Storm

I am feeling so cooped up right now. Not able to stretch, to speak, to cry. Things twist and curve and roll off my eyelids like the storm outside. I shudder when the ground does. I flash green when the sky does. There is mania in my eyes and a hole in my chest. Like the weather, I am futile, prone to moods, given to hallucinations, taken by my thoughts. Scott waited so I wouldn’t leave to go score dope on the hill. My roommates’ cackle. I drown in loathsome loneliness. Nathan bites the bait. I scuttle along like a beetle. The cats wrestle. SHUT THE FUCK UP! I feel like yelling at the black girl on the couch. But she is my roommate, so I can’t. The fat girl int he kitchen is cooking fish. She is my roommate too. One Fat and Finnish, one Black and Bi-Sexual, and one Funny and Fucked-up: Me. Annette searched my purse for dope or a needle. If only she knew the bag was stolen. It’s often not what’s in the bag but the bag itself. But that’s life. Tabitha, the cat, ropes Oliver in, ripping through the screen door, swelling with sex and shunning from the rain. I sit and hesitate, whether to call my sister again.

The Defining Silence ~ in memory of Kenneth Koch

Could be the enclosed garden
Just before the humming birds arrive.

The pause when the raised voices
Have said all & drained the air of peace.

The restraint & halt as Monk’s hands
Briefly stop above the keys.

The edge reached as one foot
Holds above the precipice.

Cage’s 4.33
And hearing the aftermath.

The physical walk that overrides
The walk out of your head.

The pen above the page
As the mind empties, lets go.

The t.v. with the sound off
As we entertain each other on the floor.

The just before.