For a Woman Impossible to Love

I do nothing in halves.

When I love, I love with every sinew of my body. I consume like a fire; burn up the room, the house and the trees around it. Intensity settles in on me. I do not fear the all or nothing. I love like a storm. A disaster. I see everything in your eyes and feel every little twitch of emotion that fills your face.

I love like this because I have lacked love in my life. I have been tortured to the point of near death. Hated. Reviled. Feared. And I struck out. I built walls so high that no one could scale them. I grew the thorniest vines up the sides. I stretched out badlands all around. And I drew away. I protected myself. I still do.

I do not love easily. To let someone in the glass fortress that is my heart is the biggest risk. It could shatter with the slightest prick. I am scabrous on my exterior; thorny, sharp but delicate as fading rose petals on the inside. I feel too much and to be broken desends on me like torture. To be left at the roadside staring at those tail lights as they fade into the distance relives that torment; that abandonment that brought me here in the first place.

If I love you, it is with everything. Very few can live under the weight of it and none have succeeded so far. I am a woman impossible to love so I retreat further into my caves. Block the light out. Shut the world off. I crawl further away and wrap my heart in layers of spit and tinfoil. Hide it in the back of my ribs; bury it under rock hoping no one will ever find it again.

Because when the light of minor pinpoints starts to pry it open and pain ultimately consumes it in the end, I become the monster I always thought I was and set to devouring the world one little death at a time. 

Still Breathing

"Everybody hurts. Everybody yearns."

There are tears trembling at the edge of my eyes. They have drowned my cheeks, smudged my mascara, sent my green eyes glittering. I am lost under a wave of tears. I'm planning on living down here for awhile. I can't see where else to go. The way out has gotten blurry. Rippling under the water. I always found it easy to drown. Just breath in and let the water do the rest.

I didn't want this. I just wanted you. But the reality of me is heavy. Distant. Pregnant with need. Isolated. Violent. Difficult to understand. And even more difficult to live.

I will pray for you to come back. I started it and I ended it but I will never lose that love. It is a weight that lives with me forever. I never forget. I never have. Years later, I will take it out of the drawer I hid it in and look at it. Turn it over in my hand and miss it. Like I miss you already.

It is true. I am the monster. Ugly. Unlovable. Hated. Unwanted. Unneeded. Unmovable. Sickening.

I will never not be... wanting...
I am still breathing but sometimes I'd like to stop.

Suddenly Lyssa

I want to scream in your face but they taught me to be silent. Removed my tongue before I could even form the words. My love is so full of rage and hurt that I am consumed. Eaten away like the fire at the edge of the drapes. I have things I want to say to you but if I open my mouth only mud will fall out. I'm drowning in it. Gurgling and sputtering. Thrashing about like a black scaled fish on the shore.

Eat my flesh and know me. I am your green eyed whore. You'll thrust into me and then curse me as you trip out the door. I bend my will and have no idea why I grow submissive in your presence. I let you get away with that acrid taste. Stealing my candy. Ripping me up. Hanging me over the edge of some foreign mountain. I want to burn in your place. Drip blood down on your head. I want you to understand the effect you have on other people. I want you to understand your own malice.

Sometimes, I turn murderous. Quick. Hated. Angry. Alone. I stand here alone. On the edge of this fucking bleak world with nothing to hold me down. I rise up like a balloon full of hot air. I set my clothes on fire just to stay warm. I smolder. I sting. I cringe. I'm thinking of you and you barely notice. You are not to be trusted with such things as my fragile vessel. I am quick and I am dead. I feel  myself dieing ever second of every day. Slowly rotting from the inside out.

I am worth nothing and you should come here to end me.

Disposable

When he has no more use for us, he will get rid of us both.

This Failing Night

I want to feel nothing.

I want anything but this inertia. This statis. This hiding in plain sight. There's an eye I'm trying to catch. To pin under my gaze. I lit my hair on fire. Ripped the pages from my journal. Wrote a list outlining you less attractive traits. But still love worms into my already riddled heart. So full of holes. Like Swiss cheese. This love is all I have to give. I grew it myself. Planted the seeds in the mud and waited. Nothing took root but I tried. I'm just not very good at it.

I want to feel something.

I want your hand in mine. I want your lips on mine. I want your body against mine. I want your words tangled in my own. I want to feel you out there thinking of me. Why do I do this to myself? I hear you. I hear you. I hear you shrinking and thinking and darkening on the edge of a bright day. I can't even trust pain and violence. It gives me up to the authorities and rakes me back against sharp little blue pills. I can't trust my words. They keep failing me when I need them most.

The Destroyer

They should have aborted me when they had the chance. Now it's too late.

Cocaine Skyline

He hurls the motorbike into the sharp highway corner, skipping gears as he leans the bike to the side. His knee almost grazes the pavement. The speed whipping his long hair back behind his ears. The wind drying the tears from his eyes. He's not running from anything. He's not running.

He's not running from his pretty rich boyfriend on the other side of town. That perfectly angler face and full lips. The way that pretty boyfriend slips naked into bed and then into him. He's not running from that pile of cocaine sitting on a mirror on the coffee table or the insessant ringing of his cell phone. Rich junkies are just as shady as poor ones.

He's not running from that professor he's having an affair with when her husband is out of town. So much older than him, but beautiful in her experiences. She talks about philosphy and poetry over breakfast. He sits fascinated but soon enough is weaving through the heavy traffic back to that those moutians of cocaine and his soft lips.

He's not running from that innocent girl in his calculus class that keeps batting her eyelashes at him. He wants to taste that virginity dripping down on his tongue. Finds himself staring at her, imagining what she would look like with her knees in the air. That school girl look crumpling into sheer hunger. He shakes his head and is running agian.

He's not running from all that Catholic guilt his mother bestowed upon him. The guilt that eats at him like the cocaine eats at the membranes in his sinuses. The guilt for every moment of sexual bliss. Every moment of druggy release tearing through his veins. The guilt pushes the bike faster. The yellow lines become a blur as they rush by. Faces in passing cars become streaks of light and flashes of teeth. The skyline darkens; the night takes on a blue hue. The guilt takes flight as he goes faster still and all the weight lifts up to that dark heaven.

He's not running. He's just trying to find the fastest way to his own destruction.

The Holy Wasted

I would stand at the cabin door watching the sun rise over the valley mountians. The tall golden grass stretching up the feilds to the tree line. There was coffee on the stove. Crickets jumping in the creeping sun, singing their 'come fuck me' song. The drowzy bees tumbling into the morning glories shading the windows. A fawn dog at my feet listening for approaching footsteps or rumbling motors. The creek rushed by with a constant white noise; the new sun filtering through the overhanging canopy of leaves to dapple down to the smooth peebles and darting fish.

I'm not there anymore. I'm here in this city and you are out there somewhere doing your best to ignore me. I see the night now like ink instead of pierced with a million trillion stars. It has its own wildness here. Bums in the alley, wild cats under the deck, broken bottles sparkling in the street lights. I feel you out there. Just tell me what you are thinking. I can feel it anyways but I need to know what it is.

Sometimes all this humanity is a little too much for me. All those emotions and thoughts beating against my brain. Sometimes I feel like a beetle trapped under the glass. I just want to go back. Maybe I stay here for you. Maybe you could come with me. See the reality of those places. Understand what made me this way. If you would just ask. Ask me where I came from. Ask who shaped me. Ask what they did to me. How I got here all those years ago. I want you to know but I feel like I talk too much when I get around you and you wish I would just shut up for a second. I have all these stories and no one to tell them to.

Wasting

Everything decays, baby. We're just fucking our way to it for something to do in the meantime. 

Lumpish

I wish I was dead.

...
Wait...

I'm probably just being overly dramatic.

My muscles aren't fitting right. The government is taking all my money. My lover doesn't love me. I don't have no booze in the kitchen and I can't even get drunk. I smoked all my drugs up. These pills the doctor gave me to pull it off don't do nothing fun. The phone refuses to ring. My teeth are clenching and won't stop. There's a dead horse in the ditch outside. A hooker stole my shoes. The junky down the street keeps singing off key and I forgot the words to those hangman hymns. The dentist called me all angry that I hadn't paid my bills. I'll owe student loans still in my grave. They will be taxing my headstone. I've got my soul on the lay-away plan so I'm having trouble feeling anything clearly. That tree I planted last year in the yard sprouted up a thorny bush. The fucking condos are creeping up the street and blocking out the sun. My love letters get returned unopened and with postage due. I've been hanging out with the ghosts downstairs too much but they have better cookies than I do.  I have a gun but it only shoots water. I can't afford the bullets.

...
Wait...

Maybe I do wish I was dead.

The Fighter's Reach

A spider-like hop. A lunging forward with a speed and violence I know you store up in your muscles with each movement. Breath coming quick. Fist flying forward reaching for a target. I see each muscle slide on your torso, down your arms, flexing in your powerful legs. The tension coiled like a spring, flung forward at an invisible enemy. Snap! and you are back in a flash.

I let my breath out slowly. My cells grow flushed and swell.

You don't realize it but your muscles flex in the same way, with the same speed and violence, when you are above me. Sliding in and out at a rapid shuddering pace. I have to catch my breath then as well. Awed at the beauty of your hardness and my softness meeting in a sweaty dance on the sheets. I am not blind to the juxtaposition.

In that moment, sex and violence shimmer as one beautiful star burning in a dead universe. We are that center of everything and close our eyes against the dying of the light.

Seeking the Skin

It feels like my nerve endings are dancing on fire. It rages out of control around the edges of my skin. It tingles, it pricks, it seers. I convulse involuntary like a marionette with the strings cut.

These days drain me down. It's like someone plucked my batteries out and I'm slowly coming to a stop. Like molasses on a cold day. Underwater and trying to run. The inertia stealing the strength from my limbs until I collapse in a heap.

I reach out in need of you and find you at the door. Running your hands over my legs makes the nerves finally settle and sleep. They have been creating a storm for days. I haven't lived without pain for decades. Living is pain. But you hands moving ever so gently lull me back into my skin which I have been trying to escape from all week. Your fingers tracing the edges of my face give me what I need to make it through the night.

I would tell you that I love you, but I don't want you to leave. Your hand on my hip as you gently breathe beside me all night keeps me here for one more day. I might not be enough, and I might be damaged beyond repair, but tonight with your hand in mine I feel like I've finally come home.

Sugar

I want to be loved like a mouthful of candy.

Terminal and Main

Unrequited love is my favourite disease.

Kill Them

Tonight, someone dies.

Floating

The rain comes rushing down. I stand in the dark and let it wash over my face and naked body. I feel clean but useless. All used up and tossed aside. I feel like an empty plastic bag caught in a storm drain or an old newspaper full of outdated knowledge.

My skin is prickling and sore. My heart is getting cold. I can feel it shivering in my chest. I would light a little fire behind my eyes but I can't reach far enough inside. I can't get these matches to strike in the rain and the piles of wood are all wet. Nothing will catch. Sparks fizzle out and rivlets run down my side.

There is nothing to hold me tonight. Only the rain soaking my skin. The mist settles around my shoulders like a gossamer shawl. The pools rise up to meet my ankles. Raindrops kiss my cheeks. The wind strokes my hair. My secret name is out there somewhere but I'm trapped right here as the water rises to cover my lips.

I drown for fun and profit. I drown for myself. I drown in myself. I watch for waves to come up over the hills. I watch for the rivers to take the land away. For the ocean to break from its shores and come for me. I was looking for a fire but found the bottom of a lake instead. The water up over my head and my vision all blurry.

My mouth opens to reveal a forest of seaweed and little fish. I am the drowning part of love. The world when the icecaps melt. Pearls are my eyes. Silver scales are my skin. My heart has turned to coral. I am home to spit bugs and fat trout. I am running through forests and between continents. I am little ponds of marsh weeds and massive bodies stretching over rushing rock.

I am the drowning sort. I do not look for absolution but only the drip dropping pattern of splitter splatters against the window to let me know I am real and my voice has not silenced in the thunderstorms of your heart.

The Failure of Love

Let me stay the fantasy because the reality makes you sick.

To Be Unreal

No one will know what it's like to be out of phase with this plain of existence. To have stepped slightly to the left of reality and thus to feel unreal. It feels like an electrical cable driven into your guts constantly zapping you; rippling buzzy zip and zaps of nervous enegry through you. It's like having bees under your skin all the time. Like rivers of electrofied water in your veins. Nothing feels right. You're just not sure you are here. You feel like you might disappear any minute. Tune out like a fuzzy picture on an old TV.

I wake up like this.
I walk through life like this.
I pretend I'm fine.

But I'm just that little bit out of focus. Slipping between the slats in reality and something.... else.  Buzzing on the edge of electric waves trying to pull me to pieces. I feel unsteady. Unstable. Not quite here. Not sure I'm actually alive. Like I need an anchor. Like I need you to hold me down and tell me I'm really real. Make sure that I don't slip down those cracks to somewhere else. Make sure I don't just fade away.

Please hold me down before they pull me out of here.

Stupid

Sometimes you just need someone to acknowledge your existence and prove that you are actually rooted in this reality.  You need fingers running through your hair as you cry bitter useless tears for no good reason. You need calming breath in your ear and gentle words tickling your neck.

Sometimes I am such a stupid girl.

Ugly Girl

I was not born pretty but purple and choking. I've spent a life time trying to be beautiful and failing in your eyes. I have no soft personality nor a small waist. I ooze into the space around me. I fill it up. I am ugly. A wicked witch on the outside of the outsiders. I never really belong. Not in your bed. Not in your head. I am never enough.

I twist all ugly. My spine has bent. My insides have ruptured and turned on me. I have spread. My belly hangs limp and my breasts sway as I walk. I am heavy with unwanted thoughts and ugly love. My own mind revolted and held me down under water. I drown in a world that seeps beauty out your skin and the looks people give me when they see me kiss you.

Why can't I be beautiful?
Too difficult to love.
Too crooked to follow.
Too hard to understand.

Bury me in your smile and keep my bones in your throat. Tell them about the homely girl you used to fuck and how tiring she became. I'll be waiting twisted just under this purple ugly world.

Foolish

I try. I really do. But I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to these things.

Monster Tongue

Everyday I step up to the mirror and peer to the other side. That big monster is always waiting for me with a lulling grin, waving excitedly at me. It's long tongue slips out its mouth to moisten its lips revealing razor sharp teeth and red gums. It looks hungry. It looks right at me. Slowly flutters its long eyelashes. Blows kisses at me through the reflective glass. Teases and flirts all ravenous; its tummy grumbles expectantly.

I would hide, but I'm rather hungry myself.

Little Pill

My mind no longer feels like it has a weight pressing down on it. A slowness thickening it. A constant heaviness like being pulled under water. Caught in quick sand. Mired in the swamps of my own feeling. Slogging just to make it out of bed every day. Giving up after only making it a few feet. Inertia. Unmoving. Stopped.

I feel lighter in thought and spirit. I am not different but simply a slowly unfettering version of myself. I no longer feel like I am drowning in clear air. My lungs aren't filled with sand and my limbs actually move as through clouds instead of mud. I am not pulling heavy chains everywhere I go. I have movement and momentum once more. I go forward.

Things are not easy but they are better.
I think this is a good thing.

Unwanted Gifts

I thought I was giving you so many things. That I had so many things to offer you.

My body. My heart. My mind. My love. My poetry. My emotions. My gentle caresses. My adoration. My help. My kisses. My sex. My longing. My quickening heartbeat. My gentle murmurs. My long caresses. My goofy laugh. My silly smile. My dancing mania. My want. My stories. My gazing deep into your eyes. My senses all clouded with you. My heat. My magic. My softness. My emergency booze. My stacks of books. My missing you when you are not here.

I thought I had so much to give you but jewels turned paste and my eyes died as the sunlight slipped behind the mountains. I only have tears to give you now and deep wishes for everything to just be better. The waves crashed into me nearly knocking me down. I came here to drown in your sharp words and that salty cold ocean. I will never come up for air.

Queen of Wrong

I am wrong. I live upon a mountain of wrongness. Exist clinging to cliffs of wrongness. In a state of constant wrong. I am buried in wrong.

I was born wrong to the wrong sorts of people on the wrong side of the tracks. I talk wrong. I dress wrong. I walk wrong. I think wrong. I lust wrong and I hate wrong. I am wrong in the eyes of lovers and enemies. I taste all wrong. I do only wrong. I read the wrong books. I walk the wrong path. I worry wrong. I suffer wrongly. I come from the wrong town. I do the wrong things. I take the wrong corners and I cling to wrongness in your eyes. I am never right.

I am in a kingdom of wrongness. I am a Queen of wrong. I impale my self on my own spikes of wrongness on tall walls built of the wrong bricks. My eyes are wrong. My skin is wrong. I have the wrong bones in the wrong body. I am screaming wrong at the top of my lungs and slip from those wrong spires. I am wrong in the face of the wrong gods and I love only in wrongness.

And when its all over I will close my eyes the wrong way and cry the wrong tears.

An Incantation at Midnight

As below so above.

I want to love but only if that love is returned. My heart is made of red glass and shatters so very easy. I ask you to protect it. Let me move unfettered and with strength. I'm still that little girl. So sure that I am unlovable and thus unworthy of love. We're hiding under the blankets our grandmother made... waiting... just like we have through all time.

As above so below.

Blood of my blood. Let this be woven with this strand of hair. Yellow for attraction, beauty. Vanilla for peace. Amber for sex. Roses for love. This needle to pin it all in place. Come of your own free will but don't forget me. So mote it be.

You need a red candle. You burn too bright with erotic passions and darkness nestled below your eyes. Pink is too soft for you. You are hardness. Violence. Self-inflicted pain. The hands I reach for and the brow I smooth. Scathach, protect me.

Tonight I bleed; big thick garnet drops down my thigh. I bleed for you. I bleed for me. Dip the blade in whiskey. Whisper to the delicate moans. Tongue to tooth to lips. I drift back to the mainline of the universe. The blood cross over my heart. Make me your target. Let me take all from you and give all back. I spin. I feel. I am still here.  Blood in my eyes, all caught in my lashes. Drink me down. O, Apache drink me down.

Brigid, protect us, your humble lovers and poets. We ride wild horses for you and bless white bulls. We are in the trees. We are in the ocean. I am glass, I reflect only you. Goddess, I reflect you in heart and blood and flesh and rage and love and power and calm.

Come on home and find these arms open to you.
So mote it be.

The Witch You Could Not Burn

I am surrounded by hard men and soft women. And all of them beautiful.

I am talented with sex and excessive drinking.

I never give mercy, I touch softly, I feel everything in the face of mountain gods and wood nymphs.

Whirl to a beat. Sway to that thrum. Throw yourself about the floor to wild sounds pouring out of large speakers vibrating the room. The mass undulates, twists in sweat and flailing limbs. They take us down in that dark room. We hold each other close, drunk on whiskey and secret adventures. We are running through dark streets, violet light tinging the sky. So soft those delicious curves under my hands. So smooth this milky skin, delicate feet and small fingers lacing into the wrought headboard. Cry my name.

Darkly, your head in your hands. Anger and pain rippling down your muscles. So taunt. "I just want to be happy again." My heart breaks. I try to make it better but I push too hard. Try too forcefully to make it right and just frustrate you. Can I make it right? That part of me that wants to save the world tries. I just want to pull all the hurt from you into myself and carry it away. This is something like love, but it is one sided. I find your body and soul so very beautiful, drawing me in. Quick sense, quick movements, powerful, violent, a wounded sensibility. I smooth your hair back and touch your face. Kiss at the furrowed place just above your eye.

I am both savior and monster. Lilith flew off to the land of demons and she is my mother. I devour and give pieces of myself back; little sugared cubes falling from between my legs on gossamer wetness. I can save the world in my kindness or I can burn it down in my anger. Furies are my sisters. Beauty in the inky darkness. Those forms coming to frighten me; or make me one of them. Whiskey and blood are my altar, the Goddess forms above me. In the white moonlight, I know the truth. I see the universe split and hunger for love and sex and fast drugs. I want to wash my limbs in the ocean, find the way through the trees, howl to the stars pounding down the green fields banged on with a million points of light.

Come and follow my witchy ways. You never know where they might lead.

Apache

Open your fucking eyes.

The Fall

I want to be the darkness the world falls into when everyone is desperately searching for the light.

In The Garden

When I saw her striding down the street all thought left me with a whoosh like a vacuum out of my head. Her red hair flowed down her back so far that it brushed her tail bone. The nosy neighbors poked their heads over their fences and whispered in conspiratorial voices. "Who is that now? That tall, swaggering, crazy looking chick? Who is that? What is she doing there? I don't think she's wearing a bra! And red stilettos? Who the hell does she think she is?"

When she opened the gate to the yard a flock of starlings, hopping about the lawn searching for insects, suddenly set to air. They flew up into a wall of black announcing her presence with a unified startled call echoing through the neighborhood.

As she reached the bottom of my garden steps, I started to wonder what I had done to bring her here. Was I silently praying for her in my dreams? Was my subconscious wishing for her? Or was this a curse?

She bat her eyelashes at me and pursed her lips nervously.

"Aren't you happy to see me?"
"It's been along time. And the last time..." I trailed off.
"The last time..." she smoothed her fingers over her heart, "We both suffered last time."

She tugged at the buttons on her shirt and suddenly I was in the past, racing through a field running after her down a dusty path. The police were close behind, shouting words I couldn't make out but was pretty sure were profanities. She ran like a deer; gracefully, quickly, head long through the tall grass. I was close behind, my lungs burning, my legs aching.

"Stop! You crazy bitches! Stop!" yelled a red faced cop, his partner huffing behind him.

"Fuck that pig!" she screamed back over her shoulder. She still had one of the rocks she had thrown through their windshield in her hand. She was laughing wildly like a good-time girl on a crazy caper; I was afraid we were going to die at the hands of two big, angry, sure-to-be-rape-happy cops. I waited for a bullet to tear through my back. She turned her beautiful crazy eyes on me, "Come on!" she laughed reaching for my hand and pulling me down a steep embankment. I looked back long enough to see one of the cops falling head over heels down the hill as we cleared the train tracks and dove into the tunnel beyond.

She pulled me into a decaying building on the other side of the train yard.
"We can hide in here. They won't find us. They're too stupid."
"You're fucking nuts! You know that, right?" I said between gasps trying to catch my breath; my lungs still burning like they had hot coals dropped down them. My legs were shaking; I thought about how nice it would be to collapse right there. I didn't though, for fear of looking like a pussy in front of her. I wanted to be tough for her. To be crazy like her; an Amazon in a leather jacket with fiery red hair fearlessly screaming "Pig!" into a 200 pound cop's face. I wanted to let go, just let go of my stupid little safe life and embrace some recklessness. Embrace her.

"Serves them right. Calling us dykes like that. I shoulda done worse." She turned that fearless stare on me and I couldn't help but admire her unthoughtful bravery; and I couldn't help notice her unbound breasts heaving under her thin white t-shirt. Each breathe causing them to rise and fall; quivering to be touched. I clenched my fists at my side and looked down. Suddenly her hand was on my chin raising my eyes to meet hers. Every inch of me filled with longing; my body ached with it, the core of me burned with it. She must have seen it in my eyes.

She met my lips with a soft kiss wrapping her arms around me, playing her fingers along my back. Suddenly my hands were under her shirt, sliding over her nipples soon replaced with my mouth. I gasped out loud when her fingers slipped below the belt of my jeans. Time hiccuped and we were on the floor tearing at each others clothing. Slipping hands along skin, lapping at each other like hungry dogs, fighting for breath. Her skin shone in the dusty sunlight through the dirty window as she held my glistening face in her hands and gently mouthed, "I love you."

I snapped back to the present.  There she was at the base of my garden steps. Her long hair shifting in the breeze, her breasts pressing against her shirt (still not wearing a bra after all these years), her eyes still full of that crazy glinting energy. I stood in the doorway of the safe little life I had built for myself since she left. The hole in my heart carefully covered over now.  If I were step away from the door my safety would be gone. My life fractured. I clenched my fists at my side. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and for the first time since I met her I could see a nervousness under her smile.

"Aren't you happy to see me?" she said looking down at her feet.

Suddenly I was down the stairs in a blind rush, taking her all in my arms. I pressed my mouth against hers. We both gasped for breath; all the memories of her skin rushed back to me at once. Her body slid up against mine, neither of us wanted to break the connection. I pulled back and took her face in my hands.

"I've never been happier to see anyone in my entire life."

Truth Lies

I knew when I saw God in the eyes of the Devil that we were all fucked and should probably just give up now.