Three Poems

Persona 71

Dear Dears, I have been absent from life & dreams & bottoms & things & again. I apologize for looping back, putting my two cents into situations long gone. It seems I’ve been listening to conversations from all their echoes. Is the glass half full or half empty? Why don’t you let me wash that filthy filthy glass for you? That lipstick smudge on the rim won’t be easily gotten rid of. As if it were a place marker to instruct: Lips go here. Teena Marie said, “I got lips, lips to find you.” Which is almost like admitting defeat. Dannii Minogue, on the other hand, said, “Dirty hands, I demand.” O. Look at all we have lost, all of us. Look at what we lose. We are trained to connect the dots, draw lines from past to future. Migratory patterns, trajectories, downward spirals. Lines all. Would something like a ruler help us draw straighter lines? No line drawn from or for me is ever straight. My dear dears (as Bambi’s mother would say). As what I said before fires & hunters & day. Persona 85 The lady at the bus stop said, “Wherever there is water, there are rats; and now I can no longer look at a lake or an ocean or even this bottled water in my hand without thinking: Rats! Rats! People do that, you know, they tell you things and then go away, go on with their lives and then you can’t forget this one thing they’ve told you just to tell you, not thinking you will hold on to it like this; like love. And I said, “Stop it, Mother! You’re embarrassing me. What the hell are you talking about?” But Mother just screamed, “I am so thirsty! But those rats! Rats! Those rats are like your love, depriving me of a cool sip of water when I, your mother, am so dehydrated, so thirsty, so parched!” Sipping on my Big Gulp Diet Coke, I said, “But mother, I’m dying...” The Fisting Bottom Soon, the carnival of me will be no more than tossing sausages into an open cave. The dark maw of Proud Monsters devouring its shining arrogant young. For those who escape the kill -- the wily, the motivated, the schemers, the pure (certainly purer-than-thou), the chosen ones, the untouchables -- the wreck is never far from mind, never close at hand, but always sticks to the back of the throat. I have turned myself inside-out to turn my understanding right-side-up or down; I have wielded my weapon with cunning & grace & skill. I have lived past the point of impact; I have seen my disciples and my foes. I have courted perfect loves and imperfect time; and still I long to bloom. Rosebud was never the name of my sled.