
A Disgusting Tryst

Where do depressed people go
When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
Back to their room, where one voice says – take them up on their offer
make a phone call
but the other voice knows they will not because
when you feel that down the last thing you can do is talk.
Where do depressed people go
when the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
Outside to empty streets / not reminded of what they fail to achieve
the silence, a balm on fevered emotion
for everyone judges what they cannot see
as others watch Pandemic movies behind closed curtains
the sad roam in search of meaning.
Where do depressed people go
when the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
they’re told it’s a disease as much as a broken arm yet
judgement is always a cudgel just one step away
even lovers rebuke and ask; Why can’t you get out of your head?
Do something helpful for a change, instead of navel gazing?
or worse, say nothing, ignore, over it, worn out
few can handle a season with dysmorphia.
Where do depressed people go
when the entire world suddenly feels they do?
For a quarantined period, it can even feel like fun
nothing of the permanency, nothing of that locked in sensation
pervading senses, shutting down, until all the dreams you had
are dust and ash on floor, you can’t even get out of bed, to brush your hair
or walk the dog, this inertia isn’t laziness, it’s a switching off
of life’s impulse and so the bulb dims eternal.
Where do depressed people go
When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
This is how it feels every day, you struggle to find a reason, to steady yourself
into faking it, and surely, the falsehood runs its course and you’re back
with naught and nothing comes from nothing we’ve been all taught
self loathing reflects back in the unwashed mirror, a hateful creature
your worst enemy is between your ears, you hear only
the rebuke and chastising of that part of you wishing to be free
break out, break out, crawl, stagger, run get away
from yourself you cannot.
Where do depressed people go
When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
trapped in a brain that doesn’t sit up and beg when ordered
motivation a distant memory, as much as you want there are
no magic pills or electric impulses powerful enough
to restart what has lain dormant and half alive
we are quarantined by our own demons they
made prisoners of us long before Covid 19
even those who love us, wish we were different
self hate is a woman without rocks in her pocket
yet
she walks to the edge many times each day
her reflection cries even as she no longer does
for tears are wasted after a certain time
fixed in place by broken ways forward
she seeks to drown the madness with one jump
and they sit on their sofas talking about how it will be called
the great epidemic, where we all stayed in place
not realizing for some of us this is
our hell already created and nothing new
we have been here before, we shall again
it is the wordless, grieving place of those
locked down by their minds in situ
watching the world build around them
statues in the dark
to a pandemic long pre-existing
where screams are never heard.
Photo by Sean Patrick on Pexels.com
We talk about the past
I used to like talking about the past
it was a favorite drink warming my hands
when Winter first called
this time what has gone before now feels
sad and heavy like wet wool blanket left to dry
in insufficient heat
it leaches the warmth from my lavender bones
I feel sorrow and weighted down by metal reminder
who was that girl? Who absorbed
grief and laid it on her arms in shapes and symbols
to be read years later by Rune interpreter
did she really? Think she had no worth
so much so the days became years and the pain
soaked so much of her blood she longed to eat
meat
you craved her up and steaming you fed on her
badly wound lassitude
she forgot herself as she pretended
love means forgiving time and time again
she forgot, she was worth something
that girl who didn’t have hands uplifting her from
the clamoring downpour
lost her way in cavorting storm
the spooling moon, a snake wrapped against tattooed branch
this way and that, the even keel of life forgotten
some days it took everything just to stand up
she mislaid the memory, she was not there to be crushed into
tiny pieces of herself and thrown for white breasted sea birds
to swallow whole
love should not force you to your thin knees
it should not destroy the tender parts of you
capable of feeling
fingers playing fiddles with tempura emotion
love is not a white flag of surrender
at times it needs to be a pirate ship
fast on its feet, answerable to nothing but
the truth of vanquished things
torn and shredded in haste
we talk about the past and
I used to like talking about the past
comforting me like a one-night-stand
until I became tired of hearing how I accepted
less and took nothing
raging against the dying light
life is after all
short and painful and full of unexpected turns
do not add to it by self-hate or diminishment
if I could go back in time, this is what I would say
to the girl who got used to having empty pockets
I would take her by the hand and remind her
you may have been broken or forged incompletely
darned with a yarn too coarse for fine needle
you may have been told this was your lot in life, you did not
deserve equality
but just as it seems true, the world will be submerged
when rain comes down pitiless and hard
it is not so
we rise then
we always rise
for one more chance and when it offers itself
hand in your bad habits and leave that moth eaten coat behind
take the tall steps upward
feel the sun on your throat
smile even as you don’t know
what lies around the corner
present and glad
for your very existence
Photo by Aloïs Moubax on Pexels.com
Last night I scalded myself Mama and as the boiling water ran down my arm
I saw you through the pain and you were smiling and everything was wrong
how you are alive and yet gone, how you exist and yet don’t, how I was never right
and somehow always mistaken
If I don’t come from you then who? My mitochondrial existence and all the women before us
seem to pass into memory and then detached, by our severing
every day I wake and I think of you and then I remember
you’re not thinking of me
What tenderized my heart so? Pounding it until it cried out
I know it’s futile and still I yearn
What compelled it to continue beating even after the obvious?
I loathe that about myself and I love that about myself
I am like a ship in a bottle, you cannot figure out how I came to be
full and whole, encased in glass and yet
I am neither full nor whole, but hungry and drowning
a featherweight, a word, something you created and then said
no you can take it back, I don’t want it any more
(I never did / I pretended / it was the mask of a mask in a mask)
and so I went far and nowhere
near and not close
wondering what will come first? The last loss of you, or the first diminishment of
my eternal want?
Who am I kidding? With endings there remain
more scabs to pick off, prayerful knees and bowed heads
no amount could achieve
forgiveness or whatever it is I need to be to
change everything that cannot be changed
so I watch myself and you
I watch nothing and no one
empty their expressionless pockets into water
watch the colors of us turn dark and indistinguishable
as if we’d never been and I am not sure
where or who I am without you
like a glass blower who stands on the quayside
wondering if
the boats will come today
marking the horizon with their
dusky forms
Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.com
A house without visitor
a life without notice
the invisible among us
silent behind their walls
we think nothing of
in our hour of mirth
trying instead to catch the tailcoats
of that good feeling as long as it lasts.
For some of us, if we are lucky
we never run out
of brightly colored days and regard
for others, life is a jigsaw of incomplete moments
too much spent unnoticed and forgotten
behind structures that do not speak
the words too hard to say.
We are not selfish for wanting to stay
free of sadness, and shrugging it off when seen
though it compounds those many weary souls
alone so often it begins to feel
like a waking death.
I used to wonder at their fortitude, why
they continued on, what kept them going
if anyone ever gave them a thought
never imagining I could become myself
their neighbor in isolation.
There is nothing to be done for it
some of us are by our natures and fate
passed over, left behind, forgotten
no pity required, we sustain ourselves
on the very grief felt, sitting at single tables
trying to open our mouth to sustaining.
Sometimes, even breathing is
an effort
perhaps, when we die early
and unremarkably
this is why
for the body responds to sadness
shutting down, closing off
turning out the last light.
I think of childhood and how I should have known
it was a preparation, or a warning, depending
but then I had hope
and now you cut me off
with not so much as a whisper
and I see my own reflection fade
from all memories and all common ground
to become what maybe it always was
before I ever existed, before
time itself, counted down
loss
though loss is not the right word
for you cannot lose what you
never possessed
a voice
something still alive
someone trying not to scream
they make a sound that could only be described as an
oral ache
stretch of sinew, wide mouth, no noise, neighbors hear
nothing
there has been too much pain for sound
still tears come, when you think there could be no more
nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows
behind well constructed facade, beneath masks
the woman with her head in the oven
probably wrote a decent poem before she expired
smoothed her apron down, sent her kids to school
before turning the dial high
her own sounds of anguish and the hiss of gas
a sigh of sighs
the postman can knock on the door and you can open with a bright
false smile and he will think to himself as he departs, she is such a happy
woman always with a nice thing to say and a bright grin, I wish my wife were
half as content
close the door, gather the rope, sling it securely
the same woman who turns the dial high
prepares her demise with thoughtfulness
she is tutored at deceiving
sickness overwhelms her and she is on the floor tearing at herself
watching from ceiling, a woman unravel and be unable to re-knit
she feels in her solar plexus, in her very marrow, the scourge of loss
she can’t stand it, she can’t stand it, she can’t stand it
the idea time assuages pain, is a falsehood
hers is a road that will always be wet with tears
her eyes are closed and she is imagining how it is some of us
never stop hurting and others can brush off betrayal like lint
walk on unperturbed.
in the silence of her house, the clock in the hallway unwound
she feels the walls closing in, the very sky descend
all her madness like balls of yarn, have no where to pretend
they are okay
she is demented with hurt
voiceless, personless, no-one to reach out to
her arms are cut again and again with the switch of abandonment
she was once someone’s baby
she was once someone’s love
lapsing into unconsciousness in hot overflowing bath
crimson for her unshed horrors, streaking clean floor
did not need to use her own hands in sterile afternoon
washing line blowing emptiness like fallen maps
now she is dirt and dust and a woman without bones
she is sinking into the soft hiss of gas escaping gratefully
if she had the courage she’d light a match to guarantee
her inferno
she left one last message on one last machine
lost in time and the rolling hours curling their faces to the wall
her tinny voice breaking and crackling over distance
saying goodbye without saying goodbye
for even in death she pretends
everything is okay
and when you come home at 6
the table will be laid, your shirt for tomorrow pressed
hanging like a specter
its loose arms waving
in mute appeal
I push people away
as they pushed away from me when I first learned
that’s what people do
so run ahead and do it first
you might tell them your real age, or show them the scars in your skin, that usually does it
with online trolls who really only want a
mirror little narcissist
you might show them your face and all the welts that
lay invisible and divisible like trails of tears
finding only drought
you might reveal your defeats and play join the dots
with stories for each one and then you may
know me just a little
except I don’t want to be known and even as I write
I remain anonymous to myself
the perpetuation of a dream instead
where we dance sweaty and disordered with our hair
collapsed like flamenco skirts in rivers of ruffles
two people with thick manes and thin skin
I taste blood on your lower lip and the depth of it
makes a vampire of me
your pulsing neck is salty from your keening
we interlace our hands like church mice and bad girls and best friends and artful dodgers
I feel your fingers pulsing within me as together we cleave
so much comes from a body who wants and so little from one who does not
when I see you, I want to close my eyes and hold onto the image
how you stand, the light caressing your flawless skin as
oil might run her rivets down your elongation
If choice were a bird, I’d choose you again
And once more, with the release of my lips from yours
A song passed between mouths like a key
Open my heart, keep yourself there
If choice were a thought, I’d choose you again
And once more, with the capture of your ebony and ivory
You, who is seamstress to my soul, play your flute
I hear it behind my eyes in the vault of my trust
If you were a dream I should better wish to wake
Our drowsy love may keep us drugged by its tempest
Sleeping in the passion of your touch
As sun sets and night becomes us
Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com
When I am sad, a voice, not unlike my own
chastises the impulse
if it is that, wishing to rise beyond, crush of emotion
when I am sad, I make myself sadder
by listening to those inherited echoes, telling me how I should feel
shutting down the validity, condemning feelings less than
knocking walls already fragile, disqualifying the emotion
when I am sad
I think of your disappointment
how much you wanted me to be
a thing of steel
reflecting only brightness
nothing dull or sorrowful
how I became in irony, almost everything you loathe and detest
I would say I am sorry, for your distress
but I learned instead of words, to be sad
maybe in part, because I saw, that flint in your eyes
nothing else was there
though in truth I was sad, at six years old
watching kids bully each other
knowing then, inequality and inequity
imagining the fight before I had, grown tall enough
hoping The Magic Faraway Tree
was real but knowing if it were
children grown to adults, would cut it down
when I am sad
sometimes it helps to think
love cannot be broken
by sadness or loneliness or grief
love stands as our first flower
even as it no longer exists the scent remains
to save us from disappointment
of so many other things
including each other and our infinite ability to be cruel
I am still the child with the blue rabbit
watching adults lie to each other
and kids emulate and pinch, the very stuffing out of hope
for if there is a Magic Faraway Tree
I think it would not be
for you or thee or me
like all magic things
only reveal itself to those pure hearted enough to know
sadness is manufactured by what we do to each other
with each cruel act it grows
if we let it and if we don’t
then next time I am sad
I will think on other things
like your voice and how
you make my heart quicken, just in your use
of words, the familiar cadence a worm
reaching deep into my heart
moving toward light.
how when they like you
you think they are being their true selves
their gentle care
mana to your eroded soul
it is merely the sticky gloss of their expectations and dreams
appear attentive
short-lived when you do not
rise to unspoken expectation
once they know you are
just who you are
fantasy or the begetter of
their own glossy stage play
all the light
all the brightness
are withdrawn
and they say
no problem
but by friends they mean
I will no longer shine a light your way
there was something else
on offer
swung at ill thought promise
for they exist at
the bus stop for restless people
who only give damn when they get
paid in turn
we mean what we say
but they are
not true
to their word
intention like
blotting paper absorbing
all the little stains and feelings
and no boat can be formed
for those left drowning
in their indifferent wake
Lie in bed
Child
Lest what stands beyond threshold
Threatens calm
Waking to the sound of winter silence
Clutching at inanimate objects
The seen friends who do not reply
Delve deeper into the mind
Where disturbance is held away
By merciful imagination
How long can a child
Pretend
And make-believe?
The sounds of fighting through the walls
Even the deaf hear
The crack in plaster grows wider
Each day carpet higher
Till jungle swallows child
Alone
Her own words ingrowing
Dance when no one is looking
For nobody did
Turned faces absentees
Hunger for attention
At first an annoying shame-faced thing
Then the end of longing
Acceptance
You placed me in a room of my own and said
Thrive
I did not
Instead
Half of me turned into plaster and chipboard and carpet fibers
And half climbed out windows and got lost
Letting her feathers be plucked early
By stranger fondling hands and false words
Prophet’s without prophecy
Girls born without reason
Growing in one ache
The silence their lover and their torment
Sliced in half
One, a creature straining to survive herself
One the albatross of finely dressed humans
Absenting themselves from responsibility
She says
You damned me
You shut me up
You expected me to thrive and grow in darkness and coal
As you closed the door and said entertain yourself
She switched the camera on and let them come one by one
Watch her fall beneath the lights
Mayhap dancer, mayhap pornographer
No words escape her
She moves her pain
Above you like light streaming down
Pure and broken into prisms