I smile in the mirror or I stretch my mouth in an idea of joy force myself to unlatch but I’m frozen inside these tiny sentences clinkity clink ice sloshes up my sides hoho I was a wino all those nights rolling around on strange floors waiting for the cocaine to start the party waiting to go onstage one more Mozart or another corsage candled along the church trundle we sat so quiet all our ball sockets oiled and now I am so old I break the ice with my heel bats fling around my head at night snick their wings string my hair in the yellow porch light they are home here on the western edge the compass spikes the hemlock and madrona on every full moon.
I search my yard the sides of the road for colors that announce flowers for even a tiny spark of primrose a yellow promise it’s so cold 26° this morning my gums ache I’m saving money all my money to get my lower dentures fitted again I’m angry with myself for not taking myself back to the quack who made them for insisting for fighting with him but I’ve temporarily lost my fight so I save every penny to go to a new dentist and denturist and now my oven only heats to 500° and all I can bake is sourdough bread in a Dutch oven but that’s another $700 I don’t have. I’m not complaining okay that’s a lie (I’m a liar lookout for me I lie and lie and lie) but it has been so much worse for me all those years working in the factory the stress of being around people being social participating needing to appear normal not bipolar nor completely insane. Now I’m retired with a pension and social security two paychecks a month steady as rain and I don’t have to wake before light unless I want to I don’t have to pay rent only taxes twice a year I don’t have to pretend to be human. It’s such a relief.
Is she smiling she isn’t smiling she’s stretching her mouth open in an idea of joy if she felt anything at all
I am doing so much better ever since my last psychiatrist dropped me on Christmas Eve of 2019 because she decided she would no longer take patients on Medicare. Merry Christmas you nutball! Sorry about adding a wee bit more stress to your life but don’t worry the whole world is about to collapse because of a virus. I’m lucky to have found a general practitioner who prescribes my tegretol and the other meds I take to keep the mad dog off my heels. The cocktail. Such a strange ugly ungainly word especially for a Sober Woman. Especially for a woman who has zero interest in ever looking at a cock again at all. (Oh yes boys and girls when impulsive sexual behavior is part of a manic episode it is terrifying.)
I am a jellyfish with no sting. I have severe loss of brain movement. My muscles would make a nice bread pudding. I slept a billion hours already today but zero hours last night. I fear food. The sun is shining. Birdies are tweeting. I have spider dreams and I am extremely anxious. I coughed all night like a 91 year old 2 pack a day of Pall Malls emphysema patient who demands to be unhooked from her oxygen tank and rolled out on the veranda for a drag. I watched one of my stepfathers die of emphysema. It was a bogawful thing. I am terrified of not being able to breathe. I haven’t ventured outside. I waved at my garden through the window. I said fuck you garden. I am a professional level perhaps Olympic class worrier. I could dig a hole into my head with a pencil. I fret. I have too much to do but I am mired in mud. Like a horse chest deep in muck. Blinking flies out of my eyeballs. Blink. Blink.
All I can think about is getting back to the beach. And eating crunchy food. Water makes me feel human. I am an alien in this place. I am not of this place. I have been other all my livelong days.
I am not like you.
ps. I'm also going blind like the Aphyonus gelatinosus or the gelatinous blindfish and I don't care.
I’m watching my face change now that I walk around with only upper teeth which are as useless as my old rotten teeth. My lips that were always thin have shrunk to slices barely visible and slivered as a knife edge. I keep losing weight because I can’t eat which I love I have been both thin and fat in my life I prefer thin even though thin is just a construct in my head (I’m so incredibly vain I have always thought I was beautiful is it shocking to read that I don’t care besides it’s probably a lie but one I’ve told myself) but I can’t afford the expensive clothes I love and even if I could afford them what am I going to do walk around in the forest with them? Show off to the storm front? Roll around in the low tide in them? Kelp them up slime them in and out then slide down the moss covered boat ramp in them?
There was something I wanted to write about beauty about our culture’s idea of beauty. Bardot was beautiful when she was young when I was young and now she is old and she let herself age truly a European ideal not an American ideal. American film stars refuse to age. Everyone refuses to age. I am proud of aging of not dying. Staying alive was not the only option in my family of origin.
I had some thoughts going then I got distracted by yet another dreaded waiting day when all my insecurities and anxieties float to the top of my head which is every bit as bullshit as my moods being affected by weather or tides or the moon that is me right I’m doing that. So I watched a terrible movie this morning. I carved an apple to cook in my oatmeal. There was comfort in the peeling and coring and thin slicing of the apple the knife in my hand because I currently can’t eat apples unless they’re cooked. I’ve become expert at finding ways to make food soft enough to swallow. I have words in my head but they’re not pushing themselves together they’re not behaving I can’t pin them down or make a sentence I haven’t written poetry in decades (months I’m a liar).
bascule
Jackknife Bridge
bleeding callus
snap pouch
zone 15
Galt
There is nothing happening with those words. They float and zip in and out and trigger nothing. I send them to myself in endless emails with vague subject lines.They’re mine but they’re stupid as starlings. I used to be a poet on fire! There is a thing that happens or doesn’t happen. Sometimes it seems my psychotropic meds work exactly as they’re supposed to. We get along. We cope. We’re okay. Then on other days it seems they don’t do anything. And of course the numb days. Science isn’t an exact science now is it? It’s an old joke I know. Mea culpa.
Well, this is definitely a poem, a brilliant muscly poem that spins and feints and curls and then let’s the hammer fall, yet not to injure but to see everything plain, not flinching, brave and daring to look what is in the eye. I am happy for your two checks each month steady as rain. Happy for the doctor who prescribes the cocktail. Happy to witness the beautiful sourdough. Not happy about the quack dentist but love that you’re putting the fight elsewhere. You haven’t lost the fight. You just fight differently now. I love you.
I am heartbroken, reading this. I wish I could buoy you up, toss you far off into the sea. Where you could float along for a while, until some peace blows back through your too-often troubled house. As it is, please let me know if I CAN help you in some way.