My Tormentor

Where is my soul, my faith, my reason?
What happened to my bright dream?
I gave it all to you for the promise of uncharted love and adventure.
In return you became bored and threw it all away with broken drumsticks.
You grow and I cling, vicariously needing your hope.
My need equaled only by your resentment.
Haven thrown out all purpose and sanity, I am left a hollow shell, my guts lined with infection, I ache and crave the relief of your touch.
Survival now is my goal, staying alive my only identity.
I lay on the shelf beside magazines, records, drumsticks, hoping to be the possession you reach for.
Your aspirations become my obsession.
Your attention the only nutrition for my starvation.

The stillness of night surrounds me and quiets the throbbing of rotting emptiness
Darkness distorts vision and relieves my eyes, swollen and red from eternal hysteriical tears.
I struggle to remain awake never to give in to the lull of sleep.

There I again find my dreams, wrinkled and torn like wadded up tissues, I open them and again become my own.
I am fearful of the peace of this slumbre for I know that it only lives in darkness and the sun will rise again only to blast away my clouds of contentment,
memory of a dream that was
Again the light will burn my eyes with reality and pierce my wounds with the familiar pain of your indifference.
Again I will seek the safety of your arms only to find the pain of your violent mood.
Again I will find myself despicable and fight to regain your gaze.

written to RS in 1975

Daddy ( Things I Meant to Say)

Things I Meant to Say 

Caught between dirty laundry and work schedules,
a tightness grabs my throat 
When the day lasts too long or the night too black

silent fear creeps in dreams
Three weeks turns to six months and then 30 years.

A stranger with a one-sided smile walks by 

a flash of dread -goosebumps

Photos of happy picnics or easy tubing down a river,

Did we actually  laugh?
Tastes of speckled perch, frog legs  and hush puppies 

Did it really taste so good?
Gulf Coast sunsets and my small hand reaches for your calluses

Did I reach or was it just to comfort your guilt.

A dewy dawn in a boat on a still fishcamp morning 

Daybreak, you and I alone on a lake without a shore .

Hot sticky air and sentenced worms in a box.  
The picnics, gone and no fishing mornings come searching to

change diapers or hang out the clothes.

I am content. 

Once I was a 12 year old girl,balancing hope and terror

No welcome mat.

Now I am an adult caught in the rituals of days

I avoid drifting in unfettered boats or PB&J on blankets

but my childhood festers, questioning

Were you ever even there ?

Nursing Home

She calls you "darlin" as she changes your diaper, one more before her shift ends,
But she'll never know the babies only your arms could soothe.
She quickly glances away from sad sedated eyes- glassy stare-   mirrors of a distant time.
She never saw them sparkle as you sang to a little girl with a long braid.
She posies you to your wheelchair and trembling old hands reach out for something or someone no longer there.
If only she could see the beautiful lace dresses those hands made for a little girl's dolls.
She brings you a tray, nutritionally sound, as bland as the wax paper that covers it.
No more chocolate milkshakes that you love, sneaking sips when no one was looking.
She humors mild requests and feeble talk as you repeat yourself--.mindless muttering,
Ah, but she never saw the wink in your eye or heard the quick wit in your reply.

She is efficient and thorough and not without kindness.
She knows your name,  and your medication schedule.
She is your caretaker, but she knows not who you are.

Oh Grandmother.

Black Eyes

Delicious Torcherer

Black eyes hold me with a lazer gaze,
Plunging  ,  falling without gravity,
an ocean of unknown depth
warm mouths search and command...
fishes slither  in transparent jelly.
whirling, drifting, sinking
deeper into dark salty water.

Relentlessly engulfing black eyes
Power and tenderness wrestle for control
No choice remains.

 Intoxication of oceanic whirlpools,
caverns and day-glo coral,
fishes and eels slither without shame
soft yet unyeilding,
teetering on the brink of destruction
Willingly diving, no weight, no time
 uncharted depth

Total surrender to black eyes, lost...
pulse and breath merge
perfect suspension
Only now as I start to drown do
Black eyes release their bondage.

Slowly like an image  in a developing tray
 eyes open to bare white walls,
The air is sticky and smells of ocean caves.
Treacherous black eyes flashing playful smiles of innocence
(surely they are aware of their threat?)

Like a child he wonders if I know who I am with,
Do you like me? meekly, he asks
Thunder roars and my brain evaporates
Ha, shyly I answer, yes.