hi
Rabbi
i’m that girl
this Eden is
very beautiful
i’ve crawled on my belly
since the time of the Pharaohs
and i’m feeling deeply tired
today i make the case that gifting
me free will does not compare to heaven
when i close my eyes the cries of Mary
still echo in my ears while Martha’s
brother slumbers wrapped in linens
and the taste of chocolate
melting joy on my tongue
careless angels send
Your blessed signs
however
i am
done
willingly i sink in your hands im tired peace flood over me
chaos in our blood
sunrise joins our hungry mouths
zen entwines our flesh
some Sunday mornings early at the park the ducks would waddle toward him with shaky hung over arms he’d lift me above the quacking wonders the giggles floating up like bubbles some summer times long ago i’d get to stay at his home motorcycle parts in the bathroom and nightly a different ‘aunt’ to make me food some days after his brothers would roar out of his garage in the afternoon i’d make a dollar for every bottle i scavenged from his oily shop floor and i finally had enough to buy chutes and ladders there were certain times i didn’t trust him his glances were an empty page don’t act like your mother he’d say when i offered to do a chore just to strike up a conversation like Sammy and Ginger my neighbors next door did with their Da when it was their turn to water the lawn i guess he thought i wanted another board game as i grew older and farther away i saw no use of trying my hand at rewinding time with the old man being a Da wasn’t his suit and being parented is something i’ve always sucked at
any road north at this time of the year is cold and wet
my neighbor said coughing out gray-white swirled
menthol smoke
your journey need not be postponed
if you can live here for more than 23 minutes
you’re used to the inclement weather
i squinted up at Jeannie her pin curls once golden
lighting up the strip joints along
the weary loosed boulevard were now dull piss
yellow and very very sparse
she couldn’t remember that she walked into my room
believing she was home
as Jeannie orchestrated a plan to cross her shriveled
go-go booted legs still i sat silent on the floor
crushing pills to help me think i was never one to
bother reading directions
by the morning when the birds bathe in the puddles of acid rain
and snails ever so slowly smear their way
to the dying ficus tree and in a moment of pre-contemplative clarity i look up again at my lady
her crushed velvet baby blue robe casketed what time separated from the wheat of life
then wild cat eyes darted past her nodded head to look out of the screenless cracked window
with Tom rasping something through the radio about
a downtown train
and a torn paperback about Lenny Bruce’s life on the milk crate shelf
i couldn’t help to wonder if we were also waiting for
Beckett’s
immutable Godot
you blue humming bird
i orange blossom opened
satisfied you go
another flame in the distance of a repetitious page
alarms my blood into a flow of fast thinking
she comes in the storm of her own pain
a slow thick fear the only match i have to counter
i now know not to longer linger by the crusted ashtrays
or lean on their solid walls of past injurious indiscretions
but rather crawl out of the darkness of the closet
a charming foxhole a Neverland of sorts with Barbies GI Joes
water colors and a one eyed teddy bear called Mike
after the storm lulls herself to sleep
and the lightening goes to some other town
to launch his cowardly thunder
we are all less than triumphant in dignity and resolution
and when all is calm the mirror under the storm
confirms that there is life yet
another successful recon mission
a blue awareness baptizes me
today i survived again
and am still breathing for a home
bone pain
and angst
the clouds
roll by
gray i
can see
them in
the night
sky i’ve
become numb
mute deaf
blind to
your poisonous
dark soul
as i
want to
rip myself
in half
rather than
lash out
and become
like you
share your love friends ❤
on the last day of Hanukkah 2001 i was hung over from too many filterless Camels and clove cigarettes the night before i couldn’t sleep and i chain smoked i made my way to the cold bland bathroom to wash up the radio was on and i danced as i walked i moved like any skinny slinky Brit androgynous heart throb it boy from the 70’s i thought and felt kinda embarrassed after my ritual i went downstairs to chew the fat with Jonathon O’Mara from the coffee shop in the Tenderloin he wasn’t home so i went for a walk the sun was hot for a San Fran morning back then i was able to ride the bus for a quarter the drivers would mistake me for a high schooler it was easy i always wore boys clothes and black chucks my gay boyfriends always gushed over me as they tried to capture my femininity i loved having gay boyfriends we’d all have fun dance etc and i didn’t have to put out and if they needed an emergency fiancé to introduce to their waspy east coast family members they’d send out the beard signal and i was there we were all excellent fucking actors but behind the good times and the jokes we all lived our lives as prisoners in very painful cells some of the folks in our circle were even handed death sentences through illness or addiction as far as i went i had to fess up to my boys that men’s clothing might keep the rapists away and that when someone had the balls to tell me i was beautiful it would hurt very badly along with a litany of other issues most of my boys would gasp and then weep because they too had been deeply hurt continually for long periods of their life but we were a rowdy bunch we had survived our way and through those unfortunate passages we realized we were all connected and that race gender orientation and any other label didn’t really define us we were very strong and wise human beings with the capacity to love hard and relentlessly as for Jonathon and i woe upon anyone who’d mess with his sweet pea for a portion of my life i was blessed enough to know such a human capacity existed and i can move forward with this evermore
words less spoken 