What I Remember

What I remember from her
is just something visceral.
Something in the body.
Raw. Ancient.
Long life. Sentient. Awake.
Star stuff.
I know we were a shitshow.
Bad words and hurtful things
said, done, and felt
to each other.
But somehow all I remember
is powerful, visceral, psychic,
physical, soulful
feelings.
Well, just a feeling.
One feeling, one unified feeling.
It feels very similar to
sunshine on your skin,
on an early October morning
in Texas,
in autumn of the northern
hemisphere
on Earth.

Do you know the feeling I’m talking
about?
When the sun touches you and
it feels your skin,
it fills your soul.

In A Hotel Room In Albuquerque

In a hotel room in Albuquerque
I wake up
in the middle of the night
to various things you said
speaking in my mind,
like a radio tuning in…

Initially there is static,
my mind is groggy,
the words are unclear,
but soon the more into
consciousness I awake
I can clearly hear:

“Women don’t have penises.”
“Women don’t dance like that.”
“Women don’t have those kind
of thoughts.”
“A woman wouldn’t wear that.”
“I don’t think women do things
like that.”

Then I get up.
Go into the stale bathroom of
my hotel room.
Grab my pink metal tweezers
and continue my tenacious ritual
of plucking out the remnants of
my beard hair, one by one,
as I stand there for an hour
underneath the nauseating
fluorescent lighting,
plucking probably 800 hairs
and plotting out my plan to
move to Berlin to become a
Sapphic lesbian, woman-only,
sensual and tender,
feminist healer prostitute.

Leave You As Ghosts

I’m going to leave you

as ghosts

back there under that

moonlight.

Your lips left there

on my shoulder

drawing

your big, scared,

sacred, sensual feelings

out of you

there in that

ghostland

where I leave you.

A last time,

an eternal seance

with your feelings there,

not here,

left with the ghost life.

Witch’s word, witch’s covenant.

I step into the sunlight.

Spells In Heartbreak

I set to write the spells in
heartbreak.
The aborted child.
The lost capitalist culture.
The absent love of parents.
The lover whose heart I broke.
The lover who broke my heart.
The abusive father.
The abusive and withholding
partner, and the anger and anxiety
lived towards them.
The two cats who revolutionized
my soul, then lived, created
something joyous,
then died and went away.
The gender I am but in some way
will never wholly be in
other people’s eyes.
The hurtful things said.
The hurtful things heard that
are never surmounted once said.
The living of self that always
carries a crushed something.
The gentle smile I still manage
in soft quiet moments
with myself very still or
across to another’s eyes
who needs my gentle smile.
But I did not write these spells
in word —
I lived and live them.
And I guess they taught and
teach me to
love and love onward
somehow,
in a lifetime, in a life form, in a life
way remade, reformed, and
even revisited.
That is their spell.
That is the spells in heartbreak.

Ripe Moon

Our emotions are full

when the moon is high.

Ripe am I

in your heart and mind.

Over the fields,

the arms of the trees,

sleeping and dreaming.

The northern skies

believe in southern breeze.

The breeze weaves and

weaves

around our bodies entwined,

but separate and solo.

Midnight is right,

the light between leaves.

You’ve awoke in the morning.

Your feelings,

so many of them

underneath the bright moon,

now clear in daylight,

together and simple.

And this is why I cast

dark pearly eyes to the sky

when you are sleeping.

She Is

I can feel a thousand lifetimes

passing through our fingers.

She is a person who would

let a thousand lifetimes

pass through her fingers;

an epoch of love and lovers,

passed over.

She’s done it before,

many times.

I’ve seen it.

And I watch it now.

That’s why I was here again,

to see if things could go

differently.

But they won’t go differently.

She’ll be in this situation again;

it may not be on Earth,

it may be as a woman or as

a man,

it may be as a mom

or as an animal,

but she’ll do this over and

over.

That’s why I leaned in to

love her.

Heartsick

“Lightning strikes, maybe once? Maybe twice?”

– Fleetwood Mac (from the song Gypsy)

We both smoke
cigarettes
right now
because we’re heartsick.
So in love with the biggest
love we’ve both ever known,
but too tired to move forward.
So we puff, we puff, and puff
to give up on each other.
But I also go out
regularly each morning
and run an 8:45 minute mile…

because I’m strong-hearted,
rooted deep in my soul.

I wish… well… I wanted her
to value my strong heart and soulfulness.
But she didn’t,
so I continue on, running
and smoking and feeling and
mourning.
My heart continues with
the mad beauty and love
that I am
and that I have to offer.

Toucheth

How does it feel
when I touch her?
I don’t need to know this.
I won’t know it.
Not in this stalemate of
consciousness.
Heaven on hold.
Though I felt it on her,
her body on top of my fingers,
the whole of her force.
Yes, I want to know.
Does she feel
what my brain feels inside;
raw madness,
imagination alive
and birth and bloom of
some concept
burning neurons
blurring self
between earthling and
angel
right before,
raw body.
I’m melting.

We’re headed down the
West Coast,
someday in the future.

A Bath When Sad

The bath when sad
reminds me of the last day
my cat was alive.
I bathed in ablution
before I went to put him
to sleep.
Afterwards, when I got home
to the empty house
I bathed in ablution again
and cried and cried.
Then I remember how
5 minutes after I had put him
to sleep,
out in the parking lot of the vet,
my partner at the time
argued with me about
when would I be showing up
to hangout with her and her girls
that night.
I remember that feeling;
complete disbelief and despair
that she would argue with me,
care about needing to know
such a thing, there in that moment,
in such a raw and tender moment,
the lifeless body of my 17 year old
cat laying right before us
wrapped in a towel
in the trunk of my car
… and then,
I get more sad.

Now —
The cat is gone.
She is gone.
Her girls are gone.
The cat is a spiritual presence
for me still, an everlasting being
and feeling of love.
She is something I don’t want
to remember, but still do
in lots of hurtful ways.