I work odd hours.

I like walking quietly down long hallways
in tall buildings during business hours.
When everyone is shut away in their offices
or trying to stay awake in lecture halls
looking at powerpoints and projections
I am creeping past doorways without making a sound
catching bits of conversations
portions of solutions
nodding in agreement

I think about pulling fire alarms
and sending everyone out onto the sidewalks
standing in the ante meridiem sunlight
in their nice shoes and trousers
crossing their arms
in business casual button ups
looking at their watches
sigh and roll their eyes
small talk with coworkers
about weekend plans and
heading home for the holidays.

But me, I work odd hours,
putting my hands on people
convincing children to keep breathing
Sliding needles under skin
to puncture veins and gain access
to the network of vasculature
which will receive my metered medications
and reveal its diseased secrets
in collected and labeled vials.

Your body can't hide behind itself
and your blood will tell the stories
your mind has tried to hide.

Dreamt

Cycling an anxious road
in a mind where day turns to night in an instant.
Where dead ends are marked as through streets,
unfinished bridges left unmarked
over endless ravines.

My body feels small as it falls asleep,
yet limitless as it dreams of flight and kitchen fires.
My mind haunted by dreams of reality
clinging to me well into the afternoon.

Asking my husband if that was a dream-
when I was wearing the purple sweater
despite the sweltering heat
and we talked about getting Thai food for dinner
but went to the taco stand instead.

He raises his eyebrows.
"Ok, that was a dream,
but do you want Thai food now?"

So we ride our bikes out for dinner.
He takes the lead,
sailing through stoplights
down named boulevards,
crossing well lit streets
and finished bridges.
So unlike the ones I ride in my mind
tunneled through my own thoughts
and into the frightening dreamt reality
of my own wakeful sleeping self.

strength

My brain is a beast of burden that I will never understand.
It carries around far too much on its back
lashes down the old hurts instead of letting them fall to the wayside
My brain is prepared for anything...
as long as it's the worst case scenario.
As long as it's the impending plague,
the coming famine, the doubtless drought
that may never appear.
Why can't it be prepared for the endless goodness
the forever and ever endeavor?

My brain is a beast of burden that I may never understand
and this discipline in small doses is doing me no good
when what I need is a two-hour tongue lashing,
a good brow beating.

But strength is hard to see
when muscles are covered by skin
but I have peeled the skin back before
I have seen the form
and known in my muscular heart the function

But strength is hard to see
when the muscle you need most for it
is no muscle at all
as formless as the feelings
it longs to express
and about as functional
as your vermiform appendix
buried deep in your abdomen

So I will use this beast of a brain of mine
let my mouth speak the words that
give form and function
to every unspent second
to every ounce of hidden strength
that I have squirreled away
for just such an occasion...

blame it on the weather

It's a gift and a curse that I live in this reactive body of mine.
So perfectly, predictably responsive.
Stimulus input, response output
and nothing left to blame.

I've grown weary of this equal and opposite reaction routine.
I'm ready for one direction, ready to make a little headway,
instead of holding the steady hand of homeostasis.

I'll blame it on the weather.

I'll blame it on dead relatives.
Coffins solemnly wheeled out of churches into the rain
past the outside edge of your peripheral vision
through the blind spot you know is there but never see
as your aunt and cousins close their bodies in on each other-
Thanksgiving was too long ago
when he was always just down the back steps.

(And you wonder who will be next,
someone in your family will have to be next)

I'll blame it on too much time in hospitals.
Surrounded by the fetal monitoring strips,
mapping out the early and variable decelerations
of a tiny heartbeat inside a body that is only potential
that has never felt the air on a hot day
or left a carbon footprint
or sat under a tree for shade, looking up at the faces of family


I'll blame it on this eternally two-sided coin
one side the sterile, slow slipping away
of a life timed out in alarms at the nurses' station.
The other the bursting, flowering fullness
of the woman about to bear fruit,
the sweaty scream and push
that accompanies our entrance into this world
this one world we must eventually exit.

I'll blame it on the feeling that I'm stealing.
Ripping out an essential life force
as I grip this central line,
take hold of these pacer wires
and feel their resistance,
tugging at the ventricles
and pull what feels like miles of tubing
out from the insides of a 10 pound kid.

I'll blame it on 12 hour shifts
in these 24 hour days.

I'll blame it on regular sex,
leaving nothing left to yearn for.

I'll blame it on these slivers I keep getting,
reaching up from railings and floorboards
like little daggers
from a vengeful enemy,
bent on taking me by surprise.

Require

A plane trip through this pre-dawn - back in time and time zones- is all it would really require...

For long, lazy walks and movies every night and mass transit rides through tunnels and across the interstate overpass.
For hours of conversation in dimly lit bars with $2 well drink happy hours, stirring my drink until the ice melts and leaving it watered down. For a blush that extends from my chin to my cheeks, hidden behind my glass. A sly smile where I bite my bottom lip to keep myself from talking,

there are things I need to tell you.

All it would take. For a chance. For pitchers of beer next to the pool table, picking stray cat hairs off your shirt. Sitting on the front stoop.
Leaning in, laughing quietly.

I can see myself on the sidewalks, reflected in the stoplights clicking red to green, waiting for the crosswalk. It's all stop and go with me these days.

I miss you. I'm tired. There's things I need to tell you. There are places we need to find.
I tire of this mindfulness. This minding of manners, of marbles, of business, of p's and q's.
I tire of this wakefulness. Of midnight, of 1 am, of last call and bar close, of staring at the ceiling trying to sleep.
I tire of this loud music, these same familiar strangers, these dead-end cul-de-sac streets, this creeping weight gain, this elusive sunshine.
Of this ineffectual screaming. These wasted warnings.

I miss you. There are things I need to tell you.

before I got home

I've been wishing today on necklace clasps and eleven eleven

The wrong latitude has left me with a perspective even I don't recognize as my own

not to mention a terrible cold and

an empty bank account

Grown tired of light until 22:30, damn 24 hour time,

and twisting my ankle on cobblestone streets

looking the wrong way when I step out into the street.

Tired of different colored currency

menu items I can't pronounce

and wading through conversations

muddled with accents I love.

The people here are shrapnel

from an exploded dream I wandered out of

I wake unexpectedly every morning

to pick them from my teeth

and shake them from my hair

bleary eyed. sleep stunned.

Unsure of how to wander back,

less sure of my desire,

when every map is a wasted weather map

that failed to predict these atmospheric changes

in time to make any difference.

And any direction is every direction

leading north of my gut and

south of my sore throat

to a tiny four chambered room

prickly with daggers and thorns.

I fall asleep to my own pulse in my ear

pulling a thread of a raveling memory

as it whispers names and dates

I can't forget but would rather not remember.

may eighteenth, may 18th, 5/18

I wake up in unknown rooms

my own rooms dark and deserted

with faces I can't recognize and voices I can't place

carrying out plans I don't remember making

not quite sure I want to change

unsure how a month away

has left me saying phrases

even I don't understand.

metronome

metronome

If you're not supposed to bring liquids on the plane

then they shouldn't let me on,

not with these tears,

spilling from over active lacrimal ducts.

The entire economy class smiling sweetly at my sadness.

Late nights under the southwestern sky

leave you longing for the milky way and shooting stars

long after you've returned to streetlights and stop signs.

Clouds sit on a plate over the lake, showing their soft pink underbellies,
safe and out of reach from our claws,
who knows how many times my nails have scratched your back,
how many times can I climb your spine
in a week? in a year? in fifty?

Your pulse is the metronome of my mind,
your voice is my resonant frequency
every utterance creates a shudder
a shiver and a clatter in this loosely sutured heart,
bounding behind my rib cage.

sometimes simple questions [will you?]
with simple declarative answers [yes.]
are the only ones worth asking.

Strong emotions demand speechlessness
stunned simple words
four letter expressions
and three letter activities

It seems like yesterday,
like ages ago
since the oppressive heat of that day,
the escalator,
the asking...

september 2oo6