January 29th: Losing My Virginity

January 29th

Sometimes we wake not knowing

how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones.
                                     Mark Doty
                                     "Tiara"

When did it start to be some breach
of intimacy to think back with my hands
on the thighs of my houseguest memory

and ask do I remember my first time?  And when
did the first time become myopic and only one
man with his hands under my shirt

and the purity and sweat of that heat, of two
separate skins introducing themselves---how words
were the crudest invention

how they were heavy as duty or monogamy
or too early and so they stayed silent in the lode
of their own unmined coal?

And isn't mute exactly half a word away
from what did you say, a trace of yesterday
and the salt of the inside: my jaw my nose my tongue my lips:

those least known ago coves where all the
One small boat floated then broke mooring finally
in the third or more storm of the season:  I see hands

that abandoned it and welcome something
else (though what can't be foretold) after it navigated
the safety of the bay and the open water became birds and sky.

And along the way it became old growth claimed from what was recovered and then buried again for the ages, wiping away

the first time my lips touched the salt of such sea and soaked it imbedded in it the slightest can't live without this splinter and forever

rested inside it a burning, a pain with purpose and something else, something other than word except to ask: if, after it all sunk deep

the first time and a lot of years went by,

did riding in it ever come to mind,
like the first time he was between
or I was between the shucked hull

of intimacy, intoxicated and broke
open and no words not ever any words,
as one and then another one

knocked open the door came in
and felt right felt absolute and out-
side of any crime a mouth (who'd

forgotten its own first time or worse
named it blame and dirt)
could continue could clack, could

because nothing is holy to it, hold
the glow of each virginity up to the light
and grip and grit and grind it away

in the face of everything that's precious,
like sex in my old age say, or
the tide for being the tide, wind

for being wind, lover for being lover
of someone who's new every time who
could never lose, even that very first

time, my virginity any more than I could lose
my tongue or, under that tongue, the salt
in every press of love

I've gripped, and the welcome of it, the precious
bless of it, the first time every time
and the letting go of it.

at sunrise

at sunrise

the sun will come
leaking heat
over the cold river
where this winter
a woman fell into it
and for days
abandoned by soul
and lone last breath
she drifted and bumped
in the silt and stumps
past old cars
and bikes
past sleeping ice
on and on to the abandoned
mill dam where a man
with a rusty shovel
found her,
hair stitched to last autum's
leaves, against the grates.
and water, kind now,
pushes past her, not
a smudge or question,
not one accusation

January 28th: But What, Tell Me, What Are You Saying?

But What, Tell Me, What Are You
Saying?  A One Track Dialogue

Descendant:  I have nothing to forgive you for.

Ancestor: I have to be forgiven everything.

I want to say:
Your intentions were as honest as your blindness
Your intentions invented milk and innocence.

I want to say:
There are no one way streets where I grew up
only roads into woods where once they said a man I knew
only in graffiti in the shed left his cow by a tree to teach her
to find her own way home. And she stood
bawling until she dropped alone and cold
and desperately resolved to her abandonment.

I want to say:
I found her skull one day and asked how
the amber soak of her horns and bones came to be
the only honesty to exhume her that spring.  What couldn't be jawed
and lugged off by coyotes, what couldn't rot
into the moss fell still and quiet as all grave-
yards do even if and maybe especially
they are the acutely vacant: elderly
farm animals too old to milk or breed or eat.

I want to say:
maybe it's the teather that rots last, the loose
knot would've with one tug come undone,
that she could've walked down the hill trailing it
and her question like afterbirth and umbilical
back to the barn back to her stillborn calf back
to the grass that wasn't anymore and wouldn't
ever be again. 

I want to say:
I imagine (because the skull faces away from
home) that if she turned to look at you
while you walked away and out of sight
she might have resolved to meet you in some small way,
and instead her neck fluttered flies, eyes to hide to tail: bluebottles
match the best, their calm massage into pools
of saline at the corner of her mouth, the tip
of her nose...

I want to say:
I imagine you being through with it all and feeding
everything there was to feed: the perfect care
the grain the hay and maybe you took her
far enough away
so you wouldn't spook her loading the gun
while, coming ultimately undone, you put all your affairs
on the table and one by one drank them
shot after shot and everyone forgot
about her.

I ask:
why didn't it occur to them thoughtful as you were
your whole life with all your sons and daughters
how neat and tidy they found you, tidy
as a lie wrapped in bailing twine, passive
as a sky going by going by like feet beside
a cow's spine, her hide all grass now all green
or yellow or red fall leaf after fall leaf

I say:
when I found the skull covered, was it your
shadow never far from here
or the slow approach of my hand
that woke  the bones growing in me before
I have the chance or the need to pull away?

On Those Mornings I Set Out Alone

On Those Mornings I Set Out Alone

not every day but some days
some days I can wait in the face
of a channel or a bay that faces
east and see the lazy suit of
fog give up the pall its been
holding all night or at least
in the darker dark (if the wind
doesn't bully) or when the water
mumbles with stones at her lips and is
after trees the first chance
she gets to reflect (take one
swallow though who'd know
sunk this far down) into
the coming day when haze and
the island in the bay and,
occasionally, a stray from far
away from any place it began
feather I almost step on almost
toe into the stones in the dark
on mornings I set out alone

January 27th Wash Everything Even the Stained Glass

January 27^th:  Wash Everything Even the Stained

                                Glass

The Ruin was

within

Oh cunning

Wreck

that told no

Tale

and Let no

Witness in

                                Emily Dickinson

After they beat you and left you

to your clichéd death and dying

after the handyman boy found you

nude and nearing the blue hue

of a saint in stained glass (that’s

what I thought of when I saw you)

you know the one I’m talking

about dull on the ground floor

that takes all the mud and grass

and is impossible to see in the winter

and forgotten when the benevolent

window washer comes every start

of summer and begins at the most

wounded piece of glass and how he  

wicks out like water on cloth like cotton

stilled in the solid wax muffled

a hand over lips and throat only

a fire will let out I have to say

when they told me they found you

that way and a few stray teeth

I came to dwell alone in remember:

sponges.  the ones I watched

the window man dunk and pull up

running water like hair over a bolster

(through to the window, see where

I’m standing?) and bubbles were

your mouth closing almost for good

and I wanted to see from the inside

so I slipped off a while and blessed

myself with the cold holy water in the font

and I walked down to the pew

and kneeled and he was through

with one small lily and stroked up

to the next frame into Judas and who

would blame him his kiss if that’s

what he was supposed to do with his mute

lips on the warm bony skin under

the Savior’s eye--or maybe it wasn’t

Judas at all I saw in that story in glass

maybe it was this time a nobody a

nobody like me was washing the body

and going into the basement…

listen: from the inside you are ribs

and glass shattered on the trauma room

floor.  You are un-put-back-able.  Even

with my own bucket of water and soft

as you can get soap, this far down

is too far gone.  But I don’t stop there’s no

daylight there’s only me and in-

spiration and twelve tiny windows

in a room I’ve never seen from the inside

ever.  To distract myself I ask who

framed each of these and only let them

peak just up out of the grass enough

to be colorful to bugs and wasps and winter

ice?  Each crack my sponge catches

makes a soft sigh and pulls and so I use

my hands alone and water and wipe

like a Veronica or a Mary or a daughter

in shock each piece of glass loose teeth

each color a different kicked bruise

each leaded embedding a stitch in your lip

your swollen shut eye your (though not

for days) broken through spleen

and the breathing a bigger lung a rib went

into and through.  You are Jesus walking

Jesus kissed Jesus teased and tried Jesus

stripped Jesus flogged Jesus walked Jesus

falling Jesus getting up Jesus lifted nailed

forgiving dead you are Jesus being

washed like windows like glass you are

in the hands of ghosts who want to save

each piece of dignity buried in your skin

because it is precious more precious

after stones lay still on basement floors

of your skin red and blue so red and blue

you are a new hue you are a new you

even you wouldn’t know lying beaten

on a hospital bed.

January 26th: Humility

January 26^th: Humility

is watching is the spot where the hawk

is lost to me in the blue or rose

or sinking so toward the drink it's still

blue or rose since it’s all about

mirrors and spilling it all back

if it’s a clear morning and spent

one foot then one foot in the old

growth where a commercial logger

knew knew! to be old growth and spared

he did he laid down his ax and picked

up his people who’d walked through

there a century ago with their stones

and their ox and they hauled heavy

lines that spined down and up

the mountains they walked on moss
all those generations ago

and it called them eventually back

it called them with its muffled song.

It is the time of year a frost pushes

up from the water we never see

deep as she is in the ground, a shrug-

ging some poet noticed when he walked

and put (come spring when nothing

at all needed him) rock on rock

and saw himself too as he used to

be in the skin of a doe in the inside

light of night that’s never as black

as the inside of that hawk’s eye

come killing time to tell me surviving

that isn’t any more than just slight

of hand isn’t just mirror bright isn’t

shift just coincidence to the left

when the bird aimed straight and true

and all that’s left is dust covering

the tracks of whatever small thing got

away, or today, a ripple on the water

an empty claw dripping, and deep (we have

to see it inside ourselves) the trout's

gills fanning if that’s what they do when

they get away.  Or these old growth

cedars and pines, how in some places

if we lean on them, there’d be

a breathing we couldn’t hear or feel but

for relief reaching all the way up to the sky.

January 25th: Considering How Some of it Happened

January 25^th: Considering How Some of It Happened

--One day it happens: what you feared all your life,

the undenduringly specific, the exact thing.  No matter what you say or do.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Marie Howe                                                                                                                                How Some of it Happened

How did the phrase she’s in trouble come to mean

she’s going to have a baby and she’s in a bad way

not being married, how on earth?  Look:

                                Old French: trubler, to trouble,

                                disturb; make cloudy, stir

                                up, mix; agitation of the mind,

                                emotional turmoil

was it a man or a woman all those years ago on

his or her knees at the end of the confessional

row who said I’m in trouble now or you’re in

trouble now and under what authority what

consented or stolen they’ll twist to provoked

either way and the shame the shame is all hers

to carry all her life in her arms like a baby too

and will be dying she’ll take it to her ashes the way

she tensed when he touched her if you don’t

I’ll kill your baby brother if you don’t I’ll…and so

she does again and again and again and again when-

ever he wanted and before the baby and eclampsia

and living and right after the baby she didn’t want to

but he found other holes he found he turned her

over she screamed she knew it would be like this

she always knew her mother said if you fool around

with him if you lead him on you’ll get in trouble

and she did admitting it was the fucking her every-

where that broke her it wasn’t the two daughters later

that broke her it was she was in trouble the first time

he touched her and he zinged so big she flinched

and he liked it she moved away ran away and he liked

it he was charged he was lightning and she was

always always ground when they met.

after another nor'easter

after another nor’easter

after all that was wet

and heavy

after all I could do to

move it

out of the way and into

another way

after the sky got better

at being blue

after it got tired of getting

after all that and clean

windows a wind

a thick bay fog kind of wind

I want to lay my face

down in the new

snow falling

I want to lay it far

enough to stay

the rain

I want all the work

of moving to

be brief

I want, some,

only some,

I'll admit...

but after

icefall: small like rain, chance of freezing 98%

icefall: small like rain, chance of freezing 98%

tiny pebbles a would be

lover throws at the window--

mice in sawdust

their narrow nose their minute

eyes--

ice ticks in its own way

in the morning too dark

to be morning at all it’s still

night there’s still time to pass

into sleep there’s still time

to hold the dumb lamb

in the dark and bore her nose

her mouth pull the sheath

of veins away and throw it

like a memory on the burn pile.

Her mother had turned

away from her even before she

was born her body stopped

shuddering and the lamb

was trapped in half

way worlds womb and clean

blue air--a fire I pet into her

mouth and nose into the scum

of mucous-caul.  I hug her up

to the house remembering

how her mother nosed

her udder without a sound

tugged at what she could

with her tongue and the ice

of the night all the tiny eyes

buried in the fur and burned

my bare hands my bare

and bloody hands and the lamb

January 24th: E.R. Trauma Nurse Notes: Stillbirth, Beating, Drowning, Suicide

January 24^th: E.R. Trauma-Nurse Notes:

Stillbirth, Beating, Drowning, Suicide

The heart’s in the right place I know

when they tell us not to look (to not

look?) look away at something else out

the window if there’s a window at

the crow if there’s a crow don’t ask

to see or peak it’s best for other eyes

eyes that just before you went into labor

saw a woman cut and kicked and bleeding

anus vagina mouth especially or the blue

drowned boy who couldn’t be bilged

but his chest was caved in for his father

trying don’t look look away look at the tray

a half full glass of water or plastic coffee

urn ok don’t call it an urn call it a carafe

yes after all this is done we’ll have a cup darling

don’t look your baby didn’t make it some

how something someone pulled the placenta

over his face oh sweet sweet boy he’s

perfect you have to see you have to look

so clean so baby powder perfect you have

to see hold him hold him see him as long

as you need I have another emergency

girl twenty three swinging from a beam

no don’t see that see your baby boy perfect

I’ll be back to see to him afterwards
you'll see

January 23rd: A Monday

January 23^rd: A Monday

Now your story  enters the room

before she does and it wears

a thermal coat she doesn’t know

she has on at all and it glows

with more of you and it thickens

with more of you and she won’t know

going back to school her kindergarten

teacher will hug her like she always

does only a little longer a little stronger

and breathe in her clean hair (just

reflex just checking) and let her go

to the story rug and pull out a book

and say this one this one and yes

ok yes let’s and the whole day

is book after book and cookies

of magic and milk and anything just

anything sweet and a soft nap toy

a new one you’d picked up and dropped

off two weeks ago because you had this

thing about giving gifts on your birthday

and you asked teacher please yes

of course and it was there in the chair

the whole weekend after your news

a blue lion and his mane made entirely

of tags all sorts of textures and spots

and you knew which one she’d like

the most and pointed it out the rippled

one would feel best on her tongue

and isn’t that knowing your own

and it’s true the first thing she finds

is that one and she never cries but

when nap’s done she doesn’t stir

at all and teacher brokenhearted for you

for you and your daughter teacher builds

a paper brick fort with the other children a shhh

let’s surprise her fort when she wakes up

she’ll feel a princess shh, but let’s leave

the door open and watch her lion

see maybe he will wake up first

and ripple his fur and purr shhh

let’s just listen and wait and see

January 22nd: Dear Sarah

January 22^nd 2017

Dear Sarah

it will not be simple, it will not be long

it will take little time, it will take all your thought

it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath

it will be short, it will be simple

                                                                Adrienne Rich

                                                                Final Notations

Dear Sarah

                You left but came back a couple of times first the new baby you were seventeen and not married but today we don’t say what a shame we say do you have everything you  need and then on another day a year or two later and the baby walked in familiar and a little thin and so were you but you smiled the way you used to when you knew you’d cut through to getting good you were always good though I knew you didn’t believe that you had a new tattoo too often you found a way to cut yourself acceptable

                You never came back again but your boyfriend did and he was brief and breezy and thick as Sunday ham and knew too much about the wrong things a thug in a kid’s skin and we read a book to him about a boy-father who held his new baby alone because his girl had a stroke had her breath almost cut and it was like a prophet she/you eclampsia and a premature baby and you both lived through that but something something past passing passed left a brand in you a gully then a trench he’d knock you into and two years later another baby for both of you

                Now you ‘ll never come back not on your own two feet but I follow you up the stairs every day now I follow you out the classroom door and down the hall I call your name and it flits quick florescent and sparks still a firefly I think of now a firefly in the night I follow you and carry the news to you because maybe you don’t know that when you hanged yourself last weekend I was wondering Sarah I was wondering if I’d remember the name of the poet I heard read a poem in the late ‘90’s  about her son and finding him that same way and she couldn’t save him either and later all she had left of him was the scent of his jeans and these jeans are the only thing she can’t be without for years and years and years.

                Like for years after you left I never saw you and now I do I see you every day and I’d like to say I’m glad but I’m not because you’re not and you never will be again not in your this lifetime skin anyway I wish it could be otherwise  I wish you’d’ve come to see me before you went to your mother’s house I wish you’d’ve come and walked in the classroom again and again and let me let you empty out and hold out

January 21st: For A 23rd Birthday

January 21st: For a 23rd Birthday

The first day after a death, the new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

                                                Philip Larkin

                                                The Mower

 If I come back

like the Buddhists

say we do if all

my eyes of sight

and sound of mouth

and obviously

touch of hand if

all those lost boys

I orphaned when

I slept come back

and find the window

open will I know

what I left is not

the girl on the bed

but a copy of her

and truer a copy

of a copy of a copy

all those gone years

beyond heard word gurgle

or felt touch all those

little moths cluttering

the steps under

the night-burning light

expired and I step

through them and

their dust’s on me

and my shoes but

I do I step through

oh God how many

waited at that warm

too warm light and died

and others took it up

the wait a legend now

a vigil so that by the time

my great granddaughter

is old and I return

the way Buddhists

return through the skin

of other lives

and I’m feeling

a pulse fading

in the wrist in the neck

I tell you when I feel,

feel!  I’ve seen

this woman before

or heard a clock

and a brief wind

grunt and growl

of every one of the

lives of my heart

it’s absolute it’s true

me, me, another me

precise little me in

a pair of different soles

and a billion billion

billion billion billion

breaths ago maybe more

it’s so felt:  a woman once

let go of my mouth

(I won’t be afraid I say

but I am) I’d gone out

in a boat

with the other kids

and somehow

it sunk and that’s all

in my next dozen

or more lives I recall

the most I can’t

say how I do or why

before the veins lay still

in the muscle and bone

and I know but don’t

as I turn to go and brief

the moths white this

time but don’t ask me

how I know

or how they follow me

toward home

I don’t know I’ve never

known dying is this

dying?

January 20th: Size: 2T/3T; Weight: 30 lbs.

January 20th: Size: 2T/3T; Weight: 30 lbs.

Your absence distributed itself

like an invitation…

When I lay down between the sheets

I lay down in the cool waters

of my own womb

and became the child

inside, innocuous

as a button, helplessly growing.

I slept because it was the only

thing I could do.  I even dreamed.

I couldn’t stop myself.

                                Rita Dove

                                “The Wake”

And then

what about: I couldn’t

help myself

because I can’t

I can’t help

thinking: Who?  Who will

fold your five

year old’s new underwear--

she’s been needing

them for weeks

and finally after enough

of a gap between the cheat

and sweet boy (sometimes

friend most times

tyrant)’s hands in your pants

pockets you scrape six

99 for a pack of Fruit

of the Loom and Dora

and Boots and Map

and they’re there in a bag

(receipt in case they need

exchange) beside

your bed.  Who’s seeing

her innocent run through

the kitchen with such new

relief such glee who’d think

this--THIS could be

all you need to make your little

girl happy: new clean

fresh hers.  Who

will even remember now or know

you went all the way

out on two busses

and picked through pack

after pack and bought

(a few cents to  spare)

and brought them back

and he was there

again

and you dropped them

and he called you

and he called you

again and again

he called you whoreslut

who were you bangin' off

with.  The same song

his heroin prong forearms

slip in and out of your hair

and he’s so high

on his righteous stride this

five year old's 

home from her bright

kindergarten light, she walks in to

stare at you going cold

past her a slow

stride out the door

dead before you make it

official a day later (though

where you were in between?)

where were you when you kissed 

your mother’s cheek, where?

And a chair to stand on/

And a rope or a belt/

I don’t know

and  you don’t know

you can’t know I want you

not to know your five

year old still

waits for you.  Even

as  you kick the chair

away I want you

to not

know this.  Even as your mother

cuts you down

I want you not

to know this falling/folding

down like you do

your perfume puffing

up to her face, no sweet girl

I want to, I can’t help

myself, think

you only felt him

his hands on your throat

and thought to finish the job.

January 19th: now,

january 19th: now,

what's left in the river

under the bridge is

a set of brick steps

steep and brief

the way, in green,

they peek out to be

seen.  winter’s sweep

of leaves bears them

back up to the road so

you’d know that once,

a long time ago it was

something necessary:


a mill maybe, or a bit
driving a wheel

pulling the water so
the fabric gets, even a little

made and baled and
bolted and owned

snaked down the rail-
road...

something in the way of stone

holds out alone over time

and beyond the purpose
a man set it for:

like all those broken,

once soaked in creosote

trestle posts thrust up out

of their sea saw gums

like broke teeth, the green

river moss--I see though

really smell the mossy rot.

the way this river on a

hot august day takes it

all into a smooth pooling bowl

down by the foot of

the old mill stairs (imagine

how many men walked
there, every boot a chisel) and throws

the smell up from the river

bed to the open sky.

and it just passes by, passes

by.  Yesterday I saw the snow

piled high on each tread

and tried to think:

a hundred years ago

the waterwheel, the mill

the men in bad weather,

how they bark and cough. 

how they watch the water. 

today its as benign

as the snow--as the sky

after a quick blizzard.  No-

where to go I suppose,

those old bricks.  Nothing

to hang on to or sit with

but the old eroding bank.

It’s a different sort

of grave I suppose, I mean

really informal.  the look

of a town that just got up

and moved out and let the rest

all drop, as though quitting

time was blasted and that’s
what mattered most.

january 18: there is snow

there is snow

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.

From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:

Then time returns to the shell.

                                                                Paul Celan

                                                                Corona

for Sarah Contino

in the way of this

particular rain,

how it makes

like hay (needing sun) in a cloud

and seed, an always warm/cool

loose moving cloud.

or similar

of snow: a cold

layered crystal haven

although from here

from where I stand

it comes down

today the way

news of your death came:

there’s a sunning

patch of floor, a brief square

where the philodendron

desk plant pushes

toward her need, quiet and still

alive

and I know it like I know snow

or rain:

contained in those

roots or outside

in clouds is simply too much

to contain

so it all falls out

to to the ground

but never falls

to rest.

the news of you seems a

brass parenthesis

slipped around my wrist,

chaffing like a handcuff. 

and while some days its head down

in the rain and snow,

today, whispered

and hushed,

unbelieving, I open

my mouth to it

 

tongue an unglazed

clay bowl holding

what’s left of you

to sit with to sway

with in this snow

this rain on this ground

as the wind picks up.

January 17th: Infidelity

Infidelity

It’s lust what teaches me

                (when it looked

                like love had irises 

                like love had fingertips

                and yes a mouth

                oh a mouth and tongue

                and blood and vein

                touch)

what comes undone when

                (too late to button

                or zip up--the hip has

                her own way--curvy)thin

                as a chase lounge

                before salt yes mostly

                salt and a little flush

                of blood)

just before sun comes sidling

                (she’ll reveal the stocking

                shed like snakes shed

                and easier now he knows

                with that one hooked

                thumb slipped in,

drawn down  and off

left breathless empty)

and lights on the most revealing

                (though most eyes might

                because they scan and make

                proof too quick and assume

                they’re savvy to it all the

                infidelity) (yes! miss it!

                entirely!:

                the near empty box of loose

                tea--the tray--a hotpot kettle--

                two spoons--full (sour) creamer--full  (caked)

                sugar bowl--as though doing it

                black doing it bitter

                                (but or because? you tell me.

                               

                                you tell me who you know I bet you know

                                the cooked

                                                tin foil

                                the needle Jesus

                                must’ve I mean

                                that eye

                                flaccid flat humped

                                camel imagine:

                                                                this room a desert she’s lost

                                                                and the sand

                                                                and her companion

                                                                split

                                                                and no coat listen I want to know

                                                                do the heatstroked lost go

                                                                out there naked

                                                                the way the hypo

                                                                                                thermic do

                                                                who strip burning to their bare skin

                                                                and expose to what’s really 20 below?

                                                                but fever! but glee!  but eventually black fingers

                                                                nose and toes

It’s lust that teaches me to be unyielding

It’s love that teaches me

                                (because that was my mother’s last room

                                of consciousness)

cover what’s naked with the blanket

of my own skin

warm it alive again press it

blue as it is or black

to my lips breathe warm on it

                                                                                ---hover---

                                                                                ---hover---

make the bone weigh more

than her

dying.

January 16th: Recovery Relapse Relapse Recovery

January 16^th:  SEE(Recovery Relapse Relapse Recovery)SAW

heroin is a Cinderella shoe you never fit into

a fluid tattoo in your plasma and the rest of you

stumblebum you a paper boat of ice-out. 

What’s step one from the precipice and then how far is it to that first

                                bot

                                                t

                                                                om?

Is there some thrum tadum thrum unsung but shoved up the inside

skin of the eardrum and stuck there and struck when the who gives

a flying fuck what  stick is pulled and whipped through the air and down

on your skull?  Is there some silence then there after the rubber draws

the vein altar high and the prick is a down on your knees relief even

before the blood’s tongue laps (the vein’s an open maw now)

and pants and groans unhinged.  And all the grinding stones stop

grinding and all the glass bowls overflowing hold to their brim

and the floor is clean and shit’s ok and the sick was weeks ago

now and the kids are happy and the husband loves you and he’s back

in your bed and man there are roses and they smell good what

starts it what stops it what starts it up again again again it’s not will

or want to at least I’d like to think for you but seeing you seesaw

flat face an inch from the soup I made for you when  you came out

finally and fumbled your bum in the chair and sat half hip in it there’s no 

denial you were getting started again and your injection (a pill on a plate

for you no needle) using you more than you using it--shit--sitting there

on a surface of who cares who goddamn cares and some band starts

to playsway in your head and you high flame your face and hair and skim straight

over the bowl and you drip with it and smash because you’re too heavy

your face on the table leg and you wave and fly fly you fly and I hand

under your elbow your arm lift you escort you back to the bedroom

you’ve reclused to and truck you to the commode then to the low

mattress (so if you fall you won’t fall far) and you strong now somehow

twitch and seize and spill your shit and it’s this it’s this that’s one

of the last bottoms I know for you using all those years flying high into

silence all that silence you bought and sold your life for.