Poem

When I open myself up again to being touched,
I want to write poems again, and only then.
They never show up for me in the cool, closed spaces
of rest, or hiking alone up a mountain day after day.

Perhaps there is something that links poetry and touch,
skin on skin, two people breathing in and out of
each other, that feral and unfocused grasping. The strange
weight of some new arrangement of bone and flesh
pressing itself against your own frame, also suddenly
unknown to you. Something in it like words,
slippery, unfamiliar.

But no songbird or sunrise in either, no mention
now of loving anyone. Just hands and faces pushing,
pushing against the dark.

MJB

Yesterday was a phenomenal day. I listened to my morning affirmations and dutifully repeated them to myself--primarily because of a tarot card reading the night before which was clearly, inarguably, letting me know that the secret to my happiness (brilliant, sparkly, star and princess of cups-type unbelievable happiness) is to re-program the evil robot who habitually chants a litany of negative thought loops into my brain. Actually, he's not really a robot, per se, I'm thinking of someone else's evil mind-monster. No, mine is this horrible abs-of-steel Armani-suit wearing guy who works on Wall Street, that stands like he has a metal rod for a spine, just behind my right shoulder, and never seems to run out of criticisms. You're not a real writer, you're not taking care of yourself, you're irresponsible (that extension you filed for your taxes is about to run out and you still haven't found an accountant), you're wasting the last vestiges of your youth on a series of meaningless activities that are leading you nowhere, the bar is no place to find love, do you really think that at your age you can get away with wearing skirts that short? That kind of thing.

So he needs to be re-programmed. And I think this is possible. I think that my brain is just the site of a million chemical reactions per minute, and by breaking the usual patterns of chemical reactions that send me spiralling into self-deprecating and unproductive darkness, I can get rid of Armani-suit guy and replace him with someone more benign--a voluptuous, encouraging, maternal type of figure, perhaps, a woman who shakes her voluminous bottom on the dance floor without shame, say, and reminds me that, as amusing as all this self-deprecation is, I should never under any circumstances let it dictate the length of my skirts.

With this in mind, I pulled out the affirmations disk and threw in some Mary J Blige. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that what followed was a bit on the stereotypical side--me, in my underwear, dancing with abandon over the shiny surface of my hardwood floor, and singing along at the top of my lungs--to the dismay, I'm sure, of my bar-tending neighbor who usually sleeps until three--with the self-named soul hip-hop queen, about how whatever I do, it's gonna be hot, and how I got my head on straight, I got my vibe right, I ain't gonna let you kill it. I directly addressed this message to the Wall Street robot that lives in my brain, now gazing at me in surprise and vague horror at my vocal stylings and spastic dance moves, until he became nothing more than a crumpled, pin-striped, stayed-out-too-late doing blow heap of expensive couture in the far corner of my room. He really looked rough. I kicked him out the window.

And everything that followed that day was sheer delight.

Five-thirty in the morning you wake from an achingly repetitive dream in which you are telling an ex-boyfriend: "this is it, we're finished, you are looking at the last moment of this relationship," as you count out twelve pairs of socks from a basket, over and over again, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...and so on, back to one, two, three, four, five...And again. And again. You just keep counting and breaking up, and counting, and breaking up.

Something is burning a hole in your stomach. You open your eyes to the formless dark of this solitary hour before dawn, run your hands down your body, feeling the softness of your own skin, feeling grateful to occupy this skin. But what is this sick feeling? Oh, yeah, there was that misguided trip to taco bell at one o'clock this morning after drinking three beers at a friend's house and watching Punch Drunk Love. The kind of movie that makes you want to feel love now or never, the kind of movie that makes you want to smash up all your old keepsakes, burn your letters, forget you ever wanted to hold or be held by anyone, curl up into yourself and get good at being alone, because it's a terrifying world this world, this world of feeling, but you will have to crash or crawl your way through it somehow.

And you remember that yesterday that ex-boyfriend, the one from the dream, told you that you are the one--and you've heard this before, you nasty little heartbreaker--that you are the reason for his bitterness. That somehow you failed him. That you ruined him. And you know that this of course is beyond unfair, that you can't ruin someone, that we're all responsible for our own lives, that his life is his own precious and miserable gift just like yours is and he can do what he will with it, that we're all made of blood and bone and have to do what we can to carry it, that you are the one in the dream who is screaming inside, that you are the one in the dream so full of rage and disappointment that you feel like you are being pulled apart, that you are the one in the dream counting, and counting, and counting.

Anecdote:

Making out with a guy I don't really know that well but nonetheless wish to impress with my formidable sex skills, I attempt that maneuver where you, from your reclined position--suddenly, passionately--flip him over onto his back and take charge. However, since I am unfamiliar with the landscape of his bedroom, and have disastrously underestimated the size of the bed we are on, my smooth move ends in a very loud and decidedly un-sexy crash to the floor. And, so much the worse, he cracks his head audibly on the nightstand on the way down. So there we are, in an awkward tangle of half-unfastened clothing and bruised limbs, and I have to make sure my poor abused friend is not bleeding from the knot on the back of his head.

What can I say? I saw that going differently, you know, in my mind.