Yellow takes my hand in its own shaking grasp
In reassurance that she doesn’t know why
We’re so afraid, either:
Trapped in a state of tension
And our hearts slap loudly in our chests
At the reverberance in our ears
Of its throbbing
She says that she understands
And that is a greater strength
Than I could ask for from any more solid color.
Sometimes
When they criticize you how do you
Hold your wings?
I hold mine put
And down, descend a little, then more.
Cool air comes. Nobody cares how low
I descend, and the way my eyes close
Makes me disappear. They have their sky again.
So then a life I have, scribbling dust
When I turn, trailing as if to follow
Something inside the earth, something beyond
This place.
If I accept what comes,
Another sky is there. My serious face
Bends to the ground, the dust, the lowered wings.
William Stafford
It was already gone
Before they took away our plates
Before I lingered in the doorway
So I’ll explain myself:
It wasn’t you who turned away,
The shaking body sobs were when I said goodbye,
And I’m sorry.
A drunken excuse for sadness,
It was you in those tears,
And I gave them back before you could take them.
A regurgitation of the alms I think are deserving,
Because everything I do is mechanical,
And it makes me fucking sick
To ignore my modesty
And be an honest lover,
Giving every last drop
Because I’m tired of being discarded
Without a say
And living as the victim of a blur
Of misinterpretations, that follows me in every pile of rubble
In small pieces of the self I destroyed
A display of dramatics
So that you miss the point
And you won’t be tempted
To try and follow me,
Carrying particles that don’t fit back into place.
You created a void
And its emptiness started to fill:
But they lied to you
when they said you couldn’t breathe underwater.
And you can learn how to swim when you’re drowning
And since then, I’ve grown a thicker skin
So your icy waters can’t freeze me.
And every bridge you’ve bludgeoned can be repaired
Or we can just start over,
And let me stand
Because one day you’ll be too tired
To push me down, or grow thirsty
And drink it back
And either way, I’ve grown to love
Your frequent mood swings
And make light with the flames that fall from you,
A showy orange and red
That only burns itself out
And like a dead star, you hold fast to your own waning light
To make a colorful end
But charred: you quickly extinguish yourself
And slink away in embarrassment;
A sad kind without a crown
And you’ll get sucked into that black hole of your own defeat
And disappear.
But now, I won’t look for you,
Not even on the blackest nights.
When I lose you, I win a battle with myself
And my teeth attack a vulgar tongue
Slinging slurs at my indiscretion;
For feigning no dowry,
No reason for you to stay
Filling my glass of self-contempt
And guzzling its thick, sweet sedation
A victorious stab
Against the bleeding heart
I would be nursing
If its lethargic pulsing
Didn’t stand so strongly
As the trophy that I hold
For smothering my hopes for you
And for my own well-being
That I’ve chosen to forget.
Clocked on the last missed call
A late night: I forced myself to feign sleep
And ignore my waxing wanting
To hear the voice that sings me songs
And out life to it
Avoiding an obvious mistake
Tying a bow around my neck
To hag myself in front of you: a gift.
My very last self-sacrifice
That you can’t ignore.
