I don't BELIEVE

If God is in the test tube,

I don’t believe in soul-mate love.

If God is in the traffic light-tire-screeching-wheels,

I don’t believe He come from above.

If God is in the afterbirth,

I don’t believe He come at conception.

If God is in the rainfall-pond-scum,

I don’t it’s He the protozoa and me the amoeba.

If God tug on my heart strings,

I don’t believe He pull at my belt.

If God knock on the door,

I don’t believe He come in the window.

If God let us fall from heaven,

I don’t believe He pick us up.

If God is in the epitaph,

I don’t believe He come at birth.

If God is so wonderful,

I don’t believe in pain.

If God is so powerful,

I don’t believe in suffering.

If God is so amazing,

I don’t believe in failing grace.

If God is so beautiful,

I don’t believe in dirt.

If God is so loving,

I don’t believe in tears.

If God is so strong,

I don’t believe my fears.

If God is…I don’t believe.

Fuck IT

Wake up headache, go to bed headache.

Lawd, Lawd, wake up from Hissake.

Wake up in my skin and teeth.

Wake up in grief.
Bereaved.

Deceived.

He didn’t love me.

He didn’t even like me.

So now what’s the fee?

So now what’s for free?

Nothing when the blood run.

Nothing even when it was made in fun.

My life’s not the punch line.

My life’s not fine…

Hurt, broken, ripped, and rent,

No more Hallelujah falls to knees, no more repent.

Burnt offerings and ash,

My life rocket fuel burning flash,

…a drop in the bucket.

My life, the plasma weeping pig – we stuck it.

My life, the barrier – we struck it.

My life, the song – we sang fuck it.

I’m the bobo doll – punch down, pop up.

My life, the interrupt.

My life, the punctuation at the end of the tombstone.

My life the dirge, the funeral wail and moan.

My hope crushes,

Even as my pulse rushes.

There is fear in here.

There is fear in my bones – it’s hot, it sears.

There is only yesterday.

There is only the scale…I pay.

A just deserve.

A car crash swerve.

Erupts in wreckage.

My book, the ripped page.

My body, the chewn cuticles.

My dreams, the icicles.

He ruined all that was good about me.

I’m not the same, even when no one sees.

So I sing our song.

I sing FUCK IT!

Blinking

Blistered, black and blue, blinking.

Teardrops forming, falling on arid ground.

From where guttural cries should come, emanates no sound,

Just this everyday surrender in which I’m sinking.

                                              

I pick myself up, but he run me down.

I dry the tears, but he makes me drown.

He can run from himself, but he can’t stop drinking.

He can beat me up, but he can’t start healing.

And it’s with this dilemma that I’m dealing.

The broken thoughts that I cradle, the broken thoughts I’m thinking.

He can do a lot, but he can’t do anything.

And the angels won't carry him on their many wings.

In the aftermath, it’s he who’s drowning, while I’m winking,

Black n’ blue blistered, blinking.

GRAVE love GRAVE

Blood blister broken.

Now, leave no token,

of the love we’d said we’d share,

as the alcohol run away your care.

Lawn mover blades bent and bloodied.

No preparation comes in the materials I studied –

only fear, as you stand in front of the freezer,

yelling, discarding, probing with machete not tweezer.

Your mantra, an insult, slurring BITCH, BITCH, BITCH.

My crying, a wasted effort, brings no sympathy, no twitch.

Reflexes and reaction time Sloed in gin,

hurrying me out the door undressed, as if personal hygiene was vanity, a sin.

Says I’m fat and stupid, a PIG.

Says I deserve it, each attack, each dig.

Says it is I that’s wrong and he who’s right.

So, I don’t know each evening if I’m coming home to a fight,

or if he’ll be passed out or disappeared.

Yet he claims it’s me who’s weird.

I’m a disappointment, a boring COW or HAG.

And with each insult over my head he tightens the bag.

I am thinking I will asphyxiate

and drown in the hot tears made from his hate.

What happened to my love?

Battered and trod upon, a thread-bare rug.

There is no help, no hope coming from above,

so push me below and bury me in the grave that my love dug.

New Test Leper

Burning like battery acid – this anger within my veins, my vena cava, my left ventricle.  Even with all of the forgiveness and “lest not ye, lest ye” I am quiet rage, restrained but lusting for vengeance.  How can he not care one iota about his son?  More than two weeks of radio silence now, but he’s been spotted, bedraggled, but alive, still in town.  I tried to be optimistic earlier, but now I feel like the walls are towering and pressing, no hope to escape the pit or the pendulum this time.  I’m just trying to hold it together, trying not to let myself become fear or panic, trying to subsist.  Yet man or woman, there’s no survival on bread alone. 

But where does the sinner’s prayer rank among the cries of the needy?  What just do I deserve?  Any?  The mistakes I’ve made, I’ll pay for in blood, in loss, in tragedy, in my worldly possessions, in my freedom.  I cry Lord save our ship, but the SOS distress call come too little, too late.  Lord, save my ship:  these waves too big, so no rowing or treading will save, only drowning, lungs filling, my alveoli bathed in sea water, chlorides choking, no breath, no more.

Rowboat

Late as usual.  In this high tech society, you would think that I wouldn’t draft my blogs on a notepad, but alas I do.  There is something about a pen and paper.

Uninspired today (a few days ago), gears clicking, grinding.  Things to accomplish, lots of things to accomplish.  Gnawing leftover steak, hurrying back to the timer on my bench, incubations ending.  I’m not sure how I’m going to get through, bills looming, no child support coming in, car not sold yet – worried, sick.  I’ve got one good thing to look forward to at the end of my week, but even that comes with a price.  I want to cry not fair, but maybe the punishment does fit the crime.  I tried to live in the moment at the cost of reason and future planning.  Look where I am now:  two steps forward, three steps back.

My God

I’m overhearing lunch conversations turn from football to breast cancer – sends my feelers up.  I start at one point and always come round to cancer.  My brain is a slug today, slow moving, sticky, leaving slime trails.  You would think more sleep would do me good, but all it does is wear me down all the more.  Like potent and addictive drugs, of which I have no firsthand experience, sleep has me hooked, wanting for more.  Instead of feeling revived, I feel groggy, as if I am peering through fingerprinted lenses.  I think sometimes I need to burn my candle at both ends, fatigue and chaos convenient devices to camouflage my feelings.  It’s hard to feel angry, depressed, lonely, anxious when you’re too exhausted to feel much else but tired.  Although it’s winter, it’s not winter-white.  It’s winter-brown, winter-gray, overcast, threatening rain not snow, everything cold mud like very early upper East coast Spring.  It’s a lousy feeling.

I am mad at him again – too drunk to see his son, playing cat and mouse games with us.  He does what he pleases, but I have to do the worry about our son, the bills, the future, court appointments and lawyer’s consultations.  Spend my time worrying about what could be perceived of our actions, our statements, because the legal system protects his kind.  We arrange, rearrange busy schedules so he can see his son, and he’s too drunk to bother, slurring last minute voice message cancellations, not exactly sure what day it is.  I’m glad I can’t have direct contact with him.  I don’t think I could be civil anymore.  I hate that this burdens my family, but I’m glad I don’t have to deal with him directly.  I was feeling guilty, feeling sorry for him, although I know this is not my fault – I tried.  Now I would love to hurl the pack of beer I know he bought the other day at his face, but I’m sure he drank those and another 1 or 2 packs by now.

Why does God keep an eye out for drunks and vagrants?  I know that Jesus love us equally, but I doubt I can do the same.  My poor son crying Daddy in the doorway refuses to surrender his coat, thinks they’re going to see Daddy, pleading to leave, while my mother has to say “not today after all.”  I want to cry.  I want to yell, tear out hair, kick, stomp, and bite, throw things, throw a temper tantrum.  Yet I can’t, I won’t.  I turned on the radio today to an Alanon ad.  Is that a hint or a shot to the face?