What There Is

Somehow I keep making posts on the 14th of the month as if this were a kind of mental menstruation of the writer in me. It makes sense since, essentially, these purgings remain childless, or fruitless, nothing like a poem you can show off to the neighbors. And it's somewhat painful, like the cramps seem to be for women.

What there is is confusion, especially when it concerns the women in my life and the women not in my life. Why is that I can't praise in words what I praise with my eyes, what I appraise with my hands? Why do I find it hard to utter beautiful words to what I find beautiful? Am I looking too much for what could be ugly, for what could be ghastly, for how much unbeautiful there is in a woman, so I can know how much I can live with it?

No. I'm going in circles, in cycles. After lying with a woman, in both senses, I'm trying to get up, and get out, just to look around.

"So Full of Shit"


It's been over a month
since I moved you and the kids
into an apartment that we
don't share like we did a bed
once upon a time.

It feels like it's been a lot longer,
like we're strangers changing shifts,
hard at work being who we are
and hardly speaking to each other
a word or two of praise.

Our job is to raise two kids,
to teach them--not to be like us, but
to be better than we manage to be
even at our best--so that
the damage we've done
to each other's hearts
doesn't touch them like a beating would.

The world is more than we can say,
and whatever they can imagine
we should encourage to grow.
I don't know what went wrong,
or if anything was ever right,
but I'll take the blame
if someone wants to point a finger.

I follow my bliss and it
gets me into trouble,
but also sets me free.
"You're so full of shit,"
you say to me
as I have said to you,
emptying ourselves of all the love
we fed each other, the love
that has made us sick with hate.

Now I can taste the bittersweet
lie I told myself, over 8 years ago,
when I vowed to be your partner
"for better or worse, until death
do us part." The truth is
we've already died and
now we're full of it--
that deathless desire
to be born again.