residue

It’s beautiful and sunny, yet I’m feeling dark today. Dredging up some older poems. These, obviously, are more difficult to post than the ones about my family. Maybe that’s why I want to get them up now. Before anyone finds out about this blog….

Residue

Daylight comes creeping over tight shut lids.
I’m still in my clothes,
I’m on the shag carpet,
I’m feeling my head ripping apart.

My mascara runs and
leaves some raccoon eyes
looking at cold rain
with sadness. There is no one around
to see the mess that’s left.
There’s no one to clean up the
sticky kitchen floor,
no one to put the stale food away.

My dreams of black coffee and
black t-shirt men give me the shakes.
I’m tasting the residue
of a lingering hangover that feeds these thoughts.

I could claw my way out,
I could forget all the mistakes,
I could remember my medicine if you would just let me be.

“What brings me down now is love,” cry the crows.
They fly over the humming wheat fields Van Gogh saw
before he died.
I have the dried paint on my fingertips and under my eyes.