Vision of my mother

Walking, half stilted, hand on hip and gluteals

Dry coughing, like whooping cough, the action not the sound. She's not concerned.

The cough is helping her breathe. It's when she doesn't cough, when she feels the desert in the canyon of her throat (you can hear the wind)... It's choking her like the absence

of a thousand seas and too many discordant voices. She sees me and begins to say

"Silent watcher, dreading child, my cough is the first mournful gape of my reaching mouth.

I will swallow you and bury you with your fears.

When you resurrect you will place your hand on your hip, you will cough on wind.

Cover your cough, a lady is polite, choke on your mother's silt, sifting souls"

She wanders away

No emotion just poison

And dead wind.

I'm skinny AGAIN

Like I was way back then

Except when I was twenty

And cutting I was never asked

If something was wrong

And now that I'm forty

And divorced

I must be snorting shit up my nose.

My weight loss couldn't possibly be

The reality that I'm no longer

Feeding my feelings

And my metabolism is, has always been,

Was fast, and this "wain" figure

Before you may seem a ghost of the girl

You knew the past ten years

But she was an extra large shell

Of hollow dreams and neglect

Now I'm thin but it wasn't purposeful

I didn't diet I like myself fine

and I get it

You're uncomfortable with whatever size

I might be because

Somehow even now

the size of my body

Explains my character.

How about my body is a container

That holds myself and

I decorate it how I wish

I grow it's size or shrink it

Based on MY need

I wash it and dress it

With my wishes

And no one else gets to decide

The things I must have done

To myself

Because......

I'm troubled

Fucked up

Drugged out

Anorexic

And full of toxins

Like if you knew me

That would be any measure

Of the reality I'd seek

How about I was two hundred six pounds

And happy in my skin

Despite the state my heart was in

And my body changed with medication,

Yoga, illness, surgery, a lack of appetite

And now I'm one hundred twenty pounds

And still happy in my skin

So please stop telling me

What box you'd like me to fit in

Especially since no matter

The shape I am larger

Than your mind

And the tiny wrapper

It resides in

Drifter I have been

And am, a traveller a visitor

Here and in between

Among the watchers

The weary and the hungry

And there I walk

A shadow unseen

I take the old, the vibrant young,

The child on the green

I am not greedy

They come freely to me

The pained and yes the fearing

With their drifting smiles

They all come waltzing

Here with me

A gentle touch

A peaceful slumber

Life is but a dream

I sing them sweetly

To lands asunder

I sing them softly

A lullaby

Through veils

Through doors

Through roads long past

I sing them gently

To peace at last

A Dorman

Some things are too delicate

For hands that cannot ask

Like the ever melting candle

And the dripping of its wax

Ephemeral as the dawn

And rising with the dew

The ever breakable spiritless

Quaking beauty of you.

Some things are quite passionate

Quixotic in their glee

Bacchanal in nature

As a fig leaf falling free

And still the fire clamored

At an overwrought iron gate

Became an inferno

Licking the metal that it ate

There's a stench of sodden poison

As if hemlock gave off gas

As I watch the wealth of us

Drained from an empty glass

Perhaps love isn't measured

In reality but dreams

And it flies as it can

On broken made up wings

A Dorman

Your hands, fingers long

Bones so straight, skin paper thin

Every mineral sane

Blood just like anyone

Every drop of water, sweat, cells

Complete.

Calcium like the bones you built me,

Iron your stubborn refusal to treat

Your broken mind, like

Hemoglobin pulsing,

Ready to burst, plasma healing

Even as you bite down again.

I wanted to be hydrogen

Floating

Be oxygen

You breathed.

Felt as a part of you,

Not your chromosomes,

Your DNA that feeds my psyche

I am as much a part of you

As your hands

And every memory

They've broken against.

I find myself 

A little torn 

From the moorings.

I fear I've lost 

My balance,

Tripped up myself 

In honesty.

I've given you 

All of me,

All my inconsequential 

Sometimes nervous 

Truths, they're like 

Loose teeth crumbling

Into my palms.

I try giving 

Them away 

But no one understands

How valuable 

They really have become.

I've cut those 

Teeth on my 

Own softness,

My flesh,

Even the bones 

My soul is said 

To reside in.

I've tested them

Against every faith

And every lost race,

Every good fight 

I've put down 

For awhile.

I can't return

The scars I've 

Given myself

Or the fear 

I paid for

But I've loosened

The corners of 

My mind,

Accepted the dark 

That strays there

And the light 

Weight of pasts

I've learned to 

Carry, arms outstretched

Growing heavy at 

Times, when mania

Tries to tell me 

Loneliness is curable

And God, what I can 

Remember of him, 

Tells me loneliness

Is cureable.

Salvation waits

In submission,

Turning my identity 

Inside out,

Stopping who

I am, sometimes 

An open wound, 

An odd ball, a never

Quite understood

Piece of happy vulnerability,

An open book 

With pages meant to 

Be torn. There is 

No salvation for 

Who I am, no 

Stationary moment 

When my thoughts 

Will pause and 

Let me be.

I cannot see 

How there is 

Any answer under heaven

That supplies 

Something other 

Than divinity 

Or damnation.

For me I choose

This shell 

I live in 

I've been afraid

To speak

For too long. 

A Dorman

I am born

And born

And born again,

Each time

From truth

Stripping away

The I who was before

Each time

More crystalline,

Naked.

The mind weeps,

The secrets of myself

Blow away

And the vacuum

That remains

Becomes, again

And still

I am

I have been

A high minded church girl

But I've lost my faith

More in love with science,

The truth, and grace.

I don't have time

For doubt, or fear,

Crying over spilled milk

Till I haven't any tears.

The bones you'd

love to pick with me

Have already been ingested

Weighed against my gut

And fully digested.

Blind faith sits heavy

It's a beast of a burden to bear

And the weight

Of some old man's morality

Isn't worth any of my cares.

I know our brain

Creates guilt from chemistry

And those chemicals in your view

Make a sinner out of me.

But I'm not born of the spirit

My soul doesn't sing like a lark,

At least not in church on Sunday's,

More often in the park.

You see my nature decrees me

A child of the stars

And my hopes are built with my hands

Not crumbling stacked cards.

The love I proffer doesn't waiver

And it's not made of holy vows

It simply is in my nature

To ooze oxytocin like nipples

On a sow.

So when you tell me

I'm more like Cain than Abel

I'll tell you I'm more complex

Than some teeny tiny fable.

Perhaps that's hubris

And I've risen above my station

But I cannot for the life of me

Accept your condemnation.

Your book does not explain

Adam and Eve's children's children's children

And why it's okay for them to fuck

But not me and my cousin.

In truth the only profit

To be gleaned among the pages

Are the small truths

That already defined humans through the ages.

Love your fellow man

Love him as best you can

And when you can't don't kill him

Turn your back and walk away.

Try to be forgiving

Let go of shit, okay...

~A Dorman

Last night I watched

The stars,

The hard glimmer

In space,

A touch of light

Against your face,

Against the taste

Of me...

Felt my pulse race,

A meteor

In veins

Rushing under skin,

Sore, worn against

The hood of a car.

Restless, ajar,

Almost opened,

Like the universe

Displayed.

Orion's Belt

Hanging around my neck

Melts

A fire in my gut,

Reflected wet,

Where Castor and Pollux

Pulse and burn.

A Dorman