Wild Woman

Wild woman.
Jungle woman.
Untamed, undomesticated, unmanageable.
They talk about your black eyes and red red red lips.

They want you;
Not to love, but to possess.
To place upon a shelf,
Shine you monthly,
And let the whole world know:
I won this. This is mine.

My lovely feral woman,
You know not their desires,
But you can tell them all about:
Loneliness
Square pegs in round holes
A throbbing womb
A desire to be touched gently
Dreams of strong accommodating arms.

Woman,
I hope you stay wild.
Be resilient- follow your instincts.
You are stronger than they will ever know.

Love is a jungle:
A fierce and uncultivated world,
Full of vines to trip up your feet,
Flowers to poison you,
Snakes with slick tongues.

And though I know,
Sweet wild woman,
That you were born into this ruthless situation,
Only you need to know,
That you-
Black eyes
Red red red lips-
Are the Queen of this Jungle,
This Maze,
This muddle,
This mess.

Time to reign.

Crabgrass

The Memory of you is
as stubborn as crabgrass-
slowly but surely
replacing
the grass of my brain
with your maze-like roots-
until finally you have consumed me.

I cannot go an hour
without you snaking your way into
my thoughts.
The fights we have over music.
The way you pull my hair,
like a child let wild on a playground.
A comment you made about my red lipstick.

I dreamt of you last night.
We were rock stars,
and while we sang
we kept eye contact with
each other rather than
our screaming audience.

The dream haunts me today.
All I can think is:
What does it mean?

What does it mean?

Untitled

I worry about you
little boy image of me.
Though I guess at this age,
I can't call you little boy anymore.

You are always shaggy and unkempt,
and yes, this can be excused with your tender teenage years,
but your eyes have a look I recognize and know all too well.
It's the look that scares me when I peer into the woman in the mirror.
They are the eyes of someone I pretend not to be,
and someone I tried to hide from you.

That look on your face,
that sweet face that resembles my own so much.
The outbursts for attention.
"Love me. Please, love me,"
your eyes scream.

I understand my dear child,
who is not my own child,
but I certainly wish you were.

I can recount your whole life.
You kept me sane in a chaotic adolescence.

At 2 years old,
headbanging in the back seat
to old classic rock songs,
while big sis took me to school.
If I turned the song you liked,
you'd kick the back of my chair until I flipped it back.
I've changed so many of your diapers,
watched you so many times while you slept,
holding you close and rubbing your back as you cried,
cleaned so many scraped knees and banged elbows,
that I feel I own you.
Maybe I owe you.

Now you are too old to let me hold you
when you are upset.
You are stuck in a hurricane of a home,
and always scared of what the storm may fling towards you-
be it death or domestic dispute
or just general anger and frustration
projected upon your slim boy shoulders.

It is not fair, my dear heart,
that you have to leave home to feel safe.
It's not right that you have to play man of the house,
because you learned at far too young of an age
that some women need more love than it is possible to give.

I see how this wears you down little man.
You sleep on couches of family members.
You are torn between the way it was
and wanting to make her happy.
You lack the experience needed to know-
you can't do that for her.

So little boy/man,
when you show up on my doorstep,
young enough to forget to brush your teeth,
but old enough to have questions about dating etiquette,
at 7 am on a Saturday-
Don't fret.
I'll always let you in.

Fog

I spend my days in a fog-
gently the mist clouds my facilities.

It's a welcome fog.
I don't want to think anymore.
there are too many things-
too many banshees on my windowsill.

When the fog lifts,
I am more disorientated,
gasping for breath in the clean air.

My head is not accoustomed to noise
such as this,
this life,
these problems,
the questions of:
What do I do now?
Where are we going?
Or, scariest of them all:
Am I happy?

So when the fog rolls back in,
I am grateful.
I pull it around my breast like a security blanket.

When you have a brain such as mine,
a curse seems very much like a blessing.

Ted, the cell in the small intestine

Abstract is difficult for me
-but-
I can tell you that
today
I know
rooted somewhere deep inside my small intestine
a tiny cell named Ted
is having a heated discussion with a friend
about how my brain
must be experiencing the exact same emotions as
a jelly donut in SoHo.
They have decided that this donut does not deserve to die
just because the baker decided to make said donut delicious.

It's not the donut's fault.
Why should he become
69 cents worth
of some stoner's sticky pleasure
and then be promptly forgotten?

Another cell
from the recesses of the large intestine
(I don't know his name)
counters back:
"Ted, you forget how vicious things are out there.
What about the poor man making the fated donut?
He must have motive.
He must need money to provide for his basic needs-
a family, shelter, and all that."
He has a very high-pitched voice
for a cell residing in the larger of the intestines.
"At least," he continues
"It seems that way to me
but what do I know?
I am only on the interior of
exterior goings-on."

Ted seems to hang what may
or may not
be his head. He and his friend move on
to another
lighter
subject-
temporarily reprimanded.

Trampoline

When you talk
you are as animated
and as emphatic
as a man on a trampoline.

I see:
fireworks
flowers blooming in hi- def
babies welcomed to the world
sunset in fast forward
the circus through 2nd grade eyes
hummingbirds in warp-speed flight
sweaty love stained bodies moaning in unison.

So please please please
Dear Heart,
don't stop jumping.

Lover, not my Lover

Hello Lover,
but not my Lover.
For though we dance,
feet-light and head-heavy,
we aren't quite there yet.

Lover,
not my lover,
you confuse me.
Sometimes it's as though
you've set up your tidy little home
in my brain.

You decorate your walls with my thoughts.
You've always had a taste for abstract art.

And yet at times,
you are cold.
Eyes like No Man's Land, and it takes some extreme
manual labor
to squeeze those three little words
out of your tightly sealed mouth.

Lover,
not yet my Lover,
I don't know how to give you eviction notice.

All I know is that without your walls to decorate,
the paintings of my thoughts wouldn't be nearly as beautiful.

Ramblings

A star burst.
A wind chime in a light breeze.
Glitter under the eyelids.

All I know id what I feel.

Tingles.
Laughter.
Bright lights.

So forget about the menial things.
Work.
Responsibility is too heavy.
Keep it light baby.

Your hands like electroshock therapy.
The purring roar of a V-8 in a muscle car.
A giant bowl of mint ice cream.
A morning spent warm in bed.
A locked door.
A letter from a friend.

Fuzzy.
Warm.
Inviting.

Like a spanking.

Don't ever stop loving me the way that you do.

Death

I have started to understand suicide.

The death of one's body is not as scary
as the death of one's mind.

It is so difficult to cope, ,
and turn it into something.

Play house.
Smile.
Everything's great.

My house is dirty.
Cringe.
I'm not afraid of death anymore.

Love Diagnosis- the Project

Emily needs intellectual stimulation. She's been referring to herself in the 3rd person- just not a good policy. This is her idea:
All those people you watch- the couples, the man with the baseball hat cuddling his wife on a park bench, stroking her hair as their children run around in front of them. that old man sneering at the waitress in the cafe on the corner. That woman with the fire engine red hair who gives you coffee, and announces the fake name you've given her with a drumroll and a piece of history... Crawl in their heads. What does love mean to these people? How do they love? Why? Motivations? Insecurities? Turn ons?

I will be writing a series of blurbs from the perspective of these people that catch my eye, and write what I think they are feeling... No poetry. Journal type entries. This should be a challenge.

Welcome to Love Diagnosis.