Catching a Bat.

I still get flashes of "everything is all wrong" voices in my head say "wrong way to spend your time, wrong body, wrong job, wrong dream, wrong relationship" wrong wrong WRONG. I don't know what theses days I can say for sure. I know that I am here in this chilly wind, looking closely and feeling the feelings of my age. And how can I do it all?

Sometimes I feel really in the spotlight. am I acting right? Sometimes I feel like I am mean to people who love me. Sometimes I just want to be more sweet and funny. I have a hard time connecting and loving all of my selves and the different moments of my life so far, how can all these parts be the same?

Sometimes I break.

Worries I have lately:

tangled hair.
being yelled at.
being very very lonely.
taking my last few days here for granted or entwined in toxicity.
the trailer not fitting all of my stuff.
no more faith.

a night of talking last night that hurt and hurt and hurt. to let go and let God.

I want holding close and treasures, I want passionate yeses. I want calm gladness. I used to have these things.

I just came to realize that somedays we wake up and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

There was a time.

Matt moved out a week and half ago. I can't yet bring myself to be in the kitchen for more than five minutes without it reminding me of the endless dinners we cooked together, hugging with wet hands and the sound of pots clanging. My kitchen has been heaven. I feel like I have lost a limb. The kitchen remained relatively untouched when he left, most of the art and dish ware is mine but my kitchen seems to have suffered more than I have. I come across some of his white shirts in my laundry and I smell the arm pits-weeze-goodbye. You could grind his lack of presence down and make diamonds that could scratch glass. I guess there is so much I took for granted, so much to be missed and I can't help but wonder, how the human being be so resilient? You think you will never get over it, and I know that pain doesn't heal all wounds but there is something dulling about the nature of pain. Pain on pain on play repeating--with a back up life in waiting. I guess when you are lost in the woods, it takes you a while to realize you really are lost. Also, there is nothing terribly glamorous about being alone. After all of my laundry is done, washed with perfect lilac detergent, the carpets are clean, and we will leave the dishes will be left out of this as they have been neglected in the dark cavern of this phantom life I insist I used to have. What is there really to do? I wanted: "to spend time with myself, get to know myself better" I think I might have known myself a little better when you were here.

I swear to god I can hear machine guns in the living room tearing up the fire place, puncturing the dry wall drowning out the sound of your body crunching on the carpet. The light switches are broken, this memory is tracing a picture of a heart over and over again, each ventricle one at a time.

And then I realize, conceited independence is like hollandaise. Deliciously decadent, till it stops your heart.

The VIolence

I have taken the blueprint of your back for granted
as if the sidewalk were not an altar
and the sound of the shower not a hurricane
bearing down – there is no ceremony for this.
the night goes on in spite of the rain, much
like the mail. make me a bullet of a mouth,
sex love and money on the radio. not a bullet,
a gun. not a gun, a harbor. to hold you, against
this, against the night with its sirens and batons,
I fly down the block to you and the lights, in
harm’s way, all sixteen muscles of my tongue
pulled, meat for the men who don’t love you.
my love, ink is fool's armor. your good luck
works on no one in uniform. if it's true
that bone is harder than steel, make me
a building, a garden of calcium
and mineral in bloom, deadbolt
of a spine, you coming home whole,
the apartment of my head on your bulletless
chest / each time the cry of fight goes up
on the street I remember your hand, the man
rocking back on his heels, his mouth
a sidelong oval shocked into quiet
at last, his pale hand torn from your forearm --
love, lay your burden down, here, tell me how
to make this body a safehouse and not
a prison, how hold your hand when its every lifting
is an act of self-defense, how take the knife from you
and not call it murder, or surrender – the cabdriver,
the cop, the woman gripping her purse
on the L train conspire -- you are already
a weapon. I am no building, no shield,
less than cotton between the violent night
and your skin, less than teeth
ground down to bonedust
small, white as I am.

Marrying the Violence - Marty MCconell