Week 27 - Depression/Catharsis

I drink to write.
I write to my drink.
black and sweet
it swirls around
the muddied glass,
a sip left on my lower lip.
I am across from you,
you and your beautiful body.
I take off my shirt
pout at you,
bite my lower lip
and widen my eyes.
I feel your hand on my back,
drawing me closer,
I see my reflection in your eyes
my luscious breasts pressed together,
hair dark and thick,
sadness in the arch of my eyebrows.
I see you ache for me,
so I lean over
and place soft kisses on your eyelids,
cheeks,
nose,
filling you with lust and love.
You look at me,
look deep into my ridiculous eyes,
don't even realize that I am right there with you.
I am simply a warm wet body,
a thing of flesh
of smells
of softness.
In desperation we reach for each other,
and after
we lay down to sleep
in silence,
backs touching.

****************************************************************************

I am a shell
of the person
I used to be.

There is a growing darkness in me
and it's swallowing me whole,
this chasm,
this black hole
absorbing all the light.

It's no one's fault that I'm this way.
No one's fault
that I lay here
unable to move,
thoughts racing
bouncing up down around and around
until all I can hear is the
pounding of my heart,
rendering me unable to sleep,
to think,
to breathe.

I will keep this shell until I find a new one.
I will stay quiet,
mourn in silence.

*********************************************************************************

Defend the sacred
in you,
around you.

I am not so good at that.
I lie back
and let him have his way,
it's not his fault,
I want it
I think.

It is confusing
to figure out what is affection
what is attention
what is lamentation.
I cannot tell grief from relief,
I need help please,
can someone reach out
touch me
and make me feel alive again?
Can someone reach out
and make me feel sacred again?

*********************************************************************************

Sometimes all I have is my favourite shirt,
so reluctant to take it off,
I wear it five days in a row.
The comfort in the fabric,
the way it feels on my skin.
It is my armor,
my protection
against the elements.

I am alone,
don't you see,
so alone,
there is no one here but me.
And I try to reach out
and I touch glass,
realizing that I am inside my own world
looking out,
no one sees me anymore.
Isolated, alone.
I made my own bed,
I lie in it,
there's no one here,
not even God.
This is why I wear my favourite shirt
five days in a row,
maybe it's all I have left.

Week 26

It is something magical
to be here with you
in my dreams.
I mean,
real life would be better
but I can settle for this.

I imagine your scent,
smooth, musky,
and a little bit nervous
I know I would make you nervous.

I imagine running my nose
my plump lips along your ribs,
placing light kisses
tasting, feeling, being.

It would be something
to gaze into your eyes,
for real this time,
to see myself mirrored in them
so perfectly.
I would be perfect in them
like you are to me.

If I close my eyes,
it almost happens,
you and me,
me with you.
At least I have that
in dreams
and for that
I should be grateful.

Following the Road

I have left my wife at the airport,
flying out to help our daughter
whose baby will not eat.
And I am driving on to Kent
to hear some poets read tonight.

I don’t know what to do with myself
when she leaves me like this.
An old friend has decided to
end our friendship. Another
is breaking it off with his wife.

I don’t know what to say
to any of this—Life’s hard.
And I say it aloud to myself,
Living is hard, and drive further
into the darkness, my headlights
only going so far.

I sense my own tense breath, this fear
we call stress, making it something else;
hiding from all that is real.

As I glide past Twin Lakes,
flat bodies of water under stars,
I hold the wheel gently, slowing my
body to the road, and know again that
this is just living, not a trauma
nor dying, but a lingering pain
reminding us that we are alive.

Larry Smith

Antilamentation

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Dorianne Laux

Week 25

You were in an out of my life
faster than the hummingbird
that kept me company
in the monsoons of India.

I remember that day so clearly,
tears pouring from my face,
tears pouring out of the sky
and that little beacon of hope
flitted across my vision,
stayed for a while.

And that's what you were to me,
my little beacon of change,
a reminder that maybe I could feel something
for someone,
someone that wasn't in the past or the future.

But you left,
like all pretty things are wont to do.
Left me with a butterfly kiss
on my heart,
saying "I'll see you soon"
even though we both know that wasn't true.

I miss you, sometimes.
your incredible touch.
But I'll take it for what it was,
a hummingbird bathing in the sky,
hello, I like you,
I'll miss you,
goodbye. 

Week 24

It is dark in here,
deep and dark
yet strangely comforting.
The shadows are hugging me,
massaging my neck,
my stiff shoulders,
massaging the thought of you
away from me.

Dear God, I miss you
or at least
miss the way you made me feel,
brilliant,
beautiful,
alive.

Now I am a leaf
at the end of autumn,
floating on a pool
of half glass,
waiting to drown,
waiting to breathe,
staring up at the pristine sky
wondering what if,
what is,
what will be.

And I know it won't be for me.
So I wait here in the shadows,
wait with my eyes open.
Maybe one day I will feel again.
Not today,
but some day.