Swells

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Swells

Love – bittersweet, irrepressible – loosens my limbs
and I tremble.  - Sappho

~~~


Life Blood


I woke, walked blearily
to the bathroom
and brushed my teeth,
eyes still closed
to the bright light.

I didn’t know.

I was innocent, immaculate,
tear-free shampoo
in young, damp hair.

Then I felt it –
a jolt, sharp
in my side.

It was you.

I reeled, cringed
as you punched
the air out of me, first
with butterfly wings, gentle
ticklings in the gut -
then with fists.

I thought I was dying,
life draining from wounds
I couldn’t even see.

I opened my eyes
and found you -
blood red stain on my
bleached white heart.

I didn’t know
what love was
until it was seeping out of me.



~~~


Dance


They say, dance as if no one is watching, but most people dance alone, their only audience the mirror. But I weary of mirrors; I want to be seen. I want to dance in the world – in the partial reflections of cars and store windows, gravel scraping the soles of my shoes, dirt in the treads of my sneakers. I want to see me as I really am, in context, embedded in my surroundings, in puddles – small and distorted, blotches of beige rippling in the light, shattered in pieces, manifold.  I want to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Motion become life.  I want to dance in the vastness of being - join the whirling winds and crashing seas, float like clouds, flow like rain.  I want to feel the heaving of air in my lungs as I cry to the universe:  Dance!



~~~


Raynaud’s Phenomenon


Raynaud's Phenomenon is a discoloration of the fingers and/or the toes after exposure to changes in temperature or emotional events.


When I enter cold spaces, my heart
sucks in the warm, pulsing blood,
leaving my fingers ghost
white, tight, skeleton
skin grasping for a hold
on things, and when I slip
back into the heat, my heart releases,
and white-blue flesh explodes into red,
my own private 4th of July,
fingers numb and swollen
in the booming.



~~~


By The Sea


As we sit on the bay-side bench shivering,
your coffee eyes warm me
and I hold you against the deep
chill of the sea, your steam rising
to warm my cheeks,
a stone hearth breathing
softly in my ear.

I bring you to my lips
and sink into your heat.

When you leave, I sit still,
quivering under locks
of damp hair –
a child in a tub
of cooling bath water
held by the memory
of warmth.



~~~


The Worst Nightmare is the Waking One


Sometimes I wake to spiders,
every hair follicle turned
spider leg. For a moment
I am buried in spiders, the egg sac
hatched from nightmares, black
bodies taking over.  I jump,
slap my skin, brush frantically
until my hand finds the light switch
and my eyes tell me
there is nothing there.



~~~


Jam Jar


I bought a tiny glass jar of jam at a local bakery. I peeled the label off, and the contents looked like blood when I held it up to the light – flecks of strawberry flesh in the viscous jelly. I twisted off the metal lid to sneak licks of the sweet preserves. At home, I placed the jar on my desk and thought: it’s the perfect size to hold toenail clippings.



~~~


A Dream About My Teacher


My teacher wants to make me
her apprentice.
To do this,
we must look more
like each other.
I have high, curvy eyebrows,
so she takes a knife
and slices her eyelids in a curve,
so that her eyes
open up there.
She is just about to shave off
some of my square chin,
when she leans
to kiss me.
As her lips touch mine,
the pressure causes
her head to fall
off her neck
and roll
away.
 


~~~


Undone


I want to rest you on my lips
until you are not you,
sliding, liquid, down
my throat, dissolving
into me.



~~~


“Where are you going?”


The words chase after me as I chase dreams… men, and cheap motels with crooked fixtures and layered paint on the walls to hide the stains from alcohol, sex, kids and accidents.  Spillage from life’s little science experiments exploding into puffs of cigarette smoke that taint the air for years to come.  I cough, the sickness in my bones, in my blood, seeping into sheets as I sleep, a fertile mess of a miracle shouting, “Oh God, yeah,” in the room next door, making me dream of illicit kisses that are really just too-close whispers at my ear as you f*ck me from behind, making a mess to go with the bottles of vodka and oily, unrecyclable pizza boxes that house-keeping will find later and throw away, along with all the other imperfections of a room that was made to be temporary.



~~~


My Heart


I
You leave
tiny purple marks, kisses
that ache and remind me
how much I love you.


II
Like the ghost of bruises
fading into sickly shades
of green and yellow, I ache
long after the marks
have gone, dented
bones under
unbroken skin.


III
People tell me I look well,
but every time I catch
your scent,
I throb.



~~~


I Want


to throw you into a vat
of crackling oil and watch
your skin curl;

to watch you glide across
the black, sizzling
surface of the world,
rich, sliding slick, ripening
to a crisp brown,
simmering in the warm
summer sun;

to see you lie prostrate,
allowing the ground to move you,
bubbling up from underneath
to caress you as you melt,
insides collapsing into a soft
fleshy center, giving
under the pressure of my
insistent fingertips
until I break
the skin.



~~~


What Happened?

                              Attention, my bloody knee
wants your attention                      needs your
                                          bloody attention
            wants you to feel      my bloody pain, you
        know how I feel                          pain in the ass
need to know                                                              ask me
      you know                                don’t you want to ask   
              know I hate it                  don’t you?
                                                                                         
                                                      Aren’t you concerned?       
          I know                                          your concern, want
  you to know what I feel                                        to know
                      what            exactly          you want to
                      what I don’t                            want you 
                            to know -           
             
                                                what happened.



~~~


Swells


The blood seeps down my naked thigh,
and I wonder what it would be not to bleed –
to silently swell with life, and smile
at my little secret until my belly grows taut
and large – to rest my hands over the warm bulge
like I sometimes do my breasts,
admiring the soft globes of my body,
the heavy gravity of the curves as they shift,
tides under the sway of the moon.
I want to feel the kick of a new heart
in my belly, and feel it merge
with me, filling my flesh
until it overwhelms and explodes into climax,
bursting out in terrible waves of ecstasy
and spilling onto the floor,
blood red and shiny,
mine no more.



~~~


Nipples


Like an old married couple, they wake
to the tender touch of fingers and lips, 
and crinkle into smiles and laugh lines,
ridges peaking in familiar excitement,
flushed and happy to be
together, always.



~~~


Lungs


My nose
pressed against yours,
your warm breath hisses out
onto my lips, enters me
and exits, leaving me
gasping until
you fill me
again.



~~~


The Sea


The sea clings
to my skin. She offers
diamonds, crystalline trails
of salt, beautiful in my hair.
She bribes me and
curls her finger,
come back.



~~~


Stains


I fall into the cool, cut grass, and the sun warms my eyelids as your stray hairs tickle my skin like mosquitoes settling over my veins.  But when I look down, I find only stains where the grass bleeds green – fresh from the mower.



~~~


Arrival


When summer comes,
I will put on my
wrinkled summer skin,
don my chlorine-green wig,
and dive into a pool
of murky ice water
left by winter.