You wanted to learn
from the book of my life,
so here is a tale or two
that made me the way I am.

When I was about 12,
I was a man of the world
with all the knowledge
I needed to know
and nobody could tell me I was wrong.
It wasn't until a fateful night
with a good friend of mine
that I knew how wrong I was.
No child should ever
have to be exposed to death,
but that is a fact of life that one can't escape from
and on that night
I was no exception.
To come home to my mother in tears
was anything but reassuring.
I asked her "What's wrong mama?"
with my reassuring tone,
not a doubt in my mind that
any problem afoot
was nothing more than
a small speed bump.
It was when she told me to speak to my father
that a worry arose.
I stepped into his room, and the silence struck me;
a hit that could have knocked a hole in a brick wall.
But I was stronger than a brick wall.
Or so I thought.
"Hey pops, what's going on?"

Now, I must say that
up to this point in time,
my father has been nothing but
a sign of masculinity;
the tree with which the apples grew from.
But as my father raised his head,
eyes glistening in through the darkness of the room
I could see the thick tracings of
the first real sorrow I've seen my father in.
He was broken, like the slurred words coming from his mouth
He's dead.
and as those words,
those horrible fucking words left his mouth,
the foundation that he had built
crumbled down.

He raised his hands towards me
asking, needing to embrace me.
And I walked away.
I left the broken man to sulk alone.
Now, I'll have you know that I love my father
and I would die for him.
But as he broke, I shattered.

Later that night,
I found him alone
in the grave
he had dug himself earlier,
and I hugged him.
I hugged him harder than I've hugged anything in my life
I hugged him, not for my sake, but so he could know how his father felt
when he hugged him.

. . .

By the time I was fourteen
I had found love.
It's funny to think how ridiculous this sounds,
but this love was an honest love. (for me at least)
We had been together for long enough to know
that in my youthful state of mind
I could picture myself with nobody else.
But, as the long line of history showed before me,
young love is never true love.
However, when I walked up the stairs,
to hear nothing
I was nothing but startled.

I can still remember that feeling;
when time slowed,
the world around me freezing as the doorknob
twisted in my hand
and the door swung up.

To say I was angry
would be wrong.
I wasn't angry.
I would like to say I
was hurt,
but to be honest,
I could feel nothing.
The natural Novocaine of heart-break
filled my veins
as I sway her lips with his,
fitting in the mold that I created.

As I descended the stairs
and walked past her mother, asking
"What's wrong love?"
feeling the sarcasm ooze out of her mouth
I laughed.
Laughed and laughed and laughed.
Not to hide the pain,
but just to feel again.
But my nerves were burnt,
and would stay that way for quite some time.

. . .

Fast forward to the spring
of my sixteenth year of life.
The summer was alive in me and in you.
I remember the sun shining in your hair,
and I remember the way the water flowed
past the rocks under the bridge.
I remember sitting in the yard
of someone else's house
when our lips first met
when the connection was there
and was there to stay.
And I remember laying in the grass
in your back yard
with our hands locked
and our eyes pointed up
at the sky above us
where our heads were.
I remember you asking me
if I knew what I wanted to do with myself.
I don't remember what I said,
but I remember thinking
that there is nothing I wanted more
than to do what I was doing
at that exact moment in time.

And I remember leaving.
And I remember never returning.
I remember the nights alone
waiting for your word,
knowing you were waiting for mine,
and never getting them.
I remember spending day after day
tracing your face next to mine in that grass
and making the record player skip
with the words you said to me.
I remember thinking of all the things I wish I said to you
while I still had the chance
and kicking myself for saying the things I had said to you.
And I remember wishing to hold your hand,
and kiss you lips
and thinking that I never could again.

. . .

But now I am here
where I never thought I'd be
And I'd just like to tell you
that once you have read this,
all other tales and stories I own
are now yours to hear.
My book is open to you.

To the human who bears the marks of an angry partner, the young adult who struggles to humanize the body that others have objectified for so long, and the child whose mind bears the seeds of poisonous hatred waiting with baited breath to burst with life as the offhand comments increase in number. Take the sharpened blade with conviction and place it far from your traitorous fingers. Believe my words, blood pulses through your throbbing veins, not the black ooze of hatred. Your skin will never be a canvas to taint with red. The red will collide with the peaceful cells, and the violence will not be a masterpiece. You are not just a number, you are a fucking gorgeous universe encompassed in mere atoms that strive to do your essence justice. Gather your soldiers and prepare to fight the enemies that make your body an anomaly or your struggle commonplace. Those horrible nights, where only the moon bore witness to the horrors you carved, are not “typical” and should not be a widespread ritual. You are beauty incarnate. I implore you to lace this statements around each particle in your body until your cells sing with conviction, and fight those who have brought you to your knees. You do not belong there.

I’d like a pizza topped with cheese
then sprinkled with some gnats and fleas,
some centipedes and slimy slugs,
and other creepy, crawly bugs.

I want to add some fingernails
and oyster ooze and crunchy snails
and chicken bones and spoiled meat
and smelly socks from dirty feet.

I want it topped with lots of mold
and gooey boogers (not too old),
a lot of snot, a little spit,
and guts with grimy, grainy grit.

I want the most disgusting crust
with spider webs and day-old dust
and dirt and mud and blood and gore
delivered to my sister’s door.

Tourist, who gave her eyes
to the fishes and the sharks.
Ingenue queen of the lingering darkness.
Tourista, chain smoking in the rain.
Perfumed winds blow from her mouth
dizzying the Phoenician sailors with longing for her shores.
And the moths circle,
searching for her cable knit heart.
And I will go back to my darling,
my darling tourista,
when you my darling are gone.
Us being strangers of the night
and enemies in hollow places.
Tourista prays to ooze juicily
at last round the bearded lips of God.
Tourista swallows sleep
and swallows deep.
Tourista lost in translation
between valley girl slang and punk rock idols.
Pushing pushing pushing, push em.
Tourista of the long white neck, neglected.
Free of love nibbles and nicotine kisses.
Though she longs for their ghosts
and strokes the scars of their cousins.
Her screaming, rolling head full of tinder and ready to ignite.
Like the loveliest of hand grenades.
Tourista who's heart swells and empties with the tides,
all Jackson Pollucked up inside.
The punch line of every joke. The object of every desire.
And tourista rattles with wheezing.
Tourista vacant. Accepting reservations.
Calling dimply she prays to the highway dogs
and hound dogs and squealing pups.
Tourista of the pure soul, sprinkling virgin lamplight
like vestal seeds.
Though she implores every living thing to dampen the flame.
Hold tight, says tourista, happiness is surely near.
But she hides it away in her bedside table and hopes she will forget.

Of course, I like preposterous and circuitous,
cirrocumulus, curmudgeonly and humungous,
audacious and bodacious,
irradiance, iridescence and magnificence,  
flamboyant, fandango and flibbertigibbet,
(but this is difficult to say when you’re drunk),
voluptuous and vertiginous,
sumptuous, salacious, slithery, sexy and glistening,
crepuscular, strumpet and strawberry.
And I may as well include whipped cream
here as well, because this can be laid on in dollops,
and dollops is really an excellent word.
Drooling is also highly evocative,
and I don't need to be provocative to observe
that even weapons can drool.
However, I'm really very flexible, because
in my lexicon,  low moaning noises are OK, too.
These sounds are actually part of the chord of creation
and the primal reverberation from the time of
primordial ooze, which would be great between my toes.
Then there's protozoa, spermatozoa and also
wriggling flagella everywhere. So there.
I think we should also celebrate salivate,
and also onomatopoeia that helps choose words to display here.
Words I don’t like include don’t, can’t,
stop and mustn’t. Also, irascible, indescribable,
unmentionable and ineffable, impotent, incoherent,
incontinence, leaking colostomy bags,
importune and misfortune,
gawping, cavernous and cretinous,
circumambulatory and pursed lips.
These words should get the heave-ho.
And I definitely don't like parsimonious and mendicant,
which are miserable words.
Words which I abhor even more,
include cunt, which is an insulting word, and
being taxonomical, the score of this word is astronomical.
Hate is also right up there on this list. Hate is abominable
because it tries to destroy love,
and love should be indomitable.
Indomitable
is one of the
mightiest
words
in the world.

Mike T Minehan

Pour me
out
on you.
steel me.
cast me cold.

Hold me under the soft silken spell
of those luscious, lying, lips.

Scratch me, tooth and nail
leave rot and rust
dripping through my skin.
Leave some scars.

Bit and gnash.
Toss and turn.
Give me a wince to remember
when you're gone.

Ooze me out
like melting shadow milk
dripping
dripping
on your bone white bone cold skin.

Squeeze me.
Peel me.
Skin me
to your heart's content,
my blood is mine
to give.

Take
Receive
Taste and
see
the goodness
of violence
and a promise
of sweet, sultry pain.

Let me burn
and kindle
a fire left cold these last few years.
I can sear
a few old memories
away.

Forget
for a second.
Leave sense and pretense
behind.
I am here
for you.
My shadows, my chill,
are yours
to fill
the night with.

The red hour
is yours, burn it away.
Spark it with the cries of the night.
Shut the stars up for a while.
It will be our light
that shines
tonight.

My tornado thoughts
Spinning
Spinning
Spinning
Tearing ideas into
fragmented shrapnel
whipping around in the wind
one piece landing in my chest
the other miles away

My oil rig thoughts
Drilling
Drilling
Drilling
Diamond drill bits
sparkling yet damaging
ravaging the mantel
of my brain, hitting
a deep subconscious
oil pocket, black ooze
gushing out to the surface

My flint spark thoughts
Burning
Burning
Burning
One spark hitting
the kindling forest full
of dried pine needle worries
igniting an uncontrolled
wild fire, turning everything
into black ash

These untamed beasts
Clawing
Clawing
Clawing
my mind apart

On a grey day
in the green sea,
under the moon,
the wind howling,
the waves walloping,
enveloped in slime as a newborn,
on the cold wooden floors
of a glossy blue jack boat,
with a thick, white canvas sail –
born alone –
whitecaps rolling and breaking
flurry blistering,
the small boat,
like a model,
rocking,
is blown in all directions...

Trapped lying back,
like a turtle,
knees and elbows wiggle,
suddenly the malleable hand clutches
a near dry piece of bread on the floor
and swats it into dry chewing
swallows –
thirsty...

A hard wave pushing
up and back
the little body flips,
moving on hands and knees toward
a jar of water
at the tip of the hollow bow while
crawling past,
the rough-hewn mast,
a wave hiccups and
the soft shoulder bumps –
like clay it’s remolded,
one up, one down

dragging along, limp
a tumble over...

A fast gust and
a whirling gyration
of a tip,
the too-weak weak, small hands
that tickle when trying
to twist the metal lid
off the jar,
leave the thirst caking
the roof of his mouth desert,
tongue parched.
waves sprinkling
a cool mist
on those tender cheeks.

A heaving swell
billows
the swaying jack
and wheels the balmy tot towards the flat-backed stern.
on his way rolling
he collides again with the mast,
and his workable spine
folds in two:
he is dead.

An awesome tempest
that will come in the morning
has sent scouts,
and with them whispering hums of expected carnage,
that rattle the polished blue clapboards.
The floor had been dry once,
under the moonlight –
on that orphic birth,
the whole floor,
everything but the damp shadow
of primordial ooze
underneath the fretful body, kicking and clawing to flip,
had all been dusty like a shop.

And in some moments,
when this poem wasn’t watching,
the unsubstantial body would run one of the tenuous fingers
from one of its embryonic, plushy hands

across the coarse plywood –
slimmer than a board an amateur martial artist
might brag about breaking,
And he would build, along the wood floor,
little trails of dust, his extremity mindlessly tracking
to create aisles that
ants might march through,
the little walls of the finger’s wake like tan snowbanks.

The gale came and passed, and in the sunny blue morning we found
that the boat had kicked the mangled infant’s body out
into the clear sea.
Cheeks no longer dry like sawdust,
eternally pruned, saturated:
sponge of a boy who spent a dead lifetime
floating through the great storm,
water lapping over his face
with the sort of
pothering, hasty turmoil
that would dilute a breathing man to madness
but had come and
with salt
cleaned his face and body,
with the sort of peace we’d like to find
on shores.