There is a quietness to the hum of normal life.
The quiet rev of my prudently purchased Nissan.
My quiet paycheck
hushed and sucked
through tiny, quiet, non-crazy straws.
My husband-to-be,
once the cymbal of suffering,
doesn't even snore
anymore.
To say that I miss the chaos is ridiculous.
I prefer cracks in the ceiling
to dents in the hall.
And while my writing may be
lulled to sleep by normalcy,
I am a silent sighed walk
of uninspired relief.
"Come back to us!" they said,
so come back to them, I did.
There, thick in the throes of friendly faces
and past lovers,
I sat
with a mouthful
of white rice.
As they yelled across the table,
exchanging petty arguments
and uneducated guesses,
I moved the rice around in my mouth.
Devoid of taste, but pleasing in texture,
I lumped the rice from one side to the other.
Hid it under my tongue.
Packed it between my teeth and lips.
Pretended I was the only chipmunk
prepared for the winters ahead.
I swallowed that lump and made a game out of it.
Taking another mouthful,
I tried to only swallow one grain at a time.
It's harder than it sounds.
The rice tends to stick together.
You have to -
Oh? No.
I missed the Grammy's.
See, you have to cup smaller lumps in the bowl of your tongue
and push single grains to the top....
Two birds landed on a wire.
Over time, they grew nearer and nearer
until eventually
they sat right beside each other.
At this,
the birds flew off
to find less crowded wires.
Like smooth wet pebbles
lazily being rubbed together.
Like hot cinnamon apple slices
sliding down a white plate
or mashed potato flakes
without enough milk.
Kill me when I sound
like that.
Lacking the jovial overtones of intoxication,
exhaustion has hijacked my vision
and thrown my hands in front of my feet.
From this position, they rest their feet atop my back
and tell me what a great job I've done with the place.
The dog catches the snacks that fall
and I alternate white palms with red elbows.
Impaired as ever (but without the joyful confidence),
I reach out for someone familiar.
Someone who might have known me
before the goddamned utility belt
and silver swears
and haunted hangers.
Oh, but they are quick to send to me back to Earth.
Back to Work.
To the eternal hangover
from the best years of my life.
People say,
"How is it that you don't enjoy anything, Brit?"
"How can you get no pleasure out of life?"
I don't think that's entirely true.
I receive great pleasures from
the hardhat in the Pump Room.
And I very much enjoy the ready response my guitar gives me
in spite of the calendar years of neglect.
"If you enjoy these things, why don't you want them more often?"
I don't know.
It all just seems so pathetic.
Maybe it's not that I don't Ever crave things...
Maybe it's that
nothing I crave
ever craves me back.
Oh, those chimes.
They come floating through the back door
and make their way past mislabeled motions -
Lighter than the perks of Membership, they are.
Happier than a workday split into thirds.
Those pleasant little morning sounds
carry an ambiguous look in their eye
as they hold a tattletale's ear to the heart of the guard.
LUMP-THUMP!
LUMP-THUMP!
"Not now -" they concede.
"-not yet".
And then silence.
Motionlessness.
The total absence of life
thus proving I am alive!
I am a serrated edge in this paper mache construct.
Can they not see that?
nobody,
and I mean Nobody,
appreciates how still I stand.
How straight and careful.
The pointy end of my asshole observations
finds a meaty groove in my throat
as it slides down
down
down
and out
out
out.
I am the Least of Goliath's concerns in this glass house.
Or so he thinks.
So they all think.
Here
beneath the feet of Architectural Digestion,
I am well out of the public eye.
Away from the shrieks of children,
the yawns of men
and stretched smiles of mothers.
I am 6 feet under brown
where the dirt serves to enrich the lives of stay-at-home pupils.
I think what I please,
projecting my fancy fantasies onto the concrete movie screens
surrounding my anxious viewers.
At times, I see everyone so clearly.
They, the long gone and never was,
seat themselves at my planted feet
and tug on my pant leg
asking questions with crushing gravity,
making piles of unanswered earth where opportunity may have been before.
I appease them as best I can
but in the end
Resolution, like so many lovers past,
just doesn't have time for me
anymore.
As the morning brew fogs up my lenses
and words get crissed and crossed around the room,
I find that my mind's eye has lost it's senses
and dated fruit hangs loosely from the loom.
Where have they gone - my immovable joys?
What's happened to my steadiness of heart?
I've been rigged to explode! An awful noise...
I grit my teeth before work even starts.
But lest I fall into psychotic ways
I analyze what's keeping me afloat,
the dream of independent summer days?
Enough to keep My limbs out of the moat.
I'll sit and make a plan to tell my boss...
as soon as I get thirty-one across.
Unfit, as I am,
for tending cooling coal and
twice-limp glories of morning,
I refuse to let our screaming children smother me with
The Obvious.
Children born of innumerable copper holes,
aimless tasks and dutiful kisses.
By now, the porous travertine has been given
a new address,
gargling chemical baths,
spitting bitter 40 year old tears.
They add to my deficiencies,
make threats that they will Surely see me again,
Not as I am.
Not barking over sleeping men,
nor pruning, nor aching,
nor feigning amusement.
But beside the stars only visible in daylight,
beside those still living,
fit and overjoyed
by how little I require.
We struggle.
Demons in hauntingly familiar costumes
hold our minds for ransom
threaten to shoot the kid
if we raise our hands against it,
but the kid always gets shot.
No matter how quietly we go.
No matter how tightly we shut our eyes.
The kid dies
and we age out of obligated consideration.
I struggle.
With the Buzz of love laying next to the dead,
I hold the words like a marble throne
and vomit until I think I've been heard.
The stink of poetry mixed with the rotting pile
of fondness and youth
is unbearable at times.
You struggle.
Don't you?
They came to me all at once.
The Jacket Sleeve
and the UnConquerable Horizon.
The Near 30 Wolf
and the Too Soon Retreat.
I saw them coming from around the Bend
beneath the Trees and
Over my Head.
They gathered in a clump of sirens.
Wailing.
Crying.
Passionate. Like a Dinner Bell.
I have no words
to describe the torture
of being Eaten Alive
by such things.
I am not the type to constantly measure.
Nor am I the type to pretend I've never measured before.
As it stands, I'm living in the cluttered corner
of a cluttered living room
in a house that wasn't designed for deadbeats.
I am a deadbeat.
And I live in clutter.
It cannot be put more simply.
Measurements do me no good.
Comparisons. Covetous whims.
The girl who has taken the hand of a Brilliant Man.
I'm sure she holds it the way a child might hold
a 4th of July Sparkler.
Joyously
but carelessly.
Waving it about.
Embers falling Just Short of her pretty dress.
Naive, as children are,
to the "Hecho en Mexico"
burning away at the tip.
I cannot measure my Cluttered Corner
against that awestruck grin
burned into her face.
So
instead
I take my bow
and knock something over.
This place is so goddamn cluttered.
I can feel it in my chest, most nights.
The Thick cadence of a soldier
warning of Impending Doom,
a Deafening Shot that alerts my mind
to the Stop in my Step
and the Sudden Sunrise.
An Intruder.
Stock is taken of Everything.
From sparkling shards of syllables
to ripe and dripping punchlines.
Every count gives a different number.
Was it Then that I laughed?
Didn't I see you walk past?
The silverware has run away with the moon
Yet I Still find myself
with One Fork and Two Spoons.
Loneliness is a curious thing
Surrounded I am and yet I think
"Not one can say they know me well"
Strangers as far as I can tell.
My friends offer and I decline
I'm not one to drag others, I
would much prefer to ponder this
growing sense of loneliness.
It's not to say I don't have others
friendly faces and eager lovers
(But)In spite of all their amity
I relish not their company.
But this feeling is surely fleeting...
And my heart soon to resume its beatings.