Medea

Last night I dreamed of you mother
There under the trees, loving another.
You couldn’t see me, but I saw

I woke and see you above me
I asked if you still loved me; but
You were as silent as moonlight

Will you still sing me songs of delight,
If I awaken from sleep sad and alone?
And make the light shine into my bed?

My father? Ah he’s your concern, not mine
He is like the sound of the weather
This is my time to be loved and misled

I forget the sorrow that rises from
The silence of stinging regret
And the deceptions of love unrequited.
Or unfulfilled.

Maman's Kiss

We take the shorter way
And see a scudding row
Of low, far off trees
Tonight dinner will be on time

We may take the royal way
More beautiful than light
But more dear, for
That night dinner will be late

The cost? A kiss, not much
But refused, as I gaze out
The azure aurora
Touches the fecund fields

The memory of your kiss
Calls across the lost years
I remember as
My childhood falls away

Princesses and barons lay ahead
I’ll know their nights
Oh – too well
Still, it’s your kiss I’ll recall.

Aphrodite abandons Antony

Last night, at midnight
You left me
I heard the low sound
Of your voice
As you went

I opened the window
To call you back
I heard laughter
But saw no one
Only the night

Invisible magic, exquisite
Carnal and sweet
Departing at midnight
My life’s music
You dance away

A prayer for a death

I pray you stay away
Don’t come to ruin
What I have, what we have built
Tear it down brick by goddamned
You’ll never know the damage

He will follow you, panting
Like a dog on a leash
Leaving behind all that he has
He’s blind, forgetful
A slave to his dreams and his lust

I pray that there will be an accident
Coming for a “visit,” you say
To him you are everything, I am nothing
He’s just blind and dumb enough
Not to see it the way I do.

A squeal of tires
The BANG of the impact
I was in an accident once
Thank God I wasn’t hurt, but
But the sound…how loud it was

There will be carnage
Innocents hurt or maimed
I should be ashamed
But I pray for that accident
I’m sorry for the others, but not for you

He will forsake me for you
The promises he made
And I have taught him
About love and trust and need
He always forgets important things

With me he is reliable
With you he’ll be set free
With me he is dependable
With you he will soar – too close to the sun
Without me he is nothing

I hope you never come here
To ruin all my dreams
And take this good man from me
Who was a diamond in the rough?
He was yours, but now he’s mine

31 Hickory Street

The street I lived on
Was broad and crowned.
But tree-lined, like an allee;
Frozen, unremembered
At the wanton end
Of a town called America.

Broad, maybe even grand
But truncated, almost stubby
Ragged at the blind end
Like a sentence cut short;
Or an arm partly lost
To a moment of carelessness.

With the shirt sleeve folded
Over the elbow and pinned,
There’s a story in that fold
To be sure; but who can tell
Who still knows it?
Who knows these things?

Deleted iPod Playlists Named for Mary

I just deleted two iPod playlists that I'd named for her - more two years after the last time we talked - and I had an actual, full-blown anxiety attack after doing it.

New Years Hope

What I hope for in the coming year couldn't possibly be reduced to a few sharp words or a couple of cogent proposals. What I hope for is unimaginably unlikely, so wondrous and joyous, so carnal and all-encompassing as to be beyond words. Here's to the unhoped for - here's to the unexpected person who will truly belie...ve - who will honestly agree with me - that I am worthwhile.

When you told me . . . those little white lies

Soon after we moved in together she was showing me how to use the clothes dryer (it had been hers). I did know pretty well how to use a dryer, so I took the lint screen out and found it completely packed with lint. I asked - sort of without thinking, "Don't you clean the lint screen regularly?" She said "Oh, yes, of course I do!"

It was such a silly little thing, but a darkness touched my heart because I knew in that moment what she'd just said was a purposeful lie; in fact it was the first lie she had ever told me. It wouldn't be the last.

"But all of that is in the past," you might accurately say. True. But every time I do laundry, and slide out the lint screen, I am reminded of that tiny lie, four years ago, and then my skin heats up and my breath catches, because I know I will - without fail - remember all the gigantic things that have gone wrong since then.

Can the breakup of a relationship cause PTSD? Can a lint screen be a PTSD trigger?