Posted 5:34 PM by melanie

*
My Abortion

So glad they were there for me.
Leave child at friend’s apartment
Drive 6 hours by myself to Planned Parenthood.
No doubts.

Sit in waiting room read article in magazine
On Romanian street children

Third generation
Living in sewers.
Think about Ceausescu



Think about Bush, Scalia,
then think again about Romanian street children

Pray to God for those children.

Pray to God that it doesn’t happen to us here
With these idiots in office.

Say private thank you to God
for kind Doctors
Risking their lives to help me
Cramps, pain, and blood follow.
No regrets.
None.
Not now
And not ever.





Obsessive/ Compulsive
(Don’t cure Me!)


And then it all goes back to the poetry
When I get frustrated
I think with my fingers
Endlessly pacing the width of the screen
I walk to one end
And then jump back
and walk across almost the same path
My hands know what I am saying
before it reaches my brain
(Automatic writing)
And if it gets too hot
I flinch only after the sentence has been written
Sometimes I have to slap my own fingers
If they get out of hand
Years of masturbating
Having given them a mind of their own
And that is weird
When I get angry or frustrated
Or especially if I have something else
That I’m supposed to do
Then that’s when I need to write
Writing being an uncontrollable urge
Sometimes I’ll think about something for years
Before I know how to frame it
Or theme it
And then it comes all at once
In the middle of the night
I drag myself out of bed
Make a pot coffee
And over to the computer
And then I write
Because
I do
.

Posted 1:23 PM by melanie

Another old one

*To A.P.B.*

Motherfucker with your faded blue eyes
Like the stars on a rebel flag handkerchief
You kept folded up in your back pocket.


Blue eyed Cajun’s son
You thought you were like Lafitte
When you were dealing drugs.

Your smugglers blues
Are nothing but leftovers in a silver spoon
You stole from your mother’s kitchen sink.

Junkie fever
Have you got cotton candy in your blood?

I’ve watched you twitch and flinch
With your veins rolling like wheels on a hearse
To your own Goddamned funeral procession.

And I would be glad to be there
And cover your grave in shit
Just to watch the poppies sprout up when springtime comes.

But old junkies never die
They just get used up.
Their heads hard and dull
As the needles they try to poke in the backs of their hands.

Mel 1991