Lines That Wouldn’t Let Me Sleep

You remember when you were young

And you held the night in the palms of your hands

In the lines on the insides of your fingers

And in the creases of your elbows

Sometimes you can still sense little bits of it, there,

Hanging,

Threads of starlight and midnight city air stuck

Under your nails and behind your ears

But when you look in the mirror

It’s a grown-up who looks back,

Haggard, adult,

A woman whose circles under her eyes tell more

Than her cracked lips ever could.

By Betsy Jacobson, 6.2.2011

In Which I Miss Her Already.

She wasn't my grandmother.
In the end, you know,
she wasn't anyone I knew.
Really, she wasn't anyone at all.
She was grey and bones,
and skin,
and tubes and blankets and coughs,
like some sci-fi alien monster
out to destroy or rule the world,
or both.
But three weeks ago, and four, and five,
and all that time before,
she was Pepsi first thing in the morning
and she was Midwestern beer at midnight.
She was TMZ and 12:30 p.m. and Judge Judy at 3 p.m.
and history books at 7.
She was pixie cuts and CoverGirl and she was,
"This is much too big for me, do you think
it might fit you?"
She was fudge and glass candy at Christmas,
she was ham on Easter,
she was the best Thanksgiving stuffing anyone
could ever make.
She was crazy earrings and too-big dentures and
she was every sale at Kohl's and Wal-Mart and Big Lots.
She was Fox 10 News, Sherriff Joe's biggest fan and
Obama's biggest critic, and
God help you if you had a visible tattoo,
or worse, a piercing.
And she was there,
always cheering,
always loving,
always willing to lend a hand or
a shoulder or
a book or
just a word.
She was my grandmother.
She was my Gramma.
And now she isn't.

RIP Barbara Janet Jacobson
Feb. 11 1938- Dec. 14 2010

Someone posted this today.
Someone posted this today
in a community about, of all things,
inspiration.
Someone posted this today
in a place where I and others look
for beauty
for peace
for distraction
for hope.
Someone posted this today
and it made me
angry and nauseous
made my stomach roil like a sea storm.
That's how my grandma's legs look. That's how
thin
how straight
how angled her limbs fall
against the recliner or couch
or bed
or wheelchair.
True, her skin hangs looser,
and she can't stand at all, let alone
walk pouting down a runway.
But those legs could be her legs,
and neither I nor my tumbling stomach
can see
how that is in the least
inspiring.

this bird is god, he said
and closed the cage.

wish you could see you
real you
three-dimensional imperfect
lovely you
all pride-inspiring and rosy cheeks
all sleepy smiles and literalness
wish i could mirror you
real you.

In Which I've Lit a Candle And Am Now Listening to Amanda Palmer.

she's the one who can't lie worth a damn,
and that's really what matters here,
so forgetting never lasts long enough for her

she's the kind of girl who needs to feel
to talk it through and write it down and let it out
clear the air or smoke it up

but she isn't the one who slams percussive screams
to the other kindly ones and
she's not the one who lives in the walls
and eats them from the inside out and
she's tried and couldn't use it in her art

but she's really very good at feeling
and no one can talk quite as much as her.

In Which I Am Overwhelmed, and Also There Are Probably Mice Nesting In My Mattress.

Something is gnawing

and I don't mean in some intangible
cry-it-out feelings kind of way

I mean, really, gnawing
chewing at my bed frame or my wall
and I can't see what it is

but I think it's probably mice

but since I did bring them up
let's talk about feelings
and how much they are like mice

how they nest
how they scrittle around, hidden
how they run out at unexpected or inopportune moments
how they breed so quickly
and how cats can sometimes chase them away and

how it would be so much easier to sleep

without this incessant
gnawing.

In Which I Don't Know.

so here it is,
that overflowing empty breath,
ragged and rasping and hot.
that old face you never recognize
the first time.
those claws
pulling everyone under you
to hold you up
despite their pleas and protests -
i'm not a foundation, i'm not a rock, i'm a person.

here it is again,
that useless vacuum,
those wet blurred intersections.
those lonely spaces full of secret
primal screams and old infected scars,
and you know them more than yourself
(you know everything more than yourself).
that clinging familiarity,
that revulsion.

In Which I'm Tired of August.

it's floating in
just behind
these last lightning storms --
and the leaves won't change
and the sky won't turn that proverbial
iron grey
but we'll feel it
we'll dance in it
we'll sit by our fires and breathe
over hot cups of cider or cocoa
knowing somewhere it's cold enough
to see that breath before rosy noses
somewhere
notebooks and pens and brand new shoes
mean something is changing.

In Which La Vita e` Bella, Truly.

this body is creation,
perfect as
anything on display at the Louvre
or the Smithsonian --
rivals the mystery of painted smiles,
the depth of starry nights.
one day it will belong, will deserve
inked skin stretched canvas-like,
heart propped on velvet under glass,
polished rosary of phalanges strung above
marble brain perched on a pedestal,
ears pinned in rows like
butterflies or beetles, dried hard
but lovely.

In Which I Give Up.

i
can't
write.

In Which I Miss Being Able To Stay Up All Night.

ain't no comfort here, oh no.

ain't no good-time-girls tonight,
no whiskey shots and no
fireplace stoked, 'cuz
ain't no warmth inside
this shanty town this time

ain't no comfort here, not here
where that breeze blows hot and
the Big Man's the only one who'll
give you a ride

well, ain't no music here this time,
boy, ain't no
jazz, no swing,
ain't even no blues hangin' 'round
these crossroads tonight

ain't no comfort here tonight.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29#Devil_legend

In Which My Skin Feels Like I Have a Fever.

can we just live in
arms, please?
in my arms and yours,
wrapped
wholesome and warm,
and never leaving you
nauseous from your thighs
to your ribcage
aching from your scalp
to your fingertips,
never leaving you burning
bones to skin or
shaking in between --
never leaving you at all?

In Which Music Is Influencing Me, Again.

pounding, that beat
slams,
that song hits with
every dark or dusky word,
with every
lung-wrenching riff,
each cymbal crashing like
eyes clenching closed
or wounds sewed shut,
the very sound is body is
arms-legs-neck-shoulders
thrown hard against
walls of air or
your own life,
brain against skull --
the only struggle you have
left within you,
inescapable and
pounding.

In Which I Have a Headache.

so here's another
lost-soul-baby-girl
crying at four a.m.,
inhaling her failures
along with the nicotine.
life is oh so tough, isn't it,
when you're in-between
and underpaid?
when prayer is
less effective and
harder to come by and
burns your insides more
than the contents of the
bottles on your
nightstand.
give it up, give it up,
baby girl,
cuz no one's gonna steer
this ship to shore.
no one's gonna anchor you down.
no crew to help you weather
this storm.
i'm not here to unmix your
metaphors, not gonna
take the wheel or
be your wings or
carry you home.
no one has the key.
not you. not even you.

In Which If It's Going To Be This Humid, Then It Really Should At Least Be Raining.

they think in promises or
fragments
of spiderwebs between
curtains and windows
or spells and magic words
floating on certain kinds of smoke
(not inhaled not burning throats
but) silken
across the room,
or sometimes
every once in a
blue moon they
think in weather formations,
and that's when you get
those storms those
lighting-hot boiling-rain
thunderstorms
that make you weep
and at the same time
be.

In Which Lame Things Are Happening to Relatively Good People.

they say bad things happen
in threes, so
one -- you woke up
this morning
before the sun, even though
it's summer and at this
time of year, the sun rises
even before the birds
start to wail and
two -- glass on the asphalt
glints prettier in the daylight
than the stars ever bother,
cuts so deep and smooth
you don't even notice until
you're bleeding
and then, finally,
three -- you're lost,
standing in the bright hardness
of this panting city and
wondering
how you got here,
where you were going,
why no one cares enough
to help you home.

In Which I'm Wearing BPAL's "Ulalume" and It's Making Me Feel Like a Faerie.

it's easy forget
(or pretend to ignore)
those little things
those
add-it-up knock-you-down
slings and arrows
when you're freshly showered
and smell like a poem
or when someone sleeping
is beautiful enough to merit
kisses that
only you will remember
or
when you never leave
your bed,
your
soft comforter and clean sheets.

In Which -- Holy Balls, It's Fucking HOT.

there's too much sweat
running from my scalp
to my fingertips
in rivulets through my
fingerprints
to really write
anything
tonight.

In Which I Like Journaling, Whether It's About Anything Special or Not.

the drip and
slide
of black
wet ink
onto dry paper
across those sharp lines
(blue or black or any colour,
but straight from margin
to outer edge)
can give more peace,
more clarity
than prayer or
voices or
creation.