memories

MY LIQUIDITY

A bath’s edge, the rim of my thought bucket,
where I keenly place my two soles
to drown outside while I swim within.
Wrinkly digits, an abstract powerhouse
to hold atop them the dumbbell limbs
that carry my towering mind aloft.

And in between, a puffy skin-house,
a minor inconvenience of perpetual need,
the cage I chose with which to bundle this luggage of great worth;
should worth have more purpose than value;
should emptiness be filled with its own garden of delights.

And above all, a roaring ocean,
a great white-noise shark of bladed memories,
a diver’s tank of oxygen to place my tiny movies
in their own bubbly vaults –
orbs into which my after-dinner 3rd eye
spills like a secret to fill and stain like wine.

And as I watch my trailers, all wishy-washy
and streamed in tears,
one foot climbs to my chest to hug me
and the other takes our sole soul
and loofahs its way along my skin-pages spa
to make new of something old in a silent, pointed dance,
unpartnered, but inseparable from this ocean of pain.

As the numbness settles in,
eased not by the misty-arms of this warm aether,
wrapped as ghostly in my past pasts not present,
my balance remains, heartbeat synced,
– paused –
while my toppled zest for love depletes.

And in this swell, where fancies frolic
and frolicking fancies break my heart once more,
I would sooner fall into sharpened creatured smiles
than comfort a bossom’d knee
bent with expired hope.

PERMISSION TO RISE

Am I brave enough yet to emerge
to escape the regret
to dismantle
forget
to demolish the surge of this
plundering ache
to curb and to conquer
and famish the quaking
– this suffering silence –
this violent breath taking

Am I whole enough yet
to prohibit the shaking
snaking my flesh with
its mandible gaping –
and I
an invertebrate
sensing
it
raking
its
claws
like it’s tilling a field in my pause.

– I AM –

I am soul enough, rousing to roar
but will this awareness
alone be the door to implore me to forfeit
renounce and withdraw from
this former attachment
to lapse while I stall
while in fragments
I catch myself falling
before
I submit to this whiplash of
“worth less” and war

mauling through self–harm
rejecting my core

Perhaps in my rapture my courage will capture
the thrill of detaching
unlatching
resolving
forgiving myself for my lack of evolving
for dressing tornadoes I’d wade in
– dissolving –
while anchored by nought but
the grief I was holding
by swallowing pain
– almost framing each frame –
as the slower the memories
the faster they came and the longer they’d last
it would tighten their hold
and the closer they’d weave they would blindfold
and frighten
and once I was frozen and broken
– eyes widened –
they’d leave

Perhaps fate will gift me a shift
from my history to bask in my victory
and mask my past injuries
and race to new mysteries
and questions, unanswered
and answers, un–asked
but desperately fancied
as I take on this task to have finally been caste
to have grown from my hate
to have flown past a place
where my purpose was faceless
to race to a moment I have hungered to taste
in a time I had dreamt of
instead of erased –

to a piece of the peace I deserve
and a truth to embrace

Will the aching forsake me at last
and the healing re–take me
its journey as vast
as the path it will trace to re–shape me
I ask
and will it profess to regress to
a time I could heave less
bereaved less
and
survive long enough to emerge
at my boldest and best?

The answer is ‘yes’