I’m rummaging
through my brain, turning
out my mental pockets,
hoping to find the words
for one more poem. yesterday
I spent all my coins, cranked
out so many poems that I truly fear
I have nothing left. why didn’t I save
one or two for a rainy day
like today, when I’m hungover
and have no inspiration
and nothing seems worthy
to write about? silly me.
maybe if I look a little harder
I can wring some more wine
out of this dirty rag
I call my brain, and cudgel one more
collection of words on the page
into something resembling
a poem.
Tag: the struggle
crumbs.
all those crackers you and I put out
for the birds
got wet
and ruined by rain
before anybird had a chance
to eat them. then,
not too long after
I finally cleaned them up,
I saw a single, lone bird –
a glossy black slightly iridescent-feathered guy
with a brassy, sassy chirp and
a bold yellow beak and legs,
cute as the day is long
and twice as brave
in the face of my extremely
interested cats –
come by and land right on the
deck, to pick and peck
at the crumbs.
the moral of this story?
turns out it is possible
to have too much
of a good thing.
save your spread
for the ones who will
appreciate it
rather than pouring out
your whole heart at once –
spending your love like something
you’re trying to get rid of –
in the hopes that someone
will happen by
to eat it all up.
to my most unhelpful subconscious
Look. I did not need
that dream. haven’t we decided that
nothing good
can come of this obsession? did you
think it was cute, to make me dream that he
got all up in my face and
my eyes got so huge and
I didn’t know if it was from fear
or from desire and
maybe it was both and then
you had the nerve to make him
kiss me. even in
my own damn dream, he seemed
sort of angry about it.
point taken, subconscious,
you dick. there’s nowhere I can go
to escape this awful knowledge
that it’s never going to happen
and I should just
get over it. thanks a fucking
lot.
the thinner line
I was leaving. I was doing it but
I had to stop and say
“are you mad? don’t be mad”
and you said no, there was just
a long line to get into the bank
this morning, and now it was after
2am.
“okay.” I said flatly. “just checking.”
and I slammed the door
with a little more force
than perhaps was strictly
necessary. later I wondered
at the bitter tone of my own
voice, and the unexpected strength
of my own, door-slamming
arm.
was I mad
that you claimed you
weren’t mad? why
would I want you to be mad
at me? or perhaps I myself was mad
about the petty fights
you seemed to keep picking
that night, at least
with me.
if you are mad, why
can’t you just say so? I refuse
to beg for the answer
to a question I’m not even allowed
to ask. but then I could say
the same of myself
about being up front
with my negative emotions.
the answer – at least in this case,
and at least for me –
seems to be
that I don’t know it, I can’t
allow myself to be conscious of it
at the time. there’s a line, thin as a hair,
between anger
and fear. standing up
for yourself when
you are long used to being
bullied into compliance
feels like walking a tightrope
above a lion’s den. when
you’re on that sky-high razor’s
edge, you can’t afford
to look down. it could kill you
to be truly aware
of how you’re feeling
in that moment. so you bury it
deep and don’t let it out
until you’re away from the person
at whom you are in fact
justifiably angry.
so I guess what I really meant
by “just checking.” was
“Well, then
you can go to hell!
I’m mad.”
KMN
nearly every day
I ask you anew
to kill me now, and you say
no. I ask you
what I would never ask him
in a million years
because I am pretty sure
he’s a sociopath
and he just might
actually do it.
please don’t kill me now
no matter how much I may beg,
though you may regret
not killing me
if I do this thing that I must do
though I dread it greatly. we’ll
see.
be flattered, though,
that I can trust you
not to kill me now
no matter how much
I may deserve it.
empty nest
years ago I saw
this tiny birdhouse and bought
it, thinking I could get a bird
to come live there
and entertain
my cats.
by the time
I got around to putting
it up, I was told
it was for wrens, which
are very small indeed
and live in the low trees.
no wrens will come
to my high aerie
no matter how hard I try.
it’s not right for their
environment.
I put it up
anyway, a constant reminder
that you can have the nicest
home in the world, the most
lovingly constructed heart,
but you can’t
make the right one
move in.
Zelda 2.0
I’m out of poetry.
I’ve run dry. what’s the use?
poems are just lies
papering over the holes
in my bones where
sadness lives.
I’ve run out of ways
to make this slow death
sound pretty. when
my mind collapses
in on itself like a dying
star, all that’s left is cold,
hard science. there’s no
dress glittery enough
to hide my hideous heart, no
drink strong enough
to make me forget
to hate myself, no
fairy tale magical enough
to let me come out
a decent human being,
so why pretend?
Zelda (and eight other women
who are not remembered
at all) died
in a fire at the sanitarium
aka asylum aka loony bin
because she had been locked
in a room
waiting to get ECT
after Scott took everything
she had, her very words
published under his name,
her own novel trash-talked
to death.
I’m a new Jazz Age
glamour doll. where’s my Scott?
come plagiarize my diary,
savage my self-esteem and then
abandon me. I’ll do it all
again, if you’ll only
pretend to love me
long enough
for me to get some art
out of my veins and onto
the page.
my grocery lists
how many trees
have died for my
grocery lists?
thrown in the trash
with most of the page
left blank. well, rip me up
and put me in there too
because I’ve died for you
a hundred times and it’s all
meaningless, in a hundred years
no one will care, my using dead
tree bodies to write my ephemera
is just one of the eight million
reasons I’m going to hell, and when
I get there I’ll be confronted by the
sad-eyed garbage men
who will wordlessly show me
the cuts on their hands
from my orphaned and deadly
cat food can lids, and all the little
children in Africa who died
as a direct result of my wasting
water by running it in the bathroom
to give me privacy or sometimes
if I can’t pee right away, anyway
the point is none of them will
actually be in hell because they
are innocent and I’m just
the absolute worst – and even
saying that is narcissistic and
pathetic, a self-pitying
worthless loser trying to
draw attention to herself talk
and you see now how
this goes, a perpetual
downward spiral
forever like Fibonacci or some shit
I probably saw on a FB meme
because I’m
dumb like that –
they will just visit me in hell
and give me accusing stares
that say I’m not mad, I’m just
disappointed and I’ll probably
learn even more ways
I’m fucking up right now
without even meaning to
or knowing it so
as much as I hate being alive
half the time for no good reason,
I don’t really look forward
to dying, either. so please
call off that mob hit I ordered
on myself, because
I’m going to have to do something
far worse than death.
I think I’m going to have
to live.
what it’s like
when you break a glass
and for months, years afterwards
you find those sharp-edged shards
in the most unexpected places?
it’s like that.
that bread you forgot about,
there’s only a hard crust left
and it looks so lonely that
you eat it anyway, and then
it cuts up your mouth?
like that.
that little table clock,
the one that sits high
up on the bookshelf,
the one that lies constantly,
the one that doesn’t want to
work any more, the one that’s given up
for want of a new battery?
the one that no one notices
in its beatless silent solitude
but you? the one that
if you did try to fix it,
would be sure to spitefully fall
right on your foot?
it’s like that.
but even that dead clock is right
twice a day. too bad I can’t
say the same for the thing
(a wounded, wounding, icy
shard that rankles;
a churlish, shriveled crust
that rots and plots revenge;
a wind-up toy that won’t perform
its only purpose)
inside my chest.
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.
R. Brookes McKenzie 