This mostly consists of compiled autobiographical pieces and memories of what I hope to be a published memoir. Confessional poems, in several different forms that I also use for Zine work. You may stumble upon a few short fiction stories.
Enjoy the Madness, Savor the Sense.
With love Truth & Scars
-Mary Catherine, Cowardice! Queen of the Ants.
Happy Birthday David Robert, Bowie Knife In My Pocket.
I see her again.
She is all there is left; of shattered and seventeen.
There is a sound of a baby's whimpering, it comes from a room very near to the one she sits in.
She is staring straight ahead.
Her shoulders begin to tremble.
Her chest begins to rise and fall more rapidly; she sucks in all the air, contorts her face as she grits her teeth so hard they nearly crack and crumble.
Then her eyes close as she folds into herself and her whole body began to quake. She stays just this way for a small while.
When she lifts her head up once more,
you see then that her eyes are bleeding;
they must be.
For she does not cry;
Not ever.
The blood red rivers of sorrow,
of rage.
The Niagara falling; disillusionments despair.
Monsterous monsoon of shame and terror.
Tis’ only the bloodshed of a warrior.
Now she bows her head puts her arms out to either side and grips the cushions of the sticky faux leather couch and all you see is the quaking girls blonde cropped hair covering bleeding eyes.
I think I heard her say something as she tries to build the dam again.
What was it?
A barely audible,
“Please?
Help?
Why?
God? “
Her strange language.
The babe’s sobs had grown louder as if the chord that tied him to her in utero was still intact. Her head jolts up and she is slamming and pounding those final bricks into their proper place.
Her stronghold,
Her barricade,
Her ancient dam is back up as quickly as it had been knocked down.
She slashes her palms across her face beneath her eyes.
Not wiping away tears.
Never.
This must be her war paint.
She takes a breath in and holds it as she puppeteers her body upward with an unforeseen, formidable strength.
Once standing she marches toward the whimpering before it becomes an inconsolable battle cry.
She breathes out, but only once she reaches his crib and sees him holding onto the rails trying to balance,, his chubby knees buckling.
He is not quite one year in a body of his own.
She smiles;
A faint yet genuine smile and runs one fingertip under her eye.
“What’s wrong? What is it, my silly boy?”
He wobbles his way to face the sound of his Mother’s beautiful voice he knows so well; he is the only one that ever really heard it.
They make eye contact, and for a moment, all was becalmed.
When she lifted him up and out of his crib, felt the warmth of his breath against her neck, closed her eyes, listened to that breathing and as her lips touch to kiss the golden crown of his head, they linger there
within his silken strawberry blonde hair.
She inhales deeply his secret message.
She brings his face gently to her own and holds him there;
skin to skin.
She contemplates a response and then whispers in his ear…
‘I know my beautiful boy, I know.’
Silence for a moment, another few breaths calming herself and calming her child.
Then with an assured tone of voice and a look of certainty she continues,
“I love you.
I love you so very much.
“You are my prince and one day…
One day, I know, that I will be your queen.
I will be a great queen, I promise. You’ll see...
Then, one day…
You will be a King.“
She allows one steady crimson rivulet to trickle from her eye.
Raiseyour glass Hoist the flags In the bygone celebratory fashion. Onslaught- let it go girl endure girl suffer girl shatter girl glue girl persevere girl treacheries girl sidewalks girl down in your place girl crawl beg lie steal girl mother fucking fiend girl you get the fuck up and march girl Debased- a decade's depravity arrogant willful no god damn idea child.
I never learned to skateboard. I was always afraid of falling, not anymore .
My God, if I could I would glide past you all.
So fast and so free.
My legs are heavy; my soul is too wild to be in this body.
So I leap.
"Why are you here Maverick?
I told security not to let you in."
If I could fly, I would. I would be far above you.
You just go on, try and throw another punch at me! I would beat my wings with such a ferocity It would throw you on your back. before your hateful fist came near me.
I see your back hit the cement. The wind is knocked out of you. I hover above you.
I watch you as you look up at me, squinting. The horror and shock upon your face is priceless. I smile at your frailty.
I look for a street sign, something familiar. I am on Twenty Seventh street and First Avenue.
I never really liked this area.
I almost died near here a couple of years ago. Some say I'm crazy.
I take off higher and go towards the north end of the east village.
I perch on top of the W hotel on the north east side of Union Square Park.
I think for a moment about the night I stayed here, with a tipsy yuppie, young and pretty woman.
I believe she thought she saw a lost part of herself in me. I had spotted her as she drunkenly stumbled out of the bar onto down third avenue near twelfth street. I was going to immediately treat her as I treated all civilians back then and just ask her for money, but she had started a normal conversation with me. She spoke of the woes we women suffer and endure in terms regarding the male species idea of we are. I remember that I had looked at her fur coat, her manicured nails in contrast with the misery behind her words and her drunken state and immediately thought of Norma Jean Baker.
Mirrors, all of us are mirrors!
I thought I knew that already but it is indisputable now.
This entire time, I know that everyone I ever met was a mirror.
When I began to notice how late it was getting,
I gave her my speech about the hostel I needed money for.
She did not think twice and invited me to stay with her.
"No, no. don't worry about that! You can stay in my room tonight."
I asked where she was staying, she told me the 'W' at Union. I was aghast.
She may be intoxicated but I will not lose a chance to stay inside this hotel I had lusted for.
I knew I would not take advantage of her.
I stained her pillowcase pink with my hair dye.
I had sweat out some of the poison as I grew sick during the night.
I smile at the thought. She whined about a security deposit and left early in the morning.
I did not steal from her. I do remember wishing I had at least told her the truth about what I needed money for. After she left to catch a flight she was running late for and the door shut behind her.
In the quiet I quickly realized just how sick I was, acute opiate withdrawal.
(The things I did to myself, I cry at the thought.)
I had grabbed up my backpack ran my fingers through my hair, put on my mascara and went straight into the park to see if I could get a front.
All the dealers knew I was good for it, I was money making machine.
A scrambled up robot, a non feeling, non thinking machine that served only to serve itself.
Stuck and doomed to repeat.
I look at that park now six years later and my heart breaks for the tale spinning broken girl I was.
I leap off of the building and circle around the park, just out of the naked branches reach; my eyes skim the faces for anyone recognizable. Danny is gone, he is dead, I do not know anything else.
I Know somehow that I will never see his beautiful face again.
He was one of the bunch that fought for my affection when I first turned up in union and it had become common knowledge that I too was a creature attached to the daemon.
Of course, I choose the one that sold what I required and I knew would never ask me for money.
Then he too was gone, not dead though.
He went back to the place where 'they' put all the ones that supply what the seekers are after.
I did what I do best. I had survived. spirit still intact.
This made me stronger, wiser, more compassionate.
It all did.
Now I fly above all those ghosts.
The ghost of who I once was.
I see the dog park and my chest tightens. I remind myself that it is all over now.
Maximus is long gone. My beautiful honey colored warrior. A pit bull I loved.
He made a man bleed once because the man had pushed me. He nearly tore his arm off.
I would have married a man like that, a man that fought for me.
If only men acted more like there so called best friend's.
To be as loyal and protective as they are. To be more like the goldensweet and unruly Maximus.
I let a tear fall down my face for the man that I will never know.
What harsh lessons I learned from that individual alone.
A man that was trapped inside a body I slept with for nearly five years.
I will never know him and I will never be with him.
Now, it is enough that I can fight for myself.
I hope that boy finds peace. Before he finds his death.
I think for a moment how cruel, strange, how random, how unjust it all seems.
Who dies and who lives.
I glide above the barren trees and I think of the children I gave birth to when I was still a child.
They will come to know the truth one day and love me as I love them.
I beat my wings with all my might as I head south.
Away from futile "If only's" and all ghosts of the like.
I am peace with that now.
I am high above the city now, I can see the World Trade Center and the 9/11 memorial.
I feel a shock of keen awareness for all the untimely death and pain that occurred here.
I go straight down Broadway and lean west once I near Wall Street.
I circle the old graveyard in the back of the church and I can feel hundreds of years more pain then I could have imagined possible.
All this suffering, how selfish I was once.
I slow the thunder of my wings and place my feet on the ledge of the church.
I look out at all the empty streets that should be busy.
I am crouched now, between the clock and steeple at Trinity Church.
Where are all the people, the cars, the taxi cabs, the buses, the noise of the subway?
Maybe it is all one long dream.
I think about how glorious it will be when he and I find one another.
This soul who will share with me and I will share with thee.
In time's own time.
You who are as strong as I am.
You, who have known hell like I have known hell, so intimately, so horrifically.
We will respect its existence and keep well above.
We will hold one another's hand on an equal plane.
I feel another's gaze and it feels ancient.
He is waiting for me.
It is dawn.
I am not among the living.
I did not just grow wings, this is not a dream.
Now everything clicked into place all at once.
I was having a transplant at Bellevue Hospital.
The Doctor had said that fatalities were rare but not unheard of.
They told me to count backwards from ten,
I turn my head to the left and upward as he turns his to the right.
Our eyes meet.
He looks exactly like me with masculine features.
A silver cord severed.
Recognition, respect and admiration.
One, two and three.
Our expression's change into something similiar to a smile but it is peace and finality that we feel.
His emotions are directly connected to mine.
A golden thread unfurls at our fingertips. as we slowly reach out to one another.
We breath deeply.
Our wings unfurl and we clasp our hands together.
I finally found the lost part of myself.
We look out to the tip of the island.
The buildings I can now see for what they always were.
Dust and ash, it's all just dust.
We watch them fall one by one.
This is not earth.
This is but a shadow of what we once called earth.
The foundation starts to crumble beneath us. We begin to beat our wings synchronously. Rhythmically, to the sounds of something I had never heard outside of my own mind. I remember the poet in the ally I sang for ten years ago. He said that I had the voice of a thousand angels screaming. I now know the sound he was speaking of.
"I still can cry!" I think wordlessly with an infantile joy and I see that I am understood.
As I feel tears streaming down my face I see his tears are falling as well.
The questions they always pose are arranged for sentence long an answer. Yet when I respond accordingly they look confused. as if my answer was somehow causing conflicting ideas and they do. He spoke of "The average person..." and "Typically a..." I glare into his eyes and say "Average? There is nothing average about me, in this regard, you'll find that out soon enough. The quicker you do - the better. And typical?
If you're going by textbooks and trying to put me into some predefined category, you will not find one." I do not say these things to intentionally be cross or condescending, nor even defensive. I want help, I was not mandated there, I sought it out, but I do have a certain amount of self-awareness that is not common among people with addictions. I believe he was taken aback by all of my frankness, awareness, intellect. Combined with the extent of my trauma and experiences and the resulting personality sitting in his office. All in such a brief amount of time, he didn't know what to think. I expected as much. visit number two, he says, "What happened to the smiling and friendly girl that was in my office last week? I want to see her." He thinks this is a humorous request. He smiles and it spells fool on his front teeth.
I put my head in my hands and wipe away my tears. I breath in as deeply as I can, look at him again and say, "You just asked me about very emotionally charged and triggering subjects. Was I to feign some kind of apathy or peace -that I don't feel- regarding subjects that cause me distress? Please, if you can just ask the next question so I can check this off my to do list! I have wasted enough time!"
My little outburst left him wondering if I was bipolar. God damn head shrinkers.
I knew going into it that I would have a hard time finding someone who after getting a glimpse of my mind, would willingly take me on as a client or patient and be capable of what I know is a challenging case.
I didn't let that stop my pursuit.
If I am "ill" of mind then I wish to seek treatment.
But please know that I am not like any other chess game you have played and mastered. you need to forget your previous strategies.
I remember an electric organ that I found in the alley next to a dumpster. I was saddened when I saw it leaning there like trash. This is not trash! Why is this here? What a prize!
Me and Antonio's apartment; apartment # 6 which he named "The Tramp Hole" was less than a block or two away. I knew it would be too heavy for me to push and it would possibly become more damaged then it may have already been. So I scurried down the ally and then east to the furniture store that I knew was on the corner of US-1 and Atlantic avenue. I asked the clerk if I could borrow a dolly and assured him I would return it immediately after I explained what I required it for.
Not much to my surprise but to my pleasure the male clerk said, "Sure, no problem."
I pushed it back to the ally to pick up my treasure. I remember being so excited to show Antonio. He was skilled musician and songwriter. I always loved the piano and had always wanted to learn how to play. Perhaps we can create together, I remember thinking as I struggled to get into the doorway.
Once I had it inside the door and pulled it off the dolly near an electrical outlet, I bent down (only slightly sweaty and a bit out of breath) and I plugged it in. I switched on the power button and saw the tangerine button light up, I lit up too as I pressed down on a few ominous notes and heard it hum out loud and clear. It worked! I nearly leapt I was so pleased. So proud of myself over this little adventure. Not only for having found it, but the charismatic and resourceful way in which I retrieved the dolly and my physical stamina for lifting and then pushing the organ all the way home.
I kept thinking how happy Tony will be and how marvelous this new addition to our eccentric and humble abode was.
I waited for him to come home from his day Job at "The Sign Factory".
- A year later when we were breaking up, I made sure to bring the Organ with me as I was packing up my belongings.
He preferred his guitar anyway. -
I remember he left his markings upon it in permanent marker. On the center keys, he indicated which note was associated with which letter.
I don't remember them any longer.
He did try to teach me, in the same regimented way he was taught.
Antonio had attended Berkeley The College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts before he had succumbed to the lure of Heroin and was sent to my Childhood city in Delray Beach, Florida for detox and Rehab.
We met when he had only six months clean and twenty one years old. I was over three years clean and sober and nineteen years old. We fell in love almost instantly, I do not think he would argue this fact even after all these years have passed.
Alas, we were children still and childlike was our love.
In my Life, I have allowed men to make me feel like;
a possession,
a means to an end,
a convenience,
a punching bag,
admired but misunderstood.
With Antonio, I felt only loved.
I also felt like his albatross.
In the end, like most endings, He was going in one direction, I was going in another, wWe were no longer aligned.
I expected far too much of him anyway. He was a newly recovering addict in his early twenties and I expected him to pay the rent, buy my cigarettes and the booze.
I had expensive taste back then. Bombay Sapphire, to be exact and every time he would restock it and pay for everything, I never even asked him to, he just picked up where my "husband" had left off, financially speaking. I think he felt somewhat responsible for my predicament. Possibly because when me and Tony had fooled around my supposed husband came back from work early and deliberately walked in on us. He saw Tony in only his boxers and me laying naked in my bed.
I use "my" bed because it was my GrandMarys before it became mine and he had been sleeping on the couch for many months anyway.
What I think Antonio didn't understand is that I had told Max many times. for years, that I did not want to be with him. That I, indeed hated him and wanted to see other people.
Yet when Max witnessed the actual act it was as if he finally understood I was not his.
That was when he began making arrangements with his sister in Long Island to leave with my children.
I think Antonio did feel responsible, though he had no fault in it.
What Max did was unforgivable. My love for Tony was pure, welcome and totally disparate of Max's actions.
Responsible or not, He did a damn good job as both caretaker and lover, but he grew to resent me more and more with each day.
At that point, I did not know any different. I had begun working a part time job before the children left at Gizzi's Coffee, after that, Starbucks; where the hours and pay were better. I would spend the majority of the money I made on gifts for myself, mostly music from 'Badbone' and books. I never had a chance to do that before, at first Antonio was happy to see me happy and I believe more so just to see me free.
He was incredibly patient with me;
I had told him how my life had been, we were very open in this regard.
Exchanging our secrets, our fears and shame.
He knew about my mother first giving me away at twelve to Sheridan House being gone for one year then shortly after returning, sent away again at fourteen to The Starting Place, the thirteen Backer Acts, the juvenile detention center, my mother signing away her parental rights and giving me to the state at fifteen, then becoming pregnant while living in my second foster home at the age of sixteen by a man more than ten years my senior, the father of my children. He knew that I felt like a prisoner living with that man and that my two children sometimes felt more like younger siblings, I admitted to him in shame and confusion.
Despite all that baggage, He accepted it as part of the package and he loved me despite it.
which I found utterly baffling at the time.
He understood my experience was unusual and took care of me, only enabling slightly.
always encouraging me to be more independent.
I was very reluctant at first but eventually started to buy my own cigarettes and some of the rent.
For the majority of our two-year liaison, it was a fairy tale romance. We made love often and well, our skinny bodies intertwined perfectly in a twin size bed. Yet I was cruel to him at times. He wrote lyrics describing that part of me. They are the only lyrics I remember and I am not sure if this is the exact wording he used, I doubt he sings it anymore, it went like this,
"Her dagger tongue, it cuts so deep, so cold that this whole room could freeze.
She's only trying to hide her love from me my love, my love, my love...."
It was a poignant beautiful melody, the kind I loved. Sometimes the songs he wrote were more punk, in sound and rhythm
I think his talent was far too large for such a genre, and although it's not my story to tell I can't help think he would work best alone, in a studio with multiple instruments there for him to mix with his words and his beloved guitar.
Much like Thom York does these days.
I think he would flourish as an artist with that solitude and freedom.
it was Antonio who injected me for the first time.
I held my left arm out and he knelt before me, with his proposal in sight.
My Right hand was held tight with some kind of love, a mutual understanding by another girl.
I was so hesitant, every time he would place the point near my virginal skin I would shrink back and clutch at my arm.
He said, "Don't you want a vacation?"
referring to my constant anxiety and sorrow.
I nodded and said goodbye inwardly.
I clenched my fist and averted my eyes to the right, where I was met with the most beautiful golden green eyes I have ever seen. I stared into Brianna's eyes and she smiled faintly and squeezed my hand as the opiate worked it's way from my main line to the opioid receptors of my brain.
All I can say about that moment was that it felt like all the fear, the pain, the excruciating weight of it all was lifted. I was warm and weightless. Suddenly nothing mattered anymore, it was no longer my problem. I felt NOTHING, save the sudden disappearance of a weight so heavy that I didn't even realize exactly how enormous the burden was until it had been lifted.
I felt angelic and pure.
I might have sprouted a set of wings.
Perhaps that is where the expression comes from.
Yes, like any heroin addict, past or present, active or inactive would say,
"I found what I had been looking for."
though I didn't know it until it found me.
As you can understand, something of that magnitude does not come without repercussions, a price,
as I have alluded to in some of my poetry and prose.
In that moment though I was an angel, and there was another to my right.
Beautiful and glorious, we creatures were.
Not Antonio, he looked like a maggot to me there on the ground. He was hideous to me in that moment as he took the needle out of my arm.
I had demonized him, made him the villain.
That was when I ceased to subconsciously love him.
I do not resent him, not anymore, I never really did.
He was just a carrier of a contagion that was looking for a host.
It could have been anyone on their knees with a needle to my arm. It just happened to be someone who I loved and trusted, very much so.
