SELF-DESTRUCTION

You with yourself

fingering the worse that makes it better

The prostitute you gave your virginity to

Atheist at the church of you

lurking inside your fragile temple

You inhale your delicious cancer

Taking a stab at yourself

 just so you can lick the wounds

The oppressor that undresses you

The lesser and the mess of you

The deluge that starves you

pulls my stomach out of my chest

Repulsed to be a snake

who must shed its skin

stillness itches

You must slide out from underneath it

where,

though it horrifies you,

your diamonds will glisten

Would that I could

I would take you home

where the rhythm commands dancing

A conversation

where grammar orders truth

and our tongues could untie the knots in our stomachs

I would have with you

But some melodies have no lyrics

INSOMNIA

In these sleepless hours

you visit me

you lay your head

on night’s black shoulder

and caress the wounds

My open eyes

listen to your tired stories

a mouse running on its wheel

Morning is suspicious

there are no guarantees, after all

The white noise, a siren

In the stillness of this night

you accompany me

as I race to the end of myself

Why do you jump up and down

shouting at me?

You evade my seduction

Light the candle

while I sing you a lullaby

Close your eyes

Your silence is much too loud

as you breathe down my neck

THE SORROW

The sorrow of you
set in like an old friend
an old woman
hanging on her bones
An art
written on brittle, yellowing pages
The woven words loosened
like a falling tooth
as the tongue pushes on it
tasting its blood

Sorrow is like that
petals freshly fallen on the ground
finished things
after
completing the colossal task
of bud

Words uttered
tasted
and silent
from lingering lips
the forgotten weight of a leg
page turned

the memory wrapped me up
like a fish feeling the weight of its scales
for the very first time

not seeing again
your eyes when they break
into laughter

Sorrow is like that

BROKEN

On that particular day

I got off the airplane

absolutely exhausted

my head swimming from

passing the sun

Nothing right

2:00 p.m. should be 6:00 a.m.

The haunted house

of parking lot and elevator

By the door

his name in black magic marker

Connoting something other

than him

I walked into his room

I saw him

unrecognizable

I looked through his disfigured face

my father

into his terrible open eyes

They rolled around in his head

He thrashed against his

restraints

My presence, irrelevant

I saw what insanity

must look like

He was so very far away

in a place

only

a broken neck

a broken back

a head injury

a crushed leg

a crushed arm

a head injury

a swollen damaged everything

can put you in

As the respirator

sucked in and spit out perfect time

as my eyes made the news

unreal reality

I fought to breathe

wincing and gasping

the disinfected smell of near-death

No form of hysteria

could unleash it

I needed to touch

what was so much less

than human

Fingernails sunk deep

into that huge swollen bear claw

Moisture seeping out

of that nearly exploding memory

of a hand

I swallowed back the vomit

as my legs

ran for the door

Water flowing

from my eyes and nose

coughing and lurching

I made it to the lawn

and watched the thin green blades

of grass

fall over

with the weight

of my grief

I couldn’t find him

Even the smartest people

didn’t know where he was

His name became

that broken chamber

that discolored misshapen cavity

inside of which echoed

a father teasing his daughter

And I prayed

that death

would set us both free

MY WORDS IN YOUR MOUTH

If I only I could tell you

Take the words from my mouth

Roll them around on your tongue

Let them rest like dew drops on your lips

Lick and wrap around them

suck them gently

tasting them fully

the bitter and the sweet

before you swallow them

I will take them back

as you whisper

and softly kiss them to me

My tongue will reach for them

And I will change them for you

I will chew them

slowly

until they break open again

and the juice trickles

down my chin

so that you can again

savor the nectar

from my lips

letting the sweetness of it

take you over

Only then

will you

understand

what I am

trying to say.

THE BOX

The walls were uncomfortable

of the box you put me in

Your exclusive world

on the outside

Just to lift a side

and breathe

Freedom is something to be

inhaled

Feel it

lung fingers

velvet tissue

Breathe it in

Rub it in

Drink it in

Lose the gasping

and savor it like wine

on just the other side

Fists pounding

I am more than

your square eyes

I am saturated

Thunder sounds in the desert

and inside of veins

constantly arriving

with each deep breath

My exclusive world

wrapped with satin ribbon

to be opened

THE ONLY TRUE GOODBYE IS SILENCE

The only true goodbye is silence

mocking you as you argue with it

Words like gone don’t make noise

The song of the burnt forest

once the fire is completely out

Green tree memory mantra

that never delivers

The was of it

The quieter ever louder and louder

Absence gloating in the present

No act of contrition or expression

can relieve it

No act period.

The meaning of that

only after the final punctuation

A period longing

to drop its mouth open

and become a comma

The brutal past-tense of lost

WRAPPED IN THESE WORDS

My moments

are what I offer

wrapped in these words

a snake sliding through its skin

rain sailing through the wind

sun diamonds floating on water

still tea in a green cup

Seek me out

in these places

Seeds lodged in the core of the fruit

your savoring them, their only purpose

The constant nows

that make and break me

The sky wraps her arms around a cloud

dancing through the great room

Every performance, opening night

This is my spectator sport

fish swimming through my lenses

the perfect rhythm of their applauding tailfins

or the sun caressing the moon

leaking their collective shine on night

My legs hold me up

snapped to attention

THE LANGUAGE IN YOUR HEAD

you hear the language in your head

banging around in there

sticking to the sides

soaking through to the very middle

making noise

noise and meaning

noise and nonsense

the silence, even louder

angst and joy, mere understatements

when words are put together

weaving in and out of up and down

informing us, lying to us, singing and screaming

answering, acknowledging, communicating

excusing, exclaiming, pardoning, parting

they knock around

when you hear the language in your head

static on a radio you can't turn off

they lay around

and where does the nerve come from

to gather them up, arrange them

put them in an order that makes sense?

shreds of paper blow in the wind

once part of something complete

a meaning bigger than its parts

reduced to rolling meaninglessness

flags surrendering to the wind

bars and bars of music

broken and torn to silence

MORE AND LESS THAN WORDS

They say

that there are active sentences

and agents

and objects

Intent can be diagrammed

Silent fragments

together

mean something

With the longest spoon in the world

we stir them up

and spit them out

fruitfully and fruitlessly

we chew and chew

savoring and gagging

struggling to swallow them

over the lumps in our throats

            Sputtering, slavering, and singing

            we spill and stain them

            and sometimes

            set them free

                       

            Meaningless without

            their consummated nourishment

And sickened by

what they lack

Prepositions and propositions

go unanswered

and worse, unasked

Tongue tied with a satin ribbon

That decoration,

curled and dangling,

longs for a tiny grasp

to tug at its end

and release the middle part,

the tangled order,

of its essential knot

(for what is a ribbon

without its knot?)

Knots and nots

are so different

yet exactly the same

There is a place

where all ingredients

mean one

where the parts stack up

only to topple with

expression and nonsense

music and silence

sometimes

trying to say the same thing

sometimes

trying to say different things

and sometimes

trying to say

that which is

perfectly and horribly

unspeakable

CRASH

(Part I)

 Throughout the day

it blindsides you

You flinch with your stomach

You learn which vertebrae C1 and T7 are

and what an embolism is

and why he needs four different million-dollar machines

What you don’t learn

are the implications

(And all this

while she sits rocking on her bed

saying Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s in Spanish

counting the little smooth balls of her plastic rosary

while her Papa is perhaps held together with tape

in a dusty one-room clinica

with four dirt parking spaces

or more likely, dead)

You think about how much you collided

with his stubbornness

And now it saves him

and you

You complained because he walked so damn fast

Your legs trotted to keep up

And now you would give your left leg

if he could take one miniscule step

Broken, broken

Breaking you into pieces

Disconnected, disturbed,

insulted, damaged

Swollen bleeding ripping and crackling

Screaming clawing, resting, dying

Hanging on, fighting, waiting

Waiting

Holding together

Falling apart

Out on a limb

Out of limbs

Fucked-up nonsense

You flinch with your stomach

and dream that a split second in time

could be picked off like a scab

and made new again

(Part II)

The scars left were ambiguous

because they were so deep

Deep in the middles of bones

In the under under layer of tissue

And in other places

Things even had to be unscrewed

We wanted to be uninterrupted

We liked our former notions

of give and take

Once upon a time

the sadness took more

than we could give

and gave more than

we could take

But the bandages were finally torn off

White flags after the surrender

THE ONES I PICKED FOR YOU

 

The flowers threw up

their hands

and rioted

(and these are the ones

I picked for you)

BLUE WET

You admire each piece

tiny in its perfection

They tease you with

potential completion

Languid longing

The sky pulls you deeper in

and deeper out

with excruciating tenderness

Blue, so blue

Liquid blue

Each drop of that sky

drinking you whole

leaving nothing behind

but traces of

blue wet

Little tiny pieces

tugging at each other

through their distance

wanting to dissolve into each other

wanting to be one

submerged

in blue wet

-- Carolyn Kaltenbach (2001)

ARABIC

A foreign language

two Muslim women

deeply engaged in

Nothing but intonation

filling the air

Birds singing and chattering

in the trees above

their wrapped heads

sounds separated into

unknown words

Peaking out from her hijab

the smaller one is emphatic

an added shrill to

the strange sounds

spit out of her lips

Her sad, angry humanity

draping over her

The taller one

Her friend?  Her sister?

Breaking it open with

a gentle empathetic laugh

The shrill passes

the song pauses

and then a quick change

a slower tempo

they ease into an easier topic

rolling off their tongues and teeth

and from their throats

always back to the throat

minor notes

in an Arabian scale

PLEASE TELL ME

Please tell me

your angle that so compels me

Your take, your tale, your spin

your version, your light, your in

The padded room I live in

wallpapered with your words

invites my days and nights  

imagined songs deferred

Come, my dear, and say it

Clarify and elaborate it

Paint it for me and explain it to me

Illuminate me to the ways of you

that I might understand the says of you

and in turn of all things

the bigger biggest of what you sing

Communion, disillusion, reunion

anticipation, merging, fusion

The spoken, the true

the meaning, the you

Let my curtains open

to your narration sensation

that I may yearn and learn

and satiate and burn

Opening mouth, opening night

lay it down and say it right

weave your stories

through my in and out

Wrap me up in your tongue

tell me what it’s about