FREESTYLEVISION

Mastery of the conflict
Defense mode, all your moves encoded
In my movements
Follow blindly so you have the reinforcements
You don’t need
I’m down for, anything, you ask for
Until it dawns on me that I needed a little more
Than a brain of a drone that was a never ending problem that wasn’t my own
Gotta go…
So I wait on your call
I laid by the phone because I was waiting to fall
For you, and your pass times
Your trail, and my confines
Your disappearing act was damn sexy when the whole room was black
But when the sun comes up, I can only see myself
And the grasping for straws, the looks of my fall
The drawing your pictures on ceilings and walls
I couldn’t anymore
It’s hard cause I know you’ll be back, you’re sure I’ll be here
But the problem is that you know when and where
And I couldn’t keep a straight face if asked if you care
Mastery of patience, or obediently head whipped, pathetic
AKA
Not really, with the former
Was just being polite
I couldn’t… anymore
So this one will be different
I close myself off to not let her know that I’m willing
Unstable
Way more than able to be all that she doesn’t even need
So I’m out to show her that she needs to give it all for me
But me, she isn’t
And I liked her originally because she didn’t want to be
So she appropriately did what took me so long to do
Left, without all the baggage
Left, for me
My past apparently has perpetual consent to make my future have a gray heavy tint
You heard it
So no denying you’re your own reoccurring burden

For being everything you needed and then checking out
How could you know if I didn’t what I was about?
For being the thickest of contradictions
Life description only changed in intonation
For dying on the inside, but sailing on the out
But hearing only my heart when it asked to migrate south
Or whatever
Direction that faced away from you
Value feel more than past days
My molecules only recognize gravitational pull…
For seeing you wholly
You needing me what you need me to be
Chameleoned as holy
Your tranquil landscape
Excused the scorched soil’s uptake
Hell raised in a snow globe
You watch
It burn
In all of its glory
Flames are fine with you as long as it’s contained
Complete
Allegory
But went
Unnoticed
More or less for the better
Wouldn’t want a mental breakdown
You realizing that there is more to life than your shape
Round and round.
For preferring schwiggly lines than your taste
For putting me before you
For once
For the last time
For being able to only to give an apology and explanation in rhyme
I needed to drain the reservoirs to see how far I can go on E
I needed
My own
Please…
Forgive me

Why can’t I do this?
Third time this week that no love alone defeats no love with someone
Nothing with meaning isn’t anything… important
But anything is better than nothing at all.
So why is it that my body rejects it and my mind goes limp
And I end up throwing and waking up face down in my own pool of shhhhh…
Kicks
To the stomach
Thinking about all the times her complaints were valid
And I could have bandaged up the deep but invisible cuts
But I didn’t want…
…to bad enough
All I needed was another quick-fix line assured to just buy me some time to get a better rhyme for her to call shotgun in the Maserati
Stepping on the gas on the highway to one sided “this won’t last”, other sided “if I give him another chance, maybe my half full and his half empty will come together and fill this love starved glass”
But I didn’t,
I couldn’t,
This thinking was diluted
And even though this theorem benefited my new autonomy
Some left over part of me said I
No,
You couldn’t bottom feed me
Or her
Patchwork was no longer an option for the mended hearted
You both deserve better
She’s too good for this
And you use to be worth something
Now a trip with me to the pawnshop will only get you a dirty apology
The gift that keeps on giving
And now I try to drown her out with loose toothed sorrow eaters,
So the world can be captivated by stories of well thought out distractions
Substitutes for the only kind of lust that really works:
Love
But I can’t trick myself
It seems her face shows up every where I turn.
No relief.

No where, to start.
Betrayed by all my days that show that pain and life don’t have to be a part of one another.
Synonymously combined.
I honor us, but I have to accept that
Your reality
Just confirms all my lies
Perception begins at conception
Again and again
Every moment, every instant
Can be honed as your beginning.
Not a force, just a choice
You’re the force, being more
Than your tattered fabric, too elastic, stretched-and-pulled for others use reflection can ever tell you
I love you, I never said it, but I loved you.
And I admired
The fact
That no matter how far you’re pushed,
You find,
Your way back
And so much liberation gained,
Like you’re asking for the chains again
But I’m asking for this beginning that’s never happened.
One’s that spectrum is a light that can blind your mind. Death to this sight
To the point, that the sun
Would never leave, so never comes
Will always be, in your soul
Until reality unfolds.
And the walls,
The walls fall
And the possibilities become endless.
Limitations are illusions
Dissolving any premise.
And you start, where you end
Where you’ve never been again.
And you’re more than just content to allow your mind to bend
And let go, all you know. Knew, but now you don’t, so you go
To find the truth
That’s between, me and you
That’s somewhere
Beyond
Me and you.
I love you, you know that, I loved you
But now I just want to hug you until you dissolve into molecules
So you can start over again
But it’s not my job to change you, or the past
I’m just not allowing myself to look back
Good luck…

9th note to self.
P.S: Hope it’s the last

I had a really scary dream. But not as scary as the sweating burned bodies of the past. This time it felt like I was sucked into a vortex of past nights crying. Like when I called that doctor woman– she had given me her card on my day-pass away from the psych ward. “I’m having a harder time than I thought I would.” She said, “I know.” That was on a Saturday night. I was crouched on the floor between two sets of bunkbeds and four female roommates at the Salvation Army– the “Salv”.

But this time, I hid in a tunnel. I battled six-hundred girls. I crashed a bus. I called for Travis, in tears, but I couldn’t dial his number, over and over I tried to reach the T’s in my phone-book. There was evidence that I had crashed the bus. My drawings from the students on the school bus. My pillow left behind. A soggy Cheerio’s box, yellow and bent, under my forearm in the rain. I was naked in a shower and a kid kept trying to buy a ticket from me, bursting into my tent, over and over like a gerbil.

I dreamed I woke up on the fancy lobby couch at work. With a vision of my boss bursting in, standing over me in a purple shirt and thick glasses, his ID badge hanging over his taught belly. Firing my ass to oblivion. To no health care. To more bad dreams and calls to Travis I could no longer afford. I was asleep on the job. He would be justified in letting me go. But he didn’t understand. It was four am, I had been plucked from my bed where a man with a pale wood baseball bat staggered outside my window. Where a spider turned the same color yellow as my bedspread and crawled over my fringe. I threw it in the toilet, carrying it in my thong, and didn’t wake up Nathan. Like the cockroach that had scurried over my black shoes– the ones with the socks attached– only moments later.

Nathan. Our legs intertwined. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he had a f*cked-up foot or not. My foot kept circling his, trying to detect a defect. Or were his feet just long and flat? Or was he missing a toe? He didn’t limp, I noticed when he got up to make coffee. I spat out the coffee because I coughed. But also because I wanted to seem vulnerable and cute, and his. He wiped my chin. We still haven’t been together– like that. I told him about Patrick and how I wanted to get to know him too, and he called him a douche-bag. I laughed inside.

But my dream– I woke up wanting to call someone. Not Travis at this hour. Not dad– last time he was scared I would go outside and battle the man with the bat. In my dream I had called my God-father by accident. That’s how I knew it was a dream. I didn’t have a God-parent. Except for Sidney. Or Scott. I texted Meghan, my make-shift sponsor, and waited. Thinking about her Erin story and one-thousand plastic bags. Thinking about Poppy and her incessant need to chatter. Waiting for either for a reply, or for my boss to come fire me. Or to return to the couch when an opportune moment arose, when Don the weather-guy and used car salesman wouldn’t be taking his turn sleeping there. A beautiful woman was on the news next to me talking about anti-American rhetoric.

I hope someone reads this. Then I’ll know I’m real. My phone is next to me. All you have to do is call. Until then I’ll be unsettled, like I forgot something. I’ll be here, drinking cold coffee.

When I see me through your eyes I am strong
and I can do anything
When I take your arm I can walk tall
and without
fear of falling
With you
I am full of hope
I can accomplish anything
I feel love
I feel complete
With you

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2008

I stuck my foot out only to trip
How many times must I fall before
I get it…
Is it worth the inner pain
and buckets of tears…

Yet glutton for punishment am I
Ever hopeful for a sign of change
A glimpse of the man I loved…
God help me…
Still love…

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2007

I think of moon beams on the water
and the both of us giggling drunk under the boardwalk
a late summer breeze off the ocean to cool us
and I broke my toe
we were young and in love

Now years later with pilled up bills
and some broken dreams
and a residual ache from that broken toe
and
I can still say
I love him…

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2007

As I look out my window I see the wind gently lifting the leaves from the branches and it reminds me of you lifting my hair from the back of my neck and kissing my nape. I quiver like the leaves at the memory.

I see the clouds drifting against the turquoise blue sky and covering the mountain tops and they remind me of when we were on a mountain top blanketed in the clouds sharing passion for the first time.

I hear laughter and I look out my window and I see a man feeding chocolate to a woman. I knowingly smile as I remember the slight feel of your finger tip against my lower lip as you place a bit of chocolate in my mouth. The taste of both delectable.

I remember the first time you placed your hand at the small of my back. A shock like electric went through my body and I looked at you and knew right there and then…I want to know you…your mind…your soul…your body.

More things I remember and they make me crave you more… to see you with my eyes… to hear the intake of your breath…to hear the sound of your voice as you tell me of things I do not know…the unconscious seeking of our fingers to entwine… the touching of knees… leaning in for lips to touch… to open…to meld…

Oh my sweet…let us make more memories… soon…

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2007

Prelude
Knee to knee
A single violin plays
your hand on my shoulder
eyes on each other
I catch my breath
I wait
I’ve been waiting
Now
you kiss me
After all this time
you open my mouth
and you kiss me
Preluding
what is to come…
Again..
Anew…

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2008