Truth is.

Saturday came crawling on its knees through the rain
and it's 6 in the morning on the green clock
i slept one-eyed like a  grey wolf sleeps, never dreaming
crouched inside the sofa's  womanly folds
and woke up confused with TV  ads thundering.
there was a sudden jolt of a wake-up acid
a bright yellow wake-up acid that
stung my throat
and clawed its way down
much like  choking on fish bones or
realizing that you are moments from crashing  on
a dark highway's  tree lined divider.


Saturday morning came crawling through the  neighbor's lilac bushes
and i am bending over a gas stove looking blankly at the garden
stirring the food and not screaming
weathering this wet sleepy dawn in a kitchen not mine
like an old captain.
I am cooking saturdays breakfast of
eggs and whitefish, but these are not my hands stirring.
Not my knees pivoting.
Not my head boiling.
I have forgotten how to have hands or grey matter
and the stove knows this.
And the pan knows this.
And the oil rivers know this.
The oil sizzles and sputters determined to teach me
it jumps like a fire flea
towards the face that isn't mine and
I start to back away from the pain but
my body falls backwards stumbling
on a goddamn toy the kids left yesterday
my body that isn't  really here  forgets how to stand and
shoots  its comet self  towards the floor
hitting its head hard on the wood and
ten thousand bees that sting every piece of skin  fly around it angrily.
I am now looking at the kitchen from a very strange angle
(everything is so tall!)
drowning in sweet and hot milky coffee, eggs on rye with hot sauce
yet this fucking body  refuses to scream.
It refuses because a)  it isn't  mine.
and b)  I am really at the beach. 
I am not sprawled on  this kitchen floor.
I am not dying alone on a piece of bloody maple wood.
Nor have i seen the dawn in the garden through the
foggy and cracked window pane.  The lilacs aren't quite real.
No, none of this is really happening to me.
I am not here.

Truth is I have spent the night at the beach walking solo
out of the house and without a car, drunk
on a glass of sea water
caressed by sea gull feathers
treading  the tide's upsurge
breathing the storm's white wash by the breakers
dressed warm and kicking clamshells under the
moon's  plaster of paris  light
kicking oysters and  dead lobsters
holding fistfuls of wet sand
gathering petite rocks slimy with the sea's  post orgasm secretions
sinking my boots into  the desolate grassy sand dunes at Revere Beach.
This is where I am now, sleepless and wandering and not coming back.
I am not coming back.


Truth is, none of this is really happening to me.
There is only one truth:
This is just a routine Saturday morning
bathed in blue and yellow sunlight
a saturday with streaming fluffy clouds casting
their shadows on the veranda
just another morning like all others
filled with milk in cups, and cartoons, diapers
cleaning carpets and going through the motions
of brushing teeth and showering
doing what is to be done.


No, this isn't the truth either, and did you realize
i am a pathological liar?
Did you really think any of this is happening?


I am here, now.  
No one is here.
I am absolutely calm and
my  three fantastic lives
entwine their limbs with mine
enter  my body like a lover
or like a mother's confident embrace
a mother's  assuring embrace that I have
never had or  dared to imagine its possibility

It is mine, this body and this mother is me and i am in love
more than is appropriate or acceptable.
I am in love with this thrice-great body of mine
And I am sitting, whole, accepting,
devouring, living, singing, shouting,  my
unusual and complicated  incestuous Truth.