fog in the roads

making driving harder than the rain

and some burnt candle smell

outside the windows

as if this were all a holiday facade

a miniature world on someone's mantle

lit by flame

i am drunk

in warmth and christmas carols

and my coat feels like something i should sleep in

and i wish i could be out with the people i love

in blinking lights and layers of frost

mist rises from the road

and water washes toward the car,

spraying the under-carriage as the tires spin

and there is a greened tint to the air

recycling bins zombies emerging from driveways

deep nights and deep feelings and i wish i could stay out and embrace them

instead of returning home

a defeated conqueror

lost in the fog of my own mind

lamenting the distance of once-a-year weather

likely already gone

traded for skirts and plunging necklines

and someday i will feel the fog rising from my grave

and lament the days lost to life

and the blindness of spirit

and i will search for those i've lost

and i fear that i will only find them on nights like this

once-a-year nights

back when i spent hours with rocks and caterpillars and ideas

there were such things as secrets

things too big to share

things which had lives of their own

stored up in my chest

monsters that i didn't know how to release

without them tearing me up on their violent escape

and these were not things told to friends

because friendship was so fragile and fickle and tenuous

and could so easily dissolve,

and because i wasn't these secrets

and i didn't deserve to be associated with them,

further weight against my forming personality

and i still keep secrets

because that is the thing to do

when something is so horrible that its escape

would maul those in its path

would massacre or mangle all souls within range

but no one else keeps my secrets

they spill out in a torrent

and people talk

and soon everyone knows

and my childhood instincts were correct

that someone cannot know a fact relating to you

without attributing it to you as a person

and i always knew not to let anyone too close

not to give anyone too much

but a sting of indiscretions

during a long-abandoned attempt to connect

plagues me still

and i wish i could go back to those days

when those monsters only lived inside me

and were not me

every morning i wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth

and an unsettled feeling in my stomach

and i wonder what i was doing while i was asleep

who i was eating

we went somewhere and someone told me they got a job at a beer bottling plant

this could also have been a dream, but bear with me and let's say it happened

it might seem hazy because i was drunk

which is ironic because in this memory

i was warning our friend

about someone who went into AA

after being a canner for Coors

and being paid in alcohol

everyone's always getting too far into something

and getting lost

i have another friend who was just found in Tennessee, homeless, dazed,

having burned through something like $10,000,

which had been left to him in a will

and my own brother, my own family

the stories i could tell you about them

and myself

now i just sleep and wake and there is no shock between the two like there used to be

and i can hardly tell

one day from the last

i just keep pumping away,

hoping you'll find the answers to your problems,

hoping i can help you find some relief

so i can believe it exists, somewhere in the world

relief, i mean

weeks like years

days like weeks

marked only by nights of full sleep

and empty mornings

sleepwalking naked through my room

and laying face-down on the carpet as respite

i awake with aches and stiffness

into the hazy blackness of 5 a.m.

to conquer another day

while my mind is still a few years back,

stunned into to stupidity

at the passage of time

rhythms rise and fall, trancelike

lulling me past hours and minutes and seconds

and i "live"

following some invisible piper

leading me on

and on

and on

october death

i push my shopping cart out into the mid-evening

of the parking lot

the air has a comfortable briskness i haven't noticed in months

and on the edge of each breath i take,

there is the faint scent of smoke,

that seems always coupled with a slight cool breeze

i think briefly back to firestorms

and the weight of that ash, inescapable

now, my eyes glance across the sky, out of habit

but the only clouds are remnants of a two-week storm,

monolithic and back-lit by the first pinks of sunset

as i cross the parking lot toward my car

a monster of a vehicle lurches toward me in reverse

the tinted window or the desperation of life obscuring the driver's view

i angle away without incident

but the thought stays with me

that at that moment, i would not have minded dying

and when my life is terminated,

i hope it is on a day like today

artichoke

super-empath

that's what they'll call me when they tear me open

and dig down into the deepest place behind my breastbone

out will come all the emotion that had lain blue and glowing and dormant,

gravity forcing it down to something small and densely packed

and totally out-of-commission

the feeling part of me that lies frozen under the ice that flecks my blood,

the coldness that is so strong within me,

will be out and exposed and beautiful

but for now, my fortress of ice and stone and emptiness,

all things unliving, unfeeling,

is who i am,

controls my actions

and there is so little of anything within me

that i have built up my outer shell to hide it

to mask that absence

but i haven't done it very well

and the glaring void still shows through

when i get tired of making the expressions,

pushing up that energy behind my eyes

to look like

i'm there

and here's the terrifying truth:

i smile and react

but i can't feel it

it's just an act

to look normal

to hide the fact

that the world

has taught me

how dangerous

it is to care

empathy is vulnerability

so much more to me than the outside
but we judge by what we see - i do and i know
it can't be avoided

years i've wished i could let my hair tangle
grow out a beard (a hormonal impossibility)
and sit in the trees

better to be friends with the wilderness
the earth itself
than to hold faith
in the fleeting whims of humans


i don't need much
and i'm never lonely
(or, rather, always lonely)
and i think slowly
enough to savor those days

instead, money lies on my mind
like an unloving god
ubiquitous but unattainable
and grinds away my days
into blurred, detached memories
into dust

literal summer depression

third-class passenger on a sinking ship
watching the lifeboats go to those who have more
who, because of good bloodlines or cunningness in business
or wiles enough to marry up,
began ahead and will finish ahead

gray, unbearably hot days
like a post-apocalyptic backdrop,
really just the normal weather in this dusty valley,
cloudy but swealtering,
always on the verge of a rain that never comes

all summer is dirty pools and gritty hamburgers
leftover time and waning ambition

i've been asking for help but never seem to find it
and each day that passes when i watch someone else
slide through trials and stages of life, unscathed and confident,
weighs me down even more
weighs me down against the roughness of life

it shreds and tears at me
and someone said to never give up,
that i can do anything i put my mind to
but those were lies and tricks to keep me busy
to keep me out of the way

and the world is finally wearing me down
and i spend my days,
too tired to even sweat,
watching that boiling gray sky

and at night i lay on the floor awake
while the bugs that infest the house crawl over me
and pray, without faith,
that if no one will help me,
at least they won't persecute me
and maybe i can just leave,
disappear into another life

it's a strange feeling to lose faith in someone
you previously trusted, unfalteringly

to know they are fallible and have failed you
and will therefore continue to fail you
(failure doesn't happen just once)
and all the time you held out hope for them,
believed in them,
was wasted, foolish, naieve time

to have some person become almost a stranger to you -
that comfort of their presence torn away
until they become just another acquaintance
with whom you happen to have shared many experiences
(and even those are tainted with the sugary flavor of gullibility)

it's happened with everyone
and still i am duped into believing there will be someone,
well-intentioned and strong enough,
to not let me down

and each time someone else fails
my heart, once so healthy,
calcifies and cools
a little bit more

four years of jittery hands and white knuckles
being alone and faceless and constantly bound
in my crutches, like a child with weak hips
comforted by that firmness of man-made metal,
making my hands sweat and smell like copper

what was i waiting for all that time?
a savior? a hero. in all likelihood, yes.
and realizing again and again that strength only comes from within
and the external world only chips and scrapes at you
and leaves you feeling appreciated and only needier for it
less yourself and looking to others all the more

i have the impulse to follow the same habitual routine
i've followed every night
but i have nothing left to say
i'm too tired to make conversation,
too tired to apologize again
and it would only feel like rough-grained wood
sliding the lining of my intestines
sour and grating and unreal

i just want to feel myself rise up from my body
and hover in nothingness
for one more night.

loneliest in the strange electric light of night
waiting incessantly for the cowboys i once thought i'd marry
and in the glow of these flashing signs
i see that all life is death
and all death is loneliness

years squandered away by pain
and understanding others will never know
a curse of unusable knowledge
and pulled in so many ways
that a life on the road
is the best escape

and even for that exodus
that great purging of all the confines life has taught us,
i can find no companion
and i am lonely everywhere
and everywhere i find no respite
and maybe it is better to be lonely alone
than among the grasping hands of others

clicks and blinks in the blackness of night
and all the acidity of the human soul piercing out through the pores

camping in the back of an old trailer
with green, moth-eaten upholstery
and a smelly cousin
who will never learn to spell
and whose teeth will rot out of her mouth
before her 21st birthday

i can lie there with all the wonder of the past sins
committed against me
real or imagined
dreamlike and created
like stories from my fantasy world
until they wash across me
and become another confused illusion,
another secret like so many parts of my life
i can neither remember nor understand

smelling that mustiness
half ocean, half old carpet
i feel young again with the memory
of hopes and loves and the mystery of things yet to come

and i know
i am safe
no one will look for me here
in the back of this rusted tank,
my only home, as far as i can tell

my body is profane already
though i have done nothing profane with it
my breasts trapped in a compressing bra
that binds and squeezes and makes it hard to breathe
my waistband digs into my hips
my underwear cuts at my thighs

my face is blank
but that is no solution
too much has been given away already
in the curve of my chest
under any shirt
despite bad posture
and high collars

my mind does not match my body,
which should be out flirting,
dancing with boys

inside i am a tomboy child
ready to fight and cry

back toward that land of dirt and wind,
the highway blends beneath you
and you feel the heat rising up through the floorboards

tonight you will wear yesterday's clothes
and contemplate the age in your pores,
amplified and sick-looking under the flourescents,
while water swirls and sucks around you
and music pumps through your glands,
too loud to recognize

and you will try to focus through the smoke and movement
and remind youself again that this is not a book
or a movie
and the gravity of reality will settle upon you
as your blood turns sour and
yellow bones grind and dissolve beneath your skin

but now you feel lost and light and small on the road
and the wind whips through the windows like it will carry you away

born on both sides of the tracks

my coal miner, cowboy, sailor
husbands
riding rails, highways
lifting the steel to build towers,
sanding planks, digging trenches

oil filling the lines in their hands,
taut muscles,
green tattoos

find me somewhere in my life of privilege,
of academics and books spiraling me into some world
so foreign to the grit that runs in my blood,
so opposed to the scars and sunburns i see in myself

husbands, saviors,
resotre my identity
make me genuine again

to my dark-veiled friend

no stranger to death
i've walked on your black stoned beaches
heard your voice calling to those who surrounded me
like moths in the night

i've ached for your dark promise
but knew, all the while
it was me you loved best
me who held your eye
as the spirits of the frail-boned
slipped out between your fingers
to some soft light you knew not of

you gave me direction
you drew me to places you were destined for
and you repelled me away when you appeared
and these earthen strangers you so prefer
these fleshy monsters who blind my thoughts
smother me and leave me
indefinitely, eternally

but i follow in your path
and you travel beside me
and i feel you in the shadows
holding me and waiting

borderline

nights like these i wish i had jesus
and a boyfriend by my bed
and you to call

some biological lonliness, desperation
muddies my blood
leaves me waiting, always,
for the next step
the final truth

for that warmth i only had in childhood
that warmth i lost in my youth

dust storm
with grit in your teeth, your eyes, your skin

i remember those clean wrinkles
in your plaid linen shirt
and your pants, soft from the washer

i remember those days with the cool white sheets
when you brought me down to lay there with you
and my legs were smooth under my dress
and my calves rubbed together like silk and honey

and i felt so light, like all that bile was pouring out of me
and i felt clean and warm and alive

and now my feet won't take me too far anymore
and my shoes are old and slap the gound,
stirring up heat and fine red dirt,
and dust is swarming around me
and filling me up
and closing me in

i organize
i press clothes
i smile using my eyes,
extend my hand,
and win you with the alignment of my teeth,
the brightness of my irises

i fix your printer
i soothe you with the sound of a mother's voice
i fry your eggs with onions and pepper

i take exams and feel the flow of knowledge
and the answers are obvious
and i never hesitate
to know i'm right

and late at night,
when the devil sleeps in me
and i can almost feel that blistering void,
i commune with that magic
and take all the world has to offer

and there is no other but me
and i bring the light to my eyes

congenial night
when the headlights and the heartaches fade
into a rush in your ears
or a total lack of sound

dark places
to spill your drinks
and wait for your friends
and feel that broken rythm
again pulsing through the floor

your lovers wait
in double beds with rose-patterned trim
their faces dark
and far away, some long train horn blares
and you wonder what reality is yours

and when the dark silence of your mind
will come to take you home once more

i lay down for no man
and days when i reach down in grass
and feel the dew curling around my fingers
and connect to the coolness and life in the ground
you, in your clumsy shoes, come to trample it all into mud

you, so careless and brash,
destroying the last delicacies of womanhood
flailing into the arms of some man to confirm you
but my soul is ripe
and my body is alive
and i lay down for no man

driving home at 3, 4 a.m.
the road is wet and all yours
tires roll over the asphault more smoothly and the window
is cracked open, letting in damp but surprisingly mild air

a lone dog limps by
emerging from a brief, thin patch of white fog
and a low car rumbles past,
a strange spectre of widely-spaced headlights
on some unknown fraternal journey through the night

back when you were getting home late, years ago now,
[delete: from Ramona, from taking kids to intensive care at midnight
and waiting with them, suddenly trusting them to do the right thing,
to behave in public
and their frankness astounded you,]
you sped over the rolls and lurches,
slid across the puddles, pumping the pedals to get home

now, when your nights are lost to people and drinks and soft beds
in houses that are not your own,
the trip past the tall grass
and fences
and leaning aluminum out-buildings
goes more slowly,
is more savory somehow
in this wet, shiny, misty night

you pass through a loneliness
and feel it seeping into your bones