Image credit – needpix.com

LIVING ALONE
 

At first you were thrilled.
You never needed people,
as far as you could remember.
It was your dead mother
who relied on crowds
And secretly you pitied her.

She needed you to
fill up her void, be her
Hero her rescuer
You crashed, broke, hurtled
under the immense cruelty of her love
and then you lashed out at, blamed, berated her.

Oh you would never
be the stereotypical needy single mother
(Although you defended her from people)
You would be your own self-contained,
self-reliant Home, and the world (or a Man)
would never be your homewrecker.
 

But now your home has begun to
speak of its own accord
And you have started to observe your
own descent into chaos
You can clearly see
(especially when you stare at the ceiling)
how often her past ate at her.
 

You have begun to meet God
outside temple bells and sermons
On indifferent subways and
the back of a friend’s friend’s car.
There, someone you don’t know begins to roll an exceptionally
Long joint, the sunlight falls on your face as you
grip a cigarette holder.
 

You had promised Her
days before she went limp in
your arms
(Before a part of you broke and you
screwed it back on for show at Her
funeral)
That you would never
seek Home in the arms of strangers.
 

You told her you would stretch
down your roots, be your own
Hero but now
that’s exactly what you do—
Seek bliss and snippets of God
in the filth of outlanders.
 

HEAVY
 

Every morning I encounter
the sky in my bed:
open and hard and crusted like a wound
I am afraid to open.
I make my way around it before it
enlarges like a head.
A
 

caged afternoon shrieks behind
with adorning cafeteria smiles
while I tear off desperate limping
batches of “Fine”
I offer it to my colleagues for lunch and
throw away the salad filled
with drooping bits of bloodied insides
my
 

evenings roar
with the slow melodies of tracks
leading Home
A sitting down and a hugging of
grand human domes
I hurry before pairs of eyes look
down to meet my punctured holes
they
 

glare at the purple skies behind
the latticed windows
I use a scorching cigar like a
knife to dig out the blows
I
 

stumble, writhe, coil myself
in the dark and release the
steaming flushed internal
bile
I watch the world through
wet fingers and
dread the closing of my cage
when the sun will rise.
 

HEART
 

The heart is a wiry athlete,
a bubbling broth.
A pebble in a pipe,
an unwashable, creasing cloth
 

Stuck, stuck
like pieces of metal in a sock.
Feet puke rust
inside glistening shoe blocks.
 

My heart, my heart
tearing through
My body: tender like sock.