cracked rear view

I have very few memories of my father. They are weathered and worn, distorted over time. Some only reappear in my dreams and I question their honesty. Yet here, in the sobering hours of daylight, I can clearly recall that his Jeep Wrangler smelled of piña colada freshener and there was always a 12-pack of beer in the refrigerator. I remember that his girlfriend never seemed to like me around. I can still hear her screaming at him, their verbal abuse barely hampered by the paper thin walls of the apartment. I remember being homesick, and crying myself to sleep at night, the pillowcase soaked with salty tears. I remember him being strong and tanned, this vision accompanied by his musky scent of stale cigarettes and sweat. I remember he used to make promises all the time that he would never keep, like visiting Grammy that weekend or driving to Disneyland to go on my favorite rides. I was always left disappointed, and finally I just stopped believing him altogether. I remember being left in day care, with all the stupid whiney babies and the cranky overworked sitters, huddled in the corner of the noisy playroom, alone, missing my mother so much I could barely breathe. I remember Rick would always mumble the words, 'cool beans' when we spoke on the phone. I hate that fucking saying. I remember being eight years old when the Hootie and the Blowfish album was released. That tape played on repeat for the entire summer, and when we got into his red Jeep, the one that smelled of piña coladas, I would beg my daddy to crank up the volume as high as it would go. I would sing those lyrics at the top of my lungs, the wind whipping through my stringy brown hair and cooling me from the suffocating Utah heat. That was the last summer that I spent with my father. There isn’t another memory more distinctly palpable than that one.

“She sits alone by a lamppost,
trying to find a thought that's escaped her mind.
She says Dad's the one I love the most…”

black

Unending apologies could never suffice
Nigh, they would ring untrue still
My love remains for You, of course
But like death with ribbons
Or pain with sprinkles.
Beautiful garments for luster lost.
At first I swayed carefully. Wary
Of stampeding Your invisible heart
With my vile idolaters heels
Yet slowly I turned my wayward step
Feet scorched on the embers of cautiousness.
I chose wrong instead, tripping into his arms
He—who haunts my sickly-sweated dreams.
Your saccharine words once enveloped me
The printed characters stained in Red.
So cocooned I was in bloodied Truth
Eloquent, but alas they don’t quite fit.
The tongue ferrets out my secrets instead.

gasps

Again a quiet, secret love
muffled by the silent sleep.
Eyes darkened, eclipsed suns.
Simple warmth in which to crawl
held beneath in slippery hands
His easy words, they melted skin.
Salvation lied, she hoped
in his soft and steady love.
Yet, no Savior did he prove to be
That starlit sky was not her heav'n,
and shared breath is weakening.
So in the blossoming morning dawn,
swollen lips will breathe their last.

Dear Status...

I think that you and I are offically broken up.
It's been two months and you never called.
I haven't really missed you much at all.
We just don't understand each other anymore,
and that word "community" tastes a lot like bile.
I'm sick of drawn lines and divided loyalties.
I hate that I don't trust you,
and that I hear whispers when I turn my back.
I tried to stick with it, work things out.
Really, I did. I don't like being a quitter.
But you just don't fit anymore.
So maybe I'll see you around sometime.

Cordially,
Megan

Lovesong (yes... again)

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

"Lovesong"
-Ted Hughes

oh, Ray...

child-painter

Fingers dipped,
smearing the brilliant colors
into brown swirls of shit-stained mess.
Paints only vibrant in separation.
Instead the child’s digits,
are dripping wet
and poised for the kill.
Her mission: to blur lines.
Rainbow rouge-stained fingertips,
soiling frilly pink clothes,
white carpeted floors,
coloring book pages.
Former art and beauty,
of suburban tidy
transformed into soiled disorder
at the reach of the small hand.

She is still the same-- that little girl
now a grown woman in form alone.
Hands smoother, manicured and adorned.
Her world is the artists glossy dream,
Relationships beautiful--
Vibrant and lively
in their original separation.

Composed and collected,
packaged and presented.
But compelled by her own
feverishly inexplicable streak of
masochism-- she destroys the good.
Twisted and sickening
she bewilders them all.
Her mission: to blur the lines.
Overlapping and muddling,
Mixing and rejecting.
Toying with helplessly
trusting hearts,
sweaty grasping hands,
red swollen lips.
Until nothing is left, but
brown-shit colored pages.