Printed with Yesterday's Date
darker sweeter punish
the calamity of me is a clause in the contract
She was born with skin like glass / she fractured easily/ shattered in pieces. Pharmaceutical treatments didn't help. She gave her secrets to a false friend who shall virulently place an escape impossible to mourn.
Every torn dress she took to the cleaners -- gave another reason to give up. And, thus, she did: lived in the shack of her shell, dwelling in darkness.
or lie is what does when middle comes to pluck it like a peach into the particular is no longer a thought for the wish is simple participate and the late alighting pain of birds their thought a sight though a cold current in these bones unread and surfaced to a place of no return no lungs strong enough to penetrate the denseness of rejection for a life not wanted within industrious species
the calamity of me is a clause in the contract
speaking violently to the journal in reply to the hopes and the address of emotions now nothing but beautiful weeks of sun to force old age separate sides of the bed sexless anger treatment as if to wish the ruined person allowed to know my address
how sick she became having contracted the not promised how some have luck some don’t some show their anger against fate some won’t but some like I have been given the changes which wish me away sickness and a wanted ear unwanted to meet me
so much pain in this small expanse of time a life unwanted a life which should have been courageous in the village drinking cappuccino why not listen to the obstetrician and to the vague yes the light on the ceiling the month of march slaughtered
apologies that you or anyone must endure the treatment i’ve received instead you don’t see me don’t want to know me i am honest in my journal which is but a schizophrenic file filled with cancer autism alzheimer’s the ugliness of the human condition
you have a grandchild now and so my refusal to make the cruelest visit physically and lawyerly as a man with perfect progeny a life of pure boredom suffused with health a beautiful wife many riches what a mistake it was for me not at least to see
Bobbi Lurie’s fourth poetry collection, the morphine poems is published by Otoliths (Australia). Her other books are Grief Suite, Letter From the Lawn and The Book I Never Read. She lives in New Mexico.
