15 Poems from December
A new approach to Nightmares & Morning Pages, from December
My daily writing practice changed in December, or it had been changing and it just a new flow. It was not daily, sometimes it wasn’t even writing. Half present and then whole like the moon, a birthday well celebrated and holidays hardly mentioned but trust I’m alive, I’m alive. Thank you for reading.
I. Empty storefront empty storefront empty storefront, the city wants to know why. The city says, $480 for a pair of jeans $7 for a slice of pizza $4.25 to park with a two hour limit but you can time it out right. First Friday, only a few folks out with hats and gloves and winter coats, prints and t-shirts blowing in the wind, a film festival, a maker space, a huge crack in the window and the heater blaring right below. I grab lunch between jobs and wish everyone well on my way. Can't listen to the state, can't listen to my feelings so I listen to the weather. It tells me I can't see shit. It tells me, We are all getting touched by this world, wet wet outside and yes, you have to go. You have to look. You have to get drenched w/ the rest of us. Can't see the ground, can't see the sun and hell, she goes to sleep so early this time of year, doing her own thing on and on without us. I write for the little loneliness I scrounge up, I make it I fake it I give it I take it I take it I take it a few minutes a few hours I'll take it. The sun remembers me and dries December's wet
II. I've been selfish, smoking in my bathroom. It's a bad habit but I couldn't spend another winter getting high in the garage like someone's shitty dad. I close the door & pull my feet up onto the toilet in front of the space heater while my boy and the band play hard in the living room. Smells like grass & rosemary in here. The ghosts in my head have been telling me lately that everyone thinks I’m shit & is afraid to tell me, or they just don't feel like it. Feels like anyone who loves me simply doesn't know me well enough. So I’m sitting down, learning to Tell myself something different. I stopped writing and started stretching. I realized the words were sniping at me again, little fucking piranhas that poems can be. Just when I'm wet and feeling safe I drudge up the mean truths. My head like a hammer, metal crashing hard on metal. I do this all the time. All the time, when I think I've gotten somewhere that I'm getting somewhere that I could ever truly get anywhere. My self worth in smithereens with all my other incompletes. In the mirror, my hands around the hammer. I think my brother is right about guilt being sharp, being a carving thing, bloody & beyond sin. I understand his feelings though I will never understand his responses to them. Cruel. Controlling. I turn my head away from that now. Now, stretched hips, head down. Now, alone with linoleum angels. Now when I'm turning red where I sit. Gut all bloody, churning & chewing. Shins and toes red hot from the space heater I'm sitting too close to. I do not think about Christmas or turning 30. I do not think of who I am letting down. These days and so many days lately I don't think about me or the limited ways I let myself be. (I am tugging on this leash to be free, down boy, down boy) Days where I simply don't have to. Where I am fed and lucky, fed and lucky and crumbling at the very bit of what my life could give me, what I could give my life. No, not give, make. Make of it what I make of it, what we make of it together. I take photos to tell time. I look at them & remember. My baby keeps the tempo of his favorite song, a song of shame and regret, of warning and going home. We talk about New Orleans & watch something w/ a happy ending. They give up, I say at the endings of those movies. If he could sit still maybe we’d watch something different. As it is, I sit arms crossed under covers, shaking my head. My body saying, no, knowing no, but struggling to get it out of my mouth when there are patterns that need breaking. I take Myself to work. I take myself Out dancing. I cushion myself In leather & cashmere. I am so so careful of what I say. I take my smoke break in the bathroom. The boys piss outside, ask me no questions. I tip the candle, lit, on the back of The toilet seat where I now sit, top down & top off on a Thursday. An accident, spill the wax, down my wrist w/ a fucking purpose. Under the dim fluorescent, I watch it pool and drip drip down, warm and slow like honey. I twist my wrist & angle it down my arm. I want it to drip over a bite I've been scratching. Bit by imaginary bugs in my sleep.Bullseye. The temperature rises with the door closed. Something very small, soothed. The song on the other side of the door ends & changes. I change the lyrics, I feel winter creeping in and I'm tired of myself agaaaaain. I dance with illuminated angels. No more mirrors tonight.
III. My baby goes out of his way for me and I say, don't, that's dumb. He gives me a morning lesson with kindness, about how gratitude sounds. I look down at my hands and watch myself do it all the hard way, the slow way, not so risky after all, a little dumb after all. I was taught growing up the ways giving can be selfish, the ways thank you is a payment, the ways it's dumb to care. As if kindness were work and we were owed something more in return. The dumb way my step-father loved. God whacking his only son in the back of the head. That’s what he called himself sometimes. God. I tell myself I know better, Now Lately, I've been afraid to look down at my hands, afraid to see too clearly, afraid to watch myself make it harder and more painful, harder and dumber and more painful. I rub my eyes in the winter snow, see sparkles, see blind spots, scars on my eyes irritate. Fireworks, fireworks. I am saved, I am saved! The sun blinds me from myself. I am everything I touch. I am everyone in the world and nothing at all!
IV. What customer service does, what capitalism does, every word means Something secret & for sale. You know: hello & goodbye & how are you today? Words we all use & hardly hear anymore. I try to switch it up, say something unexpected. Just to see what happens in honesty. No longer reading off the script. The muscle memory of language. Our Dylans are on Instagram. We are on stage, all for sale. The hungry in America pick up guns in their dreams, hunting CEOS. This morning, I woke up screaming, GIRL THE BOYCOTT!! V. I get new glasses and I look More like my mother these Days. I stretch my hips wider. I prop a leg up whenever I can. My frames are brown & square. I wear them and I see myself age. I get afraid and then I get brave, Laughing laughing, living my fucking Life. There's only so much we can Change about ourselves, folks. I Am looking at POWER again & I want to apologize. I am Looking at the pain again & I want to run. Oh, power, How tender & soft this Muscle. Weak, yes, but Growing stronger My mother gave me a high tolerance of other people's bad Behavior. My father gave me a low tolerance of my own bad Behavior. My step father told me, Bad behavior? You mean How you win? VI. What do you want? He asks sweetly. I am a week away from 30. I say bravery I mean kindness. I mean bravery to be kind. I mean honesty and vulnerability and facing firsts with strength. A lion growls in my gut & snipes at life. Teeth first, tears in my eyes, doing it afraid. For my birthday, I make one wish for me & one wish for the revolution.
VII. In a dream, I hold my friend's Hand and ask, Do you think We'll be like this forever? Building walls up tall, leaning into them until they break or we break or something breaks? Her arms go up, shoulders groove in a shrug, exasperated with heavy lids. I mirror her. She’s beautiful. VIII. I stand below Jupiter and show my niece the stars. Out where God’s horses once roamed, where my brothers dogs lived & died, on The Massachusetts land between my aunt’s house where she lives & the barn my mom stays in when she’s here & she's here! She's here! & We are out here, out here! Where The cold feels good actually & The sky ain't so dark, where The stars are dead but shining.
IX. I open my notebook for the first time since my birthday. The universe hands me a fifty. A postcard from J for my birthday, doves and horses, talking about A Future close-by & possible. Half a postcard actually. The other half torn carefully and glued onto the next issue of the Dirt. 02 in January. I am rich. I tell the band, learn the one that goes, there's a Biiiig, a big hard sun X. Last night I drove home in a winter storm, the world wet and underwater again. Salt and steam melt so slowly. Ice crunches under snakeskin boots, used to a certain climate. There is war everywhere we look. I'm thirty now. Tying ribbons around my steering wheel, wishing today was tomorrow. Early to work just to be late to work with ash on driver’s seat, black ash on driver’s seat. I remember the way I love is the way everyone wants to be loved. I remember it takes bravery to love like this. My love, so deep it's deafening - sometimes you don’t hear a thing. I remember my wish that went white when I blew out the candles. I remember the dream I had last spring about the stalker & the bubble of love. Good Days plays and it always feels like the first time when it does. Last night, my lover and I ate brain food, one wishing for less words and the other wishing for more. Today, I dress exactly like me & exactly his type. I stretch my leg up on the steering wheel and I see red and green, red and green, my friends and me, bright bright lights on the evergreens. So many poems this month about trees growing, impatient for my own, still a little afraid but less and less. I know where my bravery comes from. I count what I have on me out loud: keys headphones jacket cell phone & mandarins in pocket, turquoise in December. Episode 2 of my day begins. My coworker & I talk about tradition and making choices, about something like home all over again. I craft a text asking for more & I don’t send it. I hang clothes on the rack. Colors dance. I lean like I learned how to lean. I am ready for change.
XI. In a dream I hold my friends face after holding her thighs. In real life I sigh heavy before the party. It's a snap cold Friday night and the red bows blow in the wind. 5 days till Christmas, I wonder what it will look like this year. Changed by time, I am, smoothed deeply by it, edges soft & raw. I think of a rock on my windowsill. York Beach, 2024, all smooth except this one edge - broken, earthen, breaking & changed now. It looks like us, it looks like us right now!
XII. Tearing up on your shoulder unexpectedly, a future I can't wrangle with yet. Desire sits like a stone, can't move through it. Gifts half opened in my car, a card, a disposable camera. If we could love each other exactly equally, I’d dedicate my life to it
XIII. On the longest night, I stand with the bell ringing. I stand below Orion and take aim in the shadows. Another Massachusetts home, sitting heavy. His uncle Asks, Denise, what time is Tomorrow? It is quiet, all white. Kill the Hallmark movie in your head. Trees here, spindly like spiderwebs & a sign in the laundry room that says, work hard so good luck can find you. I step outside to smoke a spliff with Spirit in the Cape while the wind is lifted strong from the sea. Solstice 2024. In my leather eating sweets like a big dog, big dog drooling, wanna run around in the yard and know God in this biscotti! This path leads straight to the sea. All my life leads straight back to me. I laugh and laugh at what I can't see, beautiful crooked angels, broken stone, open dirt. The wind caresses all, takes me away into a psychedelic future ringing loud above the hard December ground There is deep emotional knowing in my roots, it's where my voice is rooted in. Denise wants to build us a treehouse to live in. SNL’s Message for America is: Do drugs this holiday. The moon Is 100 million years older than we thought. I’m rereading Still Life W/ Woodpecker, my copy falling apart in my hands. The moon is wooing me, I feel it in my body when I’m away From home.
XIV. For Mom Somewhere, there is a Marlboro gold Burning between fingers and though She tells me not to smoke, my mother Passes it to me in the dark, in the light, Outside where the world comes home. There is Marlboro smoke & Aquanet Extra Hold and Vanilla Bean in a bathroom and in the bathroom, Time stops between generations. I learned to speak to you through a Notebook while looking in the mirror. Now, I see you in the mirror, you and how you've shaped me, me and how I've loved you, us and all the space we take up. Somewhere in my dreams, your hands Are always on my knees, squeezing or Just telling me you're right beside me. More than your voice, I know your hands, Your grip, strong, holding me forever. And though mine may be clumsy, I've Found I hold on tightly too. Enduring & powerful magic in our hands and fingers, always moving. Spinning silver and gold Or soft thumbs over cold knuckles. There is never a still moment, never a dull moment, never dead air or emptiness, No. You fill the room with light & I reflect it back. We keep our hands moving, alive, keeping warm. The way I learned to love, Little back and forth motions of a hand Or fingers. My mother taught me to look up at the sun to know where we come From. She taught me to look up at The moon to know I'm not alone. She said, all the stars came out when your were born. I said, that means they came out for you, too. XV. I'm having daydreams of building a home, roots that tangle into the ground, a table that just grows and grows. Bumper stickers: I ❤️ here / I ❤️ now
This entry is a part of my Nightmares & Morning Pages series, where I write every day and share the good stuff. Subscribe to keep up with me & share what you like (please).
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