pushing

I’ve laid down in a dozen beds

Felt arms around me

Rested my head

Lied down and been lied to

Tied up and skinned alive

Had my heart eaten by masters and dilettantes alike

I could bury my head

In the hair on your chest

Lie in your arms

Look for truth

but I’d never find it

not there

the physical is fickle

it rises and falls

ebbs and flows

pushes in and out

rises and swells

before it lets go

a torrent of lies.

Forgiveness

I just wanted to tell you that I know there were times when I was shitty to

you, and I'm really sorry.

No need to respond, I just wanted you to know that I know.  I hope you're

doing well.

Because I am a masochist

I read your flaccid apology

over and over again

hoping to imbue it with substance.

empty and hollow,

a facsimile of feigned regret.

Its three sentences

form a thin body

that lies,

sans the details of contrition

wan upon the page.

Nevertheless, I forgive you. 

Bread and Butter

He used to butter my bread.
But now I take my toast dry.

Excavating fear

What drove you?
Was it the fear
that you would never be enough
for your mother?
If I excavate the ruins,
will I find her
blonde face
in the dust of your despair?
The ruins of our failure.

My own fear
that I was never enough for my father
haunts me
stands like a shadow at the door
a monster under the bed
roots me to the floor
paralyzed
I should change the sheets,
but cannot turn the page.

our fears so deeply buried
lines of code
like DNA
they spell out
run
run
run

Medical Release

It was an artifact I never thought to find
amongst the unpaid medical bills, foreclosure notices, junk mail.
In the debris of my life,
I found your signature
small and tight at the bottom of the page
certifying that you would keep me safe.

Elizabeth  never warned me that the stages of grief could last so long

she never said that one little paper could inflict so many cuts

could the doctors and nurses have known,
the brevity of your promise.
how already you were plotting to rid yourself
of the troublesome woman, the mischievous girl
this walking hospital bed and her insecurity blankets
that covered you with love and smothered you in fear.


I can't be the first woman in history to pine over a broken love
and I certainly won't be the last, this is just grief looking for acceptance.

paint a beige wall red

Take the plates from the box
move the table to the left
find new homes for old things
paint a beige wall red
and build a new life
upon discarded remnants
past life possessions
well worn, loved, previously used
made useful once more

Did you know that the M-space of a teenager or an adult is only 20 minutes at most?

Dear ___________,

I read something today that I would have loved to share with you, if I could ever stand to speak to you again. I always respected you as a professor and an educator. Listening to you teach, whether it was that time I stood in the hall without your knowledge or the time I sat by invitation in your class, always brought a smile to my face. So when I find myself learning something really valuable about teaching, something I know you could benefit from as an instructor, well it makes me want to call you or at the very least write you. But I can't do that. We aren't lovers anymore and we certainly aren't friends. You are someone I used to know. I don't really miss you anymore. Not since I realized that underneath that feminist visage beat the red and bleeding heart of secret misogynist. You are a man more concerned with his ego, his fear of being a cuckold (which is in my opinion the roots of misogyny), and his pride than with anything else you profess to hold dear. There is a reason you are unmarried at forty. Yes, you can form longstanding relationships with friends, even female friends, and family. But you will never be a true partner to a woman until you can let go of your fear that she may take her pussy elsewhere with or without your permission. I could have ridden through the streets like lady Godiva but I would have never strayed. You were to fear filled to respect me as a woman. And while you would have never used the word out loud, I know you called me slut in your heart. So I cannot call you to tell you that while your lectures are funny, oh yes you had a gift for humor, they are too long. If you want to get better results with the students in your class you should vary your activities every twenty minutes. Provide more opportunities for group work and meaningful expression. You should give your students a variety of ways to connect to the material. After all if the goal of teaching is to help student's learn than you can't afford to take the easy way out and simply lecture. No matter how entertaining and funny your lectures may be. Yes, its sad that we can't talk anymore as friends. I would have liked to be friends with you. But how can I ever be friends with someone who doesn't respect me? Especially, as I love and respect myself enough to know that I deserve better than a short blonde misogynist, no matter how smart or how good in bed he happens to be.

Best regards,
The Goose Girl

Reaching hell

There's got to be bottom
to this endless darkened well
because how long can I keep falling?
without ever reaching hell.

a little after four in the afternoon

smoking
I catch my father in the glass
staring back at me
with half lidded eyes

but the curls give it away
his hair is too long
cheeks too soft
I look left
and his gaze follows me

looking straight ahead
we engage in that classic contest of wills
staring each other down
we crack simultaneously blinking and looking away

Me, looking for my mother.
him, looking for I know not what.
I see her soft cheeks
and round eyes
as I lift my lids up
to greet my own

The perils of swimming

His body upon me
weight on my back
shadows in the dark.
suddenly,
the tide has me
I've swum beyond my depth.
I'm dragged out to sea
drowning
in my memory of pain.

His body upon me

I transcend time and space.

 fourteen  and tipsy on wine

impressed by a senior letterman jacket,

I don't notice the change in tide

until the water's to deep to swim.

His body upon me
my cries are swallowed by the waves.
my insides burn
I float face down
like driftwood
tossed about by the tide
discarded by the sea.

late at night

                                                                                                                    Late at night

                                                                                      you sneak into my thoughts

                                                                                like the early morning sun

                                                                              streams into my room

                                                        through the cracks in the curtains

                                                                              so carefully hung

                                                                  tucked behind the books

                                                    and that camera I never returned

                                                             I cannot shake loose the dust

                                                                                      of your memory

                                                                                          no, I am pinned

                                                                                                  like my curtains

                                                                                              shut tight against the sun

                                                                                                that creeps into my thoughts

                                                                                                                                  late at night.

Light

We appear briefly in history
if we show at all
just one brief shining moment
our light barely has time
to travel the length of our most distant star
before it has gone
extinguished
with all our hopes and dreams.
In light of this short window
I choose to shine brightly
so that my glow
will last the length of the universe
and back again.

An Angry Letter, unsent...

Dear _____________,

Why the fuck won't you send me my pictures? Do you realize this makes you more of a scumbag than that  fat englishman who took six months to pay me back the 400 dollars he borrowed, at least he had the excuse of not having a job. What fucking excuse do you have for being such a prick? Is the postal service too complicated for you? Do you not understand how to buy stamps? Was it not enough to break my heart, must you now humiliate me further by withholding this one last thing? Keeping me tethered to my mail box always searching for word of you? You are a fucking asshole. There is no question about it, you are a prick. I shall stick to what I said last August; of all the scum bags I have known you are by far the worst. At least the others were decent enough to feel shame.

And I'd send you this letter but I can not see the point. I loved you once at expense of myself. It cost me pieces of my heart, my mind, my soul,  my freedom, my body, my energy, my spirt, and my hope. And once you'd spent your pieces of eight, you made off like a pirate with the bounty of my love.  So may you grow like a onion with your head in the ground.  Even with all your layers you are forever upside down and obscured by dirt. You make me want to spend my nights looking up Yiddish curses. If I met you on the street or outside of the acupuncturists office I could hurl them at you the way the British and French forces compelled themselves over the battlements at the Somme.

Do the right thing and know that I will not think poorly of you. Or don't and know that I should hope to see you on one leg and that you should see me with one eye.

Shalom,
TGG

kissing you breaks my heart (Desire)

With every sweet vanilla kiss,
my body aches and arches
bending, contorting, stretching
to find satisfaction.

your teasing touches
craft desire out of distance.
sweet whimpers in my ear
send shivers down my spine.

and I wish with every fiber
to be like other girls;
heady with desire,
desperate with need,
easily gratified by the kind caresses
the soft touches
that your teasing tongue implies.

II.

yet even as desire mounts

reality crashes in 

dragging my wishful thinking out

to see truth lying naked

in the streets of my mind;

toying with a dull penny

bored with a toy,

that only yesterday

seemed new.

frustration builds

finding its way

into my flesh, 

electric.

I miss the sweet sting

the transfer of power

as you light up my skin

turn me red with desire.

III

Kissing you breaks my heart

makes me wish for ordinary

reduces my hopes

leaves me wanting more

Steinbeck letter about love

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/john-steinbeck-on-falling-in-love-a-1958-letter/251375/

Last month on the 9th...*

Last month

on the 9th

It was Richard Nixon's birthday

and the nightly news said nothing.

The Monday night dancers

tangled on the floor

"You are my sunshine" floated over the crowd

as I finished the blues with Jacob.

the accordion of time

exhaled one note

between Memories

and your front door.

Then the newest stranger knocked,

ready to collect her things and vanish

like so much wind over dried grass.

As you spoke

movie theatre projectors

Spilled from your mouth

clattered on the floor

made a mess our story

Last month

On the 9^th

My father’s ghost turned 68

Blueberry Kush swirled

In the back of my head

gathered in my living room

made a phantasm of my pain.

*subject to revision at any time and actively soliciting comments.

Parsimony is a state of grace...

Loneliness breeds a collection of words

They gather dust in dead letters

Murdered before the post

Cramped hands stained with ink

bemoan your fickle fleeting fancy 

the futility of it all.

Parsimony is a state of grace.

A nirvana only reached

through fasting, prayer and meditation.

When the fullness of my own heart

replaces all lost love.

sleep deprived

you
 can pack
 a weeks worth
 of clothes under my eyes

Apology

I just wanted to tell you that I know there were times when I was shitty to

you, and I'm really sorry.

No need to respond, I just wanted you to know that I know.  I hope you're

doing well.

Because I am a masochist

I read your flaccid apology

over and over again

hoping to imbue it with substance.

empty and hollow,

a facsimile of feigned regret.

Its three sentences

form a thin body

that lies,

sans the details of contrition

wan upon the page.

You do not even desire my response.

A cruel reality bravely borne.

Her mind was a map of memories and as she traversed each road she discovered new paths of pain. Every new connection reminded her of the love she had lost. Where could she go? Nowhere was safe. Every song, every article, every sidewalk and familiar place brought with it infinite opportunities to create these the connections within her mind. Even the simple act of the sun shining on the freeway asphalt made her recall the long drives to his door. All of her natural habits now betrayed her. She could no more seek out the arms of another to obliterate the memory of his skin than she could slice the flesh from her bones. For better or for worse he had changed her. Imbued with this new knowledge she couldn't help but see the futility of her former actions. He had civilized her.  Nor could she roam the internet without risking stumbling across some article that she would have, in a former life, shared immediately with him. He had at once enlightened her and abandoned her. Unable to share these new thoughts with the one who had helped give them birth she was left to parent her growing consciousness alone.

Was it any wonder that she missed him? Who could she speak to now that would understand? She looked around and saw no one. All at once despair welled up inside her threatening her hard won calm. After all throughout the majority of their friendship it was his mind she had admired first and foremost. Her love for his body having taking longer to mature. Although it was worth noting that she missed his body. Each night, in bed, she replaced the warmth of the electric blanket with heat of his pale body near hers. Mornings were a cruel reality bravely borne.

Emotional Cripple

I loved you
for your imperfections
webbed toes
thinning hair

emotional cripple
that you are
I loved you.

Manumission

I wasn't separating my emotions from sex
like yolks from the whites.
I was scrambled up in you.
So completely yours
that I needed release.

My body ached from unexpressed pain,
your whip set it free.

hiding my tears
beneath my curls
leaving my body,
behind

a sea of red welts
swim slightly down my thigh
up my back
break skin on my hip.

later when I join myself
my face buried in sheets
I can feel you
inside
lighting me up,
an energy so strong
it could have been mistaken for love

At the finale
my mouth is on you
I vibrate with pleasure
and for just one moment
we share bliss

and I am bound to you further
denied my release
alone

my sadness mounts
welling up inside
my mind
and mouth
flowing out of me
I make a final request for freedom.
Manumission having been my goal
from the start.

Not once not for a moment

I didn't think of you all day

not once

not for a moment

at no point did I close my eyes

and remember 

two clear blue pools of light

I have forgotten

the lemongrass scent

of your hair.

the sound of your voice
a distant echo

down the hallway of my mind

my skin no longer aches

to feel your touch

all memories of your kiss

have abandoned ship

my disciplined mind

doesn't miss our agile conversations

No I didn't think of you at all today,

not once,

not even for a moment.

Alexi Murdoch -Shine

I wonder why
We are the way we are
And so I wonder why
We are the way we are
And why
We only love each other from afar
This is how we are fading
This is how we are fading
Time
Time
You spend your days watching the door
Yeah you spend your whole life waiting
But you dont know what for
You have everything you need right here
Still you want more
Ow this how we are fading
This is how we are fading
Time
Time
Well I didn't come here
Looking for a soul
And I'm tired of watching dust collecting all above
I'm a spirit trying to be human
I'm just a spirit trying to be human
But im thinking
This is how we are fading
Whis is how we are fading
Time
Time
You hold on to yourself
You're afraid that you might get left behind
And so you hide your eyes
You're afraid that the lie will make you blind
But it's time
It's time to shine
Yes it's time to believe in what you know
Time to believe in what you know
Time to believe in what you know
And you don't need strength te be strong
Time to believe in what you know
No you don't need strength te be strong
Time to believe in what you know
Time to believe in what you know
Time to believe in what you know
Time to believe in what you know
Time to believe the far you go

This will only end in tears.

doubt

doubt creeps in
like cat burglar
rummaging through my thoughts
picking out the jewels of hope
and absconding with them
through the window

Correspondence

I've kept all your correspondence
when read together
I can see our story
unfold before me

flirting in our friendship
guarded in our fears
venting all your anger
to all just end in tears

letting go

I'm letting go of loving you
it hurts in every pore.
as the bruises fade
from my skin
my heart's bruises
deepen more

the path
we walked
was jagged rocks
pain with every step
yet I would travel
back that way
to be in your arms again

Auger

I cannot auger your intentions
from a review of your actions
pick through the entrails of your affection
to determine its meaning

What I should have known

gut voice
a whisper
though loud as a storm

red flags
warnings
so many mines to disarm

years ago
like magnets
attracted then repelled

time has come
I join the list
of those who came before

a history
of broken hearts
mishaps and tortured love