untitled 2.

I.
I hear my mother in the next room turn and sigh.
my father has the flu near the bathroom
and I have a secret stash on the third floor.

I hear him all night and it pains me to record this because
I just keep trying to maintain a muffle to the sounds of blowing and grunting and beer can cracking.

out the window the moon is just a cold bit of silver gristle low on fading banks of sky.

in the morning, I peel the stale cage of sheets off my legs
and I am free.

out on the day, the September light is clear as an alarm.
the sound of the dogs barking startles me –
(is it wrong to feel ashamed to have your dogs see you in a horrible hangover condition?)

and I go back into a dream I was having when I awoke,
one of those nightlong sweet dreams of
lying curled up in the arms of h.
like a needle in water – it is a strong physical effort
to pull myself out of his blue silk hands
as they slide down my dream hips.

but there is no longer goodness.
to see the love between h. and me
turn into two animals gnawing and craving
through one another
towards some other hunger was terrible.
perhaps this is what people mean by original sin, I thought.

it made me angry.
some regard anger as a kind of vocation for most women.
indeed, it is a chilly thought.
only the vocation of anger is not mine.
why construe silence anyway?

II.
the constant cold departure of h. from my nervous system
every time I drew a breath or moved through some tender touch be may or may not have given to me that last warm morning
was all something I thought myself too clever to get holed up in.
“You’re too smart for that” John said when I told him I was scared of what was going on
just before he left for Belgium.

I am not unfamiliar with this half-life of mine.
but there is more to it than that.
“of course there isn’t” Meredith would say.
"you really know how to hang puppies, dani" she's said.
just because he overheard your half-broken sentences he’d never bother to piece together – doesn’t mean you have to stick around to find out what happens next,
I would say to myself.
and by now, I’m back to listening to the kinks and cracking beers.

* * *

I wake too fast from a cellar of hanged puppies
with my eyes pouring into the dark.
fumbling

and slowly
consciousness replaces all the whiskey huts from previous hours
finally. dreamtails and angry liquids

swim back down to the middle of me
taken from that well-kept secret stash.
it is generally anger dreams that occupy my nights now.
this is not uncommon after loss of love

however, I must say that this is highly uncommon for me.
again, I am generally not an angry person.
yet, I am interested in anger.
I clamber through my days to find a source for all those who are, well, angry.
I come across only one.

III.
I was having a dream right before the last tremens.
the dream was of an old woman lying awake in bed.
she controls the house by a system of light bulbs strung above her on wires.
each wire has a little black switch.

one by one the switches refuse to turn the bulbs on.
she keeps switching and switching
in rising tides of red hot anger.

then she creeps out of bed to peer through the lattices
at the rooms of the rest of the house.
the rooms are silent and brilliantly lit

and full of huge furniture beneath which bury
small creatures – not quite cats not quite rats
licking their narrow pink jaws

under a load of time.

I want to be beautiful again, she whispers
but the great overlit rooms tick emptily

like a deserted oceanliner and now behind her in the dark
a rustling sound, comes –

my pajamas are soaked.

anger travels through me, pushes aside everything else in my heart,
pouring up the vents.
last night I woke to this same anger,

the soaked bed,
the hot pain box slamming me each way I move.

I want an explanation. slam.
I want justice. slam.
I want to curse the false friend who said I love you forever. slam.

I reach up and switch on the bedside lamp.

perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.

moonlight in the kitchen.

Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of my grandmother’s graceful demise.

The kind of sadness that a black suction pipe extracting you
from your own belly button
and which the Buddhists call
“no mindcover” is a sign of sexual despair.

The blind alleys that run alongside human conversation
like penny arcades situated in old run-down beach towns are signs that we might overcome.
My own calmness is a sign that I might never get well.

The surprisingly cold smell of potatoes or money.
Solid pieces of silence.

From these different signs you can see
how much work remains to do.

Put away your sadness, it is a mantle of work.

small, but muddled measures.

you have been most kind
in speaking slowly
and inviting me in for a few of beers
with a state of mind.

although tongue-tied myself, your talk, our conversation
this discussion that I keep having with myself
has led me to uncover
certain false answers
to life’s basic questions.

once or twice we spoke our hearts,
kissed in slow motion.

only now, we simply measure the distance from each other’s hands
that we could never really bring ourselves to touch.

but we fuck.

I’ll miss all that.

and here we are just people sitting across from one another in some bar
that is seemingly crowded when it is perfectly empty.

I’ll miss that too.

however, we seem to have a breakdown.
can I speak to the manager of this joint?
it isn't urgent and i'm not complaining.
nevertheless, I feel I should say something.
I lunge for words
as you knock them down
in accordance with your firm fluctuation between good man and bad man.
helpful phrases come to mind.
they may have even worked.

you see, I want to be a good woman.
and I can’t stand to see you be a bad man.
and this is why I am leaving.

and this is why
I am lying
when I say
I can’t see you anymore.