Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / Past time of a poet
Synopsis
My life has been bared like a baby's
bottom, though not as sweet and pure,
nor pretty. My blackest days
live on pages without pride;
where I am a crone, a masked assassin,
a box full of bones.
Where I wait on line for sacred little pills,
build a shrine on a peeling wall,
think motherhood is not all
it's cracked up to be. Where I watch
my father's heart explode into pieces
I still find here and there. Thirty years
is a moment, sometimes. I let wrists
bleed on my mother's white sheets and dodge
fists that break wood and spirit. I bare
my middle-aged breasts and dry vagina
with foolish hopes that don't fool me,
with soulmate fantasies that pass the days
and make me feel like a woman again. Such
ways I have to keep my sanity. Where I see
what happens between hospital visiting hours
with rag doll grandmas and brown liquid
filling an oxygen mask as a mother's goodbye.
I cry in most of my poems,
don't I? Where I confess my sister's hair
makes her blind to things, and I hocked my lover's
diamond ring for a few bucks because I didn't like
gold. Where I drink Merlot until I run naked and wild,
walk the streets at 2am looking for my child, find
his boxcutters in a drawer, drool at the memory
of those pretty, candy cane sheets. Where I sabotage
every good thing, feet blistered from running away,
waking to a day without sun, even when it shines.
Where I am a snail, a turtle, a knife and a cup.
Where I am broken, glued together, upside down
and rightside up. Where I am not a wife, mother
or friend, just simply me. Where I might be a fool
for letting strangers into my sadness, my forever night,
but the truth is -- it's the only way I can write.