Poem: Why, why, why.

Why don't you love me,
like I think you should?
When you say that you love me,
but I can't feel it,
or see it.
And you wont hold me.

I'm always there for your tears,
but you're never there for mine.
You just make it worse.

My needs are so simple.
My wants are so pure:
Stay with me,
Look at me,
think about me.
hold me when I'm sad.
Listen to my words,
do not twist around my meanings.

If I can't even talk,
then it's really time to try.
Tell me that you love me.
Lie with me until I say
"stop."
Dedicate your time to me,
as I dedicate mine to yours.

When thinking about you only hurts.
And there is no medicine for me,
but to be alone...

After enough time alone,
anyone seems like an Angel.
I just want to be loved.
Something you are no good at.

Oh, you can talk.
But when it comes to shutting up
and just holding me,
well,
forget it.
Like it is not your job to support,
because you're a female.
All you can do is cry,
which makes me feel worse.

God, baby, I love you.
But when it comes to compassion
and just plain healing...

you suck.

Poem: Bad Transformations

An Intimate Lover turns into
a strange, unknown, Monster!

How could this be happening?!
So fast!
Where is the human Lover I knew?

This, this, this...
Doppelganger,
who took Their place!
Hearing not a word I say!
Seeming to care for me not at all,
knowing nothing of my feelings towards e-mails,
contradicting themselves with each paragraph.
Great, lieing, Haughty, Hypocrite:
Demanding response,
while no response will do.

No matter what I say,
it is taken by Them for Evil,
only fueling Their Unrighteous Fire,
their weird Demon's thirst.

They will not rest
until We (My Lover & I) are destroyed completely.
Until all chances of friendship between us,
and all contact,
of any kind,
is gone.
Made Impossible.
Our Time Over.

I list my boundaries;
the Monster,
my Lover's Doppelganger,
immediately crosses them all,
taunting me with sadistic glee.
"Now what?" They sneer.

Knowing how fragile I am ,
knowing how sensitive to
my lovers written words;
This Being I used to Love,
hurts me on Purpose.

Hurts me, hurts me,
and hurts me again.
Deliberately,
with Malice aforethought.
Self-Pity may be pathetic,
I am not such a Fool
as to not see that in me.
But so too is being a doormat.
Even a doormat for
a Beautiful young person.

Aiming Their verbal bullets
at my weakest parts,
(weak points they learned of naked,
in Love, in Trust, in bed, with Me).

Their justifications,
for my heart's Assassination,
are nearly infinite:
Blaming me for the bulk of it,
nothing left for me to say.

Sometimes -Silence -
is the only reply.

Every response I give them,
bent into an excuse to attack me.
interpreting my answers
as invitations to continue
their never-ending harangue;
Of Me,
all my limitless faults,
all my limitless cruelties.

In one sentence from Them I read they
"...have never loved any one more than (Me)..."

In another They submit reasonably that they
"...cannot ever bare to see You (Me) in person again..."

Then a few pages latter does a few
mental flips in the air again and asks if I
"...would you like to meet up Saturday..."

To pages and pages
of similar,
self-contradictory,
deeply heartfelt,
confusion and lies.

And sometimes,
just plain insanity.

It seems to me that my
Lover-Friend-Stalker,
(hopefully temporarily)
has lost contact with
An Objective Reality.
Governs by Moods,
rather than Morals.

One cannot negotiate with a Madman,
the language barrier is insurmountable.

I had never guessed the depth of
Anger toward Me,
Need for Control,
Power Hunger,
Expectation,
and just plain
Spoiled Brat Selfishness
which resides near the center
of my X-Lovers being.
(Of course these faults are also mine;
that's the reason I can see
the method to this madness).

Remembering back They were very quiet,
through much of our time together.
I never had reason to believe that inside my
Gift from The Goddess
there would be a volcano.
Waiting for a victim,
to make it erupt.

I had finally gotten the
Peace of Mind
to stop reading
Their sad, poisoned, words.
It took a complete Panic Attack,
boarding nervous breakdown,
at just the sight
of another mean letter from Them.
But it worked.

I hate giving up.

Yet it's something I've had to learn to do,
to succeed, to survive;
As gracefully as possible.

Maybe one day
They will be Sane again...
We can meet and hug,
go out,
have coffee,
fall in Love again,
whatever.
I hope so.
I wish so.
I Pray so every day.

Saddest,
most evident,
there is nothing to be said
between us
now.

This part is Over.

Poem: Bow and Repeat

My mother chose my father,
over me.
Over and over
and over again.
As a child.
He would beat me
and I would beg her
to leave him.
But she wouldn't.
He'd scream at her
and beat her
and I'd beg her to leave him.
But she wouldn't.
Or she couldn't.

Later in life she remarried.
My stepfather would beat me;
stealing all my inheritance
from my mother.
I asked her to leave him,
or at least protect my inheritance.
She wouldn't.
Or she couldn't.

Later still I was dating
a woman I loved.
Who was addicted to
an abusive former lover.
He said mean things to her,
and once she left me,
for him.
Telling me she didn't
care for me
anymore.

Finally back together,
I asked her to leave him for me.
Let his friendship go,
and live in our love.
She wouldn't.
Or she couldn't.

Like my mother before her,
the abuse is more important than,
my love.

Poem: She-Addict

She cares for the drug
more than she cares for me;
Of course,
that's the definition of addiction.
I cannot say "NO" to her
and she uses my sympathy,
my empathy,
my love,
to manipulate me.
My feelings be damned,
as long as she gets
what she craves.

She lies to me,
hides things from me,
and when I catch her,
she cries and yells at me,
as if it were my fault;
Her behavior.

Going out of my way to help her,
I'm rewarded with abuse.
The more I give,
the more she wants.
We are both spoiled children,
though I try much harder.

Leaving her house
to be homeless again.
Left to the streets
feeling emptier
and more miserable
than when I came.

She does not deserve me, now,
and I deserve much better.

I love her.
I don't think she knows
what that means.

Mother-Moon,
I tire of her games,
I tire of her "take, take, take."
My life is hard enough
without her
making it worse.

The worst of all is that
She is now Me,
and I am now Ruby.
Seeing how I treated her
in days now too far gone.
Wondering if this is my Karma.

"You do not get to choose your Karma,"
Mother-Moon reminds me.

I wish she'd given my
8 pills back.
I wish she'd said,
"I love you more than that."

She did not.

Picking pills,
she sent me out the door without Love.
Back to my life:
Alone.

Poem: Teary Morning

Try not to think about it.
The worst is over now.
Waking cold, alone as ever,
by the Ocean, far from
succor or store.
Wishing to stay in my
warm sleeping bag;
No choice, no choice.

Why did I choose a sleep place
so far away from everything?
Pluses and Minuses all around.

Think about the moment, now,
no longer cold at all.
Think about good things to come
in the future.
The tears are trying hard to come.
I've been fighting them for days,
and winning.

Poem: Underground

Like an underground river You,
my tears, are always there.
Like I am divided in two
and the bottom half is always crying.
While the top half
interacts with the World.
I can descend into my river
whenever I wish,
simply by letting my guard down,
thinking one too many thoughts
in the wrong direction and
Whoops! Splash!
Drowning and crying,
crying and drowning.

But I never die,
nor am I ever saved
by a Hero or Goddess.

I simply pull myself up,
pretending the river doesn't exist
- and I go on with life.
Unresolved.
Unfixed.
Uncompleted.
About to slip at any moment
back down into the river.
But for now I'm OK.

I used to think the river was good
and may lead somewhere Holy.
Now not so sure,
new power comes
with new introspection.
The more I rise above,
the easier it gets...

Living in the River for years,
the tears are more familiar
than the warmth.
Cold, sepparate, and salty.
They know me so well
that the warmth of Love
always confuses, a creature of
dark being shined by the sun.
The initial warmth so beautiful,
so close,
that the coldness
which used to be my life
is seen as it is;
Sad and Lonely.

Yearning for life in the sun.
Not to be. Not to be.
To imagine I know what Lucifer felt,
what Adam and Eve experienced.
Denial from the Heaven
that oncce was known to them.
Writ in stone:
"Thou Mayest Never Return."
Cast from the most beautiful place
in existance -
to...well... You get the idea.

To imagine I know what they felt;
is that not Pride
of the first degree?

Poem: Payday

Woke up deeply sad about Her,
almost crying,
then remembered it was Payday;
the one day a month I'm rich.
Bum-rich.
It didn't really change my feelings.

Early morning, sun just rising.
Me, deciding weither to cry,
to go back to sleep,
or to get up and start my day.
Deciding to cry, no tears come.
Hiding my head under the top
of my sleeping bag,
no sleep same.
Windering again about crying
and if it was good for me
or just self-perpetuating
dis-ease.

I get up to start my Payday
in foul spirits.

Walking by the seaside,
first thing in the grey morning,
is a hard place to stay
in a foul mood.
Truly beautiful,
my sadness seems petty and small
in comparrison to the Ocean,
who has seen so much.
So much death,
so much birth,
and here's little 'ol me;
Sleeping in the same spot
that countless
Ohlohnes Natives
also slept.

She's using me, I know,
though she may not.
He's done using me, I know,
though he may not.

How can my life change?
Withuot outside intervention?

Poem: Go Home

I prayed to God saying
"I don't like where I'm living."
The next morning awoken
by the Police.
"But where am I supposed to go?"
I asked.
"home," the Cop said softly,
not unkindly,
"go home."

That's when the tears started.
It's so easy for someone,
who comes from a home,
to say "go home"
-I've heard it before
many times.

But how do I tell them
I don't have a home?
Never had a home.
Everyone must come
from somewhere.
But that doesn't mean they
have a home.

I havn't had a real home
since I was thirteen years old.
My parents sent me away
from there.
First to the Desert,
then to the Other Side of the Country.
There was no warning.
They said "two weeks of fun."
But they meant
Boarding School,
Punishment for Imagined Crimes,
Confinement,
Loss of all friends and social ties
I'd been building
for thirteen years.

Almost twenty years later:

My Father,
unable to put me in Prison,
still has a restraining order against me.
No home there.

My Mother lives with a man
like my Father.
She cares for him instead of me.
He's my replacement;
since she's had him
I stopped mattering to her.
Not my health,
not my schooling,
not my life.
Before she remarried
she put our house into
legal trust.
She said
"Jane, this house will always be yours.
I want you to know that.
My new marriage changes nothing."
Her new husband battered me
at their wedding
and because she didn't care,
no one else did.
One month after marriage
she sold our house.
No home there.

I sometimes hate
people who have homes,
or those who come from nice ones.
Though that's not fair of me.
They can't help the way they are
any more than I can.

Still...
I wish I had a
Permenant Place
that I could always go.
Somewhere safe
and warm.
With food, too,
and a bathtub.
Somewhere I'd always
be Welcome
and no one would
call me bad names
or hit me.

I probably always will wish this.
And it's a little too late,
for that wish,
to come true.

Poem: Yet Another Anti-Depressant

Trying another anti-depressant; Paxil.
Warned that I may be sleepy the first four days
I thought, "yeah, right."
But I've felt like shit on a stick all day...
I think it is day 2.
Like a sleepy Zombie again.
It is so fucking hot,
these anti-deps never work good.
They just make me incredibly dopey.
Also my stomach hurts a little dully.
My hands are cut up
and my writing looks funny.
Can't write anything good.
Me think Paxil for stupid heads.
Poo-poo brains pee-pee pee-pee's.
Can I make it four days?
We'll see...
(I doubt it)

Poem: My Poor Mother's Pain

"I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, as a woman, as a wife."
My Mother says,
as the guilt in my stomach clenches,
making me the worst person on earth.
"My Father died when I was so young," she goes on,
"I never learned how a woman was supposed to act towards a man. I was doing the best I could. I'm so sorry."
I accept her apology and feel like slime for ever blaming her,
for ever hating her.
But I was just a child,
how could I have possibly known
she was innocent?
All I knew was
I didn't want my Father to hurt me anymore
and she was supposed to have
that power.

Thoughts: Lessons I Learned as a Child

1) Whenever possible avoid telling the truth. Truth leads to beatings at worst and shrugs at best.

2) My opinions and feelings do not matter to anyone.

3) Never tell anyone what goes on at home. It's the worst thing you can do.

4) If I endure terrible treatment silently I wil be rewarded with toys and money.

5) Promises to me do not matter, they can be fullfilled or changed at any time, for any reason. Promises that I make, however, have to be fulfilled or I will be hurt.

6) I don't deserve to know the "truth."

7) Loking good to your neighbors and the outside world is more important than how you feel or how you are really doing.

8) Whenever possible to get away with, it's O.K. to cheat with money a little. Like buying a discount movie ticket you don't deserve or cheating on taxes.

9) No one would save me from my family and abuse. There is no escape ever.

10) Adults are most often petty, stupid, mean, selfish, greedy, and terrible at dealing with each other and the world at large. I can't wait to be one so I can slap the fuck out of my father and tell everyone else to "Fuck Off!"

11) My parent's divorce was my fault (They both confirm this to this day, although Mom sometimes changes her mind momentarily).

12) Even as far as adults go: Mine are exceptionaly vicious and stupid.

13) Teachers care more about disciplined behavior and repitition than actual learning.

14) I was often blamed successfully for acts I did not commit and nobody ever stood up for me. This taught me that I would always be in trouble no matter what I did.

15) Doctors and Psychiatrists do not care about helping you, they care about money and their "theories."

16) Money is easy to get.

17) Friends can help, but only momentarily, you always have to go back to your family alone.

18) Something called "genes" and my "family tree" said I was almost guarented to become an alchoholic or drug addict (whatever the heck those are!) when I grew up, unless I never touched the stuff.

19) My Mom liked my Dad more than she like the idea of neither Her nor I being beaten and yelled at by Him. Or she was just a big coward. I couldn't decide.

20) My Father didn't love or even like me. I was the worst part of his life and avoided him as much as possible (He confirms this to this day).

21) My Father was the best Lier in the world and no matter how much truth I told, people would always believe his lies instead of me.

22) Sometimes you just get punished for no reason at all, even if you are doing really good.

23) By controlling all information released about me to my parents, I could lesson the number of beating I got. Information is power.

24) Entertaining guests is very important. More important than me or my feelings.

25) The outside is everything, no one cares what goes on inside a person.

26) Buying T.V.'s, Roses, Stereo's, and a car, makes up for breaking dishes, slashing car tires, and other abuse.

27) I could depend on my family for pain and misery only. For everything else I was on my own.

28) Drinking alchohol was more important to my father than my mother and I.

29) Hide anything of value and write diaries in code. Your room will be searched constantly and your diary read. I have no right to privacy.

30) Dad counts every cent in his change jar (I should have remembered this oone ten years later).

31) No matter how old I got, I was never too old for a beating from my father or emotional torture from my mother.

32) Adults act stupid at parties.

33) Everything dies. Mostly pets killed accidentally by my mother.

34) My parents would rather have my school Priest tell me at Mass in front of the entire school that my dog had died, than have a heartfelt conversation with me.

35) If I'm going to get beaten to matter what I do... well, then, "Fuck it," right?

36) I can manipulate my mother into buying me things because oh her guilt. She knows that she is wrong for letting Dad act like he does. I might as well milk it. Toys are all I have.

37) If someone has to be beaten, I would rather it be Mom than me. It's her fault for staying with him (Ouch, I know, but it's what I felt at the time).

38) Girls like me... and I like girls!

39) I can meditate all by myself and get away from all the crap.

Poem: Learning to Suck Dick

When nothing is "bad"
all things are permitted.
It's like a final protest
against the Gods who made me.

Clearly I'm meant to learn to suck dick,
why else would I be in this place?

Penultimate Humbler,is there any lower place?
The closest near-guess is the anus!

I do it, just so,
if it's wrong, even better.
Maybe now my prayers will be heard,
on the back of the anguish of my heart.

If the devil truely loves
to demean and rule the purest,
surely I must be
a fine old meal indeed.

Poem: Nice People

Most people arn't nice
to be nice.
Most people are nice
to get what they want.
I keep trying to believe
that the person
being nice to me
is being truly good and caring.
I keep wanting to believe.

This results in my being repeatedly
used and crapped upon,
always by choice,
always in the sincerest hopes
that this time,
maybe this time,
things will be different.
maybe this time
things have finally changed
for the better.
God has finally heard me!
Only to be replaced by
my tears and shame
at how wrong
I could have been.

Poem: He is a Demon

A loser again.
The tears come freely.
I chose the wrong trap
and felt so good about it.
Where can I go?
What can I do?
All choices are ugly.
I am alone.
Escape!
Alarm!
Sirens blaze
throughout my entire body,
nothing comes but tears.
Tears and fleeting ideas
of "maybe" and "perhaps."
Arggg!
All of my choices are ugly.
Just when I thought
my luck may have changed;
it had -
for the worse.
He is a demon
looking to make others.
I pray for help,
spirits hear my tears.

Poem: Mother's Tears

When the Haitian Loa of the
Mother Ocean
possesses the body of someone
she often spends her time incarnate
crying for hours upon hours
for all the sorrow
of all her children.

When I think of my mother
I cry.
When my mother thinks of me
she cries.
Salty tears
salt water
the ocean
salt water
Mother Ocean
Mother tears
cries because she
love you
and it hurts her
to see you in pain.

Endless tears of love.

Poem: Another Morning #27

More tears and nightmares.
Evil dreams have never been so
brightly-colored before.
A problem with my Anti-depressants?
Possible.
More likely just the average pain
of the end of a month
with no money in sight.
+ the Hollidays
+ my Birthday
- gifts and friends
= me right now.
Teary-eyed
and trying to hide,
from reality.

Poem: Another Morning #26

More nightmares.
My eyes are now open.
The fear remains
in my beating heart.

Realization
that I have been whimpering
out-loud
for some time.
Crying and moaning
from my bed.
Embarrassment
as I look at those around
who heard me.

The men say nothing.
We all cry in our sleep sometimes.

I wasn't asleep, though.
Just scared
and tired.
Out of options.
Nothing left to do.
Cry.