shock

I went to this party for something to do
and I went right home once I saw you
to the street, to the train-cause I tripped on a shoe
and besides, I can't even look at you.

Because your mouth is a ship's prow
or maybe a snowplow
fearless
surrounded by Antarctic ice flow
reckless
on a mountain road- slick, dark and narrow.
Breaking the ice
(feel it under, around us?)
But breaking the ice is dangerous,
breaking the ice really is dangerous.

I am a
railroad spike,
rusty tumbleweed cabbage.
lumpy gravy. mannish. crude.
I could work in the oilfields and they'd never hire you.

I went to this party for something to do
and I went right home once I saw you
To the street. To the C train!
Because after looking at you
the ice it melted and I fell right through.

Yeah, I went to that party for something to do but
(Shut up Ugly Dress! Fat Ugly Mess!)
you know...... I can't even look at you.

regret and reckoning

I've had time to think about it
(YOUR MOUTH IS WHAT, REGRET IS WHY)
time to replay it again and again
(AND STARE AT YOU LIKE A MAGIC EYE)

Time and Space don't care
that we'll never collide
(in Herald Square)
I can't clear my mind or understand me
(All WEIRD, REPELLENT, SOLITARY)
and Time and Space won't rewrite a Single Involuntary
not one February night.

You found me in possesion of a freezer burned heart.
You arrested me with your eyes.
For trafficing powder-fine, freeze dried desire and other senseless crimes.
So I'm sentenced
to these wide open spaces, this lonely life
to the water trough and its layers of ice
to a few thousand miles- a year gone by
full of schemes, schemes, and fever dreams!
so on and so on...
As I struggle to escape the cattle in the field
and contemplations of suicide.

I'm cracking up out here so I'll confess:
Your expertise (I love!) your face
your cold shoulder
I love it all to my disgrace!
Time and Space, Space and Time
won't rip up my warrant and rewrite
a Single Involuntary Solitary February Night

So, I'll rewrite it here:
You stupid thing. Don't leave the warm apartment
(HIS SMOOTH SIDE)!

And this order is tangled in my hair, and written in
(IN THE SKIN)
of my wrist but always
(every goddamn time)
denied.

Lights out. Remember it bitterly well
Lockdown. Roll tape again you treacherous brain cells:

It was a bone cold thing

to good-girl-it down the stairs and out the door quick
spewing out childish disappointment there
and I'm still a little sick.
a year away, I touch a cool scar,

love the bruise

(it's just pride)
Leaving is what I always choose
a statue with a girl inside.

We were very close. You sat right there.
And under this year's pile of coats
I still feel last year's winter air.

Dear Colette by Erica Jong

Dear Colette,
I want to write to you about being a woman for that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . hangs above my desk like my own muse. I want to tell you how your hands reach out from your books & seize my heart. I want to tell you how your hair electrifies my thoughts like my own halo. I want to tell you how your eyes penetrate my fear & make it melt. I want to tell you simply that I love you--though you are "dead" & I am still "alive".
Suicides & spinsters--all our kind! Even decorous Jane Austen never marrying, & Sappho leaping, & Sylvia in the oven, & Anna Wickham, Tsvetaeva, Sara Teasdale, & pale Virginia floating like Ophelia, & Emily alone, alone, alone. . . . But you endure & marry, go on writing, lose a husband, gain a husband, go on writing, sing & tap dance & you go on writing, have a child & still you go on writing, love a woman, love a man & go on writing. You endure your writing & your life.
Dear Colette, I only want to thank you: for your eyes ringed with bluest paint like bruises, for your hair gathering sparks like brush fire, for your hands which never willingly let go, for your years, your child, your lovers, all your books. . . . Dear Colette, you hold me to this life.