old, found poem fragments.

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"There was"

There was a me that loved you.
But I stopped listening to her
years ago. She was always
wild-eyed and scary, stupid,
and crazy for love of you.

But I can’t hide from her longer.
It’s worth it to feel whole,
to turn around and hold her.
She had long hair and fewer
clothes. Remember?

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"Change"

She hands me a dirty canvas bag—
a load of change;
it’s so heavy around my neck,
crushed against my breast.
I fight the heat to breathe
and the lump topples into my trunk,
following me for days.

How can I not realize
that the change stifles?
(Because I carry it.)
Limitations dangling from
my shoulders, strapped around my eyes.

A burst of fresh air and
a still-aching heart,
a new loss.
These compete, change,
to unglue my notion of something
permanent .

Daydreams
and memories
That picture of a black-haired baby
circa 1986.
That is not me.

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"What is it that poets fear?"

What is it that poets fear, you ask?
What musicians fear.
Everything is filtered, fitted, made art
from an inability to do otherwise,
a self-destructive need to reopen wounds.

I look at pictures, you say.
Why?
Because they make me hurt.
They always make me hurt—
the gentle throb of not being
somewhere I used to be,
my former self, loving
whom I loved and perhaps
love still. Being.
I want to look at being.
And it is so small, rectangular,
colored—or not. Small.

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