Doll

June 5

DOLL

“Why is your face all red?” asked my sponsor.

“I didn’t get my way,” I responded.

“And this crimson appearance is the result?”

“You see that it is.  I was very careful about what I wanted and worked hard to be reasonable.”

“And Baby, you were.  You did nothing wrong.  Your ego was in check and you kept your expectations in proportion.” said my sponsor.

“Then why didn’t it work out my way?”

“I only have a sad and simple answer for you.  The result had nothing to do with you, your wants, expectations or desires.  The whole experience boils down to only one thing: It was not that type of party, Doll.”

“Oh.”

Promise yourself tears like rain and smiles like sunshine.

*

Discussions with my Disease

“You’re not the girl I used to know.”

“Not the girl you used to love is what you mean?”

“You’re different is all I mean to say.”

“The rest you leave there to rot, unsaid?”

“Something has happened to you.”

“Is it something that you do not like?”

“I don’t know who you are anymore.”

“Or is it that you never knew?”

“One false move could break us up.”

“All your moves are false

why will one more cause such change?”

Frequently

June 4

FREQUENTLY

When my daydream gets so threadbare I no longer use it, I must turn to other sources.  When I cannot conjure on my own and elucidation makes me cross eyed, I must turn to HP.  I have puttered and prolonged the way to naming this legendary and fabulous enigma.  I drew out even longer any desire for close association with the same.  I have milled with the millstone and surfed in the whirlpool, dragged my feet and thrown a fit, but this only stalled the inevitable result.  Naming and interaction is the need and now is the time.  I have a Higher Power and I choose to call it Frequently.

Dreams grow wings if you let them.

*

Eggshells and Bethlehem

A stable is a place to keep a horse

and in fairytales a place to birth a baby,

but stable is the story I told myself about you.

Solid, a model of strength

and here you are a tripod,

upright only if the pressure is evenly applied.

I blame myself for lopsided need

and try to find a way to keep this coupling standing.

Stripped down to minor contact

I wonder if you actually remember me

and then I wonder if I remember myself.

This is what is at stake, this is the trophy I lose

when I fall for you and you fall down.

Where is the girl I worked so hard to create?

Broken eggshells litter the nest

and I look for the chick I used to be.

I fear losing you,

I cry at the thought of losing us,

I die at the loss of me.

No Gold Stars

June 3

NO GOLD STARS

I look at my chart, then my chest; there are no gold stars.  I long for the affirmation of my great and seemingly endless struggle.  I watch the movements of those with shiny shoes and hope to be awarded with the gummed insignia.  When I hang by a thread, I desire the corroboration of foil cutouts to assure me I have done the right; I have stayed alive.  Punishment I fear less than lack of consolation.  But, no one truly knows my bravery and if I want these paper emblems, I can just go and buy my own.

Count unhatched chickens but don’t place them on the menu.

*

The Hope Diamond

My guess is

the same god that wants me stupid

also wants me to suffer.

I ask myself what could be all powerful about that?

I wonder is God like a friend or a lover?

I carefully chose my friends

whereas my lover found me

against my greatest plans and well thought rules.

And if this is to be like marriage,

may I file for divorce if things go astray?

Or am I stuck with this match,

like I am stuck with my deformed ear

there underneath hat or fringe of hair?

I never thought of my relationship with God

like a necklace I could take on and off at will,

though the more I study it seems this beautiful thing

enhances my beauty if all is right

and will strangle me if it gets hung up.

Mythic Adult

June 2

MYTHIC ADULT

My mythic adult is seen by the crowds around me; never is the charade exposed.  Close inspection has been suspended so we can keep each other’s secrets.  Circulating through the crowd, these children are impoverished from carrying this load of pretense.  Dropping this burden is a risk far too great.  Exposure invites attack.  Stand tall; act brave.  Unreasonable expectations are the water that moves the wheel, the power that generates this ongoing play.  Hamlet is dead, yet I reprise the part daily.  Daily I watch my fellows do the same.  I mimic a ghost I never knew in life.  Did it ever live?  Or is it only a mythic adult?

Plant some things for their flower and others for their fruit.

*

Head Wringing

I have my say, though my fear is

that I constantly repeat myself;

very much the way a crow calls the same thing endlessly,

but it all has different meanings to the crow.

I would offer code keys to my readers

if I could lay my hands on one.

My mind whispers that the soothing

people get from my work is like the calm

induced by chanting monks.

Possibly it is more the actor’s trick of reading repetitive lines

each time putting the emphasis on a different word;

a way of squeezing all the juice from nonsense.

I jot ideas swearing these lines are to be found somewhere

in my previous work, perhaps whole pages are redundant.

Finally I stop this fight reminding myself I have but one voice

and what I accuse myself of as similarity might merely be my style.

Seasonal Expectations

June 1

SEASONAL EXPECTATIONS

If I am out of sync with the way the world turns, I can be nothing but disappointed.  I arrive with ice skates on the hottest summer day and grieve the loss of spring.  I shiver in my sandals and ponder the need for a windshield scraper, the autumn leaves so long past.  I must orchestrate my moods and movements with the evolution and revolution about me.  I will learn to sing with the doves in the morning and the coyotes, come the moon.  I can spin with the stars.  I can grow with the grass.  I don’t need to counter- balance life.  If I learn to bend with the tides, it all comes around again.

If moles can make hills you can move mountains

*

Soul Chiggers

If you can seed apprehension deeply in a generation,

you can reap disillusionment for a hundred years.

Bent foresight twists hindsight.

Admiring ignorance, signs death’s warrant.

Evil splintered to a thousand slivers

burrows  under the skin without killing their host.

Death delayed spreads destruction along with melancholy;

a septic contagion if ever there was one.

How do we fight this systemic blight?

It is embedded in the water,

the air, the mind, and try what I might;

I can’t seem to live without any of these.

Chiggers of the soul feed and breed

no matter how I scratch and chew.

I am raw, but still infested.

How do I kill what is in me

without killing the me?

Space

May 31

SPACE

I stand behind the podium and talk about the event horizon, which brought me into these rooms.  My audience: other unwitting astronauts whose lives, like mine, were deconstructed by the Black Hole of addiction.  Though the time and place may be different, the physics of compulsion and allergy are precise and repetitive.  Nodding heads affirm my calculations to be accurate with the vectors and trajectories of their own experience.  I conclude, with the gratitude of a reassembled life, and pray, with gravity, for my feet to stay on the ground.

Toast your bread with satisfaction.

*

The Attention Tax

Paying attention is the price exacted for living in this society.

A taxation which is like a leach;

it takes the life force, diverts my brain waves,

claims the water rights to my river of thought.

What is left I use to wash off what I can,

never quite managing to feel clean or clear.

I sit in the mud puddle

still unsure if I understand what just happened;

harboring a dark fear of the wave to come.

Frozen Strawberries

May 30

FROZEN STRAWBERRIES

“I have them in the freezer,” I tell my sponsor.

“I’m sure you do.  When are you going to take them out and reenact spring?” her retort.

“I don’t want to take them out before I’m ready.  I don’t want them to go to waste.”

“Oh, the Excuse Maker, the Staller.  Are you going to drag all the old chestnuts out of the closet?  I thought you were going to defrost strawberries.”

“Fear, you’re saying fear of strawberries is not a sign of stability?"  I ask her.

“Eat the strawberries or not, but it seems to me you didn’t get sober to avoid the sweeter things in life, keeping all your goodness locked up in the deep freeze destined for frost bite.”

Let sunshine climb in your eyes and fall upon your heart.

*

I’m not Brian

I thought life was based on a system of

‘I will suffer and that will exempt you’.

Then I would be horrified when you suffered,

after I had already done so ahead of you.

In an attempt to ease my dismay I would look to see

who had broken the pact, you or me.

Had I not endured sufficiently to protect you?

Had you left the safety of the umbrella of sanctuary?

Panic gives birth to blame

and blame of course births nasty biting things

that run loose and bury in all the tender spots.

Now the goals I tend are to end the breeding

of those sharp and painful beasties,

stop laying my neck upon the alter

and start telling better jokes.