Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Blankness

I bless the blankness--its glow, its yes.
I gaze into space; it erases this mess.
I love the losing, the pattern of holes
that opens my once-solid body like lace,
revealing the lights that inhabit my face.
I'm ripping apart the dark, heavy roles
that someone has spun from old, bad wool
and slung like a habit across a bright fool.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Tiger

My son the cartoon man, elf,
doll, funny hot bear cub in
blanket sleeper, but truly
Tiger,
shakes milk from sippy
cup into the sand, bangs pans,
takes kamikaze trike rides,
waddles death-unaware up
and down slick steps and stairs,
throws sand in my face, says
uh-oh, comes to me
growling, with the drippy milk,
drips it deliberately on me.
Tiger never stops
pacing, prowling,
and our home and
my mind
become tangled
jungles half harvested
to build someone's idea of the world.

If Tiger could still
himself, the picture
would stun you--
wet California eden,
fruit trees snowing petals
upon us in a yard full
of petals, and look at
the angel in his raincoat,
yellow, radiant, broiling,
rainbow-making
sun.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I Cast a Circle

You croak spitefully,
condemn the infant, make
frogs of men, poison the
apple, sever golden tresses.
You are always Other,
always antagonist,
old, ugly, disposable.
First the church cast
you out. You took refuge
in child stories, and
we learned to fear you.
Later, I stood accused
of being you and felt
shamed.

Today, I choose you.
I cast a circle and say
to whichever gods will
listen, we are everywhere,
rising always to the surface,
no matter how deep our images
sink. A witch is only a woman
empowered. A woman who knows
how to laugh, feel, and think.

I Show Myself

I show myself to you
at first in two dimensions;
I am a breathing picture
that looks back, like a
fish from behind glass walls.
And then it falls away:
Fear, worn like
a jacket gone
threadbare, out of style,
outgrown. When I disrobe,
you hear my space echoing
a complete song,
all its notes sounding
at once.

Fear of being seen
means never showing
my essence, the golden
field of my delight.

And withholding myself
means pain:
Unspent coins become
heavy loads on my
light body. This
time, it's time
to let gold fall
like rain.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Life Cycle of a Star

I remember that night
in October 1995, us standing
in the Deep Eddy Bar parking
lot, you pressing my hand between
yours. I see us both from a third
perspective, as if I were a small
star squeezed in the sky corner
and wondering what would happen to us.

We dated, mated, fell apart.
I was satisfied but couldn't
become. Stars change
in size and pressure to burn
new fuel. Now I must be protostar,
making shape from a nebulous past.

I left your orbit long ago, and I think
about that hand press too often. What kept
me there? That ridiculous shine in your eyes:

This is your metaphor, and I never
meant to darken it. Glow on.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Lucy

Lucy Buckley let her
hair grow longer.
Today in the park
she swept it aside
and said she doesn't go
to mass anymore.
She told my father-
in-law she doesn't
believe half the dogma,
and besides, they want
to own you.
Her girls are grown;
she did her part. All
these years, we assumed
she was devout. The Buckleys
had their own pew.

Lucy surprises me every
time she speaks, and before
I ever met her she surprised
me, when my husband
quoted her perfect New
Jersey stepmother line:
"Why botha? Wih all jus'
waitin-a die." I knew
I would like any woman
who uses death as a rhetorical
strategy, just to get out
of going to the movies.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Competent, Beautiful

Catherine took my baby
today, thank God. I stayed
for an hour and heard her
bell voice ring out Old
McDonald. The sound
stayed in my ears
as I drove away.

Competent, beautiful
mothers are everywhere
I go, performing miracles,
miracles, and they are the
thorn-crowned saviors of
the world. Fathers? Forgive
them; they know not what
they do.

I've flipped
through every image
in my brain, looking
for noncliches about
what motherhood is like.
If spiritual energy
is a fluid, there's
a siphon stuck deep
in my side. I'm so dead
tired, I can't feel
the sweet
recompensatory
wonder, the miracle
of me, anymore.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Dead Lines

These contact lenses scratch against
my corneas, because tears have salted
them too often. The plastic edges begin
curling up, and I don't gaze at anything
too long. Blur--yellow--this is my office.
Everything is overdue in my world.

My mind tapes
whirl decades-old
messages
of not good enough
and why bother and nobody
loves me. And so I have
not tried, not loved. Ooh,
maybe that's where my joy went. I threw
out the wrong album, flung
it through a car window in 1994,
and it lay by the road in a
glistening tangle.

My stories bore me, and they hiss. I recorded
on an outmoded technology.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Only You

If I were a poet,
I could describe you,
the way you were meant
to unfold. I wouldn't
judge you. I'd tell
about your room, your
hair, your breasts,
your smile, and maybe
recount a glowing, drunken
teenage memory or two.
I was in awe, I was your
guardian, and that is
love, better than with
any man. I can tell you
anything, even that you've
rushed like a wave into
sad, loopy madness and
you need to stop
drinking so much.

But I'm no poet, and you're
no object. Some people arrange
themselves, their stuff,
their friends and lovers
as if they were characters
in someone's literature. You're
not like that. There's not
much facade there. You speak
and we hear the thumping
heart of you.

You are a poet. Only you
can describe you.

Swimmer

You didn't answer.
And although
I said you didn't
have to, now I
wonder
whether you even
got the e-mail, and
whether I should try
some other way
to find you. I had
imagined what you might say.
Your wife's name, maybe,
and how many kids,
and their names. Or
that you still don't
believe in that stuff,
the trappings, the trap
where romance leads us
all. And I began composing
questions, also, all the things
I was too scared to ask back
then. How could you disbelieve
in love? And how could you
hide behind your science
when women approached, but
talk Spirit when it served
you? You talked about reincarnation,
you talked about the psychic
women in your family, and you
even knew
it was a boy. That deep
well where unknowable
things swim? You looked into
it again, again, but never
saw the love. I can insist
now: Love
lives
there, and I
was choking
on it.