4 AM

Hard twist of fate -
first bed big enough for two
but only A body.
The word is cruel.

Lie supine I
stare at the reverse of you(s)
waiting for sleep
to cover me in numbness.
My comfort is a white sheet.

Then, inevitably, I
will dream a grey smattering
of secret fantasies and fancies,
cerebral cinematography

but good fiction always makes me cry.

I need to update this more often. Blech.

"Paper is Poor Company"

Paper is poor company
these letters, vowels
meant to be read aloud
but silent, without sound
bloodless ink upon the page.

I write poetry on napkins
bathroom stalls and to people
words dribble from my pen
all lost and disconnected
without a set of eyes to see

But some see, then don't read
so all that is left are holes
in the body of me, my corpus
a line of footprints in the snow.

The poet wanders -
Sandaled, chucked, always bound feet-
with no place to go.

Saranac Lake

Gravel digs into fingertips
carpet and old fast food cups
thrust into a young face

Smaller, thinner, small
like the pebble lodged
in my palm.

Beneath the pushing
of a Mother
beneath a musty blanket

Through fingers
through rough wide stitches
the outline of Father through glass
walking past in the snow.

He blows on snow frosted fingers.
Hands that could tuck you in.
Hands that made breakfast
and pancakes
in the shape of snowmen.

Walk away on the other side.

Beneath the blanket
Mother's hand relaxes.
Spines are straightened
balls of flesh, unfurled.

But the red hollow of a pebble
leaves an impression on the palm
of a young girl.

Dealing with Demons

My mother tucked me and my siblings in each night
reminding us of sin, told us to pray
warned us that the Devil was never
too far to hear or see our footsteps
no matter how much he had to drink
but if we were good girls and boys,
turned the other cheek
then God would chase him away
and save us, if we believed
repeated Our Fathers, Hail Marys
and Apostles Creeds then Mom and us,
we'd be in heaven - looking down
in righteous glory on our enemies
and all our suffering would be worth it
because we'd be together and safe
so, we'd fold our hands
bow our heads
and say 'amen'.

When I'd forget the next day
taking God's name in vain or
acting less than saintly
Mom beat the Lord into me
with the same hands she used to pray
She'd call me things like Satan or Demon
had me so convinced I smelled sulfur on my skin
each bruise confused with confession
like my broken blood vessels spoke
of guilt within, revealing a million
cells of transgression spilling
on the floor like rosary beads,
a trail of Our Father's judgment
leaking onto the linoleum.

I prayed.
Every night my sister and I would kneel beside our beds,
weave our fingers together
and in hushed tones ask God for forgiveness.
We'd apologize, saying we didn't know why
he wanted to test me, making kids throw bricks
at our brothers or tease us about my broken family,
We didn't know why he made our lullabies
the sound of breaking glass and fists,
didn't know why he let my teachers
lie about the kids at recess
and my parents deceive and hurt each other
leaving marks across my sister and brothers
until we didn't have a home anymore
and our house was just a case number
because he knew everything, right?

He saw every time my sister held me
when I was too scared to sleep,
saw my brothers
picking up the brick and throwing it back
and he saw me turning cheek after cheek
heard the clicking and beating
of my red rosary beads
and I was sure he had a lesson for me,
I just wasn’t looking hard enough.

So I looked. I searched Bibles and
books, chased strings between beads,
and it turns out I couldn't see the Grace
for the trees.
God was in the one place I'd thought
he'd forgotten about.

God was in my sister, letting me in her bed.
God was in my brothers, always standing up for me.
And God was in my parents too.
In my Mother, in the way she prayed so hard
and my Father, when he made pancakes
and over the sizzling of bacon, laughed
so you'd swear the whole house was shaking.

Though we handle each piece of our
broken home gingerly, minding our fingers
on the edges as we glue it back together
with forgiveness and awkward family dinners
ever aware of the skeletons in the corner,
I'm proud of being a Murphy.
Because we're a family.

We'll damn each other and save each other
with a love you can only describe as divinity.

Summertime

Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
Your Daddy’s rich and your Momma’s good lookin’,
So, hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

It’s 99 degrees; I’m sitting on his knees
drinking to slow my mind, his hand on my thigh.
After I imbibe, he breathes, toking from a piece,
flame near his face despite the heat.
I call shotgun. Whiskey and weed.

We’re trying to devise
just how many vices
we need to mix.

I take a sip, he takes a hit.
Sooner than later, it’s lips,
rocking hips unable to tell
horizon, skin, or sin, where I
end and he begins.

Oh, Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
I’m one hot bitch and you’re quite good lookin’
So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

Summertime, the days begin
Waking up in a pile of limbs
I dance with the street sweeper on the way
Back up Clark, singing to the beat
My feet make on the sidewalk.

After it’s dark, we’ll write
poems on the cells of our hands
holding, touching, searching each other
for one loose comma of inspiration tucked away
In the structure of our badly formed sentences
of fleshy psycho-babble,
our conversation defined by the monitor’s glow.

While Autumn hides in the hallway, biding her time.
Watching the seconds fall from the clock like auburn leaves
patiently putting Xs on the calendar we pretend not to see,
because she knows you’re not mine.

I should recognize the waning sun
Add up the differences and signs
But I don’t want to analyze,
So July creeps by, vices multiply.

They wanted me to go to rehab,
I said no, no no.
They wanted me to go to rehab,
I said I won’t go, go, go.

‘Cause it’s summertime, life’s good and easy
Fish are jumpin’ and somewhere a clock chimes,
We’re so far from rich, but still pretty fly
So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

Now August dawns with gold colored days
and the metallic smell of frost lingers in the dusk.
We start to fight. Find faults to put inches
back in, sleeping apart in the diminishing nights
we’ve still got left together, frigid in the wrong season
unable to weather the change.

My chest is filled with ticks, tocks instead of beats.
You’ve lost the heat you had for me.
We crumble under the weight of vice.
And it could be better, we could fix it.

But, we know don’t have the time.

So, I’ve got my pints and
You’ve got your pipes and either way,
we’re getting fucked tonight.

Summertime, the livin’ is easy,
fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
Your daddy’s rich and your Momma’s good lookin’
so hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

Don’t you ever, ever cry.

I Do Not Write Angry Poetry

I don’t wear words like ‘survivor’
Or ‘victim’ very well. They don’t fit.
A size too small, my shoulders get caught
In the stitches, the feel of the cloth abrasive
and the tag ‘statistic’ itches.
So I just cut it out.

I don’t use poetry as therapy
Treating the page like a chaise lounge
And the audience as an MD
The subtext to every word being
‘Pity me. Listen to my pain, not my art.
You think that other guy went through hell?
Just look at my marks, they’re longer
Deeper and dreamy, conflicted artistic melancholy,’
Like if you’ve ever bled you understand need.
Like scars don’t count, you have to pick at scabs
Until they bleed.

A real reformed addict wouldn’t roll up
His sleeve,
Turning syntax into syringe
Making new tracks to escape on
Because real suffering deserves dignity.

A true resurrection does not happen
Surrounded by a crowd,
no apostles in the garden before crucifixion,
only the company of choice.

It’s having the strength for impetus, for change,
For having convictions.

I fight my battles alone
In the dark
Wondering if it’s real,
If tonight’s the night that
The demon strikes, breaking the door
And crawling in, sitting on my chest,
Weight suppressing breath,
claws hauling out a list of sins
then ticking the box
Next to ‘damned’ not ‘salvation’
Because I’m too proud to pray
To a God that doesn’t listen
even terrified, too paralyzed with pride
to say ‘redemption.’

I wake myself.

Then, between Hail Marys
the sound of clicking rosary beads,
I pray to St. Anthony hoping to find normalcy,
But instead discover gravity.

That things move only when forced.
That there’s no divine intervention.
Only choice.

I refuse to be defined by my problems
I am beyond the outline of my scars
I am worth more than the case numbers
Or the broken bones that have healed within
Creating hills on the horizon of my body
Or the stains on my skin,
Ink black then ball point blue fading
Back to paper white.

I write love poetry
Because love has saved me.

I play with words
Because I like meaning.

I say things prettily
Because I want to live in a world of beauty.

I do not write angry poetry.
I do not share the crosses I wear
Or the things that broke me
because I value my privacy.

My revenge will not
Be the venom of my words
Or living an entire life of ‘after’
But the songs I sing, my desire to love,
and my laughter.

All in my Head

We laughed when by honest mistake
I put the cornflakes in the fridge
and the milk in the pantry.
Later,
when I got lost in christmas tree lots
and drove in circles around the block
we smiled to cover our unease
but when I lost my wallet and keys
we couldn't hide behind our teeth
so I got replacement checks,
but the balance was off.

The doctor likes to talk a lot.
He says words like aphasia
apraxia, agnosia which sound
more like goddesses than symptoms
more like muses than a gathering
storm forming in my synapses
lightning striking but firing less.

They say the Irish never forget,
yet I see my face in pictures
I don't remember taking and
people tell me memories that
I don't remember making and
my words are waning and my
brain is straining but
neurofibrillary tangles and
amyloid plaques have
backed me into a misfolded corner
that only a coroner can diagnose
like some sick practical joke

but no one is crawling out
from behind the couches.

My husband, my rock, my caregiver
takes my hand over dinner and
whispers "I'll always love you,
soon you won't be able to remember that,
so I'll say it as much as I can."
He squeezes my hand.

He leaves me crossword puzzles on the table
I'm able to do a few but across and down
leave me confused and sudoku is a lost cause.

I pause when I see him,
not because of his old age
but because I'm having trouble
remembering his name.

And Washington thinks this is all a game
that stem cells are more
precious than my memory that
embryonic studies are murder as
I get further from myself
because some Texan's religious convictions
have turned church into state
and takes a life for a life.

But I'm not really dead.
My heart still beats,
my lungs still breathe
and maybe this isn't even a disease
it's just all in my head.

Trading in my Beauty

I'm trading in my beauty
to be pretty
or hot, if I'm lucky.

I remove my ponytail
and instead use a straightener
making no waves.

I look at my eyes
then line them with black
take my glasses off
add layers to my lashes

My baggy, torn jeans
I trade for a skirt
after shaving my legs
(bleeding a little from a cut
above the ankle).

I've started running in the morning
in the time I used to write
in hopes of losing my figure
coaxing curves to disappear,
in favor of hardened edges.

I’ve cleaned the room, easing
creases out of my blanket
and washing the saliva stained
pillows, no record of dreams.

I packed away the notebooks
that used to outline the bed,
filled my chest with wrinkled pages,
had to sit on top to get it closed.

To loose some baggage,
I’ve emptied my library
of chapbooks, dictionaries
and instead put conversation pieces
on the shelves.

Oh, yes, I’ve read the new Dan Brown novel.
I found it most engrossing,
didn’t you?

Windy City Blues

5pm, a massive evacuation from corporations
to public transportation, I catch
the 22 bus up Clark street
and brush shoulders taking my seat
crushed by the bodies of suits and skirts
feasting on their blackberries, juice of business
staining their mouths, focused on Microsoft
outlooks, or just lost
in their pocket books unaware of the buildings
passing by.

From the corner of my eye a bouquet
of flowers walks away on a shoulder
followed by a man wearing a chaise
as a hat (he kinds looks like a play horse –
human feet stick out beneath) but no one
is chuckling except me.

Loneliness, I confess, is riding with me.
Today at three, counting ahead six hours,
across sea waves tuned into your frequency,
I can fantasize about your itinerary, if I’m
remembered, and what you’re wearing
(Here’s hoping it’s the sweater that highlights
your double feature of green).

The loneliness is something old, yet this brand
is new, heart worn and liver abused, I’ve borrowed
your blues as I transfer to the CTA red line.
Searching faces I find they’re all different.

But that’s what I intended,
that’s what cities are meant for. Diversity. Multiplicity.
But Chi-town has swallowed the whole
of me
and spat nothing out.

So waxing romantic trans-Atlanticly
I know my particle waves are not
travelling seas to your station.
But rumination substitutes well in
lack of communication – in this not
tragic but bathic tram (existence)
crammed with people I’ll never meet
each headed home on one way streets.

A Toast - Revised another time

"A Toast"

Though I have been interrupted
and in bad taste
my lips still hunger for yours
and linger in your memory.
Because as our awkward adolescent
faces kissed our glasses clicked
and made a silent toast to our love
the unspoken words lay sweet
on our tongues the syllables
tumbling over
and under each
other
shouting silent sentences in our shared breath

You're a fiery one
and like a moth twice burned
a taste of chocolate and the light behind your blues
Draws me back every time
and with a laugh
I’ll convince myself that
I knew
That this was nothing (to you)
Relatively
But after imbibing the essence
Of your existence
I will leave empty handedgladlybecause I have stood in your shadowat least through your spectre
I glimpsed the outline, the corona
of something that felt like home.

Potential Heartbreak

Unsatisfied and a bit used

Nursing a hangover in an empty room

I think about the words I wasted on you

Potentials now lost, the adventures we’ll never share

Each appearing as invisible and tangible as the air

Surrounding me.

Your smiling face, in a dirty Red Sox cap

Rediscovering cribbage with my Dad, at the Lake House

Although he rags on you for being a Canuck,

And I laugh on the hammock

Looks at me from an empty picture frame.

Farther down the wall is the collage from

Our non-existent road trip, the time I didn’t meet

Your family (your mother loved me, by the way)

Our uncelebrated anniversaries, undefined magic moments

Next to the ticket stubs of the visits you won’t make

As the silent soundtrack of the CDs I never made plays.

The table in front of me is cluttered

With drafts of poems

I’ll never write as you sleep.

My cupboards are full of meals

We’ll never make and eat together.

My head is brimming with answers

To questions you never asked

As my secrets stay hidden behind all the things

You love about me but haven’t

Discovered.

Looking at these things,

I’m not angry.

And while I may

Mourn for unmade memories,

I feel mostly sorry for your ignorance.

That you gave up these things without a glance

For a few laughs, an easy lay, the character you play

And you play him well. Hell, I fell for it.

I gave you my heart, my body, my art

And you took it all without a return.

So as I clean out this room of potential

I take the 3 things you gave me,

The lessons you taught me:

You can’t share with someone who’s selfish,

You can’t make love to someone who fucks you;

You shouldn’t love someone who turns poetry into a trophy.

These are the last words I have for you,

No longer will you haunt my sentences

Hiding between the letters and sneaking into

The dots of my Is.

But let me close with this, with no deceit or motive,

Not even a play on words or decent rhyme,

just blatant honesty.

The night that we met, for the first time in my life,

As you walked away, I thought

I’m going to marry that man.

And while it’s silly at best.

There were things that you said,

Ways you moved, pieces falling into a puzzle that

All seemed to fit (despite my logic)

But I guess the finished product

Looked nothing like the box.

But, it was only potential, after all.

does that count as a loss?

Last Words - again

these are the last words I have for you
no longer will you haunt my sentences
hiding between the letters or sneaking
into the dots of my Is

If these confessions, this truth
can't satisfy you, then you can't understand

but is understanding necessary?
A spider being will be,
regardless of the affectations.

My only regret is that your songs
will remain secrets.

The Star of the North

Sitting on the hood of my 95 VW Jetta
between tendrils of smoke and exhalation
the lights of Montreal blur the horizon
above the star of the North

funny I find
that I've come to define myself
on Webster St.
My chilled chucked feet banging
on the headlight
the beat pounding into the night
between falling white flakes

four hours have passed
since you brought me home
having sat beside me for hours
listening to Mother and Father
verbally spar over fiscal affairs
while we drank cold coffee from Styrofoam cups
that cracked between our teeth and watched the clock

each tock bringing us closer to forced
betrayal of one who made us
and deconstructs

Even now, sitting alone on a deserted
country road, ice in the corners of my eyes
frost on my shoes

I'm fucked

the snow has stolen the stars

So I wheeze another drag out of my stick
and pick out what may be a skyscraper
then attach a wish to its distant
electric glow
saying the words slow ever so slowly:

somebody, rescue me. please.

Last Words

These are the last words I have for you
no longer will you haunt my sentences
hiding between the letters and sneaking
into the dots of my Is

There are many differences between us
I spell savior without u
when we kissed your lips
held no Eucharist
only the stale taste of old Guinness
and the lingering smoke of your cigarette
I just didn't know it at the time

I hope you never read the words I left you
Because I didn't mean to give them to you
That little peice of paper covered in ink
heart beating lips dry hands sweating I dared
to leave with a sleepy man you work for
after knocking on a window and disturbing the peace
of my mind
was meant to be shared, not taken.

Those words (and these) though written for you
do not belong to you
they belong to me.
And you stole them with your silence.

I hope that little peice of paper was lost
amongst the napkins behind the bar
or on the floor beneath some old woman's heels
covered in spilt red wine or mud
that would blur the words and tear the paper

because dirt would be better for them
dust and neglect, in ignorance
would be better than your knowing silence
that rings louder than the flat line
of blood that rushes through the capillaries
of my ears

I'd prefer that you hate me
than ignore my invitations to poetry slams
or for a shared pint with yours and mine
or cared enough to call and say it was just me
instead of a callous and cowardly text message

Rather that when you saw me at the bar
you were so overcome that you would have to leave
turning on your black heels, pulling
your leather jacket over your shoulder, scowling.

Than be peferctly able to wave a half hearted hello hello
share a dance where our eyes won't meet
and spend the rest of the night twirling about
with a woman who moves better than I ever could
and places her hands without shame on your backside

But that's the way of things, isn't it?

Words. Words. Words.
Empty syllables resound in my head
I should have interrupted you
saying that I'm a girl who doesn't kiss
after a first impression
Who doesn't spend the night
on the first date, or fall in love
with someone, a stranger, a dancer, a Canadian
with a heart of stone and teeming with apathy
who could disregard a girl who's willing
to wear her heart on her sleeve
and bare her soul in her poetry