ants/further/easy

In my twenties

I would go to my friend Audrey's 

flat

who had loved someone but

who needed now to be uncurled

from her pajama bottoms and sorrow.

And I would tell her

that all experience is a kind of diversion (sic) and

that there would be others more deserving/.

That even ants in their darkened kingdoms, know when the queens sonance

needs stroking. And as

she was picking at the pimples on her forehead,

id say to her far more than I believed.

Pearls dangling, a small child ate at the corners

of the journal I have pretended not to hide.

I told her that not far from here

ash was making some insoluble waste of the

America we use to love. That all that the earth

doesn't consume is given off as light/ tiger wild,

red like meat yet tender as a dolls tooth. Pools of her

insecurity danced then sat like Monk doing his

intoxicating spins. When

I search for her in the recent dreams i've had, she comes

to this place, modern from the neck down, heavier,

her acrylic nails done well by the Asians. She tells me

how it was me who saved her

when the ants of disappointment had  crushed her back

and drug her naked, agape and a*s out from Timbuktu 

to the mouth of their holy temples -

To where we are now. Still lonesome. Still needing.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

Upon second reading, I was struck that both entities in this poem are one in the same . . . giving a friend some strokes could be the same as giving oneself some healing. Knowing when we need some strokes but at the same time picking ourselves apart. Dreaming oneself to be a fractured entity, forgetting one's identity, always coming back to that howling empty spot (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[h d e rushin]

you found this one? when I wrote it I tried to hide from it. tried to drown it in the overflowing sink . tried to bury it in the shallow grave I've dug a million times in the square miles of my little yard. but you're right. you can so easily forget yourself while trying to comfort someone else. when it was you that was broken, all along....thanks Margie.. I love you mercilessly ......dana

[Robert Trakofler]

I don't think we are ever, satiated Dana no matter how hard we try to sill those voids the pit just seems to widen we can fill our hearts and spill our imparts but it never seems to meet the mark:/ but that loneliness still remains so stark

[h d e rushin]

it does, which brings us back to Tennessee Williams' "Street Car Named Desire"/ which was just a metaphor for the things we will ultimately lose. There is a shabby apartment waiting for all of us to occupy when we, ultimately, throw away our privileged backgrounds, our acrylic nails, our rehabbed spirits and yes, even our poems packed in boxes. Loneliness is our American requime; our repose for the soul. thanks for your intensely musical brain my friend.....dana

[T.S. Ulmus]

Not often do I have the thought "what the hell did I just read?" I read it a second and third time and pretty much had the same thought. Good job! There's a through storyline, or maybe two, all of the best madness kind of makes sense.

[h d e rushin]

thank you dearest. Why love poetry, I ask myself sometimes.? Because it is the engine of all poetic mistakes perhaps. My sister owns one of those beautiful Tesla's . (and you should see the inside). But it stays in the shop all the time. Yet outside, love poetry marches on. insecurity is like that. It turns the best of our intentions into merchandise....love dana

[jacob erin-cilberto]

the ants know...they work together....we need others to lean on.
Disappointment crush, but true friends uncurl that flag of defeat.
WE sometimes save others without knowing...and we are saved without realizing.
I want the world to end, and start over, with or without me...
My emotions are naked these days...can't conceal them...only congeal them with the pen.
Still lonesome, still needing, as you so aptly put it.
j.

[h d e rushin]

I'm with you jacob. my emotions are like the Christmas candy that, next to the heat register, has turned into one giant, sticky, unimaginable, "socially distant" thing (yes another one) that you can't reason with. Thanks brother for your thoughts....dana