two drafts
I can't decide about these. Any opinions would be most welcome. Just if you prefer one to the other, even. Thanks in advance.
What You Told Me
Not enough to make up distant facts, the half-brothers
in Scotland who left you a house in their will
when they died tragically falling off three separate horses.
Not enough to leave me questioning my own sanity
when it’s what I question all the time, all the false phone
calls and ridiculous rituals, all the paraded possessions.
You had to take it closer, take it harder, take it personally.
I am left with knitting sticks thrust deep
in tangled skeins of string. Theory of quantum physics
says we never really touch anything-so the yarn I unknot
is that much more removed from me. Except not really.
As if you could create a life and I could live it
through your lies. They are not simple ones, not omission or tact.
They blow up like the day you were held up at gunpoint
working the job you never had. It doesn’t matter
if they make contact, because I’m stumbling
over the edge of the yarn and the sticks, I poke myself in the cervix
trying to abort the blood I gave to you, the tissue of truth
cramping my belly, throwing up dreams every morning
when I finally call it finished. It’s not finished.
You crawl into the uterus you don’t really want,
I wipe my mouth when I can stop vomiting.
This unfurls like the shell of a hermit crab I once loved to hold
in fourth grade. Except I never went to fourth grade,
I studied at home with my books and my honesty,
and that is still what you’ll get from me,
even if I manage to terminate
this imaginary pregnancy. I’d like to call you imagination,
but I call you what you are: Compulsion. Pathology.
Sickness so deep in the tumored walls of your timid brain
there are no terminals for the axons to wait at, no synapses
bloody with contractions until they blow up the cash register
where all your change impossibly lies.
What You Told Me
I poke myself in the cervix trying to abort the blood
I gave to you, the tissue of truth
cramping my belly, throwing up dreams every morning
when I finally call it finished. It’s not finished.
You had to take it closer, take it harder, take it personally.
I am left with knitting sticks thrust deep
in tangled skeins of string. Theory of quantum physics
says we never really touch anything-so the yarn I unknot
is that much more removed from me. Except not really.
As if you could create a life and I could live it
through your lies. They’re not simple ones, not omission or tact.
They blow up like the day you were held up at gunpoint
working the job you never had. They contact me
and it doesn’t matter if I call you back.
You crawl back into the uterus you don’t really want,
I call you what you are: Dishonesty. Compulsion.
Sickness so deep in the tumored walls of your timid brain
no synapses bloody with contractions blow up the cash register
where all your change impossibly lies.