Tumbling Watters: poems for the peckish

Maybe this loneliness will preserve me. Keep me taunt. Keep my pheromones fragrant, intoxicant: Passiaflora, primal, Bora Bora.

Or Maybe This celibacy This abstinence, this solitude Serves As a mantra, a meditation To keep me balanced The yoga of deprivation

To help me find An intimacy requiring more than wet plus willing An understanding that I am always fulfilled

Always on the brink of orgasm

You eat it anyway. The water is poison, you shower everyday

Butterflies with flaming wings dropping from the sky, embers float upward, returning, stars. Their burning hair smells just like ours

You eat it anyway

And you're sorry, saddened. Though not nearly enough to punish yourself or your neighbor. 50 lashings? 100? A rash upon your face. The fourth moon eclipsed, brings a new age

HaShem, why so soft? We are accountable, not acquitted

Open those eyes. No? I have superglue, come see the river spitting out cast stones like teeth

I am to tuck them back into pockets. I am to break windows. You will find them at your feet, trip, stumble. You will find one, inside a peach, a plum

Come, find me at the toothless mouth of the river, the water rises to the occasion

But this is no baptism. Forgiveness, earned not given

We will fast all year like angels. No, we will work, like microscopic heterotrophs, consuming only the rotten, the filthy, our bidding

This until the scorched cornfields of this land bloom with wildflowers, coneflower, yarrow, this until our young orchards bear fruit. This until I clean all your sin from the sediment, and the river runs clear again

Then, we will blow the shofar, build the sukkah, kiss the fish, say the brukah

Time for soup

They will feast

Together and apart

Under the sukkah

Under the ceiling fan

On the night of the harvest-moon, blood-moon, I pick herbs by streetlight

Patchouli to remember the sacred times

My belly is full

Full

But my bed

Is a castle

Robotic, routine I rub/run through the motions

Not present

Thinking

About cooking, cleaning

What’d she cook for him?  

Thinking

About her nipple, another nipple, between his lips

My own, desensitized

Nondescript

I cannot make love to him

It’s been a year, he says

Likely true, at least for now, I think to myself

It’s been a year yet her smell still breathes from his skin

And when I suck his cock, it’s sickening

So I Rub/run through the motions

Not giving a fuck

Rub/run through the motions

Till he gets off

Until just now

Forgetting my distaste

I pull him to my face

Hungry

The connection

The attraction

Feelin’ it

Forgetting her

Her smell

And those years, my fears

I am

Present in the moment

Feeling like I own it

That moment and that great strong dick I used to worship

Expanding in my mouth

Around every curve

Of the world

My mouth the sea and he, the serpent

Lapping/caressing/slurping/sucking/pulling/yearning/churning/ learning/rejoicing/worshiping/sanctifying/succumbing  

The sea and the serpent

The cream and the cat

The forgiving, come the healing

On my knees

Forgiving

Come time for

Him to forgive me

Find my heart and break it open like a dam

And he says

Give me a cigarette

Get me a pop

And I am heavy

I am yearning

I am ready for my blessing

For his light and my light and our lives to collide

Faith restored

In love, in union

Holy Communion

Ready to take my throne

And spread my thighs  

Ready to let

The ocean

The sea/the salty sea

Cream/milk and honey

The earth/creation/rebirth/damnation

Flow

Ready to

Release/ let go

But all he wants is a smoke

He’ll probably put on a show

So I choke

Back the tide

It recedes

Bloating me

My love unable to pour

Unable to release/let go

Repressed once more

And it is clear

I need not a prince, but a prophet

To beckon forth

My song, my light, my love

To call forth

All of nature  

Trapped behind my eyes

To break the dam

Part the sea

Till the earth

Make me

A garden

An ocean

A supernova

A goddess

  So I can birth the world

All of creation

Your breath

Mechanical, cold metal

You taste like regret

I’m sorry but

I can’t turn water to wine

Here is the vinegar

Was it the fresh air, the purity of the water

Let’s head for Canada, did you feel like you belonged

Closer to the stars, way up there with the sun

Shine on me, northern lights reflecting in your eyes

Throw me onto the canvas

Envision me in red

Pose me

Compose me

Arrange me

Shade me

On the couch or on the floor

What sort of brushstroke

Well behaved 

Asleep in the wall of many keyholes

All of them locked

Do they still watch

Better find a gentle sweetheart

With gloves on her pretty soft hands

  Gloved hands and a peach in her chest  

  No, you’re no miner

You fear the depths and the perils

Now that the ash is gone

Emeralds corroded her trunk and limbs

She is a skeleton

Decked in jewels

A relic

If I could I’d cover her emeralds in amber

Preserve

and craft them into bangles and barrettes

fine combs, pins and broaches  

Only then would I forget

  Come spring they’re selling the house

(my house)

And then I’ll have to worry

(then I’ll always worry)

Who will sleep there? Love there? Live there? Lie there?

Who will sit at the counter drinking milk or vodka tonic

Who will paint over the moss-green wall, the brick wall in the den

And then

What color

(please not white)

Whose child will feel the cold smooth tile of the bathroom floor against a steaming feverish cheek as she falls back to sleep next to the toilet

And who will tend the garden

man or wife

And who will salt the sidewalk

salt the soup

Who will feel my presence there

Who will sleep in my room

(That drafty room with two closets, three windows, and one door that never did shut right)

Who’s gonna fix that god-damn-door

Who can remove every trace of me

(Every eyelash, every lost bobby pin, all the pills I spat out and then hid. That lost tooth, never hidden nor found. All within the skin– of that house. Shadows of my scribblings that crowded the closet walls, from puppy dogs, to spaceships, to rebellious songs, all washed clean– but not unseen. Sounds and conversations reverberating. Echoes of me chasing the dog, “Don’t be so loud!” Heels click clacking, unhinged mouths laughing, my mother’s laugh–hearty yet hard like pulling taffy. And little bare feet padding their way down the stairs into the clean, bright, light living room)    

Who will scrub my plaque from the walls

Who will drain my blood from the pipes

Who will find my ghost

(Six years old, hiding from Adina the bully, hiding on the side of the house, locked out, squatting amongst the berry bushes and the Queen Anne’s lace)

Who will shoo me away

      He doesn’t deserve any more poems

Or tears

Or kisses down his spine

Again he has forsaken me

  I am nothing more than a coat

Something to wear when it’s cold outside

Mostly I hang in the closet

  I am warmth upon his request

I am empty sleeves and a hollow breast

Until he pulls me on for a stroll down memory lane

  This year, I’ll let him freeze out there

On the windy streets, under unwashed sheets  

With nothing but the cold of winter nipping and caressing  

Nothing but soup from a can, the taste of tin

Once again I’m through

Your mouth is dry

Your hands are cold

Your words rehearsed

Your love is dry and cold, rehearsed, contrived

Even my name on your lips is a lie

The age of us is finished

You and I are through