All These Rooms

if your heart turns
to mud
to avoid the bitter glances
of the sun
do not call for it—
tell your tongue to
follow
it down.

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watching the faces
in the mirror above the bar
red cheeks underlining shallow eyes
magenta lipstick trying to hide
wrinkled lips
I think up metaphors
to quantify their sadness:
miles of birdless telephone poles
beneath an absent sky,
five unreturned phone calls,
or maybe it’s just one brother
with dreams of scarred elbows.
I don’t know.
but I think that
sadness cannot be quantified. it just pours
out of you […]

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You know what would be great? If Microsoft could come up with a Word program designed for writing poetry, or at least a poetry setting so that you don’t have to click on “Ignore All” every time you run spell check.

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woke up 6 am
said no to work
no to contact lenses
no to coffee
with or without sugar
I just don’t want it
said no to my mother my father
and my uncle
no to the children I have not had yet
and my friend’s children
and “how cute they are when they’re
sick and cranky and need to be held”
said no to giving blow […]

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I have one hundred years
of sleep in me
one hundred years spent sitting with the moon
at the bottom of a black river
 
while I slept
the moon circled my arms
and showed me that
my emptiness
came from having edges
 
now I imagine myself
as the cold black eyes of the river
passing through bruised shoulders
passing through
a mind made of fire, cement,
and unsent letters
passing […]

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i live in the shade
of a maple tree
so that the clouds cannot
find me
so that the sun and it’s
dirty yellow fingers cannot
change me from light to dark to
light again
trying to break down what’s
left of my walls
and steal my buried eyes
 
if I make my home here
in the leaves of the tree
my father cut down
ten years ago
i won’t […]

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if I seem quiet sometimes it’s because my eyes follow the storm as it moves across the sky and when spring comes I am always talking to you in my head. the you that I talk to is someone who can feel time passing when they touch my skin, then gently peel it back, lift […]

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my brother is
walking down Jamieson holding
a piece of tinfoil
it is July
but he is wearing his blue and red bathrobe
cause the cold gray thing inside
makes his skin turn to paper
and the wrinkles in his face
cut deeper
this dying will be slow
this dying will take years
and he will
lose his eyes along the way
I know this ugly gray
thing
cause I […]

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