Donna with her cat Pooh, Maine, August 2011

I just wanted someone I could walk at night with

I just wanted someone who could teach me how to sing the blues in key

I just wanted someone to stop me from walking into traffic

I just wanted someone so I would not punch out the power line box with a knife

But it’s too late because I brought a monster home who poisoned the well damaged the marrow

I am not trusted that I won’t bring back a demon to the lair once more

If people you knew as a child, were indifferent to you, then another year hated you, and then another would wave hi to you,

 Ask you why you’re so ugly, ask you why does your father come get you, and ask you, how come you never smile

Isn’t that person going to be better off alone?

Better that the computer light never goes out

And that you do not have anyone who would care that you finally got your ears re-pierced

That when you sat in the chair you were relieved it was a needle for thread that you did not need to be numbed only given a one second warning

Knowing it was not going to be painful, it was soon going to heal with a lovely and shameless scar, no one knowing you is invested in such a memory

You just wanted someone to speak late at night with that would not make you feel they could steal everything from you

That if you got too close they would corrode you or the person only let you talk so they might be closer to an opportunity to take off your flesh

There is the last one

There is the right one

And I will never know either

mother and daughter, "Stronger Than All"

L to R:

Ivy (daughter) & Stefanie (mother), September 10, 2011 Delaware Water Gap, PA

'just a perfect day I'm so glad I got to spend it with you', i take another bullet down this shade of veils and vials, but I wouldnt trade it for anything

fall has been a pretty good season

How to take a shot in harm's way

So when I am in the bathroom and whether the light bulb is rose, burnt, bleach, mismatched or stark I always notice a gathering of blue veins surge heavily under the skin of my arms, thighs, knuckles and wrists like a new ravine is awaiting new possibilities to overwhelm old injuries

I think how I must disappoint them all

How much sicker and sadder the eras and thicker the carnage has gotten

How swollen and reddened foreshadows another evening’s finale

 Bluish and violet discoloring the am and pm

 Darks eclipsing what time is asleep and how much longer till the next season

The years dispensing next time the first the second the present the last

Encountering some foolish, foreign amateurs a battle right up my alley

The chair focuses and transfers actuality

So I will be able to get up tomorrow morning

Now I sit on the couch into the bed

So I will awake for the dog and stay up in the meantime

The house is the presence where my mind imagines how life will cycle or cease to start over again

The veins in my knees and my palms never are as detectable as the veins below the knuckles stretching seaweed blue chlorine to the elbows

Will they burst open on their own one day or wait for an old injury to ajar

When I appear in the bathroom mirror

I think my face articulates the clearest

No matter how many hours I gain leverage

The bulb nevertheless stalls any thorough light from evolving

 And I think the lifelines will trap me before any changes happen

And I think

What a disappointment to all

To stop the bloodletting from occurring

 ______________

mon. sept. 26, 2011

'Future is Wild'

late night/am August 27, 2011

a beautiful day for a cemetery

Greenwood Cemetery Brooklyn NY Saturday October 22, 2011 with Wayne and Yi

Joseph

Greenwood Cemetary Brooklyn NY

Saturday October 22, 2011

this is a story to break hearts tenfold, twist the knife

  I think of all the daughters and fathers who have been spilt up and torn apart from one another through divorce, marriage, fear, or separation, wedlock, revenge or selfishness, and the supposed “best thing” for all involved. Physically separated, no forwarding addresses, forever off the ringer phones, no voices, or photographs and no one in the new circumstance to preserve a memory or an inkling of the person.

I wonder if I was lucky that I did not have to experience that trauma as a child or ironically, maybe I am not so lucky because what I had with my father as a child; that was all I was ever going to have.

There is no reunion, no reconciliation, no chasing second chances, no persisting or demands, or wrong numbers, failed understanding, passive-aggressive emails, cut off voicemails. There is no false hope that we will meet again.  

The best thing though is that I would have never had this kind of relationship with my father anyway we were always together and we were so close. In my brief time with him, I never once was left doubting his love and dedication to me. Our time was a lifetime in itself. Some have many decades and years and never are so close.

Now I have been alive longer than the amount of years I was able to spend with him.

Worst of all is that I have nothing and there is no future and that is never going to change; and the only exception (if I let myself imagine) may only come when my remains leave this earthly plain.

I think of all the daughters and fathers whom never had a chance and that I did have what some will never experience; this is why it is easier to make it through all the times that I miss him. The infinite moments that I will never allow to rest despite the poison of loss and trauma, it is necessary for me if I want to love and remember him as I do.  

'I hope that you're keeping some kind of record'

late january 2011

Life with one less organ

they just close their eyes and go to sleep one day

'because you have seen some unbelievable things'

school photo 6th grade fall 1993

it seems the feelings that are the hardest to get out and be untangled from are the slow moving ones

                                     what a sad and gray day when you are turning into bone

September 14, 2011

sometimes the monologue ruins everything

once in a while the choir stops to come and get you