Come at me with your insults.
Your “idiots,” “*****,” and “*****.”
Use your overused taunts all you like.
I’ll fire back more original ones just for you.
Why would I lower myself to slang and curses
when I can be just as scathing yet eloquent
through the use of everyday speech?
It’s an art form wielding words.

There’s an attic in my head where
I abandon memories to collect dust.
A lot of them were stored successfully
but a few weren’t despite great efforts.
Some memories aren’t tame.
Some are feral and wild.
The trap door to the attic started swinging open
not long after depositing human horrors in its maw.
The tar-like memories I was unable to quarantine
were dumped into the interior of my dome
blotting out my vision with the darkness of his room.
Memories take you back to places
and this was a place I never wanted to be in again.
More often the trap door began to open
spilling blackness, teeth, and hands everywhere.
Containment of such memories is nearly impossible.
There are demons in those recollections that pick locks
and find their way to your heart.

Addiction has its hooks catching
at my pre-frontal cortex.
Fishing wires are attached to the hooks.
I’m snagged like a fish.
Dexterous fisherman hands reel me in closer
to the mahogany door of my bedside cabinet
where I stow Liquor Outlet *****.
I’m choking on each hollow breath
that whistles down my chimney throat.
My thoughts need to be bubble-wrapped
and stored in vintage chests at the foot of the bed.
Maybe I’m too eager to forget.
Maybe I’m too weak to resist.
All I want is some peace of mind
from the phantoms haunting my head.
I unscrew the bottle to drown them out
until spirits flood my bloodstream.

Nights leave me feeling untethered.
My feet hardly brush the ground.
Maybe I’ll float off into space
as my head is too light to remain bound
and the darkness ***** me underground
where he resides.
I claw out of a six foot grave every night
to get away from his hands.
Bottles crowd the surface of my desk.
I rise with sleep deprivation
sagging heavily from my eyes
and clothes drenched in sweat.
I just want to sleep.
Some nights aren’t as bad though.
Especially with your arm around my middle
acting as my anchor.

A deft ripple from my thumb flicked
ash to the wooden slates under my feet.
With a joint held between two numb fingers
I ruminated over the many things in life
traveled down the haunted hallways of my mind
all the while musing over the fact that
we don’t know what we don’t know.
Each thought was accompanied with
the exhalation of smoke and a dropped
bit of spent **** every now and then.
With the pain smothered
beneath a blanket of smoke
the Oregon’s early morning chill
the remembrance of past things
failed to sting as severely.
In the end a pile of gray soot lay at my feet.
Maybe I should get an ashtray
and use it to store my thoughts.