Skin.
Skin by definition is a thin layer of tissue forming a natural outer covering of the body.
Skin is for people to tan, to clothe, apply make up to... to touch.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Mosquito bites.
Mosquito bites by definition are the itchy bumps that appear after mosquitoes use their proboscis to puncture your skin and feed on your blood.
Mosquito bites are for people to feel, to itch, to bleed, to scab and repeat. The entire cycle.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Summer.
Summer by definition is the warmest season of the year.
Summer is for t-shirts, shorts, exposure, swimming, tanning, skin, skin, skin, skin, skin.
"It's Summer, put on some shorts."
"It's Summer, why aren't you wearing a t-shirt?"
"It's Summer, let's go swimming!"
Summer is a time for these questions, these statements, these words to fester, to breed like muosquitos, to sting like the bite of a bug.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Dermatologist.
A Dermatologist by definition is a doctor that treats diseases, in the widest sense, and some cosmetic problems of the skin, skin, skin, skin, skin.
The Dermatologist tells me to use this and to use that. Lotions and potions, as my mother would say. Slather, rub, treat, swallow.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Skin care.
Skin care by definition is the range of practices that support skin integrity, enhance its appearance and relieve skin conditions.
Get up, shower, sterilizing soap, body oil, steroid cream, medicated lotion, drink water and repeat the process before bed. My daily cycle.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Seesaw.
A Seesaw by definition is to change rapidly and repeatedly from one position, situation, or condition to another and back again.
Seesaw, to push off the ground, into the air with a sense of victory and joy, only to fall hard to the ground with stinging ankles and sore calf's.
This isn't a playground anymore.
The Dermatologist says that if I don't get better, they'll have to put me on the pill.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

The Pill.
The Pill is an oral treatment for my condition. My eczema.
One pill every morning at seven AM with food and an entire glass of water.
The risk associated with the pill- Osteoporosis,  Muscle weakness, Mood and Behavioral changes, Increase in chance of developing cataracts,  Stomach Ulcers and Liver Failure.
One pill every morning at seven AM with food and an entire glass of water. The daily cycle.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab.... **** it.

I would rather my liver fail and my bones go brittle then to be stared at on the street!
"What is that?"
"Are you okay?"
"What's wrong with her?"
"Is it contagious?"
"Don't touch me!"
I itch, my nails dragging over my scarred skin and pulling at wounds. I bleed, the welts that crack and leak drops from the red river that flows silently beneath my skin. I scab, leaving horrible lumps of ugly, hardened flesh to coat the once smooth area. I repeat....

Well, I don't want to repeat! I want to be able wear the clothes I want, to walk the streets with out the judging and questioning eyes of the passersby on me, to be held and touched by a significant other without the fear that their fingers will fall upon my skin and recoil in disgust!

Without looking in the mirror and wondering when I can finally begin to love myself.

I decided that today is the day! No more Itching! No more Bleeding! No more Scabs! It's time to break this ******* cycle.

Janie pushes the metal book cart back into its parking space in the Document Delivery Department of the St. Louis Public Library and hangs the last sticky note for October 30, 2012 on the wall by the head of the department’s closed door. She retightens her brown scarf under her chin, tucking the wispy hairs above her ears back into hiding. Having your hair begin to prematurely gray as a teenager has dramatic effects on a person. Her mother wore scarves around her wrists when Janie was growing up and when Janie begin to wear scarves to conceal her salt-and-pepper hair, her mother just smiled. The clock hanging on the wall above the children’s section reads 11:28pm.
Two more minutes.
She reorganized the pens and books on her desk and set the box reading NOTES onto the right corner or her desk with three blue pens and a stack of note cards. Her coworkers learned fast that Janie does not like to talk. She does not like eye contact. She loves the silence, and never ever to ask her about her hair. Her manager gave her the NOTES box after about a month of horrible miscommunication and everyday it fills with requests for books or tasks that Janie has to complete. She completes the tasks one by one, alone, in her back office in the Reference Department and hangs the completed sticky notes on the wall by her manager’s door. She works the night shift and locks the library up every night. When she’s alone she can talk out loud to herself and those are the only voices she cares to hear.
“Goodnight, books. Good night, rooms.” Janie shut the heavy wooden door to the library, placed the color-coded keys in the front right pocket of her jacket, and began her walk to the bus stop one corner away. She avoids the main road, taking her first right onto a side street that she knows would spit her out right beside the bus stop.
“Goodnight Taco Bell Sign. Goodnight Rite-Aide. Goodnight Westside Apartments. Goodnight Jack-o-Lantern smile.” She stopped in the middle of the alley and peered up at the Jack-o-Lantern grinning down at her from the third story window above. “Mother wouldn’t’ve liked your smirk, Jack. She would’ve slapped that **** right off your face.” Janie, satisfied the pumpkin was put in its rightful place, smiled as she trotted on.
“Mother carved smiles into her arms and that’s why Daddy left, it is, it is.” She kicked at a crushed Mountain Dew can as she remembered that night from years ago.

“Mommy?” Janie pushed opened the door to her mother’s bedroom and saw the moving-boxes torn open and all their contents scattered across the floor. She tiptoed through piles of scarves and silverware and corkscrews until she reached the bathroom in her mom’s room.
“Come to us like rain, oh lord, come and stay and sting a while more, oh lord…” her mother’s voice was slipping off the tiled bathroom walls. Janie pushed open the door and saw the blood for the first time pouring from her mother’s wrist. Her mother was naked and perched on the bathroom sink, singing to a red razor blade.
“Mommy?”
“GET OUT!” Her mother jumped from the counter and perched on all fours on the floor. She began to growl and speak in a voice too deep to be coming from her own throat.
“Mommy! It’s Janie!” She began to cry as her mother, still naked and bleeding, twisted and writhed onto her back and began to crawl towards the door that Janie hid behind.


“Thirty-Three percent, dear. Just a thirty-three percent chance.” She shivered trying to clear the last memory of her mother with the words that all the shrinks had echoed to her over the years. “Schizophrenia is directly related to genetics, little is known about the type of Schizophrenia mother was diagnosed with except that it is definitely passed on genetically. But, there is only a thirty-three percent chance you could have it, dear. Thirty-three percent.” The sound of the bus stop ahead reminds her it is time to be silent again.
“Disorganized Schizophrenia.” She mouthed to herself as she stepped back out onto the busy street from her alleyway. She tightened her scarf and saw the bus pull into the pickup spot. She walked forward to the bus, again immersed in her self-imposed silence.
Stepping out of the February cold, Janie removes her wool scarf as the bus doors close behind her.
“Where to baby?” The driver smiles a sticky smile. Her nametag reads, “Shannon” and has a decaying Hello-Kitty sticker in the bottom left corner.
“The Clinton Street drop.” She hands the driver her $2.50 fare and avoids the woman’s questioning eyes. The night drivers are always more talkative, curious.
“Your ticket hon.” She tears Janie a ticket stub. “Everything is pretty dead this late, I’ll have you there in ten minutes top.”
Janie begins to shuffle towards the seats, ignoring the woman.
“You mind if I crank up the music?” The bus driver asks, purple fingernails scratching in her thick blonde hair. “I need to keep my eyes open and blood flowing and music is my fire of choice you know?”
“Sure.” Janie shrugs her bag onto her shoulder and walks on before the woman can say anything else.
“Route E-2, homebound.” Shannon’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker.
She shuffles down the bus towards her usual seat; second from the back right side.  Shannon starts the bus rolling before she reaches her seat and Janie can hear her singing along to “Summertime” by Janis Joplin. The bus floor, today, is sticky because of the morning rain. Two years of riding public transportation has taught Janie that staring at the floor as she walks to her seat is better than the risk of making eye contact. The bus is usually empty this late but if there ever happens to be anyone else on, it’s better not to converse. Safer that way.
She plops into her seat filling the indention that ghosts of past passengers left. The seat is still warm and Janie squirms around until the stranger heat is forgotten. She tightens her scarf and sighs. The brown pleather seatback in front of her is peeling towards the top. Janie leans forward and idly picks at the scab-like dangles of brown as she watches the sodden city canvas roll past her out the foggy window. As she picks, the hole grows. She twists and digs her unpainted nails into the seat until her hands feel wet, warm. Looking down, they are covered in blood and mud.
“What. The. Actual. ****.” she whispers, wiping her hands on her pants leg. She cautiously picks off another piece of pleather and a trickle of deep red begins to run from the seat back, clumps of mud now falling onto her knees. A puddle of blood and mire splatter down her legs and pool around her feet as she picks at the seat. Her white tights are definitely beyond saving now, so she digs faster until her thumbnail catches on something, bends back, and cracks. She gasps and withdraws her shaking hand, watching her own blood mix with the clotting muck in the seat, half of her thumbnail completely stripped off.
Looking around, all else seems normal. The driver is now muttering along to some banter by Kanye West, completely unaware of Janie’s predicament. She closes her eyes.
This is a dream, this is a dream, wake the **** up.
She opens her eyes to see the pool of filth around her feet trickling towards the front of the bus. Panic sets in with a whisper, They’re going to think it was you, your fault, you’ll be thrown in jail.
“But I didn’t do this.” She lashes out to herself. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
Next stop, E-2. Shannon blares on the intercom.
“It’s just a dream, get your **** together, Janie.” She laughs at herself, manic.
Prove it! Her subconscious screams.
Convinced to end this moment she has to continue; Janie plunges her hand into the pleather grave one more time. Frantic and confused she laughs as she digs, spittle of muck splashing on her bus window.
Faster, faster, faster.
Deeper, deeper, deeper.
Realer, realer, real.
Wake up, now!
Then, as the bus slows, one last chuck of mud splatters to the floor and Janie sees a pink piece of her thumbnail stabbed into the white of a bone in the bottom of the seatback pit. Her white Ked’s were becoming so red they were almost black. She pulls her knees up to her chest and begins to rock back and forth. Clenching shut her eyes she begins to hum. Janie’s sweet soprano harmonizes with the buses deep droning purr, their wet melody interweaving with the driver’s alto and Lil Wayne’s screech made her feel dizzy as the bus turned right.
She take my money when I'm in need
Yeah she's a trifling friend indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over town
That dig's on me
The bus slows to a stop and the bass is shaking. Janie is cold. She slowly peeks out of her right eye, expecting to be instantly immersed into the same dismal scene. The seatback is whole again. Releasing her knees, her feet fall back to the floor and her shaking fingers stroke the solid pleather.

“Ma’am? We’re at the Clinton Drop.”
Janie hurriedly picks up her bag and flees down the aisle to the bus doors.
“Everything alright, dear?” The bus driver asks, smiling.
“Fine, just fine.”
“You be safe out there tonight. The night is dark and only ghouls stroll the streets this late.”  Shannon laughed as Janie’s jaw dropped. “Happy Halloween, dear. It’s midnight, today is October 31st.”
The bus doors opened and a cold wind ****** the warm bot-air surrounding Janie into the streets. She begrudgingly followed, her mind spinning as she stepped onto the pavement. The doors slammed behind her and she turned to see Shannon pull out a tube of lipstick and smear it, red, across her cracked lips. Shannon made a duck-face in the mirror and reached down to crank up the music as loud as it would go. The bus exhaled and rolled forward, leaving Janie behind as it splashed through the potholes.
She surveys the surrounding midnight gloom and the street is quiet and dark. Even the stars are hidden behind swirling clouds. She begins to hum, hands in her pocket, and shuffle towards her apartment.
“Goodnight, stars. Goodnight, street.”
As she approaches her single-bedroom apartment, digging through her coat pocket for her keys, her thumb pulsates. She grasps the keys and pulls them out as she steps up to the apartment. Sticking the cold, silver key in the lock she looks down at her thumb and in the shadows of the porch sees half of the nail completely missing. She laughs as she pushes the door open to her bare apartment, light flooding out. Without any hesitation she closes the door behind her, sheds her clothes, and slips onto the mattress in the corner of the room gripping her thumb tight. She reaches out for the glass of milk on the floor beside her bed from the morning and it’s still cold. Nursing the milk, surrounded by blankets and solitude, she reminds herself,  “Only a thirty-three percent chance. A nice, small, round number. Small.”  
She sets down the empty glass and curls into the fetal position under the heavy blankets, pointer finger tracing circles on her thumb. Only when she has heated her blanket cocoon enough to feel safe does she remove her scarf and allow her thick white hair to fall around her face.
“Goodnight, room. Goodnight, mother,”

I know that there is a table
in a Catholic high school in my local town
with an etch of the letter "G"
next to boredom-inspired vandal,
jagged lines, circles,
perhaps a few ******* shapes
as silly high school boys
are prone to draw.

An Advanced Maths textbook sits on a shelf
with a little doodle
of a peace sign next to an emo smiley
from a time where I was caught
between two phases,
tight black jeans and a flowing turquoise shirt.

Tobacco stains smeared
over the wood of a sealed off door
just outside my bedroom,
evidence of the first time
I tried a cigarette, seven years old,
and then panicked and tried to
flush it down the toilet,
only to have to fish it out and stuff it
in a little crevice, to be hidden and
remain there for seven years.

We leave all these little marks
and stains
in places we've been.
Spilled food, spilled ink, spilled drink,
tobacco stains and pools of blood.
"The marks humans leave are
too often scars."

I have scars.
Left forearm. Right calf. Right wrist bone. Both kneecaps.

A scar across my ribs and chest I was
so desperate to be rid of,
I bathed myself in oils and it was
the first scab I
never picked at; but a couple of weeks ago
I dreamt it was there again, fresh.
It tore open in front of everyone, bled out,
and I woke up gasping, drowning in my fear,
agonised, clutching at a wound that'd long since faded
convinced I could feel it splitting me apart again.

I have evidence all over my body
and more buried deep within the recesses of my mind,
scars so jagged they put knives to shame,
shining, pale, like diamonds in moonlight
not half as precious
but still invaluable.
Evidence of the marks humans leave behind.

I'm not innocent.
I don't pretend like I am.
I know there is a man out there
who gained another scar to add to his collection
when he was fourteen years old.
I know my hands carved it into his skin.
I know I used to use my fists
when others used their words to hurt me.

When I die, I know that I will leave
pieces of myself
everywhere
I've ever been. Whether people know it
or not, whether they
remember me
or not. There are ink stains
and coffee spills. My blood
is still on the floor of his house.
The high school cafeteria
has a circle of red
from a nosebleed I didn't realise I was having.
There are parks wearing my graffiti
and children donning my old clothes, and people overseas
still alive because of me

(or that's what they'll tell me, but
all I did was talk.
Give yourself the credit you guys deserve,
you're the ones who chose to listen.
You're the ones who had the strength to
pick your head up and carry on)

There are exes who still think of me
and friends who will one day
come across some article of clothing
or a piece of technology
I left behind after a sleepover.
Teachers who will remember
that smart, sarcastic student
who had panic attacks in their classrooms
and drank coffee in the mentoring hub with Mrs. Hume
whilst buttering bagels and functioning on no sleep.

Maybe our place in the universe is
insignificant. Or maybe it's the
most significant thing
of all.
Maybe the Buddhists are right.
Maybe we are the universe, together
as one. I sure think it makes sense.

Streams of consciousness
and spirits that need healing.
We work the sun
without even realising we're doing it.
We destroy it, too,
which is perhaps why we
are so self destructive in turn.

Maybe we're
smaller than specs of dust
but that's okay.
You don't have anything
without the particles required
to make things up.
Everything is a collection of atoms:
the tiniest things of all
yet they're the centre of everything,
the beginning of everything.

So when the end comes and
we burst back into the sky,
stardust and souls and
blinking little lights,
we'll have left our marks on the earth
regardless of who remembers
and we'll still be there, twinkling,
a collection of atoms that came from a supernova
essential to the makeup of galaxies
and life itself.
What could be more beautiful than that?

My body is the makeup of both hard and softness
The reds, browns, golds...
The light and darkness of all my ancestors.
Some men have lost themselves here,
Some men have found themselves here
Most women stand stronger next to this.

I am both war grounds and silent cities.
I am both girl trying not to drown in all this sadness, all this loss...
And woman trying not to drown in all this sadness, all this loss.
I am your blonde roast that starts a riot in you first thing in the morning
And your dark roast that goes down smooth, leaving you to want for a little more...

I am both the scab healing over bruised skin
And the area surrounding it.
I am both strong legs and soft lips
...Brown skin deep enough to hide flaws still.

I am the softness in light...
And the softness of honey, but still thick enough to swim in.
I am the hardness of knees on ground, praying to the man or woman who has made me both hard and soft.

I am the woman who cannot forget enough to truly forgive,
But human enough to help you if the light goes out.
I am consistent no's and the yes that matters,
I am shattered glass and spilled milk.

This skin mirrors both the earth and everything you give the universe on a new moon .
I am both woman dancing in nothing, but a skirt to the rhythm of the ocean ...
And the ocean kissing the shore wishing to be as free as that woman.

Sometimes this mouth...
Sometimes my words bite,
Creating harsh weather,
But I am tired of making storms of people, storms of my relations.

I am both soft belly and strong back.
Something you can count on,
A woman you can be sure of.
You can bet on me,
You can stand near me,
You can fall in my presence.
...You can be both hard and soft with me.

I despise social media.
It's ugly, to state the obvious
Our lives are posted, retweeted, altered, reblogged, perfected, and photoshopped to exactly how we want to be perceived
We have the freedom to be exactly what they want us to be.

It starts with a few edits doesn't it,
pigmented our skin to seem smooth and sun kissed,
that would seem most acceptable right?
Maybe an extra like for the skinnier waist.
More reassurance for brighter colors.
Some more filters will hid the emptiness you feel with your friends
   Another like
Flashier clothing, phones, shoes, cars, other simple words our eyes have latched on to
     Another like
We urge ourselves to portray the life of leisure and effortless beauty, happiness, success,
       Another like
But what are we enjoying?
         Another like
Views of our changing world through a 3 by 8 view.
           Another like
Events pass by swipe
             Another like
and swipe
               Another like

And when we managed to unlock ourselves from this grasp
We always come back
Like flies to light, more like scratches to a scab
Festering we find ourselves getting ****** back in
To an imaginary world, that if destroyed, would have no physical effects on their fictional beings
For without this world, maybe eyes will open
We will step past the boundaries,
and start to love our beings
unfiltered

I pick & pick & pick.
I peel the layers off, satisfyingly.
I watch the blood ooze out.
Slowly running down arms and legs.

I pick & pick & pick again.
I tear the skin off, contently.
I watch the skin reveal pink flesh.
Slowly, I feel alive.

I keep thinking of you;
I pick the scab.

I keep remembering everything;
I pick the scab.

Flashes of your face invoke my memories;
The blood runs.

The sound of your laugh enters my mind;
The blood drips.

I go to places that were special to us;
I smile.

I pretend you’re there with me;
I laugh.

I sit in silence--
I talk in my head.
I even scream sometimes.
All while I pick & pick & pick some more.

The same cycle occurs over and over again:
I pick, bleed, then heal.

Healthy,     isn’t it?

A bleeding flesh wound –
I am the fingernail digging in sharply,
Deepening the cave of plasma and color.
I am the itching when healing attempts
To envelop the skin in beige-clustered hues.
I am the crusty, brown layer on top,
Unsightly for certain and unwanted at best.

Did no one teach you? No matter your stance,
Ignoring a scab to its slow, subtle parting
Will still leave a scar behind. –
I gracefully linger, for these scars don’t fade.

How we start is only part of what we eventually do.

Physically that's easy to see. Being human, adamkind,
we see weak starts often in life.
Colts or pups born a week too soon can be loved to lives as pampered pets,
Siring toys for the enjoyment of those who can afford to fuel them,
For generations, with never a single care,
Past that initial trauma and subsequent subjugation to the will of man.

I don't tell horse stories, dog stories or war stories, if I can keep from it.

But when you want to demonstrate the purest of payback,
revenge getting the bad guy in the end,
having a horse be the hero makes behaving like an animal
more noble to the mind of vengeful man.
It's not true, revenge being noble.
That's a very old lie.

Law is to prevent error by disallowing failure. Law.

Relative to the rest of God's creatures, we, adamkind, seem dependent, weak and vulnerable next to bears being weak
a way-less long time
Than we.
We come into this world weak as a baby anything and we stay that way longer
Than any living creature.

I am an American, by birth.
I was not born to a political party or a family with political roots,
"I ain't no Senator's son."
Still,
I was reared drinking mythic cherry wine
sprung from George's failure to lie
Regarding his woodman's knack with a hatchet.

Sitting on the fence rail Abe split,
town fathers where I lived
were said to have decided the most harmonious of towns
have only gainfully employed darker folks,
while white
trash was allowed to loll around because they was
some employer's kin by marriage.

It all seemed pretty normal, as a child.
The loller-arounders let kids listen when they told
Their friends, who could not read, what the newspapers said.

One block from my house there was a vet's and hobo's flop-house clad in corrugated tin, rusted-round the nail-holes all the way to the ground and the rust had spread, so at sunset,...
I only recall the single story shed having one door.
There were always old white men sittin' on the southside of the shed. At sunset, those old men's whispy white hair

appeared as white flowing mare's tale clouds under
a scab-red wall held up by old men with sunset shining faces...

It was a big shed, a low barn, a bunkhouse,
eight or ten 4-foot tin-sheets long on the north and south
Windowless walls.
The one door was on the south side.
Once I saw an old man selling red paper buddy poppies.
He was missing both legs about half-way up his thighs.
The poppy seller rode a square board that had what I think were
Roller-skates, the key-kind, with metal wheels about a 1/2 inch wide.
Nailed to it's bottom. He had handles made from a carpenter's saw
Without it's blade. He pushed himself with those handles.

That looked fun, to a four-year old.
It looks different now-a-days. Knowing
Those red poppies symbolized
The after math automatics of the war to end war.

Who knows the poppy-sellers son? He would be old.
Does he know how his father lost his legs, but lived?
Does he bear the curse of the curse that lost his father's legs?
Does he honor his father's cause or weep at the thought?

Enough is enough.
My family tree branched in America, but only one great grand-parent,
Three generations back from me, was rooted in this land.
My gran'ma's ma, a Choctaw squaw,
That rhymed fine,
But it's not true. My grandma did not know her parents. She was born an orphan,
And her father and mother were likely strangers.

1910 in southwest Arkansas or southeast Oklahoma or northeast Texas or northwest Louisiana
And the color of her skin is all that proved my American heritage.

My grandma was born poor as poor can be,
she never told me how she survived

To survive a 1925 or so car wreck
in eastern Arizona's white mountains.
I never asked what my grandmother knew,
nor how she came to know.

This is my point.
After you and I have gone into forever more,
Our great grand children may wonder
what we did or did not, since we
Are no longer around to give our account.

These days we can leave our story to our great grand children.
Our own children
And our grand children follow us on facebook back to before they were born.
Shall they judge us idlers wielding idle words for laughs,
or  think us knowers of all we found while seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven
In the place Jesus says it is. You know where Jesus said the Kingdom of our kind lies?

The double minded man is unstable in all his ways,
hence Eve and her broader bandwidth corpus colostrum
Come back later, there is a breath system upgrade evolving.

Such changes to the courage of the mind rolls out more slowly
to the root ideas, labouring to find sustenance,
it is a struggle being a radical idea,
we agree, but we have our part,
as do the flowers
and the spore.
Leaven the whole lump, like it or lump it.

The now we live in grew from far deeper roots than
the roots claimed by the
Self-identified nation through it's cartoons/representations of national desires to rally 'round the flag as if it were the fire,
those desires to herd beneath any shelter from the storm,
Your country, your incorporated allegiance
to the inventor and creator and counter of the money under
the protection of the sword and crown representative
of the flame that burns,
The namers of patriot, the rankeers of ideas
who, by their existence,
naturally, over rule you.
Such powers are granted by the individual, not the mob.
You get that?

The desires of the nation over rule the desires of the individuals who
Com-prize the nation.
Whose side are you on, dear reader?

Is the idea we believed believable?
Ex Nihilo, I don't think so because
I can't imagine how now could be
Accidental-ly.

When my hero wore spurs as he went from the jail office to
Miss Kitty's place, (Gunsmoke on A.M. radio)

What did Miss Kitty do?
I had no clue.
In my hero's world people never
Did the wrong thing
While Marshal Dillon was in Dodge.

So did you think Miss Kitty's place was anything other
than a culturally acceptable
reference to professional social ******* workers
under a strong, smart female CEO
with top-level links to the local cops?

All these are rhetorical questions, this being
Rhetorical if you are hearing me say this.
That means, don't nod or raise your hand or shout Amen, kin!

I see your answer my answer and
I know my answer, so you know my answer.

Step-back, 1961, USA Snapshot
Unitas, Benny Kid Perett, Mantlenmarris, the Guns of Navarone.

Why I recall those things, I know not.
Why I did not say I do not know, I do not know.

Though, pausing to think,
knowing contains the doing of it within it, you know.
What's to do?

Outlaws were more my heroes than cowboys, and marshals, and such
Especially the ones that had been forced out by law.

I grew up in a 1950's junkyard with no fence, one mile north of route 66
On the Al-Can highway to Las Vegas, 103 miles away.
My Grandpa was a blacksmith's son,
who rode a horse he broke and his pa had shod
From Texas to Arizona in 1917, at the age of 18.

by the time I knew him,
He was fifty, settled down, nearly, from the war.
Momma had to work, so, daytime, Granddaddy raised me.

Horses weren't, wrecked cars were,
the toys of my childhood.

Grandpa built a junkyard from cars left steam blown
on the old stage road, from before
the railroad.
The Abo Highway hain't been Route 66 for some time yet…
Hoping…


Hoping sometime to polish this bit of this book, I left myself re-minders
Hoping memory of mental realms might rewind or unwind sequentially
When trigger
Neighed.
That worked, Roy Autry and Gene Rogers were names Sue Snow's
Mormon Bishop granddaddy called me,
back when I first recall My Grandpa Caleb,
a baptist by confession,
who was,
as I recall a *****-drinkin' jolly drunk.
While Grandma made beds in some motel,
granddaddy built boats and horse trailers
and hot rod 34 Chevies,
and he fixed this one red Indian, I could read the word on the gas tank, I knew the word Indian
and this motor cycle was proud to wear the name. I was 4.

A stout-strong man, no fat near any working muscle system,
he could and would
repair any broken thing,
for anybody. People called him Pop.
Pop and Mr. Levi-next-door at the Loma Vista Motel, shared a listing in the Green Book,
so broke down ******* knew where help could be found
after dark in that town.
There was a warnin'ag'in
let'n sunset there
on darker than grandma's skin.

My Gran'daddy's shop had two gas pumps
that were reset to begin pumping with the turn of a crank.
As soon as I could turn that crank,
I could pump gas.
I could fill up that red Indian
Motorcycle.
But "m'spokes was too short
to kick the starter."
I told my eleven year old uncle
and he told
how he would always remember learning
that saddles have no linkage
to horse brakes.
"Not knowing what you cain't do
kin *** ye kilt."

He grew up in the junk yard, too.
My first outlaw hero.

Likely, I am alive today, because
On the day I discovered I could pump gas as good as any man,
I also discovered that real motorcycles were not built for little boys.

Cold, dark, and lonely..
I spread my toes out in front of me,
Stretching erratically on
my bedroom floor.
  
Frantically, I grab things,
anything. To keep myself
distracted.
  
Something to bound me away from
my worries,
my fears,
my regrets.
You.
  
Sweat builds, and a
red,
inescapable rash,
consumes my face.
Choking my innocence.
Digesting my happiness.
  
I'm pulling away,
at what I love,
at what I want most in this entire
******* world.
  
And I'm scraping you off
like a scab.
Away you'll go, quick,
and easy to forget.
For now.
  
But you'll remain as a scar,
tearing at my skin,
a surfacing pain inside my mind.
  
I can't forget you.
I won't forget you.
That is why,
you must go.

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived
  of the pleasures of hoeing;
  there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing
  moist-dark loam--
  the pea-root's home,
a fertile wound perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!
  The blade chops the earth new.
  Ignorant the wise boy who
has never rendered thus the world fecunder.

Your cold hand against mine
we are frozen in time
with your breastbone against my body
and the darkness all around me
All I want is to call you my own
all day that's what I moan
but you've passed away today
there's no other way
to hear you say "I Love You"
or for us to gently woo
the other one to marriage
where the ledge stood
that you jumped off of
to the ground below and above
the birds sang as the sound
of crunching bones against the ground
shatter the silence with a scream
maybe I'm just in a dream....
But then I awake with an empty bed
beside my body and my head
I reach across and look for you to grab
my hand where my ugly, horrendous scab
from when I tried to **** myself
lives within the hidden shelves
of my lost mind.
Oh, lover, where have you gone?
I sing a sorrowful song after song
hoping that will  bring you back
but instead your body is cracked
and will never house another soul
your body is just a black hole
within my memories of us
you're now a once was
after your suicide
I've never been the same. a part of me died.

Growing takes time,
So does healing.
The scab began to itch
And with it removed
A wound inflicted upon us both

Open wounds bleed.
We slowly walked together in beautiful metronome
Until you felt the blood trickle down and the burn of pain rush through you..

Breaking two promises at once
Both mine to you and mine to myself
So I became a recluse
And alone I sat

And with that this may be
The last entry I'll be able to scratch down
For I might be thrown into a dark place
Which is something deserved, but not for the crime they say, but the one I feel inside.

Breaking the heart of an innocent's love causes so much damage.
After ripping off my own scab, I gave you one too and now both of our hearts have bled.
And I am to blame.
and I cannot take on another-

Yes, your actions wound me
But I will not command you to do a thing

Love is a choice
And within that choice is more decision

Because love does not command of another
It prefers blind hope

Blind hope, which fails every so often
But I choose to love you through my aching

The pain you inflict is only temporary
My hurt feelings will scab over

Love is choice, after choice, after choice
And patience – a whole lot of patience

I can hear my hair growing
It tingles the inside of my head, and sends vibrations along the lining of my skull
There's a bug in every breath when I'm out in the open world
A scab on every leg
A tear in every eye
A hole in every heart
And I've been counting them all to make sure I end up on an even number

A creature in my mind runs rampant and tries to see what kinda dirt on me he can find
I'm constantly sprinting circles after him, but I always end up losing the race
All the embarrassing things that I do and I say are his doing

But **** it
And *******
And **** him
And yeah, **** her too
**** everybody right now, I lost track of my thoughts
Something about something
Right?
Who cares?
Poetry is stupid and I hate my own words

But I need them
******* addiction
Terrible ties to my tongue and my diction
I accidentally set a fire in my kitchen
From the pen I'm writing with making sparks from all the friction

I can feel my fingernails growing
The gritty texture rubbing slowly underneath my skin
And the dirt collects beneath them faster than I can cut them
I think I need to go wash my hands

I miss you
Like a toothache
Needing extracting.
To think I once loved you
Who filled a cavity.

I miss you
Like a broken leg.
Now cast off,
I rise and walk.

I miss you
Like a scab,
But the scar
Reminds me
How cruel a cut
You are.

if there is any truth to
time healing all things
then how many years does it take to coagulate this pain and
dry it up with a scar there to remain so
I will have forgiven but
never forgotten
what it was that happened?

It's been hundreds of hours and
millions of minutes and
countless seconds since but
regardless it's still vivid

the colors are brighter
the sounds louder
the struggle longer and
the guilt greater

there were long stretches where
I completely forgot
I put a band aid over it that
matched my skin and
it blended in so well
until the edges start to
turn red from the
open wound beneath
that flows steadily and
it all comes flooding back to me
a plague upon my memory

maybe at one point
this sore was getting better but
like a little kid I picked at the scab and
any progress that was made
was all lost and
I'm right back where I started with ****** elbows and
scraped knees
just
remembering
remembering
remembering

so I can't wait for this
blister to birth me a scar
it will be a defect on my actions and
a blemish that drives my motions
flaws hurt but they show the world why sometimes beauty comes as a slash across your entire life and

I find it attractive

scabbed scab upon a
scabby scab.
scratch the scratchy
scabby scab with
scaly fingers and
shaky scrapy screams.

From deep under the surface
Something stirs
The people of this city
Experienced a tragedy
A horror so traumatizing
The city walls and store blocks
Are scarred, both inside and out

Bullet holes and burnt buildings
Cemeteries filled with graves
Tombs of those who died
When the wrath rushed through

But still it lives on,
The city filled with natives and tourists alike
People sell, people buy
People remember but still people die

It is now a historic monument
But slowly the city repairs
Revealing only a faint scab
Fixed by reality

People say they will always remember
But how long 'til the scab is gone?
Lost, inside the flesh

the scab
cracks and bleeds
dead skin covering
raw flesh
a painful mistake for the
entire world to see
I want to peel it off
savor the exquisite agony
be done with it finally
but the wound is too recent
I'm not ready to be rid
of you
quite yet

my blankets are breathing
i pick my scab over and over
i pick my scab over and over
i pick my scab over and over
keep your eyes open

a protective mechanism;
unsightly, yet all you need
to keep out deadly passions
some may call is masochism
yet it is the fear that i'll bleed
from digging at the lesions
of a love long lost
and then i met you

as if you were a blanket
shielding me from the hurt
this world can cause
only your warm touch blank it:
all the pain that has been inflicted
oh, how i long to be yours.

It's unfortunate to say
that I've always done my best work
when my skin was the canvas
and when the drawings would scab over
and slowly
ever
so
slowly
fade into permanent marks.

Anyway, Anaplasmata act aptly and abstractly
Backhands ******* balky baklava
Caractal chasm chant "Catty cavalry can't"
Dactyl dada dawns Djakarta drab

Larva ask dab-tap shabby knack lad
"Ever elect effete experts elsewhere?"
A clad daddy wants a dark jab dart
Fleece fleets flee flecked flyspecks

Cleft feet eve expels three resew eres
Gentle germs gelde grebe's geyser
Cede effects leek fell pecks self lyfes
Hellbent helmsmen helped hexed herders hence

Glen's remelted eggs be Serge-Grey
It insistingly implys impish ipsissimis insipidity
He held next her belched sender heel
Jiggling jibs jinx jimmy's jill jig

Its smilingly spiny impish mississippi I-I-I Is It dinty?
Kidding kibitz kick killing kings kitsch
sigil sign jimmy jib jingling jil
Livid linitis limits limbs limp

Big **** kid kicks thinking gill's zit kink
Midriffs mimics Mis's minimizing mistypings
Slim villi distils it, mini blimp
nil ninhydrin nihilists nicks nyxis nightly

Ms Mmisty's zip disc, if firm, is miming mining
ontology on top of oophoron ostomy.
Hindi hint silly lynchings. Skinny nix I stir
phonology 'pon phytol plywood poops polyglots pompons.

Polygon hoof-moon on poor toys toot
qophs
phony thong ploy loops monolog poppy.  Woody plop! Psst!
Rooks romp rootstock rods

"Posh" - Q
Schoolroom scoffs scoop shockproof snort stools
Mock stork pro or door toss
Thyrotomy 'top torpor tot's torso

So-so rooftop honk slots. Morocco sloops off
Usufruct tu upchucks
Stormy troops root to tot trothy
Vulgus vult vults

**** such curt cut ups
Wrung wctu
Vulgus vult vults
Xu

Wrung WCTU
Yummy yurts
Xu
Zulu zymurgy

Yummy! Try us!
Lawman scandal any pay at a scab yap tat tartly
Zulu zymurgy
Almanac-scratch that-clay tract vacancy

My nose scrunched
                                                                ­     unsure of why my
                                                              ­       monkey bars mother slapped  
                                                       ­                        my curious nails
                                                           ­                                                                 ­         away
                                                            ­                   but I wanted,
                                                                ­                       but  just, I want
                                                            ­            to see what it looks like
                                                            ­     underneath the deep red patches
                                                         ­        it hurt when I saw the
                        ___________gro­und___________

                         ­                                       and
                                                                ­      not
                                                                ­          the
                                                   ­                            slippery
                                                        ­                                  yellow
                        ­                                                                 ­            slide
                   hitting the mulch wasn't ever
                   part of the flight instructions, those were
                   written by the kid who never stops
                                                           ­                             p   la y   i   ng  ----------          t   a g  

                               catch me but you won't know what to do once
                                                            ­    I'm   It

I'll be sent to the bench for my carelessness
reckless                                  of my attention
                   abandonment

then my nose will scrunch
when the centimeters of her ruler straight hand
slap away persistence
                                                                ­                                                     but but, just, I wanted
                                                                ­                                                                 ­     just wanted to

                                                             ­                                                            peek underneath

                                                                ­                                        at all the soft loveliness
                                                      ­                            the fresh renewal  
                      of skin that has never seen a bad day

I had healed the wound to a scab
but now it's bleeding again
merlot stains on my sheets
sobbing under a bandage
I wish I was a doctor

to me? Real with a certified S.King filtered -ly mod,
by god,
as the oh myers say. On Writing sans Shining.
Needful fiction,
Liars prosper. Okeh. Thus,
the poor we have with us, always.

Truth t' tell.

Entshallah allathat, OMG samesame
good mastah willin' creeks don't rise

Do the work. Come Sunday, someday,
we, all us, say.

You ever finish your own work one day and jest

sit back lax - lacks a daisy, taken easy,
laxative action,
gut synapse
synch-up, cinch that saddle on my wildest
old Nightmare, beat my plow
back to a oil drum,

set some feats t'dancin' in some ol'lady minds.

old man's angels seen t'be jiggin' on
the head o' some pen
in the hand

worth two in the bush.

Who know what ever mean, okeh.

period. point made signal.
that was said and it's writ.

set it aside, let it dry

crumble to dust and be scattered to the five great gyres
to settle
as sands
ifiable quant, to mortal mind, weighable
any worth assigned as
sought or ought,
a grain,
a mote,
as seen with five gee augmented
lenses
prestandards beeing raised in the buzz
from Utah

as an erranded boy's sail bike lifts into if
from the saline shore.
Bike tires adhered to passive-ly

by molecular
memories of being
in truth, as if
once and ever,
salt of the earth, see in the distance,
Lot's wife

as tiny as can be

Na and CL, for ever,
deja wuwuish it were possible… dream… or die…

no don't. There is a reason. I for get it can not right now but these
keys can be

used right by the sober one in the batch.
God, I love this process. This is the work. Living.
You can do it as long as you can pay attention…

selah

then it, the algorithm, I'll go rhythm, pauses,
Spelchkovian spells masters seem sorry we ever agreed she'd
leave me leavened as dust
lying around
on white linen
in the streets of Laredo, as cold as the clay,

back in the day,
we sang that song in school. We sang
in movie theaters, along with a
bouncing ball and other people,

big bio jump here. My step-brother was murdered,
and it never seemed relative…

my father married a wombed man with one leg,
whose family sang along with Mitch,

and played Spit in the Ocean.

Such experiences ificate possibilities few knew
some survive.
There could be a contributory flow…

This ever lasting book of life.
See, a shore, sand bar
snag a thought rainbowing true to you

hang-ups from way back

Any boomer bubble popped too soon. Manifest at will.
P-pickup from scratch and
make a point
to infect the next pun unknoticing kid,

old -time slow hand-eye coordination special ed, Big Ern,
kicking chalk dust in far right field, noticing
patterns
in the leftmost vector straight home--

grand children, for the joy of knowing they happened,
caused,
to all outward appearance,
by my survival of several unbelievable

periences ex nihilo only
if "It don't mean nothing".

link link link something has broken, what do we con tribute tributary flow
too dammed salty, got to puddle around

waiting. waiting. waiting for one point
to be made
edged on all angles, to each mea culpa assured
quantifiability of reason,

inquizical sequence surpast
glistering

whetted and furbished for ever,

the keenness
the cut, precision decision

and how swiftly forms the scab,
a touch,

capillary seals, the grain, at HD,
one pixelish crystallin charge

change that,
by taking thought. It does nothing to your stature,

think allusive butterflies of lifenshit

it gets tiresome. A body wants some rest from ever
meaning ever and never was known
or heard
a dis cora zone age word, like

troglodyte or luddite Denisovan bracelet breaker,
ropemaker union with certain silky
threads
to which a little leaven always sticks
as would caterpillar spit.

Meandering, right, it's the play. My role.
I manifest the dance
as seen on the surface, from Jim's POV,

then my own POV,
then my own rivers of no return,
tribute

'ary a day goes by I don't re call that feeling,

flow is moving paster and paster the walls are
higher
shade deeper
colder'n'hell fersher, rapids.
Ah,

Kern River, I remember this.
Almond trees, Columbus clouds…
Hey, readerman, paperbackwriter wannabe,

we survived. What'sa-hell, right's right.

clap. there is a - an  STD joke there.
But those aren't funny

right,
standup guy says right's right, does a
Johnny Unitas stiff arm
and gets a case of
clap from the left, worse than meaningless

neo **** non clapping on the right.
Repent or perish.
****** if it don't feel good to say that.
It's true, once you know,

Gertrude Stein, I got it from her. Lesbian Jewish leaven
in passover brownies dipped in Mogen David,
she made me stand and say a rosary.

By any other name,

a rose is a rose and so on

You've come so unexpected,
Slipping through the cracks of my heart
and finding your own place in it.
Finding space in the emptiness
and filling it with your own form of love.

But it hurts.

You're the scab to my healing heart that I want to pick.
Refresh the wound that's now become so self inflicted
and continue the cycle of love and loss.
I don't want it to be scarred.

I just want to remain wounded.

But my heart feels your presence.
You've become a long awaited antidote to this emptiness
and I can't get you out.
Slowly,
I'm healing.

But forces will try to tear us apart.
Our Love will be seen not as a work of art
but crafted by the devil.
A spell cast over our eyes
blinding us from the truth that is God.
We will look misguided and lost,
but not all who wander are.

It's the devil who wants to take us away from love.

Remember that.

It's the devil who doesn't want happiness.

You make me feel love.
You make me happy.
You make me want to go to church and be with God.
How could the thing that's supposed to take me away from him
make me want to grow closer?

But it's not you who takes me away.

It's them.
It's the very people who want me most to find God
that push me away from him.
They are my devil.
They throw scripture in our face to tell us we are ******.
They cut us with verses to enforce what they believe to be is true.

But they are not alone.

*Remember, the devil knows and uses scripture too.

There was a child went forth every day,
And everything she heard or saw, whether it was perceived with love, dread, hatred, pity…became a part of her
And it may have faded away in moments, or lingered with the day …or remained for years on end, caught in the web of her mind.
The voices became a part of her
And the broken glass and the splintered wood and the tear streaked faces and more than anything else the shouts
The sharp words and the words that weren’t words but blows and the words that turned to shrieks and the words she blocked with her hands and the slamming of the door… and the words she wrote in her journals… and the sobs coming through the crack in the door…. And the desperate cries for help she stifled with her narrow white teeth… were all a part of her.
And so were the laughter and the marker scribbles and the days at the flea market and the dinners in the living room
And so were the picnics in the yard and the games of t-ball, all those were part of her too, but there seemed much less of that.
And her friends began to dwindle one by one, as she grew older
And as she grew older it all grew worse, former friends gave pointed stares and words that stung like poison darts
And everything was closing in, the house, the town, her own emotions
The shouting was worse, the glass wasn’t broken but instead held poison that made the house stink… the stench of sterility and morgues and slow but ceaseless destruction
Her own father slowly filled her soul with a treacherous ocean of words and tears and memories and mistrust, he let her down again and again and again, he watched her fading and helped her along… whether he knew it or not
The man was still breathing, still had a beating heart, but the father was long dead, shredded to bits by his own words and the broken glass and the splintered wood and bottles of poison
The girl was fading swiftly, blocking off her door with silence and books to hide behind
They never questioned the self inflicted bruises since she was clumsy anyway….the dark circles beneath the hollow eyes were never commented upon, the silent tears were never seen… hidden behind glasses and too much hair
She was silent always, not agreeing nor disagreeing, simply hiding.
If she was quiet no one noticed, he didn’t notice, and if he didn’t notice, the words couldn’t hurt
But she wanted to cry out, scream, fight, her head was shouting that this wasn’t right, aren’t fathers supposed to love their daughters not make them bruise their arms and hate themselves? But her heart slammed no no no he can never know how scared we are.
So she bit her lips because bleeding was better than crying and no one noticed the swelling and everyone told her how happy and perfect she was… she faked a smile and bit her lips again
And every night she went home to slamming and shouting and words that bruised like punches
Fat, ****, stupid, useless, worthless, no better than me… the shadows of insults floated behind her eyes, under her skin, manifesting in tears and dark circles and scratches and bruises
She fought and she fought as he tore her apart and every night she stitched herself together
Washed her wounds with her tears and tried her best to sleep.
The shouts and poison were gone when the father left
Leaving the daughter bruised and bleeding and broken and hurting where no one could see
But she stitched herself together
The wounds have time to heal now.
The friends she made would give her new words, the drawings would let her take out her pain and her anger on something other than her skin, the words she wrote were the shouts she never allowed herself
The insults are still there, she has not forgiven the father but without him she would have no pain to pour onto pages like blood from a wound that has yet to scab over and scar, but now there is the laughter and the hands to hold and the new words that remind her of the new memories of grass and sky and smiles and effervescent voices
These are a part of her now too, and they are the things that have kept her going,
And they are the things that will keep her going and going, into a future he claimed she’d never have.

For Katharine R. Cole

If gormless is as gormless does unite
That past of him and present me, I’ll turn
His other cheek against his waning sight;
I’ll **** his Hamlet soul to cringe and burn.

But dripping cannot thick or think in depth.
Blobs like blackened bulbous beads of eyes
Persist on shrinking into transits swept,
And down through dullard pools of choking fire.
Yet treacle binds my bole wood vocal chords
In rapture from such silence to withdraw
From sand that quickens, thickens, and distorts.
Can earth and water’s union mask my flaws?
The answer dares to dream but I refrain.
My name is Mud. Dear God, that is my name.

The foot: an endlessly dull point
Breathing technique, perfected by Roman Bill,
And a tall, sinewy, fine china ***** heel,
Cheap to most and worthless when submerged, submerges.
The tough Elephant hide surface
Of a swamp-like state and state.

Q. How does one become embroiled in such a located province of mind?
A. Alcohol’s venomous beauty and cheap living costs.
     The South.
    
An Elephant on a scooter stares blindly
At its own reflection circling the limb,
Shrugging dew drop eyes at what man had forgotten.
Not once, but twice.
    
The foot becomes a divulging calf of information
Sputtering in this bubbling torment of beige,
And pulsating around like an African tunnel
Waiting to be filled – fulfilled – ******.

    
The knee complies,
                      Sinking,
                                 Slowly,
                                          Not painlessly,
                                                             Not quick.

     The mercy of a lethal injection’s lie becomes
Absurd when one’s limb is the needle;
One’s brain the plunger of acceptance.
His gasp, a roar of silent fruit ripening in a
Mode too fast, cutting life and laundering
Expectancy whilst hanged from a
Whined whimper of Penance.
Purgatory’s whistle blows for time.  

II

A small red car clenched tightly
In the hands of a tightly tiny black boy,
His eyes huge and deep, but white; untouched by
Time’s clock or the weight of granite black that
He leans upon. Plastic tires screech horizontally along the
Structure of a Library’s historic insight.
Below, the ground is dry.
Beneath him, the ground is solid.
    
        Meanwhile, molten muck pulsates around
Our swirling antipathy of soul crushing
Nullness, with a lack of guilt unimaginable.
It bubbles, it bubbles: it toils in boiling rubbles
Of the past’s present and All I Could Have Been.
And I have never, could never
Sink lower in reality;
Blow harder against punishment’s wind;
Cry for this other as a **** filled wound weeps down her face.
    
The swirl of liquefied dirt and sand bags me,
Drags me, as if some *** lover of Hades is not done
With what is left of me. Disease to spread: just a little, just
A little more, like the detrimental bottle that
Knew me.
    

      As the hip is engulfed, an angle of almost perfect
Ninety creates  itself against the horizontal extremity
And puny ballsacksquash entails. Useless yet overused;
Timeless yet impressionable, pensionable. Gone.
Nothing knows me but this thickness’ quickness.
          That wants too much
From nothing               but existence
And the scab that fastens with time.

III

Turn the bottle back and find strength to
Outpour the clock and grant eternity.
Non compliant strength paid a fiver
For a soul worth two at the most.
A penny for the worthless: For the sickened lame.
Empty time feeds rays of golden from the sun fuelled
Encrusted *******, mudfast on heat.
This somehow seems like action.
Firm firmness but cracked with ease and
Non-returnable once inflated;
Non-negotiable on the bloodorgans of salt.
Weakness and powerlessness: *****.
*** for tat, for ***, ***, ***. For tat.
    
     The Elephant rises.
You brought this upon yourself, this rain of mud;
This treacle that will dry when you are dirt.
You would not let it ******* lie.
All of your ******* life: this strife, that wife.
     Your second leg (the grasper) tries,
     At length, to shield your heart:
     The only thing that cries.
     That does not want to die.
     Cartoonish bubbles of brown pop to the tune
     Of Loonies; of your shoebox brain that screams in vain.
What is your name? What is your want?
There is no blame you ******* maniac.
Everyone knows. Sink awake. Sink.
     Rest: do not sleep. Freezetimeframe.
     There is one more timeless point to make.


The sun and moon meet brief: the seconds count,
But die shy of one minute. Clear the road.
‘Tis dusk, I fear they named it. Raise the mount
And sacrifice another drowned sot load.
The moment thence: Anonymous descent.
The digger meets the dead in buried time.
The wish is washed in mud, the liver spent.
The blood-stained hands of Glasgow dodge the crime.
Make speed my sick sad Miller, grind the grain
Of Galloway, Gibb, Neave, Dunlop and Cole.
Your ghost will haunt your tag if not your brain.
Your heart should part this city river’s soul.
The sunjoke frozen, captured, stumped, and framed.
My name is Mud. Dear God, that is my name.

You are the unbearable sort of thing that I wouldn’t want to wear on my feet, even with boots laced up to the knees, because wearing you would force me to cover my polka-dotted toes,
And anyone who would want to compromise my innocence like that is horribly patterned and dull,
                                              
Like the lone argyle sock with the tag still attached that I hate, gathering dust on that shelf in the rain, where the rest of my unwelcome thoughts have found place
                                                           ­     The ones that can’t cover my insecurities
                                                    ­                            Or don’t flatter my figure at all
              
                There’s an obvious scab on my ankle that won’t heal
                Embarrassing, really
                It came from my unwavering faith in open-toed stilettos
                                You saw it just the other day
                                And I blushed as I tried to pull my pant leg over the sore, but you knew (I think)

Oh, the puzzling urge I have to be made over by the brains of your outfits!
                                                So I can open a closet of conversation topics that would suit both of us just fine

I think
                                                I have shed 18 years of ideas in the past two weeks
                                                I starved myself until I could fit into the apparel of your approval
                                                Which I claw through my closets but still cannot find
                                                But I know that somewhere in my brain beneath an empty toilet paper roll or stuck on a dead branch of ideas is a match to your unbearable pattern-
              
Perhaps if I’d kept my opinions more alphabetized, I would’ve found it sooner
                Blast, my scattered brain that can’t seem to produce any fashion but faux pas for you
                Logic and emotion were never meant to mix like this- trust me, I know well
Give me a summer to rearrange myself, hmm?
                Or will I have no use of you then…

If only I’d started to realize sooner
We’d be peeling oranges and discussing the oldest styles of thought, you and I
                Beneath an umbrella in the rain
                                You wouldn’t be able to see that odd scab on my ankle
                                Because I would have the other lone argyle sock with the tag still attached that I hate-

I feel that perhaps
you are only unbearable because I wish you complimented me better, that perhaps the reason I’m starving myself of all reason is because I’d like nothing more than to openly say
that I hate you, my lone, little argyle sock
                                                but that is only
                                                because right now, I could never possibly hope to wear you

Oh **** your heart!
It didn't care at all.
You left me in
The gutter
But couldn't stand to watch
                                          me fall.
The words we shared
Were meaningless.
All truths
Are null and void.
I guess it didn't matter,
You weren't the one being destroyed.
So run!
And call it mercy
If it helps you sleep at night —
You can rename an atrocity
But it'll never make it right.

The skin is dry
   The pull
      The tug
         The tear
The skin is dead
   It sticks
      It bleeds
         It shrivels

The white teeth stained
With the blood and the pain
As the pink lips scab,
The skin pulled back
   Blood drips
      Tongue licks
         **Teeth rip

“El Rabio”

Saturday 6-4
Hello again white pages. I’m writing this on Sunday for Saturday because I came seven hours away from dying yesterday, I was a little busy. I know I need to write this now or I’ll start to forget certain details so, here we go.

I woke up at 5:30 for my 6:00 breakfast. The air in Lima is always wet and sharp in the morning; it is incomparable to any type of Alabama morning mist. The morning mist in Lima is tainted from the 8 billion people who live here and curse it with their waking breath, it curses them back with sharp gray stings of water on their, our, faces as we leave the shelter of the tin roofs and adobe walls. As I walked into the kitchen, Madre Tula scolded me, again, “¡Estás tan flaco como un frijole mi amor! Ven. Ven aqui. ¡Comé!” Which, if you forget your Spanish years from now when you are reading this basically means she thinks I’m too skinny and need more meat on my bones. Madre accomplishes this by feeding me, every single morning, a piece of torta, a bowl of cualquier con fruta, and a ham and quail egg sandwich. It’s always delicious and yesterday was no exception. The NesCafe coffee yesterday burnt my tongue. I gulped it down in a heated hurry because of how tired I was. I gave Madre un besito and left to walk down the street to get the girl interns, Dylan and Lindsay, from their house so we could catch a combi (bus) to Salamanca to work the yard sale for our church with our missionary leaders, Mike and Lauren Ferry.

We made it to the yard sale safe and got straight to work. There was already a huge line of locals waiting to be the first ones in the gates to buy what the American missionaries were selling. After setting up tables and moving hundreds of boxes for about an hour Lauren came sprinting up to me and said, “You got bit by a dog?” I tried to laugh and make a joke about it being just my luck but she interrupted, “This is really serious, Cyril. This is a dang big deal.” I was instantly immersed into a stage of cold adrenaline as she continued, “Cyril, you need to go to the hospital. NOW. People die from this. We’ve had to send interns home for the rest of the summer for scratches from dogs in Salamanca.” She continued to tell me that I needed to catch a combi and find the nearest hospital immediately. The sides of my vision were clouding black and I sat down, I was suddenly very cold.

I think I was in shock and my brain was trying to refuse what it was being forced to process. Rabies. Rabies? Really? That **** dog. It was foaming and all the locals ran from it. I don’t know why I thought if I just stood still it would run past me. I remember the locals screaming Spanish, Quechua, or Aymaraat at me that I was helpless to translate with my two semester of Spanish at Auburn. That **** dog was brown and its lips were foaming. After I kicked it off me and climbed up on a wall of someone’s house I remember wiping the foam off my bloodied legs. Why the hell did I not think, “Oh, that’s probably a bad thing, right?” No. I was just too embarrassed by having made a ****** spectacle of myself in front of the locals to even think about the inherent dangers of rabies.

“Cyril?” I remember looking up from my racing thoughts. Somehow I had ended up sitting on the ground with my head in my hands. I was shaking as I looked up and saw Mike, Lauren’s husband, offering me a hand. He asked me to try and remember exactly what time I got to Salamanca yesterday and when I was attacked. I thought about it and remembered I was running late so I kept checking my watch. It was around 3pm. “****,” Mike said. When you hear a missionary cuss is when you know you’re totally ******. “Stand up, come on.” He helped me to my feet. “Cyril, listen. If you don’t get the first booster shot within 24 hours you die. There is nothing anyone can do. You have about seven hours left. You need to hurry, don’t be scared.” When he said that I remember laughing. Mike gave me a concerned eyebrow furrow as he led me, by the arm, over to one of the other missionaries working the yard sale, Mrs. Sarah. He explained the situation to her and I watched the Peruanos spilling in the gates and milling through the rows of tables and missionaries selling old books and trinkets. One lady that walked in had a monkey with yellow ears on her shoulders. I remember worrying it could be rabid too.

“Cyril?” Mrs. Sarah smiled at me, “You’re going to be okay honey. Lets go.” We left the yard sale. I remember anxiously watching the monkey sitting on the ladies shoulder and as we walked past it, it **** all over her and started to rub it in her hair. I swear it was smiling at me. Mrs. Sarah hailed a combi and we headed for Clinica Anglo-Americana. The taxi driver asked if we were okay and Mrs. Sarah told him about my situation. He fingered the rosary hanging from his rear view mirror and said over and over again, “Dios mio…pobre, pobrecito.” I understood that much Spanish. Even my taxi driver thought I was going to die.

We pulled up to the hospital and told the guard with the AK-47 why we were there and he waved us in past the spiked metal gates. Inside the hospital looked more like a bed and breakfast than the place where I would be given a second chance at life after rabies. The walls were whitewashed and the Untied States, Peruvian, and British flags draped down from three golden flagpoles by the front door. There were beautiful pink and yellow flowers everywhere that scared away the painful Peruvian morning fog that permeated my memory of the rest of that morning. We paid the taxi driver; he patted my hand and drove off.

Inside, I was encouraged to explain why I was there—in Spanish of course— to the friendly nurse waiting in the entrance. I was furious. Time was wasting; it was not the time for me to practice subjuntivo or pluscuamperfecto. I mangled out a few awkward sentences and the nurse’s jaw dropped. Mrs. Sarah erupted into belly bursting alto laughter. The rest of the waiting room was empty. I was so confused, terrified, and angry I didn’t know what else to do except sit. So, I sat on the closest wooden bench and felt a tear peer over one of my eyelids. Mrs. Sarah and the nurse were twittering in rapid Spanish and I kept thinking, “Six hours. I have six hours left to live by now.” Mrs. Sarah walked over, put her arms around me and explained that I had told the nurse the reason I was in the hospital was because I killed a dog in the streets yesterday. I smiled.

“Señor Blythe?” A doctor appeared and frantically motioned for us to come into his room. I walked in and it looked just like any other doctors office except the tray of scalpels, huge needles, tweezers, and vials of purple medicine beside the bed that he motioned for me to lay down on, “Acostarse.” Mrs. Sarah told me to relax. Humorous. The doctor and his two nurses wiped down the bite marks on each of my legs with three pungent and strangely colored gels in quick succession. I swear I hear a sizzling noise. The doctor picked up the scissors and I winced, but he only used them to open up a white packet from which he pulled out a huge thick roll of rough, wet gauze, which he used to wipe my legs clean. It numbed my legs. Then, of course, he grabbed the biggest needle on the table and used it to stab both legs; directly into the bite marks. If he hadn’t already scrubbed them so hard they were scab-less the needle would have cracked the crusted scabs back to flowing red. Rabies vaccines are not fun.

After a few more vials of life were shot into me the doctor wrapped up my legs in weird smelling gauze I was told not to shower and that I had to return to the US within 3 days to receive a “monohemoglobin shot” that they didn’t have in the hospitals in Lima at the time. I sat up on the bed and asked Mrs. Sarah, “So, am I going to live?” She smiled and nodded her head and the nurse answered, *“Si, mi amor, por supuesto.”