Positively Pressure

 
 

No more apologies:

I disappoint.

Not enough, not long, hard, gentle or 

joined in heart when I hold you,

I hear your silent reproaches.

A lip corner flick.

No sorries in my storage.

Unrepentant lashes, 

un-sick over baggage.

Time I give is all the buzz

I have, all my life,

before run before hide 

–before–

and composed thus

I always was.

Heaving breath,

the sigh of it all,

sense-fire hearth, 

shorting electric

with your, his, her, their

expiry utter other grunts, twists, glances or

dances belly deep,

and all I beg is a bite of sleep.

My gutters sag under the weight

of leaves and leavings and arrivals,

the spinning door rotates you for you

and him for her for him for them,

and back again, 

a reversion ahead of me, the fool

to believe in words

deployed poison control tools–

bright, early, sunny-gregarious 

gets the worm–

the norm of help-me-happy right

keeping the dark ones light.

The House of Mirrors

image

 

credit: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/06/25/t-magazine/25leandro-redstone/25leandro-redstone-tmagArticle.jpg

 

Windows open the flies get in and buzz around occupant ears
and the neighbors see if anyone’s home to borrow a few eggs.
Prying eyes into unshuttered houses make movement cribbed
self-consciously checking on words, their tone and expression
so no one calls the cops when the screaming sounds so loud
that anxious stares cannot bear the cruel curiosity any longer.

Unlocked doors welcome strangers in along with friendly foes
to sit in the kitchen nook to wait for cold beer and sandwiches,
served in feigned welcome smiles wary of wrong impressions.
When doors swing wide the wind bellows loudly, wild howling
that outsiders mistake for babies neglected and other abuses
a lure for authorities of watchful interrogations lying in waiting.

An open house with glass walls like an atrium of family fronds
is a sociological study of disordered habits of broken subjects
where gourds are lasered open with surgical knives illumined
reflecting wide-eyed grimaced faces of fun house mirror halls
that release shrieks of wailing laughter hysterically unleashed
while witnesses nod in knowing affirmation of suspicious spin.

Confessional containers confine the inhabitants in cool cages
bars silvan with tales and typecasts for the people’s comfort,
the rack to rest their hats on in assurances wide in ever after.
“We always knew she was untrustworthy, her nose in the air,
and look at her children’s friends with the pierced nose rings.”
To lay bare what can be seen is like carelessly losing a home.