Two Poems
the heart is delirious above all things
vanity table as my witness the romance of a woman and her instruments
linger on a future reflected in someone else’s past
admiring in glass, the porcelain pill dust, a powder puff, on the precipice
of a great reveal:
the fruitlessness of all human endeavor
a golden comb and mirror
shifts the song into place what’s so woman about that
the mirror reflects only the present
before it slips away
continuously
a sense of self is deceitful above all things
reclined nude
trying for further emotion
as if what I see doesn’t see me
a linear interiority is only a hoax
and a hoax is just a joke
I am the present’s babygirl
I belong to the present and the present alone, alone for an instant before slipping again
to become property of the past
made to sit for a self portrait of us how would I pose
dripping with faux excess, staged motherhood, nestled with jewels, the figure of certain death
I angle and still my body
in unrest call up my earliest past
each instant a continual striving
in the moment then in its memory an entire existence defined accidentally
triggered by perfume
as a child my internal monologue came in the voice of an adult male
I grew up very much alone and afraid of anything sexual
The Adult Male Voice taught me how to read in a truckstop bathroom on a machine promising Her Pleasure, Tickler, Tingler, Tease her, Pleaser, Glow in the Dark next to the image
of a female nude the voice like a past life slipping away
I knew to be afraid
not of the nude but of never being alone
not even in my mind
It’s too bad I mean
how just as your voice gets warmed up
they don’t want it anymore
how were we supposed to know
middle age was meant to be a luxury
lingering on the mirror its reflection a continual becoming
short of being
the infinity of time and space contrasted with a body finite and
“female” posed at the dressing table take the selfie and
add it to the void
I dream again of houses
my subconscious knows interiors
so secluded as to evoke
meadows unending
sectional overspilling
it’s calling,
who me?
A response comes easily,
perhaps by weather
by light and mist
The house says
“Yes”
The house says
“of course”
Awake in piles of receipts, laundry, vitamin jewels,
more difficult to hold onto
than one’s own life
Truly,
I am good at shopping
someone who all his life
was never considered
one of the boys
When approached I pretend
to not know my bag is open,
but my bag is open,
I know it’s bad luck
to leave a purse on the floor
It’s just rude
browsing without want
in likeness unmade or made
a house is ever
an angle of excess or need
diffuse light
patterned tree
What sort of a house likes to be looked into?
I don’t agree with my excess
I don’t agree with my need
night blooming with the sound of it
perhaps one day life’s maintenance will come easily
I know the four legs of a dining table
I know of expectations absorbed maternally
I know comfort shouldn’t determine one’s actions
that you can have love or money
but not both
yet,
now I’m told I should’ve saved
and not enjoyed it
I long to refuse
I long to say, say
no thank you
I know
it’s easy
to lose writing
when it can’t house you
how many nights the moon has spent
people lose it everyday
I know myself completely
moon bathed in bed
the sun spilling
over spacious layouts
for permanent living
mid-sky no part left out
but who can make
this forever