the cat puts her face into mine

amid the detritus of our room

laser printed target receipt, crumbled ricola wrapper

a poem written in every cynical point

of view like tonight when the boy says

i don't need desert because i already had mine

when i gave you the flowers earlier 

and the realization that not everyone

is trying to get something 

over on you. 

 how sad, you think

that you can't appreciate innocence

when it rears its big blue eyes. 

instead it eats at me, as if this child

is playing some long con

to make me think he's innocent

and all lovey of me as the favorite of all the

mom's substitutes-for -mom

he  bounces between. he's smart enough

to know he'll be with us next year

when school starts because mom 

is still absent without notice so he better

get on my good side but omg woman

is that how you think a five year old thinks 

for real that he doesn't long to have that

mommy who tucked him into bed

who never actually tucked him

that one that used to watch him on 

infrared camera as he struggled to fall asleep

never really making  a peep, no sounds

as he tossed on his bed til finally

sleep took him down and how now he 

dutifully takes the melatonin that knocks him

out. he likes it, he doesn't miss his momma's

how many kisses do you want ritual

it was not around for long, he's happy drifting

off in the ending silence after  a goblins by request story

so  to think he says that to build 

trust in his con, after he's already snuck the robin's eggs

from the top of the frig and yes 

i checked, he did

not

is to forget how i sent to him to his room

after he hit me in the stomach-not hard but -

yelling get in there till i don't

wanna hit you no more. 

reddit post

 visiting the past

is not a good way to live.

i know this yet

i keep going back here as if

something will be redeemed.

what does that even mean, redemption?

redeem=compensate for the faults or bad aspects of (something).

nope , not it. the only fault is that it's past, passed.

make amends for a error

gain or regain in exchange for a payment.

not ex act ly

fulfill or carry out a promise or pledge.

ahhhh, there it is

but i pledged eternal undying love

as if i were god. pointed out to me that the biblical 

never says unconditional.  so how can the pledge be

undying and eternal if there are conditions ? is it ok

if i insist that i was not lying at the time? i felt as if i'd love

forever. forever being

the time i inhabit this body consciousness

but i don't love the you as became.

i love the you that was. a one sided memory.

still love that for what you did for me. 

all of you. for what you were when i knew you.

for what you grew into, i still love you.

but it's not possessive or sexual.

don't even know if i'm sexual anymore.

too pain ridden . sex is absence of pain.

aftermath glow disappears with time

and pain creeps back in begins

at the hip, soldiers to the neck

no room for other thoughts.

becomes the constant, the lover so  how

to love this back? embrace and receed.

let it fill me let it be me. ugh who wants that

***

i have one cigarette left

the oncological plastic surgeon

wants me to quit. entirely.

i have cut down 2 cigarettes per day

in 2 weeks. continual diversion 

is the secret. not now, later.

using the work/reward system

has always motivated me.

but i could use a keeper.

  phone alarm

 daily bells of work

your mouth on mine

and two cigarettes isn't much of a drop

but have you met nicotine?

constantly just available like that

so many forms and positions whispering 

just have a little more. little more.one more drag

and then half your day's gone. like scrolling

down the page of the social media of the day

pretending that you're living. 

&

*

these days my desk is in the corner

of a shared room. facing the wall. the windows

are on the other side because i'm neater

than my partner and the door is often open 

and sometimes we have company so i must

 have this side due to my mother's voice

a heartbeat out of step if unkempt.

we are both slobs but that side's ocd depths

of hoarding. if that doesn't make sense

try living with it.

so i can't say  outside my window

and i don't have a parking lot 

changing scenery

other lives 

to take me off my navel.

ug

((((

no riffs or borrows or burrrows

to get lost in. out side this voice of sacrifice

and pain. who the fuck am i, christ?

i wonder if i've always felt detached

and just didn't recognise that i do?

my sister,17, dies iin a nursing home

my mom in her bed from cancer at 39

gramma a couple years on. 62. hospital pneumonia from cancer.

and i felt the loss but only in dreams.

i mean i still had to get up every morning

and go to school, with the same people

who knew her, some there at the party,

and the only words of comfort i remember getting

from anybody in that high school was a former math teacher

of both of us who expressed his sympathy 

for the accidently on purpose manner of her death.

wallflowers don't need sunshine.

and when, for me, mom died on that freshman year 

 march day she couldn't form words

to speak on the phone so she couldn't tell me

everything she forgot to impart to her middle 

and dad's undying devotion to her wish that i attend

university despite my total unreadiness for that life

so that when i asked him to let me go to jc

and live at home he just said nope, i'll pay for shcool and

 dorms and i wouldn't live in the dorms

so i did the part time school work thing

which of course left me penniless and starving

in a one room rental behind a hot dog place 

1 week from eviction so when the man

i'd been fucking invited me to be his room mate

i moved into his bed and forgot to leave. 

red flag number one and it wasn't even subtle was before

i moved in. i still have the scar. i may have written this before

but it bears repeating. i visited him and cooked my gramma's 

famous fried chicken dinner. i learned it growing up, helping

her make biscuits in her yellow kitchen. cleaning up after.

cleaning up after at his place, i stuck my hand inside 

a thin glass which split in half and sliced my pointer knuckle

significantgly. like 2 inches of half inch deli meat. there was blood

dripping  out of the towel i wrapped it in to walk

the 7 feet to where he was sleeping on the couch.  it pooled

on the terrazzo floor under his head as i attemptted wake him

when he suddenly shot up and began screaming at me what the fuck

are you doing, what the fuck you goddamn bitch!

and i was all like i've hurt myself

can you drive me to the hospital? and he was like woah

man i thought you'd stabbed me! what the fuck 

i thought you fucking stabbed me and i was like

can you please take me to the emergency room 

and he calmed down some and said woah oh i don't 

know how to drive stick shift and since it was my right hand

i told him i'll work the clutch and drive, you just move the

gears ok? and i guess he reckoned he could deal with that

some of the details are cloudy these 43 years on but i remember

he did ride in the passenger seat the 3 miles

to the hospital where they stitched me up and didn't ask

questions.

and i lived with that for 23 years.

*****

so i mean i reckon detachment

has made me able to bear the unsympathic vision

of the void . i mean i don't feel particularly 

empathetic but i cry for street beggars.

gave out most of my cash on hand to them this week.

next week who knows how generous i'll be. 

only if i were down to half a cigarette

i'd appreciate someone handing me a full one.

so i take that into account. and maybe that's

detached but reaally more attached to the other so much

debating what would future me, other me want

that i ignore this vessel that carries me. 

sorry, boat.

bastille

 to finish this i think i was 

thinking of the song happier

and how the band name and song

align together to describe how i 

sometimes think of our relationship now

i as the object of the song

who would be happier

and you as the subject saying

that's what you want

for me. and how you chose goodbye

over change, that was never

part of your vocabulary

but i was good until i have to

take care of a baby 

who isn't mine and how much

good can it do when i resent it

can't get over resentment

it wavers in my gut, snatches peace

i resent working for him

and the ones i pay rent for

more than rent

and how i could have  money

or peace and i chose peace

but how that peace is shattered

by the duties and how i wish money

could buy me out of that obligation

which isn't even MINE to begin with except

in an it takes a village kinda way 

so i want to know where the hell is the village

when it's my blood that suffers

how come i'm the only one in the village

that cares about that? wtf, this isn't even my village 

i guess. they've made that clear, his mom

made that clear. show me pictures of baby him and me

doesn't scan. isn't.

***************

just, thiis keeps circling

i feel trapped

that bitch is not going to go to work

and that bitch is not going to stop using

and while i can deal with that bitch

the druggie is pissing me off because i can't 

buy my way out. i have to be there.

and i don't want to have to be. 

sometimes i don't mind the being

is that having that always pisses me off.

and i k now that's selfish but i don't care

if you call me that. i only care what the pissed off

might do to the kid. sigh. so i tamp it down

but it comes out anyway. i don't have

the same excuses for him as i do for mine

who i don't have to take care of. 

i want to be who i am, gramma,

not some kid's too old mom.

and that bitch mother of his with her delusions

of normal. oh dear why can't you get your kid back

you meth head. i hate you for it. i don't care

if you're psychotic. you managed it before

with  meds and clean living. too bad you were fat

and getting older. now you're a skinny methhead

who lost her kid. same as all your low life friends

 now you fit right in. just move to philly

and be done with the farce. you will never

get your shit together again. give him up

so your sister can raise him.

this, quickly

 so i did a numerlogy way back

when i was witch, and it said

i would die of intestinal issues

and i have them and it makes me wonder

if i really did reveal the author

with that reading and have simply ignored

me since.