Husband

Huh. It seems to be more difficult to write. Maybe because I'm married now? I'm also very out of practice. There's no silly drama about whether or not things will "work out". Not that that kind of pain is silly, it's very real and I remember being overwhelmed for--months--at a time. Things just feel very undramatic now that we're married. So many of the big questions have been addressed. Will I find love? Yes. Will it be right? Yes. Will he be good to me? Yes. Do I deserve him? Well...boy that's a tough one. I have a good man and I know it, though sometimes I wonder how in the hell I got to marry this guy--I'm no better than anyone else! Anyway, what's below is the result of lots of time off from thinking of poems and lots of time off from writing about being in the throes of relationship mayhem.

I've quietly unpublished words
from years and years of pain
seeing them out in the world,
disabled all the gain
all the gain my man and I
have tried so hard to grow
and even though it's one
with pain the gain is now a glow.

it's larger than the blanket
that swept over the world
and turned me to a woman
from a small and grabbing girl.

The man I spoke of often who was always just below
was a mirror to my own distress, a self I came to know.
and peering all inside, I saw so little light
just the ramblings of a crazy girl who'd
wandered in to darkest night.
She'd grown close with the black and decided on a way
to move my life so far back, I was discontented with the day.

whose truth went down with caring for myself and all my fights
and all the love inside my veins, seeped out from tiny fatal
bites.

now i'm married
I'm a wife.
My husband is a man
who takes my sadness,
every moment's strife
and holds me in his husband hands.

toad friendship

as i was walking down the road, who should i but meet

a proud and pudgy little toad, watching over the street

i, a quiet and internal girl don't often stop for much

but this toad stopped my walking whirl, a sweetheart he was such

it isn't oft that I feel much but light disgust or gall

at all amphibians in the world, their slimy nature's call

not on my natural empathy or feelings of sympathy

if you had been but ordinary I would have walked over thee.

this day however, i was feeling most unassembled

the way that a lady feels when shes muddled in the head

over thoughts of books and men and looks and all these things with power

i had been preoccupied, the better part of an hour

and you, dear toad it turns out was not quite ordinary

in fact i found you most endearing and not the least bit scary.

what is a toad? i asked you, right out load for all to hear

luckily it was just us, nobody had drawn near

to my surprise you opened up your little toady mouth

and answered, quite articulately my question was uncouth,

but you--you found me charming and so you did not mind

and we sat and talked for hours, your stories were the kind

that mesmerize the soul and mind and interpret our deep desires

and i realized i'd found a friend in this small and pungent mire

and this my friends is the story of my surprising friendship's start

and that sad but inevitable parting our differences made tart

but every day i walk along this one same road quite well
at the memory of our afternoon, that made my quiet heart swell.

our haunted man.

oh unhappy plight, you leash of love, you hazard
i held to him with all my might, but you, you greedy gathered
all the strength the unknown has, the will but of a God
took my man so quick from me, flesh turned into fog

evaporated, death-dumbed man, pale now from the time
idles love and love's distress, movements that were kind
and oh the creaking of the stairs in night's harsh early hour
cruel and feisty up my leg, you crawl that ivory tower

a man can run an errand, a man can whisp and whirl
in life and death, these parallel scenes, like a twisting little girl
but heat and touch and taste are not the confines of the living
i know because my dead mans hands in death are just as giving.

I'm not--
I say, I'm not...impressed...with myself.
there's a real lack of...my dad would call it motivation
i would call it inspiration--who cares, really.
my job is an excuse
my apartment is comfortable
my relationship is fine, but my man is better than me.
my family is sick, but entitled.
there is no school, there is no grand dream, no thing to go forward to.
lately i'm obsessed with tvs shows and the lives of fake politicians in fake
whitehouses representing fake people.
lately i'm obsessed with engaged or recently married friends
graduating grad school
getting their masters, their Phds,
being really good at things.
it drives me nuts. i am rushed with hate and anger and jealousy
i am all things anti, damning success where i'm absent.
women who are younger, who look like me, who looked up to me.
women who are women when i am a girl.
it is completely reprehensible, embarrassing, shameful and mean,
unwomanly, ungracious, and thank you I know it's human, but
fuck off, i'm wallowing.
years with energy up to my eyeballs
years with no where to spend it
year following one thing with one group to one end,
and now years to repair it, years to watch it die,
to realize that i am full of lacking and too lazy to try.
a rhyming couplet! it was an accident.
no faith, no prediction, no accuracy or understanding
just waiting and waiting and aware that there is a beast inside
hoping for the right word, sign, feeling, idea, lightbulb
to blow me up and explode the guts again with glory and meaning
and reason.

reminder

but if the willow heaves a sob and runs you down her cheek,
run you up another tree and sing her soft to sleep.

T.S.Elliot Makes a Fine Point.

April really is the cruelest month.
all the poems that are born from January and February, cake
compared to the rigorous slog of April.
the promise of sun,
our dear magnolias on the tree, testing the air, slowly unfolding
like a woman out of bed.
and all the maples, shaken by winter, hub-bubbing about
the temperature, arguing over whether or not it's time.
Aaron and I picture them as the young and the old, the old refusing
to bloom until they're quite sure, the young, jumping out of their skin
perhaps a few weeks early, but willing to take the risk.
but it's all a tease, all dirt, all mud (we are New Englanders)
all gone FINALLY is the interminable snow bank under the house's ledge,
hidden from sun it stayed and stayed, like parents at dinner, and would not melt.
and this too is the most obvious metaphor that "things" might be just fine.
parents may not be sick, relationships may have their hope,
and we ourselves may not be forgotten, may not be diminished.
but we must wait. as we have waded through winter, ejecting
its poems out of our brains and on to paper, praying "god, when does this end?"
even the most Godless of us, "please God, please bring some relief!",
we must wait.
April: Spring's obnoxious and arrogant protege', and amongst the stentorian of Earth's eruption we must
find our reason and keep ourselves.
We must wait for Spring to raise us up,we must wait for May at least to be on the table.
Damn it April, look at me straight: your hand on my arm, your chill up my back, your hands coming up, an invisible, impenetrable blockade.
We must wait.

guh

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sly/edible-babies

This will get proper attention later.