Regret

I have a rum-soaked regret

I spent a night lying in a bed next to you, wanting you and warmed by the feeling of you wanting me, without getting closer to you, without holding you

We passed out immediately upon contact with the mattress as a result of all that we had imbibed, as we were serious about celebrating my last night in town

You lingered after the other guests had gone

As the party went on we gravitated together and let each other know in lover’s language our shared desire, finding reasons to touch each other without a reason

I remained unconscious to the world until I woke up, still fully dressed

You were gone, taking with you my only chance to physically express admiration for you

To this day, you are an ocean away

Maybe it is just as well

Why endure a one night stand, only to be followed by regret as I worry about sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy

Your presence was intoxicating enough

We both drank too much

The bridge of alcohol became our wall

Thank you for the fond farewell

Made fonder still by unrequited romance

Friend

Sometimes I create to destroy

To show my exes how well I do without them

Not that they see, and not that I want them keeping tabs on me

More often, I create to give

To share with others what I’ve learned from living

New Year’s was a holiday I repeatedly did wrong

Galavanting around town wearing the wrong clothes

Cheap sparkly heels and ripped panty hose

Spent the night with the wrong guys

Couldn’t feel small dicks between my thighs

Drank liquor that was too strong

Stayed out far too long

The morning after felt sober and nauseous

How can I be such a worrywort yet not at all cautious 

Tried to commune with nature in the backyard

The deer snorted at me and stomped their hooves hard

I took a bath and wished it could wash away what can’t be seen

Sexually transmitted disease, loneliness and low self-esteem

Some years I did some things right 

Ate a nourishing meal and went to bed at a reasonable hour last night

Though I am working today instead of napping and brunching like I’m high class

That’s ok- there are worse ways to spend New Years Day. 

I find peace in knowing that I won’t make the same mistakes again, after having made the same mistakes again and again.

Today is an opportunity to treat myself like a friend

The new year stretches before me like an unfurled roll of fresh toilet paper

May I commit every moment to the simple life, instead of my usual wild caper 

Hunted

Do not make me feel afraid in my home, where I pay the bills with the earnings from my skills

Where I clean up the spills and cure the ills

Yet I still cannot prevent melt-downs

Despite my walking on eggshells, I set off landmines of drama from time to time

These very words have potential to cause damage, depending on whose eyes find them

My intolerance of conflict is impractical

The physiologic reaction that my body is under threat with every disagreement is not helpful anymore

I take my herbal sedatives and guide my body through relaxation yoga nidra style, yet the pounding in my chest won’t let me rest, even when I visualize it as a drumbeat of peace, rippling outward and keeping rhythm as I soften muscle away from bone, cell from cell and thought from thought

Still I feel hunted in my own home in my own bed in my own head

This is the time that if I had something stronger I’d take it for brief relief. I am curious to try the medications I prescribe for patients with ailments identical to my own.

Instead I write with a smile of gratitude for the fact that I don’t have a prescription because I’d miss out on the therapeutic bliss of this midnight poem if I did.

Basement

If I were a guy

I wouldn’t have to choose which pregnancy lives and which dies

I wouldn’t have to lie

To keep my body balanced precariously over a precipice of shame

I wouldn’t have to remain silent about my pain

If I were a guy

I wouldn’t widen the depths of a woman’s trauma by asking her about the depths of her trauma

I wouldn’t judge a woman on the depth of her trauma

If I were a guy

Life would be simple and easy

You ask me about every fuck and every fetus, like it is your business

It is not your business

Do you really want to know about the countless rapes I’ve endured

Not just at the hands of guys

Girls and women, my own mother was the mother of all trauma

Do you want me to describe what it feels like to have your inside pried open and the most vulnerable part of you wounded, scraped raw as you sacrifice the new life you desired, the miracle at your core from another night as a whore

Left to wonder forever unknowing what might have been, who they might have been

It was enough for me to cut the ties

From guys I didn’t want in my life

I cheated on every last one of them, a string of infidelity leading to you

Why do you want to hear that, what would it do?

Maybe then you’d know who you married

But I’m trying to build a new life, live my best life, start anew with a clean slate, move with you to a new state

I don’t want to lie anymore, don’t want to hide anymore, but let me be myself or I’ll show you the door even though it will break me even more

Try as I might by inviting drama into my life, I am unbreakable

You try to crack me not knowing that I’ve been practicing for this my whole life

I’m sorry you are a part of my web of lies but let’s make the best of it I don’t want any more terrible surprises, even as I plant these words like a bomb under the floor.

Triggers are an invitation to see what is in the basement

My heart is in the basement but even our basement has a plant growing where the concrete is cracked

I’m trying to be that plant, don’t hold me back

HPV

She told me that I have HPV

Human papilloma virus: the ghost of ex-partners past came back to haunt me

I want to line up my exes: the awkward horn-bag teens, the sex clients who shortchanged and stole from me, the abusive drunks, dramatic douchebags, one-night-too-long one night stands, and interrogate them whodunnit.

I will never know, of course

I may have gotten HPV from dreadful fingering, though it was probably from unprotected intercourse

Intercourse most likely undesired, as most of the sex I’ve had was unwanted by me

It could have been worse, at least it was only HPV which I contracted after riding bareback on so many dozens of dicks- I don’t know now many men have slept with me, but any one of them could have easily given me HIV, somehow I was spared

God, you were there

Kids, don’t try this at home

I tell my cervix to hang in there, I will make it up to you, treat you right

My ex-boyfriends aimed and fired at my cervix: the bullseye of my reproductive tract

Whether I got HPV long ago or from my most recent mistake, it is in me now and I may lose a piece of me in a LEEP if I don’t overcome this virus

My LEEP will be a leap of faith that I will regrow intact and complete, heal myself and still have the power to create and give my baby a better life than mine

That is the goal in all I do, even the abortions I’ve endured were to make a better future for my children than the hell I’ve lived through

So listen little virus, I am a strong, powerful giant and I will destroy you

I’ve survived too much to be taken down by the likes of you- senseless double-strand of DNA who has consumed too many of my sisters, lost to the sands of time

You won’t take me, the war is on and it got personal

There is no way I’m going to let one of those awful men leave a lasting lesion on my body

I am the supreme iron dragon goddess warrior, and my healing potential is infinite

My abilities to love and forgive and understand are among my many strengths

Watch out, virus, watch out

Instead of spreading you to someone new, I will melt you with my amazing body, take you down with my brilliant immune system

You will no longer struggle to survive, you will unite with the Spirit which flows through all things, and you will flow right out of me in peace

 

Practicing Presence

I have good reason
To feel over-worked and under-paid
Burnt out, with a need to get laid
But good loving is hard to come by

I also have many reasons
To feel hopeful, joyful, grateful
Even satisfied

I’m not gonna lie
I’ve got a flame of desire between my thighs
That you light up with your eyes

Every time I see you, I re-realize
That life is only right here, right now
All we ever have is the present
For the divine gift of your presence, I thank you

Who could ever win the tug-of-war
Between past regrets and future worries?

It is hard to shake off the trauma that clings to me
I try to slip under it, but trauma’s tentacles are tenacious and latch onto me
But I know a secret trick
Without my ego, trauma has nothing to latch onto
I have acquired immunity
I shrink my ego enough to escape trauma’s grasp, float downstream and buoyantly resurface, safely out of reach

When I return from my latest circumnavigation of space-time
And redirect my awareness back to
where I am in this moment
what is happening in this moment
how I feel in this moment
I feel victorious!

Practicing presence is the only way
To be happy, healthy, and free

I wish such peace to thee

Absinthe and Abstinence

Instead of drinking absinthe

I wish I’d practiced abstinence

Absinthe passed through my lips

You followed suit, more than just the tip

I was butter and you were the knife

Wish I could take back that night

Spread out like jam on toast

On a Manhattan mattress, we did the most

It got so hot, we were the roast

But I was the one who got burned

Absinthe, you brought on sweat, blood and tears

Abstinence, you would have spared me much fear

Absinthe, why’d you help me undress?

Abstinence, you would have prevented stress

Absinthe, you never delivered that green fairy

Abstinence, your fruit is sweeter than the ripest berry

Absinthe, under your tutelage I’ve grown wary

Now I practice abstinence

From every Tom, Dick and Harry

and all the other men who didn’t have my best interest at heart-

You protested loudly when I told you we had to part.

You don’t have to understand

You just have to know that you’re not my man.

Love and Ice Cream

Love and ice cream
Are my slippery slopes,
My legal dope
I use them in plain sight
To abuse my body day and night

Too many years
I’ve caught myself in the cycle
Of getting high every time I start to withdraw;
I let into my life another bowl,
another boo, even worse than the one before
The novelty wore off long ago
And I’ve seen the pattern;
I know where it is gonna go
It always ends in regret

Today I was hot and thirsty
For that cool creamy sweet treat
With chocolate chunks for me to eat
It was on sale and high in quality
So I loaded up my shopping cart,
imagining the pleasure awaiting me

Then I remembered
How bad I always feel afterward
How out of control, how unwise
I’ve given in to temptation too many times
And paid too heavy a price

So I put the four pints back on the shelf
Let them go home with somebody else
Victory was mine at last
At least for today

Then I got home and considered writing to an ex
An ex who is still sort of a friend                                                                                                             I love them dearly
But slow down, it’s a dangerous bend
They treated me unhealthily
Why would I expect anything different this time?

Feeding my addiction
Would bring me a quick, cheap high
Although I desire them so
Like ice cream on a hot summer’s day
If I over-indulged, the disappointment in myself
Would be here to stay

I’m only human
I have to eat and to love
But knowing how easily
I fall hard where others only stumble
It is worth it for me to mindfully look where I’m walking on the rocky road
So that I can stand tall when it rumbles

The Emotions of Objects

The Emotions of Objects

I’ve heard it said that you should give away
Any object you possess
Which does not bring you joy
I agree with that, however

I have some objects which do not bring me joy
But the feelings they bring
Are worth learning from

For example,
I have pajamas which remind me of my mother
She was my first pimp, my original smotherer
I look at the faded yellow cotton and have flashbacks of the guilt-trips she would send me on, furious that I was never good enough
She still terrorizes me, even when we are far apart
To counter-balance the emotional storm stirred up by my unassuming nightwear,
I practice compassion and understanding
Adults are only hurt children themselves, but larger-sized

I also have a stained mug which reminds me that I was second-best
Allowing me an opportunity to practice humility

And a cracked bowl which resulted from an escapade of breaking the law
It reminds me to make wiser decisions now

I have some clothing
Which reminds me of letting down those most deserving of my attention
I breathe deep and remember
That it is OK to let people down
I accept that I cannot please everyone all of the time
Try desperately as I might

In my closet hangs a thread-bare scarf that I wore on many adventures
With an ex-partner who treated me, I realize now, like my mother:
Mandating, controlling, throwing fits if I hesitated to grant their every wish, spoken or unspoken
I practice self-forgiveness when I see that scarf
Because I was doing the best I could at the time

Now I do better
I practice compassion, understanding, humility, wisdom, acceptance of my limitations and self-forgiveness
The objects I own remind me
How far I’ve come
And encourage me
To continue on
My healing journey
Appreciating joy
Among many other colors
Of the emotional rainbow

Don’t get me wrong,
I’m still going to donate those items…eventually
Give them a new life
Throw them back in the sea
There is plenty of buoyant joy available
For you, me and everybody