Two birds

a bluebird

a blackbird

one on each shoulder

twins.

both birds sing 

one sweet, one dark

birds nesting in my heart

they won't fly.

the daybreak

the heartache

and just below them both

the floodgates.

both birds sing

one sweet, one dark

birds nesting in my heart

they won't fly....

i'm deaf

can you hear me >

i'm hard to listen to

when i'm hollering. 

when i'm protesting.

baby

light the virgin de gaudalupe

drive slow.

pass the mural of Cesar Chavez

stop at the seven bridges...

there is a lake on fire

with your image outlined in flames

one disastrous smile 

is still rippling 

around me

such fucking beauty.

stupid birthday party

The 5th

in a few days this will pass

i keep telling myself that.

another holiday will fade

paper firecrackers 

and birthday cake

and the same stupid wish

that i always make

as i lead the pack 

in my personal pity parade.

it will pass.

i know that.

my neighbors in the apartment across from me are drinking beer and blasting southern rock while shooting bb guns off their front porch.  i live in texas.  

Missing

i have the strongest emotion

but no words for it 

just the feeling of you.

a loneliness.

ocean eye.

shoe

  gazer

my future has become my past.

i sing my 

parachutes

Still

there are things i will never understand

and i have stopped trying.

i drove to the furthest bridge i could find

and pushed those heavy questions

like boulders, grey and weighted,

into the deep water.  

now i stand at the cold river's edge 

and i wonder... 

i am not so crazy

i am just a wild animal

my lawless heart beats like a wrecking ball

it blows up in flames spontaneously

and then just as quickly it retreats. 

quietly. 

i am very strong.

i am very weak.

you can only be both!

if you are only one.. 

you are incomplete.

The wolf

there must be a full moon 

my heart has become a wolf

it eats me alive

looking for you.

to play with then kill

to suck life blood

to softly slip it's claws into

oh the pretty face that haunts me

the midnight year of tears 

on my bedroom floor

rocking like your child.

my dirty carpet soaked in 

worthless tears.

love abandoned for lust

beauty mistaken for truth

risk mistaken for hope.

you tasted eternal.

Furniture

i don't know why 

i care so much

blow the dust off my fingers

lick the stamp mail the letters.

love is

the point of no return

just like that we're bound for life

star crossed on a starless night.

 

we belong in a pipe dream

in a paint box

we belong somewhere no sun 

will ever bleach us

after all these years

we're still worth something

like fine, fine furniture.

i don't know how

but i remember it all

like it was yesterday

like it was tomorrow.

you try 

harder than anyone i know

you left and i left too

back then

i didn't know how to hurt you.

we belong in a window

in a shoe box

we belong somewhere

no one can ever use us

do you know you are 

still good underneath?

like fine, fine furniture.

i pray a little harder tonight

for the people that i love tonight

they're falling apart slowly

covered around me.

we belong in a frame 

in a cigar box

we belong somewhere 

no one can ever sell us

rest your heart i am still standing here..

we belong in a hope chest

in a locket

we belong somewhere 

no one will ever lose it.

after all these years

you still belong to me

like fine, fine furniture...

copyright 1999

kacyCrowley

Furniture

(from the "Anywhere But Here" soundtrack)

One note

the portrait is aching

the moon is half empty

a star is trembling streaking shooting 

through your hair.

i lose you in God

i listen and hear voices

this world is a simmering pot.

such a simmering pot.

i can't tell you anything anymore

i can't sing or fall apart

the terrible two's

of a threesome 

a long shot a hot bed

that was a close call

and i still feel it between my legs

the wheel spinning

the knife throwing

___________________________________

i found the scapular behind his knee

he was kneeling so close to me 

i caught the slightest sense of it

my arrow pounced my back broke

my heart opened again

i am growing

and talking to my dead grandmother

who comes to me as a flower

a simple and potent gardenia  

one note.

when i was fifteen i put an ad in the newspaper for musicians.  i desperately wanted to have my own band.  i auditioned a forty year old drummer named Joe Hatt in my bedroom.  i didn't think he was right for the gig.  i had balls.

God given

we are man made

of lovely smiles

and steel plates

of resentment 

and melted thread

of screws 

and pencil lead.

we are man made

of method and madness

on crutches and bias

the light trys to get in

while the bone is still setting.

everything is bleeding 

and pumping inside of me 

at once alive and breathing for me

passed down 

and built in.

however shifty 

and broken.

your donated heart (previously opened)

keeps working.

it's man that is God given.

Sky

twilight is a soft stutter 

my lips are slightly ajar

there is probably at least half a moon 

waiting for us.

the space is in the sky. 

guilty

it does the same thing

night after night

what with its stars

what with its planets

what with its shifting sheet of darkness

arms and lights are thrown up

and we're just little

under it

More things i trust

experience

the g chord

change 

coffee

fire

kissing

i trust hunger

i trust my sister

i trust my conscience 

hooves

candy

my own tears

pencils

God

a back tickle

my intuition

sleep

i will never be a nonchalant girl

summer

squint

Trust is the word

i have this strong feeling

an earth inside my belly.

the gravity

of my well trained imagination.

and i briefly unravel 

like running from firecrackers

in a contest for sadness.

then i remember myself...

my strength. my lips. my beast of a heart. my loyalty. my steel spine. my huge crazy love. 

i remember God. 

and how words are not actions

and thoughts are not truth

and how answers are not solutions

and how i respond to the simplest of things.

i trust kisses.

i trust my hand being held.

i trust a ride to the post office.

i trust a heart beating close to my ear.

i trust laughter in another room.

i trust being pulled closer.

but words are pretty.

every night i dream of the barn. 

My address

dear you

dear me

dear all apology

dear fuck face

dear mystery

dear moments that i try to stay in

dear heaven

dear ashes

dear blind eye

dear cry baby cry

dear diamond ring

dear wedding

dear nervous breakdown

dear fight or flight

dear funeral procession

dear all souls day

dear sky

dear blue bird

dear blue eye

dear rearview mirror

dear horses and ponies

dear beauty

dear desert i refuse to see

dear midnight

dear moment

dear today

the worst part is the jasmine.

the heavy flower,

summer at it's darkest.

a requiem.

a long and low song that eventually quiets. 

the finite life of a trumpet.

i blocked out most of 2006.  i am capable of this and it scares me.  i forgot the last half of 1979 and most of 1980 and 1981.  which is significant because i have very clear memories of the years before and after...

my memory comes back in a thunder clap of color at the beginning of 1982 on one of many regular trips to Boston Children's to follow the progression of my quickly curving spine. At that point it had become so painful that a short car ride had become unbearable for me.  i was thirteen and i was silent about it.  i never told anyone of the sharp and throbbing pains that would grip and pull at my legs.  i didn't complain.  i didn't want to bring anymore attention than was necessary to the pretzel my little body was becoming.  so i kept quiet on the three hour drive to the hospital. i let myself be hypnotized by the trance of pine trees whipping past. i lost my head in the thick, almost bullet proof station wagon windows.. by the reflections of reflections that froze for two breathless seconds before whirring downward and disappearing into the heavy car door.  i closed my eyes when my folks squabbled up front over mom having spilled white wine as it pooled on the vinyl and slipped across the wide seat, seeping into my fathers ironed pants. they cursed each other but i heard nothing.  i wasn't listening as they fought over parking.. only the exact location of where they finally agreed on registered in my mind.. just in case i needed to get back there on my own. and as we sat in the waiting room listening for my name to be called we three were all silent.  we watched the other children.. much sicker than i, babies oddly quiet in their young mothers arms.. babies without voices or complaints.. we tried not to stare. i smiled shyly at the mothers.. foreign to me.. mothers in all colors, breast feeding their babies under faded blankets.  

my real name was called..."kimberly crowley."  x-rays were ordered, exams were performed, it was an afternoon of cold hands slipping over the knots of my body that were rarely seen and never touched. i kept quiet as the doctor explained to my parents that i would need surgery immediately or the complication of paralysis was probable.  my parents broke down.. and like a movie reel starting up again, i cried along with them... finally.  

watching the crumbling hope of my parents was my rope of emotion and i grabbed on for a few minutes and let myself feel their deep pain, which was also mine but i suppose i had been letting them keep it for me.  

i am terrified of you fading

poor things

i find them

i kiss them

 Creature 

in 

suburbia

He loved me in parts

i have loved a man unconditionally

in spite of his inappropriate boundaries

bone fences

i climb over

only to suffer 

the consequences.

goodbye, he says

you are difficult! he vents

and i flinch

waiting for my punishment

which i don't take quietly

i fight to the death

dirty ugly desperate

but he won't fight back.

he doesn't want me.

that crooked lip, he said

your beautiful mangled body, he said

that maniacal laugh

he wants me in part. but

my lips spit the questions he refuses to answer

my mangled body stays alive as an ultimate fighter

and the darkness is buried like birds in my laughter

the best and the worst of me all glued together.

Questionable

i have committed crimes

slowly in the dark

the quiet tap of my fingertips

the blurring eyes of my age

my heart skipping beats

my heart skipping beats

i would do anything to change

that moment that curiosity 

stole the best of me

but i ruin everything 

eventually. 

you can't love in compartments.

unless you love things that you don't need 

completely.

you need me here...

i need you everywhere.

we need each other, you said it. 

that's why i called you a liar.

i was hurt and didn't mean it.

but i ask a lot of questions 

that you never give me a chance to accept the answer to.

i am so much stronger when facing the truth.

Sidebar

divorce is a death.. with a permanent ghost

ghost at the supermarket ghost at the stop light

ghost at a party ghost comes over uncomfortably

your one life becomes two again.  and your own life becomes

about only you again.  and the children.  

divorce is history.  now you are beginning.

something else yet unnamed.  be brave

for god's sake.

we made love now we side hug

we don't know each other anymore

how are you? waiting for an answer

we stand next to our history

a sidebar 

Biter

he hurts me.

and i attack.

scared roving mutt

pound puppy.  wounded.

hungry.

my little baby teeth

monster fangs to any piece 

of him   i can reach.

but i only hurt me.

he is stone 

apparently

stone and bone i think.

i'll always go off somewhere and get stronger.

that is what i do mother fucker.

and then i will love another.

so deeply and so much harder

and smarter.

Pockets

he says he loves me.

he says, "you can feel it in your bones."

but i don't.

i just feel alone.

with origami promises

in my little dog-eared hand.

The girls are on the town

i have changed so much.

but i have not changed at all.

my life is a 360 

every degree 

a drugged destiny

my memory 

is drinking already.

i have corners in corners

in every four walled room

i wander through.

and there's so much that i would have done

if i didn't always need to lie down

the girls are on the town

they are all leg and eyelashes

strength and lip

and i remember how my best friend 

piggy backed me down main street

to catch up. 

people used to stay behind 

or carry me

like i now carry 

that lovely memory.

on my back watching tv.

but i have all this love!

love like a letter

love like an animal

a mother.

love that fights for you

love that kicks you when you're down

then cries out in your pain

some random and worthless truth.

love like a shadow

following you

like a fire

racing the boundaries

burning down houses

i'm stomping the ashes in your boots.

i have all this love

all of this impatiently waiting for you

and while it waits 

it turns 

into a thousand different shapes

searching for the secret door 

that it will finally fit through