I who was a house full of bowel movement, I who was a defaced altar, I who wanted to crawl toward God could not move nor eat bread.
And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, "My need is more desperate!" and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out.
I see myself as one would see another. I have been cut in two.
My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.
She suffers according to the digits of my hate. I hear the filaments of alabaster. I would lie down with them and lift my madness off like a wig. I would lie outside in a room of wool and let the snow cover me. Paris white or flake white or argentine, all in the washbasin of my mouth, calling “Oh.” I am empty. I am witless. Death is here. There is no other settlement.
There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning.
Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out.
Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.
Pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring, pulling off the elopement wedding ring, and holding them, clicking them in thumb and forefinger, the indent of twenty-five years, like a tiny rip leaving its mark.
unless I can shake myself free of my dog, my flag, of my desk, my mind, I find life a bit of a drag. Not always, mind you. Usually I'm like my frying pan useful, graceful, sturdy and with no caper, no plan.
I'll Vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called Yellow and put my lips down to drink it up.
I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.
Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly.
Letters are false really - they are expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are.
Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one.
Despite my asbestos gloves, the cough is filling me with black, and a red powder seeps through my veins.
sorrow is easier than guilt.
Death's in the good-bye.
Now, in my middle age, about nineteen in the head I'd say, I am rowing, I am rowing.
And within the house ashes are being stuffed into my marriage, fury is lapping the walls, dishes crack on the shelves, a strangler needs my throat, the daughter has ceased to eat anything.
stop the darkness and its amputations and find the real McCoy in the private holiness of my hands.
Man is a bird full of mud, I say aloud. And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus.
Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.
For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.
Oh thumb, I want a drink it is dark, where are the big people, when will I get there...?
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