Four Poems

She Said No At Intervention

The cameras rolled when she walked in.
She took a seat thinking it was a show
on addiction & how she would be seen.
So heavy to roll a joint or light a pipe on tv.
But suddenly someone was reading a letter,
and it was to her, her mother's voice, cracking
and berserk, her dad crying, her sister furious,
but clenching her lips in a smile, saying
get help, while her eyes said, you always manage
to be the center of attention.
The counselor, knowing and cold, speaking
her script of you have to go right now...
and her brother-in-law, the one with the fast
hands & hard thighs, as he dished out
money for meth, said, try, try for the family.
And she gagged at them all in a rage
and a lonely loss & betrayal that no one said
anything long ago, when she was top of the
class, bringing home the blue, cleaning her room,
tucking a pillow under her mother's head.
Then, she was invisible, but hopeful,
until she came home from a friend's house,
high for the first time & she slept forty eight hours
and no one missed her dinner plate, no-one
said goodnight, so she went again & again.
Drugs for money, drugs for sex, drugs for
a friend, and finally, anything for drugs.
Pregnant & not stopping & the baby born
with a hole in its belly & so small...so small,
she couldn't stand to look, so her family
took it away to some other family and now..
this! this farce of sending her, Now! Now!
to some place where no one would know
her face, no sunshine pill to warm that narrow
hurt, that huge hope splattered at the bottom
of her heart..
She cursed them all from the depths of her soul.

But they didn't air that show.


___________________________

Girl With Brown Hair

During my internship at the mental hospital,
a young woman greeted me, day after day,
to ask if she was pretty and if I loved her.
I said, yes. yes.
because she was pretty and because
I wanted to please her, and affection
is not that difficult to distribute, especially
if you have been given plenty of it.
So each day she abducted my attention
and wondered if I might be her sister
and did I have a boyfriend or a baby?
and would I be her friend, would i be her friend,
Would I Be Her Friend!!?
I said yes, yes, yes.
and she said, here..
and handed me a comb

so i combed her hair.

I touched her hair and she grew still.
sometimes she would reach up
and touch my fingers on the comb
and follow the strokes down
sometimes she would hold her head
all the way back so that she could stare
into my face
and always, do you love me, in that voice
of child like desperation,
as she searched for someone I might be,
or may have been, long ago.

her hair was beautiful and brown.

Before I left there, she pulled the plaster
from a high, barred window
and used it as a knife
so the aides hurried and took her to isolation,
the last place she had meant to be,
as though isolation would cure
that terrible need.

I wish someone had combed her hair
all of her life. She had such pretty hair.
Shiny, and very, very brown.
_____________________________________________________



The Despite Clause

You are older now & still angry
at the half baked cake of your life.
You believe I pocketed the lucky charms
from the family fortune & that I smile so much
because I have no troubles;
I have none that you have ever noticed.
But I love you, despite the fact,
that you cannot wish me well,
that you believe my life is a vista,
my whole world a vacation,
even when I wade in grief or cry,
you see a magic formula pouring from my eyes.
And I love you, because I know you are still waiting
for the opportunities to knock.
Your dreams lie dormant with a boneless
sullen sound & you have pruned your life
toward tomorrow winnings.
You will never see me today.
My hand in down feathers stroking your brow.
My feelings passed your way in a million gestures.
And I am kind to you, but you see condescending.
And I defend you but you look for the lock catch.
So I have added a despite clause.
It is for my own protection.
It is to wipe away the pain when I smile
and you see a smirk.
It says that I love you
past the impossible paranoia & suspicion,
past the blood love forced on families.
It says I love the way you looked
when we were small..
your small fingers pointing
into a summer sky.

_______________________________________

Panic Attack

Tonight, I need you to pretend to listen.
You have heard it all before.
There is a train whistle in my head
and on some days it passes through
a flower garden & on other days it whines
high pitched, like nails on the outside
of a car, moving fast & numb with screeching.
On garden days, the boxcars pass
in the glisten of sunny steel.
Some of us can not love without the sliver
of doubt & desperation, even when we smile
a girlhood smile of blank eyed optimism,
even when our performance has reached perfection,
there is a panic button that nice girls stir
into the ice cubes of sweet, southern tea.
I am never what you picture me to be.
My bones quake, my eyelids roll upward,
and I am so afraid that you hope I will leave
and I hurry out & drive into well lit areas.
I tie up at the hospital hitching post & wait
for long periods in my car & I listen
to the same cd of american pie, because I know
most of the words & sometimes I sing
everybody loves me baby, both at the same time,
so that i cannot think of anything but double dubbing,
one out loud, one silently, so that I block
everything & I return home, exhausted, to my bedroom,
to the fan, that hums nothing loud & steady.
So loud, that even fear, has to pause & block his ears.
And some days I clean in a she devil dodge & move
too quickly to stop, until I am too tired to care
if fear crouches on the sweat of my brow.
Tonight, I need you to pretend to listen, but instead,
I pretend that you wish to know more of me
than my friendly face hidden in a sense of humor,
my hospitality, my dancing, my soothing touch.
But you are always sleeping, even when your eyes are open.
Even when sadness haunts the depths of my being,
you are still seeing, nothing.
In the morning I will whip you up a fine breakfast.
We will enjoy another make believe morning.

Chafed Knees

Chafed Knees

I cannot blame the texture of the soil
for my chafed knees, when I kneel
too heavily on the floor of the world
I polish, over and over, one home section
until it gleams the basics of earth and sweat,
until the spot is wiped clean.
When I stand, I cannot blame the world
for my chafed knees, and I cannot blame
the knees, that only obeyed and bent
beneath the pressure of thought.
I do not blame the sky.
A majestic, blooming blue just beyond
the reach of my tiptoes, lofty and cool.
A cliff of clouds that design a variety of form,
floating broad choices and narrower ones.

Watching the Fire

Watching the Fire

The wind has built a night wind in the flames
The fire is rising with each chimney gust
There is a heat encroaching on the room,
an exile till I found these cedar chips,
pieces left from building a new shelf
Now heat is welcome and he seats himself,
beneath the sofa where I hang my feet.

There is a golden light before the hearth
and I am watching trees outside that bend
almost to earth, but then rise back up again.
And I am watching how the mountains stand
so much a narrow gateway to the world
and in the last long view of evening dusk
I know they lead to distances too far

I know dusk must move slowly into night
and that it does so all around the world
and whether we sleep in darkness or in light
the dusk will still move slowly into night
But for the moment I am happy here,
and half way sleeping in the heat that rakes
in gentle flicks of light across my face.

new furniture

new furniture

this cold couch pushed against the wall is too young
to know who I am, how many nights I roam
in the abandonment of hallways and time machines
it does not hold you dying, quietly, unto yourself..
it knows nothing of my days of resurrecting love,
the final failures in a rainy night of ambulances.
this table never held our drinks or knew the slam
of anger or hilarity, a place to place pills for dividing
into the hopeful magic that would erase
all those years of bodily abuse.
this lamp never knew your face in its' light, has not shone
on the hopeful or helpless human desires, has not watched
in the small circles of light, spilling beneath it,
how fast eyes can shut, a record with the needle lifted
too abruptly, spinning on and on in silence.