A Dying Garden is as Good as Any

This summer is no wonder, no wander

flashbacks on dead grass under the shadows of deflated fences,

not everything blooms here.

Cat parades her fuzzy parachute everywhere,

under the carpet of humidity, she says, sad Cat? don’t know her.

Neither of us are good at soccer.

Vocabulary removal from lips to chalk board, lessons from a traffic light,

try to find a corner that smells like safety,

pacing with her legs up the wall.

Don’t call me by my name, I have no phone, no home.

Sadness supply in surplus overflow, do not ask who is crying,

I can not see their face.

The mind’s torn letters are never sent.

Some nights she calls across the deaf ocean to no one in particular.

No answer.

Spinal fluid leak, will get ya’ shipped to Sacramento or San Francisco,

spring may never come so don’t throw out your sweaters,

a dry ocean’s as good as any.

A room of sailboats rocking individually, I am sad, don’t talk to me,

a blind friend teaches me how to see,

and how to grow a new body.

Close the shutters and find a basement

on the Fourth of July, we all take cover,

never learned how to swim, never learned how to drown.

Pressed against the window

for the spirit with footsteps in basketball shoes.

Where are you?

I just wanted to hear your voice, but you’ve lost it

clean your room, maybe you’ll find it, I say,

you say, you ate your apartment key for breakfast.

Don’t get too close to me, I am very worried.

Cigarettes for fingers, burn bubbles underneath two layers of scaffolding.

A dying garden’s as good as any.

Baptised with hand squeezed orange juice,

let the feathers free,

don't crouch and cry unless it’s raining.

The Jet Plane says I’ll be here a lot longer than 30 days.

The Jet Plane has been here before, has met me before, in a past death.

The Jet Plane was right.

With each gaunt memory, your youth

rises with the sun, who is this child?

and where did she come from?

Slept in the linen closet for seven,

until I heard that house with that rising sun, sunk,

had to see this rising sun.

Cry baby’s ain't got no rhymes.

for when I cry, I soak the feet of sinners in salt.

A dying garden’s as good as any.

Wait in line to use the landline,

her mother’s mouth full of metal and

well you know what? You never…

Her mother at the airport saying don’t come back.

Her mother on the front porch, we don’t want you back,

when neither of us wanted me here.

Little sister on the front porch, locked out with you,

mother’s fingers can’t pull her away, little sister will cry

for you, and let you borrow her suitcase.

Please, find my paint brushes,

incase I never come back, I can paint the truth,

your sister will lend you her golden hair.

Do not get too close to me, I am healing,

I only crouch and cry when it’s raining, now a days,

A dying garden’s as good as any.

Ars Poetica

I see the therapist every Thursday.

The therapist has one eye for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,

I hand the therapist the letter

the mother had typed and mailed to the new roommate,

the mother will never meet.

That letter had no room for stanzas,

no room for a return address

or an apology

to the therapist, the mother writes with ink of guilt,

a graph of the mother’s paranoia that the roommate knows the truth.

I want to tell the mother

I do not spare time to talk about the heavy handed

or when she pushed me onto the front porch and locked the door because

I was no good,

I am no good.

That’s why my sculptures were returned to the graveyard

Poetry should be wordless,

but I hear,

the mother, the father

do not want you.

The grandmother

does not care to let you in.

Do not get too close to me

I am very lonely.

The therapist asks me how that makes me feel

I tell her I am fine.

I do not spin my tragedies into poetry.

The therapist asks me how I really feel

I am fine

and I am doing fine,

if I wrote a poem, that is what I would title it.

I fall out of improvisational movement class

to crouch next to the trashcan in the bathroom,

my body is an alarm clock that wakes you

so abrupt it slides off your nightstand.

My eyelids are wings of a hummingbird,

my mind surfs channels of nightmares,

the history of grief

an open doorway and a maple leaf.

A bathroom of katherines

who sweep my tears off the tile floor

I do not tell the Katherines

that I am not a dancer.

Bessel van der Kolk says, trauma lives in the body.

I say, trauma is a rabid dog that has bitten me again and again.

Do not get too close to me,

I am very lonely

Memory by memory the mind’s eye

writes poems in my sleep.

The roommate from the hospital

wakes to tell me,

in my sleep

I cry out.

I tell her that

my dreams are poems,

where I am a fawn,

caught in a chain link fence,

that is why I am screeching.

She tells me that her earplugs

do not work.

I could point to the places

on this campus

where I have been assaulted.

But that wouldn’t be poetry, that would be directions.

I wonder how to explain to the therapist

that maybe the best poem is always the one you should have written.