You pour words from your lips
onto the burning walls of my life,
and leave me cold and exposed,
yet unafraid and begging for more.
Ever attentive and fully open to you,
when you say my name,
do you know what you’re doing?
Do you know?
The smell of 1000 beers on your breath and
100 packs of cigarettes on your fingers
used to dull the pain of your memories
is still not enough to deter me from you,
from your touch and your love.
When you hold me close and say you love me,
do you know what you’re doing?
Do you know?
You walk around with that fixed look of consternation,
juggling a rape, the death of a father,
and the loss of a mother,
who removed you from her life as if
you were a splinter in her hand.
When you take my hand in yours
to remove my splinters,
do you know what you’re doing?
Do you know?
Realizing that I cannot be with you
although my heart yearns constantly
makes it impossible for me to pretend
that everything is okay.
We were all fat and happy
until you came around
and injected us all with your reality.
When you walk away to sleep alone,
do you know what you’re doing?
Do you really know?
The buzzing in my head
seems to pulse simultaneously
with the flickering fluorescent lights
humming and hovering over my desk,
like bright, metallic UFOs harvesting humans
just for the hell of it.
I imagine the lights draining my energy,
sucking the very soul from my ears.
It reminds me of that cat myth.
You know the one.
The cat sits on a child’s chest and steals
the breath from her slack, sleeping mouth.
I swear I can almost feel myself being sapped,
like thick, sticky, syrup from majestic Maples,
although I use minuscule amounts of physical energy,
while typing away useless reports,
to meet useless deadlines.
Dead. Me, my self, a zombie,
dreadfully mindful of life slipping by,
outside the brain-matter gray cubicle,
in which I am constructing
mindless databases of desolation,
mourning the sunshine that is trapped
behind darkened windows and
dusty, metal blinds.
One hour, (only sixty minutes!)
to circumvent the monotony.
But I gobble it up too greedily
and it slips through my translucent, sun-starved fingers,
dribbles onto a spreadsheet
carefully prepared and jam-packed
with futile factoids that are due
by COB,
ASAP,
POC,
RESCUE ME!!
Devoid of _expression,
I shuffle about on atrophied legs,
not unlike a withering nursing home inhabitant
en route to the cafeteria for mashed carrots and potato juice.
To secure my slinking sanity,
I attempt an escape from the 1,246
daily e-mails, voice mails,
and loose-lipped observations
from bigoted males,
running rampant in this military menagerie.
Unseen, I slip into an unlit storage room.
No cat-like lights, a reprieve,
as I scramble atop a mountain of monitors and CPUs,
and pull my knees to my chest in this
computer-created cave.
How ironic to find solitude within this dim techno prison?
Composure one quarter retained, I creep out.
Glazed, desperate eyes scanning lackluster clock face
for lost minutes or even seconds.
Wooden tongue scraping across sandpaper lips
in dog-like anticipation
for the big hand on the six
and the little hand on the four.
It seems time is absorbed,
along with my ambition and livelihood.
Check both at the door.
After nine hours of my precious life
has been assimilated for the betterment
of no one and nothing in particular,
I walk through the doors, into the
scarce rays of the setting sun.
I shed my zombie skin,
breathe deeply of untainted air
and disregard the inevitable transformation
set to take place a mere fifteen hours from now.
I choose to ignore the irrefutable
soul-sucking, life-draining imps
lurking in the shadows of my eight foot by ten foot hell.
Waiting for more.
I shudder.
The creaking of the house
settling onto its tired frame
is more pronounced in the quiet
of the agonizingly early morning.
I squint with blurred vision
at the nuclear white paper
upon which I yearn to inscribe
the colors of my memories.
Words, thoughts and phrases seem to
yawn from my mind,
like the psychedelic images
from an all-night acid trip.
Abundant but useless.
Rubbing my eyes to remove
hindrances left in the wake
of the Mythical Man of Dirt,
I pick up my pen to begin
only to find myself
scribbling banal phrases
like, “The Sandman strikes again!”
Another paper crinkled and thoughtfully
tossed into the recycle bin.
“I am such a rebel,” I scoff,
sitting in flannel pajamas the color
of Christmas, a neglected package.
Feet nestled snugly in matching slippers.
Noisily slurping tea,
the temperature of molten lava,
I wince and gaze out the spider-webbed window,
hoping for some profound inspiration,
to reveal itself in the rusty, green dumpster that
partially blocks my view.
The morning paper says the sun will rise at 6:02 AM
but it’s 6:11 and still no sun.
It is not a regal mountain range that delays the timely
arrival, but the skyline of an overgrown city,
blocking out all nature like a bulky doorman
at an exclusive nightclub.
I toss my pen onto the table and call it quits.
despair is the burn of the carpet on your back,
being dragged by your hair, held
by the fistful in mothers’ jeweled hand.
her vicious love, raw like your cheek.
escape is the boughs of the apple tree
sweating in the summer sun, immersed
in the musty comfort of the book in your hands
far too thick for the likes of you: age eight.
I promised her the sun in Big Sur.
I had to.
She had a prominent pout permanently planted
on her face.
And as the dense fog rolled over the windshield,
we craned our necks, our mouths in big “o” shapes,
wanting just a tiny glimpse of the massive ocean,
the spray of sea foam.
We’d swerve a bit and she’d scream
and I set my sights back on my mission. Serious.
We inhaled deeply from our glass pipe
and turned up The Cure,
sang along at the top of our lungs, off key
and laughed until the tears came
screaming, “Stop! Stop! Oh, my stomach!”
We hiked defiantly past “Do Not Cross”
boundaries to peer tentatively
over cliffs and I thought morbidly,
of my body shattering on that beauty
visible far below us.
We peed in bushes, drawers dropped and
giggling at the sound of fellow hikers
just ‘round the bend.
Choosing to drip dry rather than litter.
And then we discovered a patch of sunshine
and stopped at a roadside shop,
where we browsed for a long time,
looking at every artifact the tiny place held.
The owner demonstrated different uses
for a sarong I was admiring.
It was from Nepal.
I bought it and a multicolored hat
for my smiling lover.
We ate a big lunch at an adjacent café.
The food was fantastic.
She wore her new hat and a greasy grin.
We high-fived and sighed, content.
I was in love.
I changed into the sarong in the bathroom
and came back to our table feeling sexy.
Here I am.
Waiting in an endless line
unwillingly inhaling
the poisonous byproduct
of human ingeniousness.
I yearn to discover grass grown on its own accord,
not sliced, diced and transported to
city plots like Persian carpets imported in order
to beautify our paved palace.
Where is the Earth?
Her heartbeat is no longer heard
over the constant crawling
of ant-like motorists on her flesh.
The parasitic encroachment of
human kind to the four corners
leaves little opportunity for one
to find their own place.
I want to dig deep through concrete
towards Her molten core.
To curl up at Her scorched bosom,
and utter lamentations for our loss.
But She knows of our smugness,
of our greed for more, ever more!
She has become familiar with the
pain of each drill that penetrates Her.
Drain away Your lakes
dry up the tears that are Your rivers.
We’ll stunt the growth of the trees
and singe all of the grass.
No one deserves what they can’t care for.
And we will continue to build our towers
to spread like disease, a perpetual plague
and pave the way
towards our own demise.
submerged in nicotine
light of a street lamp
she sat curbside
with her discontent
and two beers,
one drained,
besides.
a pack of smokes
easily became her
evil companions
kept constantly lit
from the butt
of another.
and she, the butt of the cosmic joke
her life had become,
unfurled a small, bitter laugh
shrouded,
in poisonous cloud.
beckoned through this by-product
I emerged, flapping
my hands before me
to scatter the toxins,
the sadness, like an oil slick
and she, like a lovely gull,
caught in it.
hard, cold, unforgiving
concrete beneath me
like the lover
who created this
slightly diminished creature,
in torn navy sweatshirt,
scent of cigarette,
beer sour on breath.
I only wanted to be there
toss out a line,
watch it bob on the surface
of her pain.
reel in from the depths
remnants of a prior self.
or snag my hook on a bit of the hope
that she knew to exist
beneath it all.
If you have enjoyed Ami's Poetry, then please be certain to e-mail her at taurian88[at]yahoo.com and thank her for posting her Work.
Click here for a list of all of Ami's Stories and Poetry at Sapphic Voices Authoresses.
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