Don’t even know you
Yet I think you’re so divine
Don’t even know each other
I still want you to be mine
An alien boy, so interplanetary
An Empty girl
With her head all airy

You feel like a state of inbetween
in the interval
Of sensible, and having no meaning
You seem to not think I’m absurd
Or at least you
match foolishness word for word

Don’t even know you
Yet you feel so familiar
And when you’re around
I get sillier and sillier
This alien girl, captivated by
the Able boy
with a mind like the sky

Blood makes me squeamish
A cut on my siblings leg
landed me on the floor
After catching my breath
I retrieved help

Bad. Bad. Bad.

Punishment.
If I punish myself
No one else can punish me
Wrong.

"You bruise easily."
"No, I punch really hard."

Usually it's my left thigh.
It makes sense
I'm right handed
No one can see
No one can judge

Bad. Bad. Bad.

When it's a lesson to be "learned"
It leave a nasty shiner
On my right eye
It makes sense
I'm right handed
Everyone can see it
Everyone can judge

I'm afraid to speak.
My words are always bad
Always wrong
A lesson to be "learned"

Stay Silent.
Shut Up.
Don't Speak.
Don't Bruise!

I Will Never Write My Obituary

I bleed before the world
in many different ways,
by rocks and knives
and paper cuts,
sometimes it is blue
sometimes it is red,
every time it feels real,
because it really is.
I bleed before the world,
cutting myself open
that it may read the entrails
through what my poetry says.
But this (upon reflection) is not
what will be written of me
after I have died
and it only concerns me now
while I am still alive.

James E. Roethlein copyright 2020