Pass the Gravy (originally written in 2006)

Leave me uninspired.
Pillowcase still damp from another emotional
Episode
While watching
Episodes
Of bad sitcom television designed to
Play off my own abandonment issues
Like the issues of time gracing my
Glass top coffee table, stacking
Haphazardly
Ready to tip into a precarious situation
If only the canyon cut between us
Could be filled with water
Or sand or a rope bridge could be built
To close the gap
And seal the problems that
Turned me into a jigsaw puzzle
Noone has been able to put back together
In 30 minute increments
Intervals of conflict – resolution
we all live happily ever after
Much better than
We all go tumbling down

You remind me too much of him

churns my stomach
Like old fashioned butter
I filled the pauses of your words
With my own ideals and
Inserted my own aspirations
Into the cold motel vacancies of your mouth
As you could never be so inspired
Creating you to be what
I painted by number
Careful to stay in the lines
Creating you to be my masterpiece
My Pygmalion

But the fun house pictures
They never represent
Any of the honest breaths escaping
My parted lips
But the distortions of body
They never represent
Any of the legitimate longings
Of my weighted crown
That tilts just off center
Making my shoulders sag invisibly
Making my neck tilt at that
Odd acute angle

The man on the stage sang
And the words traveled from his mouth
To hit me in the face
Leaving a red handprint
Handing me a playing card that says

Do not leave me
Let me love you

But I keep upacking his suitcase
Like I did that day in January
Looking out from adolescent eyes
Drowning in a pinstrip shirt that smells of starch
And your aftershave
Unsure of my hero worship
Obvious disillusionment of
Such clichéd patriarchal let downs
let downs masking put downs
That wont let me pick myself up for
Fear that I will realize

I never
Needed you at all.

That seems more tragic than the
Sad brown eyes you see from
Without ever really seeing me
You’ve created me from
Your opinions of what you do not have time for
On your grid of whats important
What is an asset
To your own existance
But I will drive to sit beside you
On your left,
but not your right
And I will pass the food and say the graces
In attempts to Saving our good graces
cease invisibility perhaps

I would like you to be thankful
For my need to see a psychiatrist

For driving an hour to sit on your left
For keeping your shirt hanging in my closet
Thinking you may claim it
Eventually