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

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2010

i have no idea anymore

i don't know things

who do i think i am

making all these plans

so now what.

surrender.

because i have no armor

because i have lost my way

and my warm coat along with it.

because sometimes exhaustion

beats you in the race

because some things are stronger than us.

because we don't know that when we take them on

and vow to fight.

but the fight is gone.

you are a beautiful weightin my chest. in my broken open beat skipping heart.you are the heavy questionthat i can't answerthe burning building that i refuse to abandonthe sailing shipthat i have anchored myself to.because i believe in things i can't seebecause i believe in the space between the words.because i dreamed this in a dream.  because there was a moment when i knewthat although every detail was wrong, the silence between us spoke of another truth.   

two virgins 

two bluebirds 

three broken angels

i tried to lose you in him.

you went nowhere.

it went nowhere.  

(but then)

we went nowhere.

go to sleep with make-up on

with my lovers hand a cold draft.

with the television my only one 

the one and only.

voices 

neighbors drunk footsteps. baileys. 

tripping the cat. up and down for a party.

still smell a boy on this pillow. 

too young for me.  too clean for me.

who turns down my advances.  my only one.

my one and only.

if you were here i would 

beg for your kiss. you have the one and only

the only kiss i would beg for. 

my only one.

What If?

in the spring of 2007 i was asked to participate in an event called 20x2.  it consisted of 20 artists who have two minutes to answer a given question in any form of art they choose.  it could be dance, sculpture, song, squirrel races etc etc...  you get it!  we could answer the question in any way we saw fit. or unfit. my life at that time had fallen apart and the question we were asked, "what if?" was the same question i had been asking myself for years.  the room was packed and quiet.  this was my two minute piece. 

i don't have any props or slides or even a guitar with me. tonight i bring you a report from the last month that i've spent examining the deceptively light and foolish question, "what if?"

I began my quest for answers with a personal study of sorts, asking myself all of my possible "what ifs," like...

what if i hadn't had a childhood cancer?

what if i'd gotten that pony?

what if i'd stayed in rehab all 28 prescribed days?

then i got a little carried away and lost the "what if" all together. 

why am i so fucking miserable? 

why can't i just admit that i'm unhappy? 

who am i faking for?

why am i pretending to be the girl with the perfect marriage, the girl who loves her indie music status, the girl who's always laughing? 

i'm living a lie.

i'm scared to be alone.

i'm scared that i'll never be able to take care of myself.

i'm scared that i'll get sick again and everyone will leave me.

and my final "what if"

what if i'm capable of living this lie for the rest of my life? and i know i am because i've done it successfully for years.  until now! i can't bear to do it anymore.  every day i feel less and less like the person i'm meant to be.

so here's the truth; i left my husband, i'm broke, i'm disfigured from cancer, i have a little tourettes and all of last year i was high on painkillers.  

and i'm not fine.  i'm fucked... so "what if" i am?

march 2007

inside out

sometimes i write a thing and i hate it.  it can be too true and i hate that anyone would read my ugly truth.  that you would see me inside out.  all my seams showing..  my tags in view.  my dirty underbelly. it gives me a twist.  in the gut you can so clearly see. i'm squirming in my obvious skin.  

today.  everything was everywhere and nowhere.  backwards and on its head.  i said i was sorry when i wasn't and i said i wasn't sorry when i was.  a suffering began.  i have put it off for too long because of hope.  hope kept my fists clenched to the edge. i hoped i wouldn't fall.  i hoped i could hang on.. a little longer. 

now.  i'm a beggar in the quiet of my prayers.  whispered plea's that i can have it back...  my fruitless tree.  god is petting my shoulders like a loving parent.  tears are crisscrossing down my folded hands, wetting my wrists, slipping to the crook of my elbow..  sweet pool, i think.  these tears.. the after thought of my pain.  because i lost you.  

expression.

the sharp silhouette of my shoulders 

like folded in wings 

i'm waiting to tell you

things with my body.

i'm holding them back

and in.

there were deaths today.

too many to tell,

it's nothing to tell really.

frozen lakes taking it's children

is that heaven we sing

in rows of angels,

seven five three

i don't want this to end.

love.

pure.

scoliosis

can you want yourself out of hopelessness?

can you want yourself out of love..

lovely and stunned?

can i run?

i can't run.  i can walk.  but very slowly and even then i am moving backwards in an S curve.

spine circles heart

and it hurts.

i don't think popcorn should be eaten alone.

it will make you feel very lonely.  if you reach into the bowl and there is not another hand reaching in and getting in your way then you will probably realize how alone you feel and then the popcorn will just bum you out.  

acceptance

tonight i felt a surge in me..  a loneliness..  a clinging to the plans i once had..  to the destination where i never arrived.   i was fourteen years old when i devised a grand divine plan for my life.  i made my adolescent deals with God and i never looked back.   and over the years this plan folded itself into what i believed was my fate.  but here's the thing..  fate isn't a plan.  it's a surprise...  it's the moment you realize that you are exactly where you're supposed to be and the last place you expected.  and for all the things you wanted so desperately, you got just what you need.  

i kinda wish i got what i wanted.

why do you love me?

when i am such a mess

when i am such a shit head

when i fight like a blind and starving dog

when i am so greedy

when i throw myself at you

when i don't shower for days

when i don't feed you

when i hate you

when i tear off your clothes

when i glue myself to your body

when i beat you

when i demand truth 

when i don't believe you

when i need you

when i don't even know why.

why do you love me?

night fell

the light collapsed.

and i wasn't dreaming.

this time i watched the dark 

like an animal 

from a hiding place.

it was unaware of my eyes following it's every move.

it was unaware of it's own descent.

it was unaware of my hunger.

as unaware as i have been.

it became truth as i could no longer see my own grip

on it.

it became truth as i found it's shapeless figure

to be my own.

it became me 

as i became a man drowned in it.

darkness.

you have made me smile 

for reasons unknown

my ridiculous valentine