Poem for Monday, May 25, 2009

O Everything Goes Black


by Katie Ford


A pattern on the back of my eyelid coils like a fingerprint, I made
a mistake, it is not my own. The blood up between my eyes, I can’t see,
I sit between people, between pillars of the cathedral between
which the immaculate spreads her blue wing-sleeves into as much sky
as there is. Small blue lights edge the church and the eyeless Christ hangs,
his sockets darkening into shaded tombs. Darkness coiling,
my eyes coiling, a wind with sand in it scrolling up and down
a body, hiding that body until it could be anyone, and is.
Even whom I do not live with I live with now. Don’t say I don’t
speak to you: I speak to you.

nights like these, sad songs don't help

The last times I really remember being completely happy are when we lived in Menlo Park. I've had plenty of good times since then, but there's always an undercurrent of darkness. I've always been just barely keeping my head above water. there's times when I hit a warm spot, and I get a chance to float, but I'm exhausted.

We left when I was 9, and I have no way of saying whether I would still have gotten so low had we stayed, but I am inclined to blame the suburban South for the seeds of my problems, if not for their roots.

Sure, this past few years' state of perpetual exhaustion has put out a lot of my angry heart-fire, but
it's left me terribly and bitterly alone. I try to make peace with it, but I sure do miss the camaraderie of going out to a show with a roomful of kids I knew and getting hammered together, pressed up tight against the stage, getting sloshed with beer, singing along at the top of our lungs, feeling every word.



I miss wanting to live.