Twenty-two.

22.  You're only 22 today and baby, are you beautiful.  At least, I think so.

It's been almost a year now.  Since we celebrated.  Since I loved you with every nerve ending I didn't know I had.  You were only 20.  Then 21.  And baby, were you ever beautiful.  The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.  The White Buffalo Aphrodite holy fucking grail I manifested from my perfectly preserved school girl fantasy at the center of my beat up, patched-together heart.

I caught your eye through a reflection in a mirror, remember that? Your shirt was pink and I was sweating and I thought what I was seeing couldn't be reality and in a split second, at the same moment, we knew.  We knew together and we knew that the other one knew.  The road was inevitable even though we had yet to say our first hello.

But we knew.

And once we did, it was even better than the cherry of the cherry on top of the cherry.  It was magic set on fire with flames fanned from every direction.  Your hair was always in your eyes and our bodies belonged.  Oh how they belonged.  Our physicality spoke the same damn language, one I thought I'd forgotten, and didn't know it was so close to the surface, but your were the mighty igniter.

A match.  My match.  My equivalent, I said.

"You two are both gorgeous", said the lady at the coffee shop as you were deciding to break my most sensitive, beat up, patched-together heart.

I knew better, but I insisted on memorizing you every time.  Drunk on the smell of you, hands running over the texture of your skin.  I can still feel your phantom skin.  I can still see the colors changing as you flushed, and blushed, and bloomed because of me.  And I can still feel the feeling of belonging.  Oh, the way we belonged. For a moment.

But guess what? I lost you.  You were mine, and then you weren't, and you were lost.  Missing.  Missing from me.  I could not have braced myself if I'd tried, but the word comes in and takes me over.  Away.  You are away now.

A walking poem, you called me.  I want to live with you, you told me.  The prettiest person I've ever seen, you called me.  I love you, I can't live without you, you told me.

My dream girl.  Dream girl.  A dream.

A dream is not a tangible thing where we glimpse something wonderful and terrible for a minute yet fully live it...then it's gone.

Just like you and me.  Star children from the Pillars of Creation, we were, and we no longer exist either. But those shadows, the phantom us haunts me like a 7 thousand year old trail behind me.  But for a moment we experienced the same exact thing.  In life.  In time.  For a moment we knew, and for a moment we belonged.  Oh how we belonged.

Every day is the same damn day.  Every day I have to remind myself I have lost.

So I did

One day it was different.

He said, "can I call you sometime?" And I said okay.
He asked me if I wanted to go for a drink,
so I did.

Then it was a dinner, then three dinners, then thirty
and a drive on a summer night with a ladybug inside the car
"those are good luck!" he said.
I like the idea of believing in omens,
so I did.

Then the seasons changed
and snow fell and the year was ending
and he asked if I wanted to go to Mexico where we
would be warm and drink margaritas and
walk on the beach.
So I did.

And one night under the stars in the warm month of December
on the mexican beach, he brought up children
and I asked him, "do you see yourself getting married to me?"
and he did.

So I looked for a wedding dress and bought the first one
I tried on that fit like a glove
and flew to Las Vegas and stood with him in a chapel
and when the man marrying us asked me if I do,
I said I did.

Tattoo

Tattoo

I accidentally saw a picture of you today.

I say accidentally because I wasn't searching for you...

per say.

I just happened to be checking on someone who is linked to you

Just like I've been in denial of doing nearly daily for the past five months

And wouldn't you know it, there were two.

You've always had a habit of sneaking up on me

and causing an involuntary reaction.

You looked so different.

Younger, put together, the messy romance scraped off

but the thing that really took my breath away...

was that you looked...happy.

You wear New York well.

It was transformative.

I recognized it immediately as being the thing

always missing from our photos.

It seemed like a lost lifetime ago.

The thought of us.  Of a used to be you and me.

I only knew it was real because I know that on your ribcage

on your left side

under that suit is a tattoo.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The size and shape and placement

on your skin.

Your skin.  The texture.  The color.

How they’d change.

The bumps, the imperfections, the smell I hope I never forget.

What beauty.  What staggering fucking beauty.

That secret reminder on your left side.  

Or...was it the right?

"And so it goes"

Body soft, she waits.

Feeling only external in the waiting room.  Small wrists.  Busy brain.

Did black patent leather shoes sit in a similar room, 
feeling similar things 50 some odd years ago?

I think so.

The hallway doesn’t end.  I see trash all over the floor but as I approach, 
I find it’s not trash at all, but the pattern of a floor.  
Too many doors.  All walls empty.

The irony that there is a graveyard across the street is not lost on me.

Not lost on me. 

Lost me. 

2012

I think.

I think I might be able to pick myself back up and put back together again. 

I think. 

I think I might thrive and survive were you to remove yourself from me.  

I think.  

But I cannot guarantee myself this can happen and I smother in my own demise.  

I think I might stay broken this time.  

I think I’ve scattered to far to collected my aching pieces.  


2012

Oh please, I beg you.

Oh but you must.  Oh but you might.

Give me back the flesh of my soul. 

I’ve emptied out and poured into you.

My hollow hurting shell remains, remained to me a throbbing reminder

I try to fill back but I no longer posses the ingredients needed to whole myself again.

You do, you have, you are.  

I didn’t realize I’d seeped out until I suddenly couldn’t catch my breath, 

couldn’t breath in anything other than this darkness. 

Your presence pierced me through the bones and through the stars that make me both tangible and scattered dust. 

I scatter, I shatter I throb.  

You.  You.  I beat.  You.

2012

Scatter

I keep choosing the wrong soul shatterers, soul scatterers 
My soul is broken. Bloodless, cracked open.


I can't bear the weight of everything I want to do
that I'll never be able to
And all the things I don't want to do
that I'll have to


You might not take me with you
You might not take me with you


I don't want to be with me either.


Every time I am left bare
Laid there


My penance every lifetime.  


2012

Zero

I can relate to no one, no one can I relate to
I allow my loneliness, I become it
I find it becomes me
I wear it quite well
(better to embrace it than be trapped in my hell)


2012

Never again.

Never.  Never again, I said.  


I sealed my fate and gave myself a lifetime of protection from never again.
But what nobody told me was that you'll unexpectedly find yourself with nerves exposed and heart laid bare. 


Oops.


Why? To self sabotage? To feel something again? 


Fuck.


I forgot the hurt.  I forgot how it hurts so good and opens my creative marrow.  
I forgot how this feels.  I forgot how deep the well of me runs.  I forgot the things I am capable of saying out loud and what it's like to hear those words spoken to me, for me.  Me.  Flesh and blood.  This is real.  


But it's not real.  It's not honestly real.  There are no such things as accidents.  What is it? And why? And why is it so good and bad? I agonize, I bubble up, I feel the weight of the world at once, once again.  And I know that from time to time I'll always secretly welcome taking it on.  


And perhaps at bottom, I wan't the one used at all...but you were.  Tricked into the role of my muse to fuel my soul and creativity once more.  Joke's on you.  


And that's how I survive it.  Every time. 




2012

9/11

You once ago knew the soul of a beautiful girl who gave herself to you. Who declared herself yours and chained to you the very marrow of her soul. Many deaths and many births and the cycle of a decade later she is still in wonder at the ghost world that once transpired.  On this day all she asks is to be thought of.  To be thought of.  Never needed hardly seen a lifetime or so removed but a simple thought to bring light to the present is what she asks today.  

2011


  

Echos of you

All around me are the echoes of you.  Still.

So many lifetimes later you come to knock on my subconscious house 

of tiny secret dreams in the tiny secret pocket of my soul.

My heart, my marrow, my memories.

Mine.

Yet each night I dream of water, of you, of her.

Only there and only then I try to remain but involuntary escape is inevitable.

How symbolic.  How metaphysical.  How cliche.

2010

Guilt Shredder (the great destroyer)

if i could write it down in latin

so i couldn't understand it

quod me nutrit me destruit

that which nourishes me also destroys me

the great guilt shredder

how easy it was

how easy to accept 

complete denial

i couldn't wrap my head around it

so i keep asking for it to happen again

i'm so hungover from this

so sick and yet so pleased

i'll be emptied, robbed 

and left to dry

(dry out inside out)

it's what it is

we know what it is

create and deny my own hypocrisy 

2006

Brave New Girl

I'm a brave new girl

In the big bad world

Or a big bad girl

In the brave new world

It tells me slow

It tells me cruel

It tells me pull

But it won't say no

The big brave girl

In the bad new world

2006

Limbo

visceral girl

body pierced

heavy guts and organs

dripping through 

the second story floor.

hot and waxy words 

thick poetry seeping in.

pouring out.

not a sound.

no way to tell.

limbo?

purgatory?

an apartment?

2006

Beautiful Beginning

I'll leave the paper and pen next to me tonight,

through the night,

because I feel there might be words...

and I'm nervous...

I'm shaking or I'm waking 

as I walk barefoot across my cold tile floor.

A coming out of hibernation I feel my bones

and begin to thaw out visceral again

(is this visceral again?)

It's been so long and I've been so scared

is my passion knocking and can I make it real,

Let it flow and write my truths...

I'm preparing now.

I was storing up.

I was enduring.

It's a beginning.

Springs awakening.

No rush no force eloquence is seeping in

or I am finally seeping out

try to breathe, learn of patience 

in my never ending growth to struggle 

to look beyond

to transform 

every win and every pain 

into Deena once again. 

2005

Arrival

OH TO SEE IT FROM THE HEAVENS

as you crashed down upon my world!

An arrow to my heart

body of hope

purity

all that is golden

salvation

My savior

MY CHAMPION HAS ARRIVED FOR ME AT LAST!

A long life patiently awaiting you..

the magnitude of your presence

the light from your being!

how I see you,

how I SEE you! 

2005

Yours

take me home with you

and not for the night 

and not for the hour

but take me home

and keep me close.

wrap me up and love me there.

leave me there and let me be yours.

tend to me with the occasional kiss

and I promise I'll be satisfied.

and I'll love you back 

and I'll love you there 

to be yours for the hour 

yours for the night

yours for a life is all I want

2005

Bittersweet Sadness

it's a bittersweet sadness

coating over her bittersweet soul

i almost feel sorry for my pain

because it's sweet. it's so, so sweet.

a brokenhearted child

in a shattered house of dreams

stuck in the glass between death and life

she floats, fades to gray

can't get in and can't get out

she's so sweet i almost feel sorry for her

and I'm tempted to let her stay

and take care of her

and feed into her 

and give to her

and keep for myself

the bittersweet remains 

2004

You want a girl

you want a girl who's seen and not heard

heard and not seen and won't speak

or speak up

you want a girl who keeps her body tense

and won't move forward 

or reach out

or is reached to

you want a girl who stifles her image

who chokes on her soul

and glazes over her dreams 

and will deny herself her destiny

you want a beautiful exoskeleton

and a mutated suffocated inside

you want a girl who's seen and not head

2004

Observations in a Starbucks

A couple reunites but it does not go well.
I see a lonely old drunk trying way too hard to get or keep or hold on to
this woman he once loved.
I can't see her face but I know she's married now
and seems to be affected by what he has to say.
I don't know if it's sincere.
It seemed like a game at first,
but I think now it's starting to get to her.
He goes outside to smoke in his old tan jacket and camouflage hat.
Staring at her through the window the entire time.
He keeps touching her, wanting to know over and over again what she's thinking
and what she feels.
I wonder if the old love songs playing
on the Starbucks system are getting to and affecting them.
"You make me crazy with those eyes," he says.
As he tries to woo too hard and tell her why she shouldn't be 
with her husband.
I still can't see her face or read what it is she's doing here 
or why she wanted to look him up.
"I wish I knew you in a previous life," he says.
The don't seem real or sincere to me.
Maybe it's because I'm half their age 
and haven't become quite that desperate, sad or jaded just yet.




2004