Just a beast with a kind skin

~ Select Works of Poetry and Prose ~

[selkiebedamned]

Piano Wire

Look at the skyscrapers,

after the first rain,

they’re always such a beautiful blue.

Reflections of an autumn sky.

It’s been a year now.

How many hours

have I spent

being just a woman in an office?

Just like all those offices.

Staring up and looking out

each window as I clean.

The crows have started to piano the wires.

The radio sings your new song.

It sounds like jokes about the cold

and stories of the plane ride

Sometimes I hate this city.

A look at you...

In "business clothes"

Now that could be refreshing.

I swear.

It might be the only thing

that could wake me up.

[selkiebedamned]

College

The day after my uncle died i was in a museum

And there really is no point to a museum

When you should be at someone’s bedside

A boy in my class offerred me a drink

But made me pay for his

We talked about sex

In a cafe

And then got stuck in traffic for two hours

He told he raped someone

But it was her fault

Because she should have told him

if she was unhappy

...God?

Is this all that life is?

I want to sleep, all of the time.

...I remember when I used to paint

I wonder what you’d think of my paintings?

My old manager asked me to paint Jesus for him

He had a nice laugh

i wanted to

but he passed away in the summer

and i never got around to it

But it doesn’t matter now.

[selkiebedamned]

I heard you’re fucking for the moon In your own sweat In your own bed The center of your palms as hot As a wish I heard you’re coming to town My feet slid Across the concrete To the bodega The checkout man stared at me He did not move closer But he did not look away I had a dream we found a pool In the middle of the forest And as you climbed the ivy to the diving board I tried to tell you Of the people who have died that way  You spread your arms out like a big T and jumped There was no splash But I waited for your head to coming bobbing up and once it did you swam to the edge where I was seated And put your wet hands on my knees They were so cold I was so hot The steam came billowing off my shoulders 

[selkiebedamned]

When I went in for my MRI It was either so late or so early I was the only one in the waiting room A tired receptionist had the TV station turned To the news They were showing footage of an airport that had been bombed I saw a man in a Hawaiian shirt Lay in a pool of blood Beside a woman in matching shorts Also dead. The doctor called me in And I lay as flat as a coffin thinking of the receptionist  What did she think of the program? Was she so comfortable with death Working here in the hospital That she did not fear it? What did she think of me then? Alone, in the waiting room? Shivering Waiting for the news from the doctor About a seed Trying to bloom it’s way out of my chest. 

[selkiebedamned]

Tremble (Mary + Dom)

Mary was small. She knew that. She was from a small town. She had a small education. She had small hands and small feet and when she said she loved someone it came always in a whisper. Mary’s family was loud. They would jump and shout and celebrate always like fireworks, even inside. Mary’s brother often started bar fights while Mary’s father often finished them. On slow nights Mary would stand, drinking in the corner the world, the bartender, forgetting her name. Dom never forgot. He said it so clearly when he spoke. Like a bell going off. Dom would gladly shout Mary’s name to anyone he spoke to even when Mary begged him to not. Dom loved loudly. Mary loved this about Dom. To Mary this was brave, it made her want to be brave to. Mary would often take Dom’s face in her small hands and whisper until Dom would ask her to repeat herself. “I love you. I love you.” Mary would say, her hands trembling. To Dom Mary’s fingers trembled in the same way he saw grass bend towards the cars tearing down the highway. Dom loved her for this. Even though he never told her.

[selkiebedamned]

And My Heart Slows Down

Sometimes when all the furniture wants to be the floor and I cannot sleep I close my eyes and play my favorite song

your laugh your face the way your head bobs when you walk

Anything everything

[selkiebedamned]

its such a weird thing to be alive

without a rescue

I have laughed in the face of death all my life

in the face of my drunk uncles

because what can you say once they start their car?

        “Get home safe”

I don’t know more of a safe

than the bottom of this empty

crowding in

like the thick of a worried hand 

still holding tight

[selkiebedamned]

Lullaby

Once you were here playing on the casio In this basement apartment With its little window

We slept in my bed Which sloped in the middle Like two hands cupped together So gently, we got closer Each morning Each night

Every poem about you has some sort of sun in it This one is no exception “I’m sorry.” I say before I go to sleep “I’m sorry.” You are not here now “I’m sorry.” I say into the dark “It’s my fault.”

[selkiebedamned]

Maybe “loneliness” 

Is the absence of god 

Something we all know by heart

and maybe heaven 

are arms, outstretched, taking you back in 

I don’t know if I’m religious?

But I know that I’m lonely

Whoever you are

I pray you have someone to hold you

That is all I’ve ever prayed for. 

[selkiebedamned]

5

I tell my therapist that some time ago I gave up on the idea of someone staying through the fever I am not the kind of person to tell you that I’m scared when I’m truly scared or to ask you for your help Instead I say a joke over the phone  While I’m sitting on the curb outside the X-ray clinic What’s the point? No ever seems to understand when I say things like  “I wish we could go to the ocean.” and then drink enough that my face turns hot

[selkiebedamned]

Don would sometimes drive sometimes all night with only a few passing headlights, his friends asleep in the van, so Don thought he knew loneliness. Until he met Mary.  Mary was young, but she loved in the way an older woman did, by placing her hands between his shoulders, and lightly touching his face. Sometimes Don felt like he was part of a tradition which he found comforting but ultimately strange. Mary was so close and also far at the same time. Sometimes her eyes would be heavy as though Mary were sleeping through their whole day together so she could get to the night. Like she was more comfortable in it's endlessness.  When Mary told Don stories of where she grew up Don realized he did not think of the people living along the highways he drove on, past the fields, in houses and counties dressed in pitch black each evening because they had given their lights to some newer city. Sometimes just before the lights came up, as Don stood on stage, waiting, he would look out at the crowds of people on their phones and think of What Mary said on their first date.

“You’ll never know unless you see it.There’s nothing like the stars out in the country”

[selkiebedamned]

Mary wanted to be a mother since she was a child  So she loved the way all mothers do By patting hair down And gently rubbing between the shoulders With arms open “You have a beautiful voice.” Men would say to Mary as she sang along to the radio Whenever Mary heard this she would always smile And sing less and less

Because Mary always knew she was best at the blues But who would want that? For a lullaby? When the men would leave As they all did   They would say it was because she was too kind And too lonely And when they’d leave Mary would sit alone  And say goodbye  To the family they would no longer have together And she would sing herself to sleep.

[selkiebedamned]

June 10th 2019 freewrite

My idea of a life together is us living in some shitty house with a loud screen door that slams Where all your friends and my friends are BBQing in the backyard and stepping on gold grass with their bare feet Because this summer we couldn’t be bothered to water the lawn When I dream of a future I dream of us with a big family of everyone we love With all their kiddos and doggos running underneath the tables They’ll be Singing by the fire and cold beer in the cooler I never really dreamed of money (not too much anyways) I never understood that Boats or Cars or Grand big lighting fixtures Instead I dream you’ll help me do the dishes And go to the store that you won’t be late unless there’s traffic I dream of holding a baby and watching it walk towards you before you pick them up in your arms In heaven we’ll look at our life through a broken window Another hot day turned into a warm night And we’ll sway just a little In a moment just for us before the stars come out before someone picks up their guitar or stokes the fire We’ll be in a world all our own Where everyone we love is here (or at least on their way)

[selkiebedamned]

Don met a girl at a bar. She was headed south and he was headed west. She did not drink or play pool. She was anything but loud. The girl was so small that if you did not look hard enough she would slip between the folds of the corner booth. Don would not have seen her if he had not heard her laugh. It was soft, quiet, for most, but for Don it was as if someone rang a bell in his jaw. It filled his whole mouth with a hum and made his teeth buzz. 

Don talked loudly, either to be heard over the sound, or to keep her laughing “Or maybe both” Don told himself. But it was not both.  

Outside past the bar lights the night was so grand you might reach out your hand and lose your fingers to its endless going. The world was flat and empty but also full and thick with unknown.

 Mary walked home from work every evening. Every evening she walked. Sometimes she would change the route or get the occasional drink with a friend but always she would arrive in front of her blue apartment building and always she would hesitate before placing her key in the lock. “Was this day really over? Would she really have to start all over again?”

Mary would often imagine that Don might show up then and she might never have to sleep. The night could just go on and on and on. She wished for that in every second before the door opening and until she closed her eyes.

[selkiebedamned]

Mary wrote poems, well really Mary did a lot of things? But mostly she wrote poems. Some were small and some were great big feats of architecture but Don, himself, preferred the small ones.

Don grew up in the suburbs. Everything there was spread between miles of planted grass and parking lots. Each grocery store, each music shop, was like an oasis and he would walk the miles of desert between each.

...Mary felt like an oasis too when they first met. She would often say to Don in the years after “You can’t live in paradise” but Don disagreed.

Don wished there was a way that Mary could live in paradise, all the time.

Once, when they first met, Mary wrote Don a love poem. It was small, so small it could fit in his pocket and go with him everywhere.

It told him to call her.

Now Don lives on the road and not in the suburbs but he still sees parking lot after parking lot after planted grass. Today, as his van crosses another state line, he is thinking of Mary and when they first started talking on the phone.

Once he sent her a picture of the park by his house mid conversation and Mary had laughed and said “I like it. It reminds me of home.”

Don wanted to go home with Mary, wherever that was, all of the time.

[selkiebedamned]

He wrote a mean love song. Mary grew up in a place in the country. Kids used to play Ramones in a barn by the field. Mohawks were big back then, as was sitting by the door smoking cigarettes.

Don wrote songs that sounded like that. He wrote songs that sounded like a door opening when you were young. Something small…a loving but haunting feeling

Mary could still picture it all as she lay in her apartment. The sweat from the pit coming off as steam on the boys backs. The way everyone went home by walking in the center of the road.

He wrote songs like that like no headlights coming around the corner like the stars were the only lights for miles and wasn’t that was just fine?

[selkiebedamned]

September 10th

I think there is a kind place but I’m just not sure how to get there Maybe i can swim through the static of the TV aquariums Or travel via endless rocking floorboards I told my therapist I could never die But at night sometimes I’d walk the bridges just to see the water from a hundred feet Death is real It’s real and it only leaves a hole But this hollow Empty Thing of a going? I’m not sure how to cure that either