Tag Archives: Poetry

red thread

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Passings and Death Notes, Poetry, sonnet

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— after a loss.

If love is what we make of it, then what
counts is not who we’ve lost but everyone

waiting for us at the end. “Love, spirit,
baby cat, I’m so proud of you. It’s done.

You’re safe. Sleep. Wait for me. I will follow.”
“His heart has stopped,” the vet said. I woke to

a strange empty bed. No nuzzling. No
medicine to prep. No deep sing-song mew

for food. Maybe my faith (“Love, wait for me.”)
is wrong? Maybe there’ll be no one waiting?

It’s hard when all you have is a red thread
joining you two. My altar looks lonely

without him sprawled in a sunbeam, grooming
his dark coat, burning with flecked shades of red.

eris

11 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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When I awake the world pulses and throbs
angry and demanding. Once more I feel

frantic. Even the promise of blow jobs,
skag and mayhem does not please. What appeal

sublime excess brings feels dull when compared
to this ache. Once more I’m sick, dim and grim

when I want to be veiled, feral and scarred:
your own incubus itching for more. Dim?

Indeed. My neck contains not one love bite.
My mind is off elsewhere. My thoughts scattered.

Eros will not please tonight when Eris,
goddess of chaos, calls. Chaos in moonlight.

All else feels absurd. There’s no other word
for me but, “loss,” no other pain but, “this.”

plead

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, sonnet

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Last night, two a.m. at the hospital,
with your loved one’s blood on your jeans. Ruin

and his screaming are still stuck in your skull
the next morning, all that noise while someone

tried to save his life. I brought him home. He
slept pressed close to my side. Can a tumor

grow and bloom so fast in days? They showed me
some X-rays. What difference does it matter

if it wasn’t there on Tuesday? It’s there
now. Death takes in threes: I lost Kriszti last

week and maybe J.R. today. Then who?
One more shock. Two weeks ago I would swear

life was good but pain is subtle and vast
and I can only plead: “not yet, not through.”

best

02 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, sonnet

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Today I took my cat back to the vet
so that they can try and save his kidneys.

Three days. They will labor against this threat
for three days. “We’ll try our best.” But kitties

die just like the rest of us and, “our best,”
often isn’t good enough. After three

days then what? For years he slept on my chest.
For years he was my love, my refuge, he

witnessed what no one else has, what no one
else will. Three days of waiting, of patience,

of fear, of, “I did my best.” Is it wrong
when we say that? Grief, not sin, damns us. None

who read this will come in time. Let absence
break me. Today here, love. Tomorrow gone.

Image

moxie

01 Friday Nov 2019

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First I drew her muscles. She had obliques
that would make titans sigh. Her broad shoulders

carried the weight. There are certain physiques
only found in men’s myth, though the daughters

of the gods come in all sizes. I drew
her as she held the world aloft. It’s odd

to call Atlas male. The one that I knew
had no machismo … just mortal, no god,

no false ennui. At her feet I drew her
sisters. That’s who she carried this for, with

a horned-moon on her forehead, storms above
her hips. — I’ve never had a big sister

like what I drew; one made not from men’s myth
but her own common muscles, common love.

Posted by | Filed under Feminism, Poetry, sonnet

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without blood

31 Thursday Oct 2019

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This blood letting. That itch. You don’t approve
when I slice a burr-hole in the soft parts

of my flesh to extract … what? hurt. The groove
I cut is deep but I don’t need Dark Arts

to count the days before it will itch once
more. Let the bad blood, the stone of madness,

out. You’ve called me savage in the essence
of my faith … but without blood it’s useless

to pray. That itch seizes me more and more
these days. I’d let it out if I could cut

where it crawls under my skin and I’ve tried.
Trust me. I’m squeamish of razors and gore

yet I’ve still tried to cut it out. Cut what
itches me. Cut what runs riot inside.

midway

24 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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“Midway through this maddening life,” you know
how this goes, “I found myself unredeemed

in a dark wood.” The “right road” was wrong. No.
The road was gone, as in, damned. What I dreamed.

What I blasphemed. Lovers of words must name
horror. I have swallowed demons before,

felt their workings in me. “Clock: tock-tock.” Same
shame. Same grief. Damn me with a touch of gore

on the cogwheel. Things slow down. In your heart
there is a murmur. You know how this goes.

X-rays show blood clots. Demons I can’t squeeze
out of you. That is my horror, sweetheart,

I’ll lose you midway … despite all of those
prayers and tears and pathetic “don’t leave me”s.

that question

12 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, sonnet

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In a way it’s just like loving a ghost.
Even on our “date” you vanished long

enough to be rude. “Only you,” you boast;
but as I read your new posts am I wrong

to doubt that truth? The problem with the dead
is that they don’t change. You can beg, threaten

and wail but it changes nothing. I’ve said
I hate not trusting you, but that question

refuses to die when I read your posts.
Why hire a soothsayer when I know I

deserve better? — Ghosts might even agree,
they just refuse to stop; that’s why they’re ghosts.

That’s why I’ve finished turning a blind eye.
Little ghost, keep posting. I set you free.

sirloin

11 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, sonnet

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I’d hoped I’d have no need to get upset
though I’ve been others’ sirloin before, burned

outside but juicy in. Juice they won’t get.
I stopped being eatable when they earned

all their scorn; insisting that I just don’t,
“get it.” True, there was a lot I never

got from them, which is why they’re not a note
I sing, a name I’ll claim as a lover

who did me wrong. They’re dead space I cast down
like a jealous god; heartbroken to find

out what they did when I wasn’t around.
Odd how the hungry ones get left behind.

I’d say: Tell me that I’m wrong about you.
Show me that’s something you can even do.

doldrums

27 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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I saw him first among the early hills.
It was arousal that drew me. I heard

voices among the brambles and the chills
I felt just then were odd. It’s been rumored

that the lovelorn can love him. He comes, spun
flakes of winter in hues of gray. — He cums

in ways I do not these days. I’d loved one
who loved others. My long sexless doldrums

were a drag but in the hills I heard song
that roused in me what many a Bacchae

before felt, I’m sure. I won’t tell you what
the two of us did, you’ve proven me wrong

to say what a fey goat-god calls foreplay
with a forlorn queen in a bone corset.

][][

NOTES:
The Bacchae were the female priestesses of the Greek god Dionysus. It is from that word we get Bacchanalia, or holy orgy. The doldrums are an old nautical term, now applied to any period of time involving stagnation and depression.