Author: Kim Koga

This is very rough and it got weird at the end but this is where my brain went on my 30 minute lunch.

 

I am crashing towards the end
And it’s another Monday & I feel
Near collapse. The sky is blue again
And the clouds call for rain and
I am staring at the space between
Wondering where to begin and
End. Where the girls are
And where shifts happen in real
Time not imaginative wanderings
That steal the tiny bits of dreams

My fingers don’t want to type and my back
And hip ache – every morning waking
Into pain and they tell me it’s ok
Keep going keep going and well
It’s not and I won’t and I will rest
And rest long and fulfilled rest like
Those deer in an idyllic field like
A yellowed field but pretty and serene
Like it should be

All these days pass and I forget
Words and how to write and
How to be human – whatever
Truly – what whatever that means
and when waking into a world
Sets the constant tripping on fire
And burns the itty bits of flesh from
My long long exhausted nervous system
And it’s really the fading that’s causing
The lack of color and you know,
That part where the skin turns gray
And there are tears of your own and
And an orange flower alights like
The sun and you curl up like a
Shrimp to sleep – that there can be
A little dream that we touch on
Pour some sauce on me, I’m cooked
And looking for another mouth
To feed.

I feel so shy sharing this – sometimes these words flow through me and I don’t quite understand where they come from – but they are a piece of me. And I can’t always find that voice. But she is here now so I’ll let her shine.

 

Look at these bad bitches take flight
They can’t clip our wings and have no bearing on our rights
Let em all melt on that hot desert sand
I haven’t got time to listen to their snivelling demands

We’ll rise high up against the walls
Breaking all our bounds like breaking balls
Nothing can ever hold us down
Take to the streets and find your crown

Were not flaming like you think
All the girls want my little winks
Spreading out like georgia o’keefe leis
Like a chorus line of queer cakes

Let them fly away
And Streak across the sky
Give me little bites of that pie
But don’t stray away from the bullseye

Color it like a poison pink sky
Call the sunset a pollution beauty cream pie
Burn hotter than the stars of a universe
Sweep me up in the milky way flavor hearse

All the play at my finger tips
Girls are fighting for my tender lips
Crash the congress doors don’t let them sleep
Bring back the people not those soldier feet

Demilitarize the fate of humankind
They can’t win the war of time
They can’t kill us all we’re not illegal
Decorate the girls with sequined eagles

My body where the dead fishes live
Invites the oxygen down my wrinkled
Flesh like every other corpse where
The light doesn’t reach

My body where the dead fishes live
Somewhere there is a god for them
Falling out of flight and calling suns
To burn them
Is that warmth equal to love? Or
Do we just burn to burn?

My body where the dead fishes live
Are calling something that they thought
Was hope but it’s planting root balls
Of kelp in fallow sands
Give them something rich, their
Scales are falling away and my
pale white white skin, crumpled like
soaked tissue paper
dye leaking enveloping
Vessels
the dead fish feed at least
I can give something else
The life that escapes me

My body where the dead fishes live
Limp under the pressure and
Each nitrogen breath creeps closer
To the borderlands
Falling into another hole in the
World
Blue if light reached it
Each movement an anchor my
Feather finned friends eyes
Loll like dead girl marbles
Catch my lip

My body where the dead fishes live
Keep the rocks sound
Chamberless and if the walls
Were glass I’d press
my body call
-ing them home

It’s really about how furiously one can tread water
If the dance is a dance you can do until
Every bone in your feet breaks and so on
But what about joy – I wonder as I read
On the way it’s all delicate ribbons layered
On and on like those crepe cakes or
Ribbon candies or piles of pages that
Bound on one edge make a book
And how even if I gave blood and tried
To save the risky living that there
Wouldn’t be any left for me anemic
Already the red cross rejects me

That saving something of myself
Is too something to be taken
Fistful and writhing like the meandering
Waters so slowly moving towards a
Destruction and a peace – these
Creations were never meant to last

If the kudzu can take it back
So can I and we can make another
Home among ruins or stars and
Starve and swoon like those Victorian
Ladies swaying our backs to the waves

The buttercups blooming like fire
Across my skin. What is there for
Each glittering moment
Blinking

Sundays are difficult for me and have been for awhile because what comes next is Monday – my day job. All I really want is this – poems forever. So I’ve been writing some messy drafts and snippets.

It’s Sunday again

And that dread is falling on me

The alarm will go off at 745am

And I will be stricken with anxiety

That immediate wakefulness whether

You want it or not

I don’t know why it even matters

Anymore. The dishes fill the sink

And the laundry is drying and

More spills from the hamper

The stained glass is organized

By color so at least art is more

Accessible and the sigh in me

Sighing so deeply I could faint

I don’t know how to count days

Anymore they keep falling and

So do I – and I don’t know how to

Cry this shame which means nothing

And I’d never call you that – tools

Are put away and the bed needs

Making and I need making and

I feel like these old wrinkled

Apples on the counter always

Procrastinating the next step

The cricket drones and I am fighting

For that energy the empty space left

After 10 years of giving myself to the

Boards and ceos and products

And every little thing I had Losing each time