24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Found, End
Do I have endings?
I never leave things behind.
I still think about the guys,
that amorphous blob of boy-men.
the one’s I crushed on
the first kiss
the first fuck
the first soulmate
and the second
the one who didn’t know what No – meant
There it is
My heart stopped
he’s out there
shapeshifting
The end of trust
The beginning of Rage
If memories could sift into
Par
tic
les
Slow, shallow breaths fill the air
An pained cough forces out
Silent tears fall down her face
As others sob in loss
She fought a hard battle
But cancer has won again
As her life has faded
To its final end.
The edge of black takes over
the whole screen.
Nada—zip—nada mas.
The peel I leave behind is messy,
for those I leave behind.
Old books worn by my eager fingers:
proof that I was once there.
Clothes frayed at the seams:
the loose threads emphasizing the lack of meaning.
Some of my dead skin sitting in the dust
of my worn white windowsill.
I can’t choose coffee, black
or with cream and sugar.
I can’t even choose coffee.
Did I want it to end?…no——-even though
I was tired. But, I didn’t have a choice.
This is just what is done, it just happens,
and I don’t feel a thing. My feelings
belong to the memories of those I left behind.
My body will be donated to the air
in grey flakes and small bits
of ivory bone.
I’ll touch down on the emerald grass,
the brown aging roots of a tree.
That’s where my spirit will be.
That’s all that is left of me.
My Facebook page is gone.
My Gmail is just fine.
All my bookmarks work.
But my Facebook page is gone.
What games are the Tennessee boys playing?
Could you complain about my candidate?
Is there news about your garden?
I’ll never know, my Facebook page is gone.
Hey, Molly! Let’s go play fetch!
Man, I need to weed-whack.
I think I’ll bake banana bread.
Hmm. My Facebook page is gone.
Chapter 1
Ordinary World
I.
Thin woods
Dirt road skirting forest
Sisters washing laundry in the river
“Do you ever wish some prince would just come whisk you away?”
Never, never.
Squeeze water from a dirty skirt
Both up to our knees in current
A little too cold, I shiver
“Never.”
“Never?” Shocked.
“We’ll have no princes.”
Silent girl doing washing with me. Silent, not complicit in my treason.
The mage is our only King.
“Which of the boys in town do you fancy?”
He loves me
He loves me not
It’s as simple
and as complicated
as that
In the beginning
he loved me
at least he said that he did
Something told me no
but I said Yes
and let him sweep me off my feet
Caught in the whirlwind
No way to step back
Instead I got deeper in
A baby
Then two
We were happy for a while
But disappointments piled up
Resentment started to grow
I began to wonder why I hadn’t said No
What I thought was love
was his need to control
The more I pulled away
the more he fought to keep his hold
But cruelty is not love
And fear won’t keep me near
All the petals are on the floor now
And the answer is clear
He loves me not.
Suffocation
living with minimal purpose
days guided by routines
spilled coffee, wrinkled clothes, misplaced keys
purposeless, stagnant, a frozen existence
numb with struggles that resist quietly within
telling you to let go of what you have become
all that you have allowed yourself to know about you
that lack of information
because you know you more than anyone else, right?
The end
severs the ties that bind you to comfort
it allows you to accept the unknown
to accept the struggles
that will soon come because in this present place
you are not growing and that is more painful than scathing your knees
In the end
you don’t have to practice
you have to just BE
Ω
the melting ring ; the roof top
leap ; the no longer struggling
fly ; the cracked screen ; silence ;
a battery that will not charge ;
the flaming fireball ; the sunken
stone ; death’s ship ; endless white ;
the great long O ; & of course ,
the brittle orange flakes slowly
eating out my heart
Caretaker
As I gazed at the day room
the head nurse shuffled through,
checking pulses and giving orders.
The carpenter slid along the walls
tap, tap, tapping for unseen studs.
The Wall Street broker yelled
into resident phones sell, sell, sell!
Slippery layers cradled within the skull
nestle gently against one another.
Whirls and folds contain the essence
of humanity, a seemingly random
jumble of gray flesh that is in fact
the backlit cosmos of each person,
unknown and unknowable beyond
outer myelinated mannerisms,
remembrance in repeated motion.
Tendrils of dementia infiltrate layers
like wood smoke on a cloudy night,
extinguish the memory of a child’s name,
a lover’s face, ember by glowing ember,
gone, but for the tap, tap, tapping,
the sell, sell, selling,
and the gentle, cool fingers
placed on the wrists
of other ghosting, fleshly shells.
Tracy Plath