Poetry: Selections From M.P. Powers
twilight zone
she wasted so much of her life
worrying
about others
all she ever did
was worry
that sickness poisoning
her blood her nerves gobbling
her synapses snatching
even her tongue
in the end
I don’t even know
if my mother knew
who I was her last two years
confused ghostlike
a jellyfish floating into the backseats
of neighbors' automobiles
skulking through
the house at 3 a.m.
burying cherry tomatoes in the coffee grinds
folding in half photos of family members
who were now strangers
and hiding them under bags of celery
in the refrigerator
my mother was an actress
in some terrifying twilight
zone episode in the end
the only mercy being that she never
knew it.
partner-in-crime
so many fiery car crashes
in my
head
so much illiterate agony
so much unreason
whose edges words
could
only sharpen or further scramble
a tarnished blue
blade
that can never be true
know that
it is
here
with me
held to my heart
even as I laugh or dance
or stand
in the mirror
trying to understand
asking
why?
asking what I did? what didn’t I do?
am I truly
so
guilty?
this killing
thing
that has no name no language
just
a single
and silent and meaningless
scream
know that
it is
with me.
talk talk
I don’t think we learn much
when we talk.
we mostly just impart
what we know
and that has never had much
appeal to me.
I prefer to listen or not listen
at all and write
what I can’t articulate vocally.
let other people
jaw away, just not to me.
I have spent too
many hours days lifetimes
trapped in cramped
quarters by didactic gasbags
with nothing
to say and all the time to prove it.
they will always find you.
they’ll call and you’ll
make the mistake of answering
or they’ll
turn up at your door or corner
you in a bar
and begin,
opening the flapper valve
and letting it all out
blasting bloviating
swelling soaring
juggling deftly the vowels
while failing to perceive in their
self-love
the deadening of your features
and lack of engagement
so hell-bent they are
on bending your ears and cramming
them with hot air.
how the hell do I get out
of this? you ask yourself.
I know, I’ll add nothing
to the conversation but a few ‘uh-huhs’
and ‘right-rights’
and wait for a pause.
but the pause invariably comes
too late
and by then you feel soiled.
to have had your time bludgeoned
like that is just murderous you say
to yourself
and vow to never let it
happen again, but you know
they are out there and will find you,
these ground
beetles starving for the last
of your guttering
light.
the sea as healer
autumn in my little seaside
town and torches sing
in the harbour little flames
of roseate
brightening
the waters the boats gliding by
I follow the path
through the palms and seagrape-eating
iguanas I go
down the dune stand barefoot
on the moonlit edge
of the sea I am a shadowy
figure in a munch painting
I am a heart with nautical rope
and seaweed and sticky little barnacles
dragged
through it
I am the cry of a seagull
strangled
by the winds I am
all these things and many other
clever metaphors
but with you in the dirt forever
I feel mostly
like that giant amberjack
I saw under
the fisherman’s blade
earlier this evening
mouth hideous, gaping
empty-eyed
blood and hacked-up hunks of pinkish
flesh smeared all over that clean white
cutting table
euripides said the sea
washes away all the ailments
of man and as I stand here barefoot
in the rising tide
I let the salt-brine and fingers
of cool foam grope
my ankles.
avoid a mass crowd
a little misanthropy is just honesty
and even healthy
if it keeps you from being soiled
by the mob.
humanity is only good
on an individual
basis and very often
not even then. but humans are never
worse than when
they clot and coagulate,
growing large like a cancerous boil
filling ballparks theme
parks arenas god houses community centers
wedding halls concert venues art
galleries nightclubs bars outdoor
fairs street festivals, and so forth.
all that human glut
gorging and guzzling and shitting and pissing
believing that in great numbers
they are safe
they are right
they have arrived
they are where life is really
happening
fun might even be happening too
(if it was packaged
and sold
that way).
but I wouldn't bet on it.
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