Weeks 1-52

"I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking these days.
These days I seem to think a lot about the things I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance too.

I stopped my rambling
I don't do too much gambling these days;
These days I seem to think about how all these changes came about my ways
And I wonder if I'll ever see another highway.

I had a lover
I don't think I'll risk another these days.
These days.  And if I seem to be afraid to live the life I have made in song,
It's just that I've been losing so long.


I've quit my dreaming,
I won't do too much scheming these days.
These days I sit on cornerstones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten.

Please don't confront me with my failures;
I have not forgotten them."

28

Divorce

It started with marriage
sans forethought past familial appeasement
to prevent "living in sin."
We were two veterans already disabled
from festering wounds
of this ongoing war
with each other, ourselves.

The worst was the waiting up
past his 5am requested curfew,
lying in bed alone. Or
the 3am phone call from a taxi cab driver
refusing him service till I came down and paid
for him to stumble upstairs,
drunk and lipstick smeared face
and not ever after
any apology.

My marriage had no armistice,
no peace treaty, no asylum, no refuge.
My marriage was the U.S. in Vietnam--
no victory, no admittance of defeat, but
at some point,
there is no more point, no option
but to withdraw.

27: "NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee"

My Sins Against God

aren't original.
I wasn't the first
to steal from family
(sorry, sis, for that buck-eighty-five
gleaned off your carpet
while you were at show choir).

I cheated
on Chem tests
in high school, but I was slutty
with answers at age eight,
preferring the insidious ambiguous
term collaboration
for signaling cross-classroom
my multiple choices.

My sins against God
been going on for a while.
Probably began with my mouth, a two-year-old liar
thinking only of Self
to skirt deserved spankings. Red-hands, but
"I didn't do it."

But dear God forbid
I trade in tenderness
to contract malice, or despair.
Those sins will eat the soul,
grinning.

23

to my family:

I've been telling you all
what I think you want to hear.

Truth is,
I'm scared shitless. Of not being good
enough. Of letting you all down,
so I absenteed me.

But I'm peeking around
some corner of self-doubt
to shyly, contritely
ask for hand--your words,
"So, tell me the real story."

prayer (week 22)

It used to be
a stream of whispered wants.
I would braid my tiny fingers,
batten down my eyelids, and recite
my litany of lack.

I tried that. It didn't help.
So instead I try
sitting.
Sitting still, still, still

"Be still and know"
what? Was that..? What God
sounds like

like pickled beets halved
with a spoon

like dollar-fifteen dozen eggs
curled up crateside

like 4:30am tap dancing dog toes
whimpering for a patch of grass

and Saturday errands graphite striked
off a list, Sunday creaking weekend sighs

like monthly budgeting
this time for stillness
to hear slow whooshed blood serving
platters of O2 to muscles,
sinews, old sins new since my time
beaded up, slinks down my windshield:
a whispering stream of H2 with O
God
regret me not these 
breaths. O God! that you would
"Be."

Week 21

Underwriting Risk Management

I got taught, this semester
how risk management works.
Some proportional formula
estimates net worth,
overriding any risky business.
If we're worried, we shouldn't be.
We've got these consumer advocates now
lest our dues to our country's
Economic Advantage
fall short.
Quantified quality control, marketing,
and sales ensures minimal heart damage
(as if our probability of loss
in this life was other than certain)
no matter
how many greasy wings we eat.

The final exam tested
how percentage based hypotheses
hedge bets on life expectancies
for monthly rates, interest-free.
I short anawered that
Death is a collecting birdbath,
and grief sniffs a flavor of mold,
like damp summer cellars
after a weepy spring.
In college we learn
that student loan debt defers
to experience, and debtors' prison,
reinstated, is collective guilt.
Ever insufficient funds.


I still want to believe
my body is sacred,
that healers exist.
You know
we all dream the same:
that god is, that god could be
a Cupid to our Psyche
that now must be stuck, bouncing back
and forth from a rechargeable battery
and neglect case in point:
when "Dinner is served." means
we bait our own hooks
we swallow
ourselves
this midday meal.

19/52

19/52
(end of semester review)

"Even in our daily unconscious,
we acknowledge
the center."
An unlikely quote
from my bumbly east-asian
professor, mister Hsu
who lectures giggling
at 9am every Saturday
this Spring.

"Bear with me," he rings
rat-a-tat-tatting
a scramble of words:
"variance, percentile,
"divide by four," fingers wiggling.
"population proportion,"
"absolute value"
and this deviation
from the norm.

It's really all about hypothesis testing
I guess. But what
margin of error, "What
can we get by with," Mr. Hsu echoes
my silent question,
What can I do to pass?

week 18

you ate my heart,
medium-rare.
yours ran on,
fair game, and almost too fast
to keep up.

here, for dessert I'll serve
this poem,
my first with the second
person singular
standing in for
your name.

16/52/2010

I like
short poems.
Like this one.

Week 14 of 52 two thousand ten

"I'll use him as my mark,"
is what I'm thinking
after seeing him cooly sidle
toward the platform this Saturday morning while I panicking rush past,
anxious for my first time
not to miss the 'yuppie train'
from the far end of the track,
before it gets too yuppie.
My first time catching the train
From my new neighborhood, new
apartment Eight weeks since
I left my husband's--our--house-home,
and my mind stopped
aching every night.

I'll use him as my mark
to measure whether I should run
to catch the inbound, or whether
I can hurry less and more enjoy
this April breeze. He's a beefy white guy

 

in a Cubs jacket,
jeans sneakers black cap.
It's obvious he knows
the schedule.

I'm swaying side to side
train-waiting in the sun, and
I wonder if people think I'm pregnant,
rocking my unborn baby.
So I sit down.
I think "does my pink skin
burn at 8am already?"
Train whistle intermittent interrupts
my continued musings: I have a few habits this Spring.
Six or so leftover from Winter,
like sleeping too much, and dosing
my meds myself. Another five
bad habits sneaked in
through all those failures--
halfhearted Lenten promises of reform,
where Easter's vigil
voyeured my cigarette smoking
hope for relief of this constant pressure
to be good.

My fingers smell like grass, weed
I bought off my new lover's roommate
and rolled into a joint smoked on my way
downtown:
Saturday city college class.
Rockwell brownline train snorts up and
at the Addison stop this preppy dude
sits next to me and fingers the facebook app
on his iPhone with deaf toned music
annoyingly loud. He gets off
at Chicago and throws me a "goodbye!"
I wasn't expecting.
I remember my Mamá
is visiting next month for one week
and she agreed to stay with me.
I hope my dreams don't get too loud then,
these recurring, murmuring, secreted scenes
in which
my mind unravels
and I wake up shaking.

But I just heard the Lake Street stop
announced (doors open on
the right), I know
its time to go.

Week 11

i

I never trusted

my Mama's affections.

Teeth-grinding hugs

and cocodile tears

she believed in.

It was a treat to be ill;

fevers were best.

One hundred and four degrees

got me genuine concern

and tepid ice baths.

Those burned.

I learned to ignore

Mama's "bad mother" lament

that surfaced when I'd request

casseroles or

evenings at home:

things she couldn't provide.

ii

I grew up

with red paper eyelids

oragamied into wetland cranes,

soggy feet, wingless, and lashing

mascara dripped feathers:

remnants of someone else's breakfast.

Because the thing is

processed wood pulp comes apart

when wetted, so

my eyelids fell off

and I was better to watch

for more reptile smiles,

alluring.

iii

Mama, look--

sweaty palm heart

beat too fast

spring fever less rest

slept caviar eyes

open. I had to. Maybe

boys, booze, bud

would self-soothe

for a minute, but

iv

shh.

I have an avacado tree

that I grow, windowsill

toothpick mason jar style.

It leaves, too.

I'm sewing peppermint leaf

to skinned ginger root:

my new waterproof eyelids,

organic, can close.

I find myself

telephone ringing, requesting again

for her company.

"Mama, come stay with me.

"Evenings at home you can see

"I smoke, take meds for my heart

"and so what

"if we've come up short of a doctor spock story.

"I like our own version
"with damp cheeks, caffeine hands,

"veiny, sure, but
"both our O Positive blood."

Eight Weeks in to 2010

Eight Weeks into 2010

This morning I was bedded

by a Jew, who, all night

and into dawn never died

"the little death;" petit mors.

He scapegoated his psych meds:

"Too sedating," he complaining

he can't get off.

But my back shows scratches,

my neck the prune-shadowed

purple mouth-shaped

bruises.

His word: "in-fat-u-ate-(e)d"

when I'd said no strings.

I should've known how doped-up post

coital serotonin sings too sweet a song

for an endorphin junkie, never mind 

the week of his inpatient recovery, substance-

free.

I'm also sporting a bite-mark on my chest,

too low for the cover of any cardigan collar.

Damn thing keeps peeking

out around my school-day scarf,

only half apologetic. Smirking. 

To top it off, I'm still fucking

married

to a midwest Catholic boy, and

for the last three seasons

(winter's no relief) closely tailed 

by these damp sheet dreams

of an atheist with uncut cock

on a Northeast Atlantic island

years away

from now.

Now, when I show up Friday an hour late

to work, it's for the fifth time

this month.

I slept through my late-night promised

plans for someone's birthday,

and, shit, I can't get sober

for Saturdays' Statistics classes.

I still dream of Death as well,

but drive with seat belts

buckled nowadays. And 

I just spent my Emergency Abortion fund

on April's rent:

my own place.

7

Fasting for Family

My sister and I, we outsourced our angst

to casseroles. Pies of black beans and broccoli, cheese,

chicken and rice smothered in cream-mush-

room soup; fried okra, cooked corn, and peas

on the side. Mama buttered us up,

with oatmeal for breakfast, but

even with raisins, it didn't taste right.

A little bit bitterer by her since absent mind.

I got real picky then, sensing she'd left,

so I made my own soup falsely noodled with stars

for after-school efforts to self-soothe self-esteem

battered by fifth grade friends and elementary school discipline:

even my sunday school teachers could wield Doubt, 

and Exasperation almost as well

as my mother.

I stopped altogether, that fresh year of college,

eating rather the sex, campus fame, and "fuck all!" 

back pocket flasks that smell sour like shame, 

old lima bean paste gone rotten.

Now how many years later I drink 

coffee, spoon slow cook steel oats, honey and milk,

organic and hand grown from a farmer nearby.

A fast February visit for our sister-friendship,

and for our supper we honor each other:

a communion of precious pomegranate, 

root veggies, and heart-blood red wine.

week 6

Reckon Me

seven pounds and one ounce, twenty-one inches

at six thirty-four of AM

bloody and breathless i came, began

wailing, snorting shocking dry air into unused yet lungs.

i could count at age three up to twenty (so old!)

and nickel and dime to one hundred.

three quarters per week, twenty-five cents for each

jar: god, (sunday basket bound); savings; and

spending (at will) always guiltily empty.

i'm only one century divided by four, a decade 

into two thousand, plus nine months before the beginning

where i, swimming within, was weightless. just us

for those forty weeks: more two hundred days

i sang meditations

on being.

ever since, though, my body trails numbers

of blood-pressure, heart-rates, IQs and test scores.

i disappointed my mother: i sixteen years old, p-

sat too small and i too many calories.

find me a season of movement unmeasured.

Reckon me not "wanting" or "not," but easy inhales,

easy exhales, easy heartbeat, whole, steady and humming

a hymnal of Shanti, spherical rhythms

announcing our places in the family of things.

Week 5 of 52, 2010 CE

a flank of indecision fishes

swims upstream my arteries

with wispy fins, frail scales and flimsy

caviar eyeballs. lidless.

Age ten I would treasure hunt her bedroom,

rooting around shag carpet crevices for careless coins.

I was found out once: sister shame. I secreted

my guilt and returned to her the $1.85 I’d taken.

hardline teeth, well. enamel, at least.

they're chipped: straight rows

and white like bone, I think. I never

saw a bone of mine to know the color.

Standing at the handed-down dresser, (I got it next)

7 am highschool preparation, she’d eye the mirror and hum

Thessalonians learned in Young Life. hairbrush became “Helmet

of Salvation,” and bras the “Breastplate of Righteousness.”

Her adolescence and my 11 years forgot our shoes,

that Gospel of Peace toward each other

all  too often.

my fishes seem to nibble feed on four

chambers, in and out: my shuddering organ-heart,

flopping frantic within ribbed fabric of body.

piranhic, sharkful. bobbing anxious rip tides.

my fishes and i, we’ve left our harbour.

My sister, now, we giggle. She hugs the ZD Chardonnay

and I steal all her winter sweaters—no,

she gives them me. Sharing peanut butter

m&ms skittling across the bedspread, and midweek sleepovers.

my sea legs suck, and my Dali drawing life

lends itself to landlessness

saltwater sponges up my insecurities.

I, always her ragdoll play-toy, squishy skin and Gumby fun;

we find fast relief in presence. Winter weathers both of us,

but she I envy: her salsa dancing grace and uninhibited laughter.

My favorite though, when she sneaks her ankle undercover

toward my own, sing-songing, “Muffin, I love you.” Then,

despite my flapping fishfin blood re-circulating old worry, and even though

I’ve forever been “No Bones Jones,” I know

a tuning fork would tell a different story.

"2010: Changing it up"

Four anti-depressant regimens, an anti-anxiety, and one sleep-aid later, my medications are stable.
Four different homes, innumerable packs of cigarettes, several ounces of weed, two different cars, and one big break-up later, I sleep through the night and managed to shrug off that sense of impending doom, damn dread.


What I aim to highlight with the following entries are these successive weeks of this year: 2010, age 25, and clueless as fuck.