Narrowly escaped domestication

my heart is breaking
i keep taking one step back
i woke up and i was shaking in a cold sweat
yet my veins were all intact

i've been manic far too long
i was wrong to think that you could ever have me
i'm no lap dog
i'm a bitch that grew too strong

i'm too massive for this cramped cage
you can't chain me up
i'll chew right through the metal
i'll forget you, then i'll revel in fresh blood

i shit you not, i am like no other
you can't smother me
i learned to breathe through other holes
from being face down in the mud

do not touch me, do not think you have a right
i'm not frightened
by the size of any structure
that has nothing left inside

do not speak, you don't have the right to reach me
you don't think enough
i'll only take a leash
from somebody who can teach me

A Place to Catch Her Tears

I lifted the blue cup filled with milk and tried to sip. The opening covered half of my face so that the edge of the rim opposite my lips rested on the bridge of my nose. This was the border of a perfect painting. Da Vinci could not have laid paint thin enough to shine a light through that would hold the same incandescence as her skin. She glowed, polished each day with a thoughtful cloth of virtue. She was praying, mumbling in low tones, and I couldn’t tell if it was English or Aramayic. She called me her dakhel deenak, and I didn’t know what it meant, but when she said it my face got warm, like the sun itself had turned to look at me. I breathed into the cup. Nothing in the world smelled like Sitho’s blue cups.

I drove past the house, what would be described as quaint by pretentious, but politically correct types. The porch wasn’t screened in anymore, so I almost didn’t recognize it. In fact, it was not Sitho’s porch at all. At fourteen years old it’d take me two strides, with my thirty two inch legs, to span it. You have to understand, that porch was huge. So big, in fact, that ten years earlier I was afraid to stand at one netted wall by myself, even when my Sitho stood just at the other, telling me she was watching me with her mothers’ eyes. Not understanding the statement I always responded, “You’re mother is dead.” She’d smile, “I know.” I stared at that house and prayed to God she’d talk again.

I’ve been a caffeine addict since I was fourteen. That’s when I read about alzheimers being prevented by a cup of black coffee. I drink a pot by myself each morning now. It was around six o’clock when I got to Uncle John’s house and I hadn’t had a cup since noon. “Take some aspirin!” He always panicked when I felt any pain in my head. He had seen me at my worst, when I was in too much pain to dress myself. That was years ago but the pain still made him panic. “No, it’s just a caffeine migraine, Uncle John. Don’t you have any coffee?”

“I’ll make a pot! Sit down, honey!” His worry always made him raise his voice and I winced at his kindness. I sat down on the couch, next to the big pink armchair that rested right in the middle of the room. I reached over to the arm of the chair and took Sitho’s hand, the same size as my own. “Uncle John says I look like Judy Garland, Sitho. What do you think?” She looked at me with her mouth half open so I could count how many teeth she had left. Her brow furrowed and I knew that if she could still talk she’d be asking me who the hell I am. So I told her. “Who’s your first baby, Sitho? Is it John?” I always tried to trick her. I always hoped she’d catch me at it and shake her head. She nodded. “No he’s not! No he’s not, beautiful!” I talked to her like she was a baby, the way we all talk to her now. “No, no no! Is it Sharon?” I pretended I saw some click of recognition like a quick sparkle in her pupil. I nodded for her. “Yes, Sharon! Sharon is your first baby!” I didn’t need to make it this complicated, but I wanted her to make the connections. I rubbed my thumb over the skin on the back of her hand. Her skin was so smooth, like God had sewn together threads of milk and draped it over her. “Who came after Sharon?” I prompted her in my baby-talk sing-song voice. “Was it John?” Don’t nod. Please, don’t nod. She nodded. “Nooooo, silly!” I put my face close to hers and kissed her forehead, smudging the pencil Uncle John had drawn her eyebrows on with. “Is it Susan? Is Susan your second baby?” I could have sworn she nodded with more vigor, like I had sparked her memory. “And I’m Susan’s baby, aren’t I?”---“CLANG CLANG CLANG WENT THE TROLLEY!”---Judy Garland’s voice flooded the front room and Sitho looked at the TV. I had just lost her. Damn you, Garland! If I didn’t feel bad for you due to the child abuse you endured I’d hate you right now! “Coffee’s done. I’ll sit with Mama,” Uncle John took a wicker chair on the other side of Sitho and I got up and went into the kitchen. I wanted to run back into the front room. I wanted to scream and shake her and make her remember me! I wanted her gaping mouth and furrowed brow to contort into scalding tears of recognition! I opened the cupboard for a mug. Instead I took out a blue plastic cup with flowers etched on the side. I put the opening over my nose and mouth . . . and I just breathed.

To Trust Again

i fast and wait for my blood to be purified
i'm pure in my predilection, my affection
toward the one i've pushed aside

i wrack my brain for answers
to this smattering of blood splattered questions
i suggest the matter's resolve is implied

if it's murder, if you've marred her starry eyes
if her wan skin was impaled, if she wailed
and cried as you watched her die

then your punishment must surely fit your crime
damned to loneliness, our hopeless stoner
cast out of this hearse, his curse is life

Sprit, removed

All I can remember is your shape
I see outlines moving, lucid scribbles written on my lips and then erased
I see cell division, gray scale DNA
A double helix, one dimensional, sketched in me in calm variant shades
I see a dream grow outside; Evade sleep
I see it manifest in blood and guts and use my naive trust to punish me
I see hands and heart and, between, vapid space
I see rapid-fire pain climb up your spine from organs you said you'd midplaced

The Thick of It

I was breathing slowly, thoughtful as I exhaled
I've been impaled by a sharp serrated blade
There is heartbreak in the details

I'd been crying, my eyelashes caked with makeup
Thought I'd take up some new interests
Slit my wrists and find out how long I can stay up

I was swollen, just below my left temple
Do they reassemble cheekbones where we're going?
Or replace the bone with metal?

I was recapitulating my aggression
I confess that I was out of line!
I had to be to challenge your oppression!

When the hands upon the face up on the wall
Reached in all directions
Little sister stood so that we could watch her fall

One by one we took our places to be razed
We blazed brighter than the stars
Supernovas, we exploded for five days

When the carnage scattered, clearing out the air
I stared, wearily, looked around the room
And realized we were all still here...

My first time

Here you have my errors, my mistakes yet unrecovered
In this morbid room of mirrors, where I watch as I am smothered
Here with all my wasted days hidden beneath ink
Here I sit before a vacant page; A naked waste of me
Here you have my bloodstains, my evidence to prove
I waited through this heartache, far to weak to try to move
Here you have my life lines on a binder in the bathroom
All his shitty little white lies that I swallowed in that back room
Here she is, our victim, every ounce of her invested
In a readied razor's wisdom, in the last nerve still connected

Serving My Sentence

You say that I look pretty through your lens
I am no model
I'm a mother to a horde of full grown men
I am a whore to a plastic package full of prose-filled pens
You adore me?
Who adores a walking paragraph?! Each story has an end.
I had a heart attack and you thought it was sex
I digress, all this dancing is my madness I am purging through my sweat
I am less of a contortionist and more of a confection
I'm a candy-coated, calorific, cognitive conception
You think that I would make the perfect wife?
I have no time to cook your meals
I need to kneel and worship, wield the word and write
I have to feel the world and verbalize the texture of it's surface
I'll remain unwed and childless, but I'll still have a purpose
If you doubt my worth without you find a page that I've left vacant
Watch that single inkwell wink at me and realize I am taken