Category: FB legacy

make room! make room!

I’m so high on love
right now. I know
it’s just chemicals, my brain
releasing oxytocin in response
to a possible opportunity
for pair bonding, it’s really just
nature trying to trick me
into reproducing,
but it feels like heaven.
it feels like sheer bliss,
like I need to merge
my heart and soul and mind and body with another.

but I remember
the other times I felt this way.
I remember how I couldn’t stand
to be apart for a second, how quickly
they moved in and how that was the
beginning of the slow death
we both dreaded until the moment
it ended.

I have my life
and I would be so happy
to share it with you
but
there’s no room.

my heart is spacious enough.
my heart is an abandoned warehouse
populated by angry ghosts,
who I’d really like
to put to rest. it’s my apartment
that won’t house
another person.

fuck. I really love
this apartment. perhaps
some form of time sharing
might be possible.
I’ll just scoop myself
up off the floor and pour
my jellied heart
back into its steel-sided mold,
and try again to get close
without losing my identity.

personal.space

I need to be alone
but not quite so lone as to be
lonely. my personal
version of space is at once
as vast as the cosmos and as cold,
and as short, warm, sparking, and electro-conductive
as the distance between the atoms
of our skin, even when
separated by two layers of cloth,
or one when I take off
my hoodie.

I want you around
all the time; I talk to you
in my head constantly while
we’re apart – and do you do
the same? do you think of things
to say to me, save them up like flowers pressed inside a book, to fall out years later, forgotten? – and yet
sometimes it seems
I can’t bear to be in your presence
for the ocean of longing that rushes
through my veins, the blood-warm sea
magnetically drawn to its icy moon,
for the welling words that lap
behind my eyes but cannot be said
out loud for fear they’ll be denied,
canceled out,
stamped illegitimate.

as if you can cancel chemistry,
rule out relativity, pass
on physics, legislate electricity,
nullify neutrons, negate magnetism,
deny the very dinosaurs
and stamp out science altogether
because you say it ain’t so.
go ahead and rewrite all the textbooks
if it makes you feel better. I know
my feelings and the physics involved here
like I know my own bones, my own skin.
I have all the faith in the world
in science.

I’ll make space for you in this station
and bring my lonely rocket in
if you can open your own airlock
and let me breathe your rarefied
atmosphere. a little mingling now
and then could refresh us both.
I’ve been sending out the signals,
won’t you acknowledge and respond?

light (s)miles

I’m sorry,
but I can’t be sorry
about this:

every time I look at you
my entire body tries to smile
until the feeling bubbles right out
of my eyes and mouth uncontrollably
like I’m drowning in happiness
and I laugh for no reason
except that my veins are
too full of bees not to, my blood
has been replaced with champagne,
being around you in the flesh feels
like my finger in a light socket,
as if all my molecules are shivering
gladly, passionately shocked awake
by this lightning storm of pure raw energy.

please note: it’s not just you.
it’s also the way the light bends for you –
as if I can see all the tiny little atoms
and their electrons spinning around their neutrons,
and the force keeping them
in that constant whirling motion is love;
as if they are building a subatomic golden shield
of purest beneficence around you
that no negative ions can penetrate –
as if it loves you every little bit
(every jot and tittle, every microscopic cell
and quark and mysterious particle)
as much as I do.

canceled

I’m so sorry to inform you
that love did not get renewed
for a second season.
my heart has been canceled.
it wasn’t testing well
with audiences,
especially the one person
to whom it was floated.
Mr. Neilsen said no; it was a hard pass
by the head of the network.

so.
it remains to be seen
whether there is a market
for my nonsense.
perhaps a reboot
ten years from now
would perform better
in the target demographic
of crazy cat ladies
and the men that love them.

I know this might not be kosher, but
I’d still love to see
the show come back to life.
if you happen to know anyone
who might be interested
in a romantic comedy that’s
heavy on the comedy,
light on the romance,
maybe you could
give him my number.
if you don’t want it, there must be
someone out there who does.

the call

it was an accident, I’m so sure.
how many times
have my friends accidentally
voice/video called me
from messenger in the middle
of chatting? happens
all the time. I’ve done it myself;
that call button is so very
easy to hit.

but usually I hang up
before the other person even
has a chance to answer.
and if someone I’m chatting with
calls me, I don’t pick up. people agree
in text first before they
talk on the phone
these days,
let alone video chat. so, knowing
it’s most likely a mistake, I’ll
normally hit decline
automatically
and resume my
text-based conversation.

but.
not this time.
I answered. we were both shocked
that it even connected.

our video chat lasted
less than a minute
(54 seconds, to be exact – but
who’s counting)
but it was so nice to hear
your voice and
see your face,
even if I was forced to
alternate between them
because my phone and video chat
don’t seem simpatico,
at least doing it via messenger –
someone screwed up somewhere,
I think. or I need to read
the help.

but anyway. it means
nothing.
a random accident,
a finger slip.
but. for what
it’s worth, I’m glad
you rang, and gladder still
I answered.

categorized

at the end of the day,
what difference does it make
if I have attention deficit disorder
oppositional defiant disorder
non-24-hour circadian rhythm disorder
and/or
bipolar disorder?
I’m still
fucking crazy.

what difference does it make
if you refuse me because
you’re afraid, and can’t admit
you have feelings
or because you think
I’m so ugly
that you wouldn’t fuck me
if I was the last
woman on earth, or with
your worst enemy’s dick?
I’m still
going home alone.

what difference does it make
if the surging waves of
contradictory emotions
that sweep over me
like a flash flood,
making me want to
scream out loud
cry
throw my phone out the window
tear my own skin off, or
move across country
are caused by tiredness
a long day of travel
with its attendant frustrations
the fact that I can’t control
my environment
a lack of serotonin
the weed wearing off
my new tattoos itching
the fact that I’m almost home
but not quite, agonizingly close
or some other bullshit I have yet
to figure out?
there’s still
nothing I can do about it.

it must just
be endured. I write
my impotent poems
squeeze my eyelids tight shut
against the next wave of tears threatening, grit
my teeth, and
somehow summon patience.
this, too, shall pass.
by the time I get home
I’ll be okay.

I tell myself this
because even though
the category doesn’t matter,
though my mothlike feelings flutter by
far too fast to be
pinned down by even the most
pointed of words,
and trying to put my wild
heart in a cage only makes it wilier,
sometimes I have no choice,
sometimes I need something
sometimes I’ll settle for whatever
can get me through
the next five minutes.

dinner of a lifetime

sometimes when I’m overdue
to feed the cats, they look at me
and I can practically see
the thought go through
their furry little skulls: “Is today the day
we get to eat your face, mommy?”

and when Diablo runs between my legs
as I’m running up or down
the (narrow, steep, dangerous) stairs
I tell him, “you know, you only get
to dine on my face once.
then you’ll be hungry
until someone else comes
and takes you away. not trying
to tell you what to do, but
you might want to
keep that in mind
when engaging in activities
that seem likely to precipitate
my premature death.”

he draws my hand towards him
with his paws
and gently bites my fingers.
he insists on cuddling and then
nibbles my face. it seems
like a love bite but I know
he’s taste-testing me,
checking for doneness.
Kitty is more discreet;
she just licks my hand from
time to time almost
like a dog.

I hope
when the time comes
for me to die alone
in my apartment
that the cats find the act of
dining on my face
as exciting as all of us anticipate
the happy event to be.

the maze

I understand how and why
you have this labyrinth of thorns
around your heart. it’s to keep
you safe, innocent
while savagery is inflicted upon your suitors
as they hack and slash
at the cruel, cutting brambles,
dodge and duck the sharp-toothed
greenery, hunt and search through these dead ends
in the ramble surrounding your true
feelings. it’s to make sure
that only the most worthy
and determined would-be lover
gets through to your hidden and
vulnerable, secret soul. Sleeping Beauty
would be jealous of this spread.

I get it; we all have our own defenses –
sometimes the way looks clear,
even inviting
right until the moment one falls into
a moat full of angry crocodiles –
that we use to see how badly
someone really wants us.

I think part of you is hoping
I’ll give up if the going gets tough
enough, because
this will prove you right
in rejecting my advances. if I
was not worthy
to begin with, then your own courage
forever remains
untested.

what you don’t understand is
how my own armored knight of a heart
dearly loves a challenge,
how having to fight for something
only makes me want it
that much more,
how the single best way
to get me to try harder
is to say unequivocally
that it can’t be done.

so if
you really want
to discourage me
all you have to do, dear,
is invite me in.

beaten to the punch

our words were flying
back and forth
over the ether
like butterfly fists
whizzing like bullets
our metaphors
exchanging blows
like prizefighters.

I thought
I was keeping up
my end pretty well,
since in some circles
I am known
for being quick
on the draw,
possessing a hair trigger,
having the fastest words
in the West, and beating people
to the punch.

Imagine my surprise
when you bested me.
I’ll hand over
that belt now – careful
with my six-guns, they’re loaded! –
and send you the crown
tomorrow.
well played, sir.

mea culpa 2.0

you asked for one thing.
I had a distinct sinking
feeling that I couldn’t
give it to you,
not because
I didn’t want to
but because I
didn’t know how.

I tried so hard; I drove
myself half crazy
trying and trying
to deliver on your request
but in the end sadly
it turned out
that I was right. I knew
what I didn’t know.
but now I think I
may have taught myself
a thing or two
about that thing you wanted me
to do for you.

please accept
my heartfelt apologies,
my most abject
prostration, and
this rain check,
and do let me know
if you’d like to schedule
an appointment for me
to assist your hara-kiri
at your earliest convenience.