Sunday, March 26, 2006

Snagged a boyfriend. Yep.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Honestly,

I keep terrible secrets.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

I wonder where the days went that I'm trying to get back to. Dissolved into photographs, report cards, and old blankets. The potpourri I call childhood, the feeling of it sometimes returning.

More and more lately I am who I want to be. Where I want to be.
The moments seem almost too perfect, and fragile. And.

There is also the relief of discovering that there is still love left in my heart. Heart, whatever that is. Love, whatever that is. However unspent the love may be, however tightly I keep my lips closed for fear of letting it out - it is still there, and I find comfort in that. Then comfort for the sake of comfort itself. Then, a surreal sort of pain, for keeping something so beautiful dormant. For using discretion with my own feelings. Like nooses for butterflies.

I always daydream. At night I leave the left side of the bed free.

Friday, March 17, 2006

the most intimate moments of our lives are silent and full of thought. they do not involve touch, hot sighs, fervent fingertips. they are of friends in empty, late-night restaurants drawing one another and reading poetry. to have my features studied for art's sake. to feel more beautiful than any lovemaking has made me feel, to be cared for more than a thousand breathy "i love you"s could say.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Run on.

early morning sweat startles me from the driftwood i would call "sleep" if i ever got used to the way it dissolves like the thundercloud cream that puffs in the coffee like deserts i drink to keep eyes open emails i get from ex-boyfriends like headaches i can't scrub when i'm comatose in the tub i can't sit in long enough for steam to rise a drug into my head drenched in luke-warm new jersey air of a crooked park bench on an evergreen lawn trimmed unreal poetry i can't write about happy children as white as my knuckles when palms bleed the screams from my mother become my own pleas at age 50 when men that have left me are picketfence tallies in notebooks blank as the men that have loved me are recurrent dreams in the driftwood i'll tell myself is somehow sleep

Saturday, March 04, 2006

let's try this again.

Belmar '52

In this one,
you are standing on the beach with your sisters. Five

ruby-lipped brunettes
too young to think of storms.

Link your arms. Dig your feet
into sand that sinks.

Fight the sound of raging winds
that barrel in off the Atlantic.

Laugh your throats dry.
Give The Ocean Hell.

The sea-weed strewn about your ankles:
it is silk, not slime.

Too young for storms. In this one,

Glide your wrinkled hand, nail-polish chipped and pink,
across the faces years wore down.

Say their names. Feel pearls roll smooth in your mouth.
Think not of death.

Of the solitude
of white plaster walls. Echoes down the hall

from an invalid - Hear them not.
Scream your throat dry.

Give the ocean hell.
You are too young for calm seas,

for the splatter crash dance undulating fire
of sunsets that smolder to lavendar and cream.

Keep your back to the sea. In this one vulnerable day

that wanes and sucks
its ocean down -

cold water down
the bathtub's drain,

and when you bathe, the sponge that moves
itself on you - not soap:

Sea-Foam. Don't close your eyes.
The hands that lift you to your bed are not hands at all.

They are schools of fish.
Shame that burns your cheeks red,

brings navy to your sunken eyes
isn't shame at all.

It is sunburn and soft bruise. In this one,

you were too young. You are too young for storms.
Feel splinters from a coral reef.

Touch salt that stings your skin
and laugh through the sensation.

Give The Ocean Hell.