i’m fine
no, nothing’s wrong
i just really love this song,
gives me the blues sometimes, is all.
a snake, a possum, a doe and fawn
on the roadside killed, again, i saw.
i heard the breaking news story
and, i’m awfully raw, so please ignore me.
this world can be so cruel and wicked
so, of course, my tender heart’s afflicted.
you see my glistened eyes, my lump throat, and my quiver lip
and, you think they’re for you??
well, sir, or ma’am: that’s rich.
all lies,
but also,
all true.
i feel the gravity
the love
the loss
so close || this close
almost, almost, almost
buoyed then anchored
an internal saltwater aquifer suffusing me
with congestive heartbreak
swelling and stiffening my limbs
i cant walk to you or anyone
beached in my own body
my eyes filling my mouth, my throat
i can’t talk to you or anyone
muted by our illicit drug
swallow,
swallow,
swallow
that sea inside you
or else,
drown, drown, drown
in it,
i am not a mermaid
i am a human woman
yet my belly’s pregnant
with an ocean
and,
she’s y/ours
Continue reading “the sea of inez”sleep keeps you from me
you, unconscious and at rest
with my newfound enemy:
the Succubus
she eats your dreams of me, love
that’s why you can’t remember them
then, this great Lake
like a cold floor
between our warm
twin beds in winter
get out of bed, love,
come, sail to mine,
risk it
simpler, open your hazel eyes, please
thumbs, please dance in the blue light
say more, tell more, please
anything satisfies, love,
everything does
If ever I fall to dementia or Alzheimer’s
I might blurt out all my
deepest secrets and desires
and my darkest shames
Let me tell you my truest truths now
so you won’t feel
bewildered, surprised, stunned, shocked, repulsed, or devastated
Continue reading “Exposition”the phone rings
i step myself off the ledge,
fall back into the window,
onto the hard floor,
crawl across the rug,
back into my bed
& answer:
oh, hello!
“…”
i’m fine, how are you?
i feel like someone
you last loved on a wednesday,
earlier this week
i feel like someone who was once your intense singular joy/ but now and once again,
just an invisible naturalist, poet, neologist and crone
i feel like someone you forgot to mention the Hilma Af Klint show to
i feel like someone losing “our” intimacy
exponentially, by the second, against a shot clock in an un-united center
i feel like someone whose forehead you won’t kiss; whose hollows you’ll never touch with hands, tongue or tip; like someone who’ll never truly climax again
i feel like someone who upset you with
Dream[ing] and that’s where it all ended; like someone who never listened to your diatribe about Waco, or heard of your plane rituals and four-part fruition
i feel like someone whose mystery you’ll let be; like someone whose content was consumed without gnosis; like cold “leftovers”
i don’t feel like someone you will walk across a frozen Lake or Lake bed to get to anymore, during the apocalypse, Station Eleven-style Continue reading “someone”
A man who wore a kelly green shirt
Surprised me in my dream
Crashed on my grandmother’s couch
swathed in blankets, soft and deep
I don’t ask him why he’s there,
It seems we both already know
This room’s exactly where she died,
This Oakdale house, sold long ago
Still, worried that as she ‘rived “home”
He’d given her a fright,
I go to wake her, see her, touch her . . .
What a beautiful, strange night.
He says, “No need to wake her now,
she’s a gem, it’s all okay,
she didn’t seem to mind me here,
I inferred that I might stay?”
I shush’d us, not to rouse her then,
Sound asleep in her old twin bed,
In disbelief, I hear her breathe
Has our connection stirred the Dead?
I feel wondrous, but then remembrance
forges space for Cardinal guilts
Smiling devilishly, making room for me,
he pats the couch and parts the quilts.
Something Gold Can Stay
True, nothing gold can stay,
If nature has her way.
Yes, Eden sank to grief,
And Ego is our thief.
Pure gold’s not beheld or crowned
‘Tis within true aurum’s found.
By Gnostics’ purest measure
Self knowledge, our sole treasure.
October 2013
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”– Robert Frost
The Yale Review (October 1923)
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 