Chapter 8 Haiku and American Sentences

Traffic lights, exhaust

speeding, brake, waiting, roll, gain

an inch of asphalt

Bare, brown, lilting to

one side, dry rustling song rains

on the cold, clear air

Grey static torment, grating voice crackles, ears numb and discomforted.

Droplets of water  on the window panes and outside the unshovelled snow.

Bending over me screaming, red-faced with spit spewing as he ranted.

Walking on eggs, afraid and skirting the incessant criticism.

Words like heavy, painful drops of rain turn the sodden ground black with mud.

Promises like a sandcastle on the shore washed away in the waves.

Chapter 7 Anaphoric List Poem

Lying In Bed At Night

If you live with a madman you cancel dinner with friends with thinly veiled excuses

If you live with a madman you sit on your bed at night listening to the thud of books crashing against the wall in the next room

When you tell your frightened three year old you will protect him your stomach turns over

And you no longer recognize the shy student with bedroom eyes you once thought you knew

If you live with a madman you find your things in a garbage bag in front of the door

If you live with a madman you hide your mother's jewelry

If you live with a madman you cry into your sleeping son's hair at night

If you live with a madman you take care not to stir his rage, inflame his fury

If you live  with a madman you swallow hard and bite your tongue

If you live with a madman you plan your escape, pray for deliverance and wonder what you have done to provoke the wrath

If you live with a madman you lie still in your bed at night when his footsteps creep along the floors, never knowing what may come of his nighttime wandering

If you live with a madman you know you will need to disappear, slip away stealthily without saying good-bye to friends

If you live with a madman you stuff the pain back down, hoping it will end, betting that you can be strong and take it and come out on top

Unaffected

Undiscouraged

Undiscouraged

when I was hitchhiking in the middle of the night in the South of France

I was never afraid               

when I slept on the ground at the Paris train station with my 16 year old brother next to me, surrounded by addicts, because we missed the last train one night

I was never afraid

my parents would have said they were disappointed

but I wasn't afraid of that either - it was the least of my problems that night

when I woke up alone in the train from Florence to Paris with a man muttering in French who had closed us in the compartment and was shutting the curtains, I burst into the corridor waiting for someone to pass so I could retrieve my bags and move to another place

I was never afraid

just mad I couldn't have the compartment to myself

when I slid down the ski slope uncontrollably one morning early, stopping only when I hit a pole full force and my shoulder was pushed out of its socket, I laid waiting for rescuers

but I was never afraid

Conversations

when my mother died

he said,

we were lucky to have her

as long as we did

surely, I thought

9 years later

we spread her ashes in the sea

and he mused,

it's over for me, I just want closure

what is closure, I wondered

on a winter afternoon

he confided,

she was so much more successful than me, I think she was disappointed

yes, I answered silently

3 days before the sheriff came to seal the doors of the house

he asked me to sit and said,

I've lost the house

if you had told us, I sputtered

over dinner

he told me

he started drinking wine in the sacristy at 11 years old

why, the word formed mute in my mouth

NAME

Light. My answer as a child when asked to say a word beginning with the same letter as my name-everyone would think that it meant 'not weighing much', not the case-I was very tall, a bit chubby. 

Indigo and red color my thoughts.

Stubborn, or so they tell me.                                                                                                

A wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out onto a garden. An enormous skylight over the open staircase with light pouring into the house, spilling out on each floor.  White walls, stone floors,  a house of windows and light. 

Running feet take flight, breathing deep. 

Orange leaves on a painted tree, obsolete papers and bills, ornaments, over priced bed, objects of sentimental value, old and beloved jewelry, odd miscellaneous gifts my son has made for me.

Never without high heels.

Angular shoulders, tall, long brown hair, green eyes. 

Nights are unquiet when thoughts pour out. In the meantime I will wait and love and hold your hand.

I am restless and impatient holding on.