Poetry 1995-2005

i always wanted to be

degas is calling across the years but he has

painted out the pain

the ugliness of the feet

in satin slippers

they make you forget, the satin shoes

that covers a multitude of callouses

built up over years

blunting the pain of trying

on pointe those feet

chasing ever and on dancing on

the aurora borealis

beginning then, with a man in navy blue

his peacoat dusted white with snow

and music

and Blake’s ephemeral word pictures

immortal-like

he was not

and nobody tells you what to do

when the music ends

and the shoes come off

the flowers die

the killing snow descends

i hear him still

what if

haunts me

I am through

tonight the mirror cracked from side to side

and i saw you clearly,

you locked me up that night, tight as a butterfly in a chrysalis who

has her secrets, all but the one you could not keep

for I had a voice.

you kept me in a silent prison of thirty years, repayment, no doubt,

for the light I shone on you,

in that chrysalis-prison where

I locked myself tight as if in a womb wrapped in denials, and words, when

your words came at me like bullets

your words of derision,

and I believed (I believed!)

fat

ugly

unlovable

those three weapons slicing me in two

the most effective in your arsenal

fired at moments of closeness

(I believed you)

I crawled through thirty years

of self-hatred, and feasted for comfort

hungered for it

hid wrapped in the heavy comfort i carried ever with me

your magic words, dark sorcerer

becoming true

(you, the all powerful)

those layers made me invisible to love

to the world,

and soon you didn't even have to say them anymore

because

they played themselves in my head

like demons dancing round an infernal fire

in my soul.

i buried that night

and hid from mirrors ever afterwards fearing the truth

it would reflect

your truth

never mine.

you, fearing a child's truth

(coward)

tried to silence me

sought to rape me with your hatred

succeeding while I chased you with open arms

simultaneously

running from your darkness

I kept running even after God killed you

six foreign countries and countless cities later

the chrysalis, black and shiny laid inside me a letter unopened

my ugliness I called it and never named it

never spoke it

my voice muted for years on end

me desperately trying to find my voice in writing

in soft summer nights and

cold winter evenings

when you were as inaccessible as the stars in the sky

and I always five years old inside

and the layers of years, of pain of hiding

I carefully built onto myself with the

care of an architect

Truth came visiting me unawares this night

and your reflection every time I saw my face in

the mirror cracked

then shattered

the chrysalis

not ugly

not fat

not unlovable

that mirror an illusion only

and I the butterfly

making her way

out into

the

light

I, finally free

of

you

Daddy