Rainbow

Stained reflections. Dripping oiled rainbows,
Dry as the ice burning in my palm.
Footprints through the browning Autumn trail
Trembling winter bus-stop-poles, creaking signs
Your face-- bright and glossy. Always abstract.

Pulled like a puppet, I wonder:
"Where are my eyes?"
Bloodied and bruised with streaks of emerald and jade?

No.
The answer is much quieter than that.

Lost in sweet-smelling locks, warm sun-kissed skin.
My cheeks are white and parched.
My lips are reddened and stretched
Over the bones of my illusions.

And the soft white skeletal flecks
Dissolve into those oiled puddles like chalk.
Magenta tears, Golden wounds, Cobalt shame,
Graying hope.

I have lost you.

Empty Threats

Back from lunch and only on "Day 2." I think that things are working out well so far. But I can't get thoughts of him and all of this out of my head.

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!!!

And after what he told me on Friday-- his "problem" being worse, and doing it when he is with me... Well, that's the end. I will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER be in his company with that going on again, unless he changes.

I will not go out in public with him.

That's it.

It's over.

Death Wish

Sick with a sore throat and feeling ugly and horrible-- like I want to die, die, die and waiting for this feeling to pass. (I know it will, but it feels like HELL right now.)

B is here and I don't want him to look at me... I don't want to be in my body... I want to burn, melt away into a raw redness, scarring and disfiguring my thighs and hips and arms. I want to die that mangled death again and again and my car-crash fantasy comes spinning back before my eyes.

I don't want to be here. I feel disgusting and loathsome and horrible.

How must I look to him? Why is he even here with me? Why doesn't he just lose himself in his fucked up fantasies forever and stop torturing me with the mixed messages? He says he "loves me." That's why he's here... But I now that he hates me... HATES me! Finds me disgusting. Why does he keep sleeping with me? Why am I good enough to fuck but not good enough for the security?

It can't be true. It can't be true.

Then why is he here?

I want to curl up and disappear... Melt into air... Sink into earth... Float into sea and let the sweet air slip away.

I am tired. And whether or not he is with me, I hate myself all the time. I feel self-conscious and horrible and ugly everywhere I go. I want to go where there are no judgements.

Void.

Nothingness.

Freedom from this hell.

Subway

By the way-- rode in a strange new subway today. Sterile white and all lit up in flashing red with Mid-Western voices (female and male) whispering of stations and stops... transfers and torments.

Drinking the Sand

Spent the past day with burning eyes (red). Last night with VJ and E-the-R. "Tear in my Beer" and "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer."

Tealux-- Vanilla and Jasmine.

And BH in shades of black. (The greased wire of the payphone coiling in my hands like a snake. The shadow of fluttering flyers on the pink sidewalk and that surge of jealousy-- those beautiful, perfect pink welts.) Shadows on the skin. And four more hours of wrestling on bricks.

The pain and the rage and the absolute pure pain that rises and falls in crests of pure, searing white. Blackening and blanking...blanketing everything in its salty, wet confusion.

And the fingers of my mind are pulsing and red as the rods slide out from under them. Going to a barbecue. Spinning between two realities-- which is fantasy is unclear. His smile and the lights of his eyes blink like two suns promising truth-- my twin suns (Schubert). How can they lie to me? But they do! (Drinking the sand, imagining it is water-- his desert eyes are scorching me... branding me...) Again?!?!

Honestly... I thought you were past all this crap.

And when it is all stripped away... all of my hope, my trust, my love, my sense of reason... I am an empty shell of hatred.

Hatred.

No Contact.

It's finally over... and I hope I can sustain it. I feel like such a loser for loving him so much and I hate that he loves me... It makes it all so much harder.

We have a new rule, though-- no contact.

Except, I have to move his stuff from home on Friday and I hope we can handle it. Well, I hope that I can handle it.

Lost Love

B is back.

And gone.

Leave me Alone

Stagnant, stagnant, stagnant air.

And longing for a time of life and motion, but I have lost him. I have let go and he doesn't know it. It don't want to kiss him anymore. I don't want to hug him anymore. I don't' want to love him anymore. I don't want him to carry my rock and I don't want to wear his ring.

I want him to leave me the fuck alone!

Waiting for an Interview

So... Here I am in sweltering Brooklyn, half an hour early (whose idea was this?) with no refuge from the sun. I can't be early and I can't be late.

And sleep still weighs on my eyelids... I wonder if it will pass. Or maybe it's the food. (Fucking sun!)

Crouching in this sliver of shade, forehead beaded and cheeks are clammed and cold. Leaves are heavy and made of paper... coated with the paint of old buildings, matching the baking water bottle beside me. (Rustle!) (Relief!) And sweetness is always fleeing.

(Never again.. .Never again.)

To hide, to hide, to hide in my closet-- his loft-- my cave-- his lie-- my heart.

He Never Looked Back

Well, that never finished because of Sweetie's (wheaties!) call and our talk. I think I finally am letting go. And as badly as I yearn for him and yearn for him, when I let go of him, I feel free... I can breathe... I feel strong and sexy and beautiful without him. It is healthier and better and as much as I love him, right now he can't give me what I need... I have to say goodbye.

*******************

Later (and canning it). Cleaning and sorting the makeup (and the great white disgusting underload). I hate myself so much. When VJ told me that she tried to scratch her skin off, I remembered the edge of that blade and how I fantasized about all that yellow... oozing out of the cracks, mixed with my blood-- those fantasy wrecks... my arms and legs twisted and stretched. Joints spinning backwards... eyes glassy and wide... bruises on my forehead and around my eyes and the sickness of cigarette smoke, black eyes and those greedy, selfish little flashes lapping up all the puddles of pain (puddles!).

And trapped here in an apricot hell (streaks of color running through the bathtub drain) and the clenching and churned and raised hair.

Fuck sensitivity!

Strained leopards with striped panties, a Chinese shoe and a red plastic box all floating on a sea of denim. (Still-life of rejection).

I know he will never want me... never love m... I know that it is over. Time to say goodbye. Let him do the hoping and dreaming for a while and let it be my head that is turned (turning).

It's time for me to look at what else is out there... After all, I have been staring at him for a year and he never looked back once... Not once.

Lost.

Blood-Eyed

The "would have been, could have been" day for that job at the music company. Things are shifting, shifting, shifting so quickly now... Flower petals grinding in the gears.

Last night I had all that vodka and I don't know why.

Blood-eyed, I wanted more of that driving black body and the warmth of those arms. He didn't' really pay attention to me though... Not like the other one, but then, he was--

Take a Bite Out of "Cream" (The Threesome)

"Maybe not such a good idea," GoldenFinch says.

"One and Two equals fucked up," I say.

I left her a note:

GoldenFinch,
The Stallion and I went out again. Will be back by 5:00 PM.
-H-

She left me a note:

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Wallace Stevens

The Reader

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of somber pages.

It was autumn and falling stars
covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, "Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden."

The sombre pages bore no pr=int
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

Girl in a Nightgown

Lights out. Shades up.
A look at the weather.
There has been a booming all the spring,
A refrain from the end of the boulevards.

This is the silence of night,
This is what could not be shaken,
Full of stars and the images of stars--
And that booming wintry and dull,

Like a tottering, a falling and an end,
Again and again, always there,
Massive drums and leaden trumpets,
Perceived by feeling instead of sense,

A revolution of things colliding,
Phrases! But of fear and of fate.
The night should be warm and fluter's fortune
Should play in the tress when morning comes.

once it was, the repose of night,
Was a place, strong place, in which to sleep.
It is shaken now. It will burst into flames,
Either now or tomorrow or the day after that.

Shedding a Skin

Okay. Obviously needed for some serious soul-searching and the old style just isn't seeming to cut it (crippled at the fountain) and frustrated and angry and devastated and scared all at the same time.

I feel like I don't even know who I am... Every time I think I see it and it feels warm and safe and right, either I get scared of it or it gets snatched away... sliding like feathers through my fingers. And what I am left with is the decaying corpse of an older me... Stripping back the black to find the old and brassy crunching, twisted red underneath and with no new color ideas.

That old shit isn't me anymore... it's not half as fun or exciting, and whereas it used to feel "right"-- something I needed to go through-- now it only feels empty and wrong and I feel guilty and a sweet, sad pain when I imagine how happy I could be.

I don't need this shit... sometimes I think I do and I fantasize about the drugs and the music and the sex and the flattery and the drugs, and the drugs, and the drugs! But I'd rather have B than any of that. But I can't.

I know, now, that I will never, ever, be happy with him unless he not only "solves his issues" but really and honestly wants to be with me-- feels lucky to be with me-- physically and spiritually. Otherwise, I will never have any kind of sexual self-esteem and I will continue to crave that kind of attention from other people.

After last night he will never again convince me that I can't be an ideal. That guy (the Stallion) told me that he had been masturbating about me since February! There is no need for B to cut me down like that and make me feel like shit. It's borderline emotional abuse and even though I love him more than life, this is destroying me.

I need to feel good about myself. He has to be able to give me not just neutrality, but genuine positivity... to respect and love me...not just accept me.

At this point, I don't know if that will ever be possible... I guess I have to just hang on as tight as I can and go along for the ride. But that's why it's so hard and confusing and I think it's why I let stuff like what happened last night go down...

********************

Later...

Left Lincoln Center (the humidity and the crowds) and downstairs with a book of Wallace Stevens on my lap and even here, on a crowded Barnes & Noble Saturday night, I am starting to lose myself to that blurring and floating and separation that used to be so familiar.

(Is it the drugs? Or is it the loss?)

Regardless, I am slipping into air.

Xerox, Xerox, Xerox!!!

To the poems now...