winter, what do you want from me?
winter, what do you want from me?
i am not working for this
for your company
i am not opening my lungs
to talk to you anymore about anything
i am not reaching out for
help, for a hand
to balance me
i am perfectly capable
of tree-pose on tip-toes
at rhyming
whatever you say, i do, perfectly
that was the last year
the year before this one
when i had to learn
my lesson
the hard way; drank
from a dustpan
to stave you off
mites grew up inside me
nursed them
back to health, never produced
an ounce of milk
tricks of the trade
my mother knows
whatever that means
i am just writing
okay? so without
further ado about nothing you know about
there is a crack in the sky, it forms
and
it beckons me to burst from
all this waiting around
for you, oh yes
now we're onto something; the publishers, they
like this
kind of
muck
about waiting
pining
being lost
being found maybe
no, no, that was just
a shadow, a hissing cat, a
reason to call myself out
so i
really am the worst sort of person as
for sheer dumb luck i
never do the things
i'm asked
and it's the greatest gift
it really is
the greatest gift
to forget and be reminded
three weeks later
you're as ugly as you imagined, as you dreaded
as you believed
would go away so you could
crush and pick in peace
that which grows the flowers, their pots
their socks
too far
golds and grounds are
to die for
for you i'd
put on a tune, a good one; it falls down
into the street
and wakes up
to transpire into
ascendent gifts; greed
and all that
bullshit
i spent it all anyway
on therapy
on notebooks
on trinkets
to give to you
on holidays
you hated everything i bought you anyway
i thought about leaving you, i
bet you didn't know that
but on the day i packed my
bras and bracelets into one giant box
you blocked the exit so
i didn't have to think about it any longer
thank you honey
thanks baby,
for taking the load off
but by then we read aloud all about it
the ugliness
to our children, stop
the shouting
stop the yelling now!
raising our
children and their fists, you know how they are, they love to
suck
but i deny
being there at all; i was busy, come on
watching the breath in my
lover
dip
and shove me like the sea
into the corner of the bedroom, the balcony
stretching
linguistically challenged
i lied to you once about publishing
wanted you to
believe in me
take a bristling
nauseating
look at me
and do
what i couldn't, what
i couldn't
pay the price for, literally; i was
broke
or just
empty of the energy to get out
of that horrible place i loved
sort of, dearly
so surely like a vein i had to
pop i crossed the earth
to find you; to talk to you
about god
and why you did that to my daddy
all those years ago, twenty
something he was disowned
and lovely
but i saw you
on the deck
with your straw hat
not so scary to me but
wielding a knife
stomaching my honesty
if you could call it that
i was
lying
about everything back then;
the soil, the sound
of your body
crinkling in the sheets
nestled
into anger, it was a fire, it glowed
it was a tower
it got old
but it did not warm
or simmer
or die
for four long months
i waited
and i cried about the mites
i tried to balance
on tip-toes
but i did not do ballet
not even as a child
i twirled
i walked right into the world
and asked
what the hell do you want from me?
and i still don’t know
