Maybe for Nancy and Tom

We are selling the couch today

to some couple –Nancy and Tom.

Nancy and Tom were definitive;

Exact in what exactly they were looking for

Eager, precisely, for a tan and pleather couch. In fact,

They’ve got to have it today, “As soon as possible,” they said.

My response was delight, “No problem!” I said, wanting

to rid myself of the tan and pleather object.

How I hate its obtrusive shape and abhorrent texture.

If only they knew-

How we fought over who was responsible

For the ugly couch.

The ugly couch upon which we made love,

Our bare skin chilled against the cool plastic-like fabric.

Perhaps Nancy and Tom will experience the same.

-Being pressed between the confutation of warm, slapping flesh

And the cold stiff arms of

Our couch.

When the couch is gone- it will be empty.

The space, the place, we once called home.

The space, the place, we must then scour,

And clean until it is bone dry,

Absolve it of all that was

Left

In the wreckage.

We must erase any link to

A time when nothing was linked,

Couldn’t be, wouldn’t be

Shouldn’t have

Been always.

But maybe for Nancy and Tom.

TO Joe

"I’ve got to fold because these hands are just too shaky to hold,

Hunger hurts, but starving works when it costs too much to love..."

‘you’re crazy’ he says with a flick of spit and a point to his head. ‘you’re crazy’ I thought, my stomach like lead. I want, I dream, I hope, I try and I have a bad day..there’s only so much to do and not to do…barreling through eggshells like it will make…like I will make it…still…but instead I’m stiff with mucus, covered in slivers cut by shells that I broke. If only I wouldn’t stomp…if only I would tiptoe

over your ego, wedging myself between your insecurity and the scrutiny of an eye…unforgiving, ready to leap at the culprit, to notice the invasion into …? Explanation. I know not…the limits of who it is and was that you want me to be, that you expect me to be, could I be any more? Could I survive anymore, could I not love you anymore? Damned if I do and damned if I don’t –I guess you feel the same way…I think. I think.

If you loved me…why? Why, then this? Why am I the one choking down my own ribcage, turning inside out?

Undertow

You say for you there will be no between—

Between the two of us.

Click your heels, raise your voice, bitter the scene;

Count the stars, number our days, fluff and preen.

But, do not, my friend, fly the cusp.

Do not invade the sanctity behind

Sullen instigation.

Instead, let us be, as is; think to find

Resolve shucking pebbles within our minds;

An inebriation.

In pulling thread, gray, through the head, to know

Of once we were and are—

Needles gouging, mending; gapped flesh to sew;

Broken scars in the currents, we do tow.

How we have come so far.

In between, the in-between is solace

To break awaiting falls.

Yet, we slip beneath the storm with distress,

Masking truth with irony to be less

Than was meant; safe in a deep lull.

Little Dreams

Child Guinivere cries in her sleeping,

Undulating beneath the damp thick of sweat.

Her chest quavers in fear of dreams dark.

Hidden below her pillow, silvery sharks slash babies to tears.

Somewhere, in a place dry,

Dragons do scorch and rear to save.

Burgeoning, inaccessible truths.

False calamity awaits her slumber,

Mother goose, to mollify, awaits,

Spinning the spun across the wreck of youthful aware.

Her hands, in shade of pink, caress to comfort the fear.

Web of black sky broken in clouds

quick to pace,

Fish-eye hook of a moon milking the mask of bleak.

Inside the hearts and minds of children,

is chance of requite,

Fervent love bedded beneath their simple hopes.

Keen of the “it”, too keen for it

Swimming a little harder now.

Then, from the folds of sheet, a child awakes with aged eyes.