Heavy Duty Poetry

 

She kept me around

 on her pantry shelf

as she sucked another soul

glibly into her gullet

licking her fingers in feigned innocence

knowing I was there

 in despair

 

Clean hope was her enemy

It’s fresh scent leads prey off the trail

Into the thriving woods

Up the ridge and away from the bog she tends

 

Come and sit with me here

On the edge of the foul pond

Sit, chat,

 bear your pain to me

She sang in her siren’s song

 

Duped, drugged, and so thirsty

 with despair

we all went,

more than once

Letting her pick tidbits off

 for later use

when least expected

at the weakest moment

 Until unable to rise…

One after another,

 Scrabbling for purchase

On the oily rock of her heart

 

She rose up revealed,

 dripping

from dark pool of her grief

unhinged,

and as she swallowed them up

There was a moment of unity and calm surrender

A moment of peace,

 Until…

 

juicy needs digested

her blinking beacon drones back on

She’s got to have more

to swallow

Even if in madness

She sucks her own tail down her gullet

 

She was too good at what she did

And ran through her stock of lost ones

Stronger in her desperate desire

She casts her eyes for me

 again,

 

She stalks me through time

From bed

From the grave

From the mirror

But I dodge

 and weave

 and pray

slip away

into the now-day

And this time,

Her web comes up empty

 

Soon your phantom bat-wings will shake and juggle

No more

It

 MAKES SENSE

 to cry a lot.

 What didn’t make any sense was to be numb in my little bed,

 to shove away the fear, grief, unmet needs,

 then arrive outside my bedroom door,

 at the classroom door,

at the neighbor’s door

with a big smile on my face.

That tore me up,

scarred me up,

toughened me up,

Closed me up,

closed me down.

It would have made sense to give up.

It did make sense a moment or two.

No more scars

No more doors

No more smiles

Just escape.

But then I cried a lot instead.

There’s the heartbreak wave

 sad and fresh

 that sweeps in over my rocky-sould

when love doesn’t work out.

There’s the horror-loss-heart

when assurance is ripped away
people,

always supposed to be

Aren’t

 and won’t ever again

 smile or breathe.

And there’s another

 Under-cover ache

Hanging around, lurking around

 waving across the night,

 just waiting.

It’s holding a little bomb for me,

delayed shock

 a board upside my head,

 the spike in my chest,
When at last self delusion breaks:

She ripped my hair harder, because…
She tore up my butt to teach me a lesson, because…

She complained, blamed, and assigned me grown-up powers over her because…

She was never loved deeply

 and her pain-hole never healed
So disappointed

 that I was not

ready, willing, nor able

to cure her secret feelings
Bitter. Sad. Jealous. Hurting. Hating.

My mommy
did not

 could not

will not ever

 love me.

There is no mother

Except me now

 

How wonderful.

 

 I have a home.

There’s caring there.

There’s soothing there

For the ache in my weary waiting heart

 

I bestow onto my own brow

A band-aid kiss

Seeeeee…

That’s better

 

Hitch-hiker looks resigned,

and yet his eyes raise as I lead my line

of cars

My destination is up on the left

I don’t want to contribute to his false-hope of a lift

I want to help him feel less pain

Walking down the car-passing lane…

By turning on my blinker

The on-coming pick-up also blinks an opposite turn

As they begin their hard curve

I make my own swerve

WHAT!!!?

Foot stomps itself on the break

Leaving just enough room for the asshole freak

 who was in a rush

and brushed

and rushed

 around the truck turner, on the shoulder.

Not seeing me

not noticing me

  in the car using that shoulder

 for a legal turn.

They squirted, gunning, as my rubber burned

We just missed crashing

 

That’s not right!

That’s not even close to right

That’s not fucking right

 in any fucking universe…

I am trying to have my day

But in a safer way

Following the rules of the road

My heart pounds as I pull around

 into my white lined slot

What a scare I just got!

The hitch-hiker saw it all

I want to call

To him to testify

My brother

My fellow sufferer

Dodging disappointment

You almost saw my appointment with death spring up and swerve right by

Oh my!

 

It’s not right.

Not fucking right.

That now in the night

 I am feeling it…

And ALL the not right things in my day

 

The old trembly man

 we plan

To keep him warm

 And fed

But he falls out of bed.

 

It’s bad when the boy is from a family

that makes him so mad,

he beats back on the pain

and they fear him,

they stick him behind closed walls

Say “we don’t want him”

You take him.

Yet we can’t

He’ll push over trembly man

He goes back home in the end.

 

What horror will happen?

Slow motion feelings boil and press everyone into another explosion

People like me who could be giving love to their own families are tethered to their phone

 

Don’t call me, I had to say. I’m tired.

I’m tired from meetings today

Meeting about the exploding boy.

Meetings about the super sad she-man

Who swallowed a bottle of pills

And needs a place to go

 because his family also says no.

 

You take him Laurie

You fix him Laure

You save him Laurie

 

And I do save, and keep people from the street,

Coaxing, supporting, helping

But don’t call me tonight

Don’t call me tomorrow

I can’t come.

 

I’m sad! I’m mad.

I can’t sleep because my sister is whispering to me

Help me Laurie

I’m in a car dying Laurie

You don’t care Laurie

Why are you dead Kim!

Why are you dead Joji?

Why are you dead Larry?

Why are you dead mommy

Why are you dead daddy?

Why are you crippled, and rotting in a bed, child-like and forgetting

 in order to live

 Lee

Eat the soft food,

Spooned into your mouth

Listen, blind to the T.V.’s drone

Drifting, sifting through just the safe places in the past.

 

It’s not right!

It’s not fucking right. Not tonight

Not with all my might

Can I make it not awful

Not with prayer

Not in a box

Not with a fox

Not here or there

Not anywhere…

Is it fucking right.

 

I want to grieve,

I just cried pretty hard

Did it help me

With the shard

In my heart that seems stuck

And I’m out of luck with nothing but the fucking fuck

 of Covid

And dying

And sighing

 And open-eyed bed-lying

 

The world’s overloaded with peoples’ stuffing down

And filling up with scrabbling

And playing and forgetting

And bloodletting

The earth is a hot dish of wriggly worms

Culled from germs

That are getting even

Spreading out to thin the weak

And cut the herd

The fear and dread

Cause even more mind-bending heads,

 to be heavy like lead

With the dead

Dead Dead Dead

I said!

It’s not fucking RIGHT!