I.
The muted despair of awakening from a 3pm nap after champagne dreams
to the hopeless slant of late afternoon sunlight shadowing my bedroom and being
alone.
Excitement, dreaming – so high and far.
Then, alone.
Being with someone – close, but not inside,
glimpses but not true exposure,
then dulled and imprisoned back here in my loneliness,
in my chunk of concrete.
It always requires recovery:
time to settle, the crying bed, the scraping of arms, the sweat and cringe and convulsion.
It’s the transition that causes the pain – the middle passage.
The constant frenzy of being with people,
like in the heart of a city:
throbbing,
and unable to breathe,
to the centered, steady depression of solitude.
It is the time in-between.
I need to untie the knot within myself. Every night I scrape my mind with a spoon.
Deep, pitting, grinding sadness that must be contained.
II.
Things that make me so depressed, I want to die:
The pile of sad, crumpled clothes in the corner that, after love-making, must be put on again
The sound of distant alarm clocks: the habitual massacre of dreams
The fact that there are so many people in the world
The television
Pavement: the suffocation of soil; the substitution of grey for all that is green. That will be our final demise, you know. People cannot live very long amidst ugliness; they begin to hate themselves. If there is no beauty around me, how can I recognize beauty in my own face?
The daily tarring of eyelashes
The prospect of tomorrow.
III. Tears Feeling hot and crimson and out of control blazing pulsing with blood shaking the voice reveals your weakness the grimace is a reflex the tightening of the throat. Resist, resist! Forgetting to breathe holding your breath the fear, the panic, the shame a tidal wave emerging from the ocean’s depth thrown off balance white heat black hot shame a fear silver and pulsating when you start to crack up your edges become fuzzy when the leak springs and pressure builds water gushing forth with the force of an underground spring.
IV. Diana My thoughts turned to you, for some reason, In my darkest hour, Age 15. After the aspirin The wrenching pain The fear and florescent lights.
The strangers and questions: (Are you pregnant? Are you sure? How can I be pregnant if I’m still a virgin?)
The black, chalky vomit
Acne and dirty fingernails.
In the hour of my despair My self-loathing My impenetrable weakness At the bottom of the pit,
It was then I thought of you—
Strong and defiant.
It was then that you were transformed
Into symbol, into metaphor.
That you became my god.
