what is luck?
i have a dotted line that i've been trying to fill in for my whole life
diagnosed at nine with a carrying-too-much disease
but i can afford the pills and therapy
from someone else's wallet
but
for how long?
tell me, doctor,
when i'm off my parents' Healthcare Plan,
will you still want to talk to me?
we've built such a great relationship
in the past lord knows how many years of
punching mirrors
kissing porcelain bowls
would you please keep giving me ****** lotion
to smooth out the holes in my brain?
what about the other kids who are dying out in the same crispy sun that doesn't set?
tell me, do you feel the same compassion
for these daughters of dopamine   deficiency?
would you hold the hands of thirty year olds
who still fear the monsters under their beds?
you *******

do no harm

and turn a blind eye

and i know it's not your fault
but **** it, Look Me In The Eyes
and tell me
what do you plan to do?

my mother insists
she was never a witch
but she gave me a bag of amethyst,
sunstones,
citrine

i joined a sports team
because i felt ignored
and movies make it look like a team leads to
pirate, swashbuckling friendships
that leave you emotionally changed.

well, the other girls got that

i try to speak and they don't look at me
i bring in cupcakes and they don't thank me
it's only when they need someone to help them that they talk to me
which is not unlike everyone else.

well, it did do one thing that was promised
i have changed

people are as good as they are unfeeling
for every kind soul i meet
there is another that would happily leave me jaded
and i'm already cynical

do not speak to me of your problems if you refuse to hear my own
i want your kindess
and your fairness
not a blind eye

Uncle Bruce writes sermons and gives grace at the Christmas table
his family bowed their heads
and listened to what they thought of as
"quaint"
"old time-y"

Most of them there were atheists
or maybe Catholics
(it depended on the side of the table)
and even Uncle Bruce was not sure what he believed in, not yet, not yet
after 53 years, he wasn't sure
(he had always been a smart man)
even after debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin
and preaching for years behind the pulpit

What Uncle Bruce does know, he does
He gives us all faith

The sleet had piled high up on the side of the road, spraying the brownish gray over the pedestrians. Sharlesburg was far out on the Pennsylvania country side, and the town was choked by trucks hauling by and the smells of dairy farms. No one really stayed there long, aside from the clerks in the little stores, maybe a few waitresses, and none of them wanted to stay around. No, the waitresses all wanted to move to the city and get their big time jobs, and the clerks wanted to move down somewhere warmer to retire. Maybe to the lake, but that was too rough in the winters. Well, the Summers were gorgeous, and so maybe that would work. The only ones who wanted to hang around were the farmers.

     Life was slow, and the farmers knew the land. Time there plodded away slower than the cows grazing on the moors. As one year grew into two and two into six, not much ever really changed for them. The land would go from muddy and torn to green and sparkling, gold and cracked, and again to the mud, smeared with the white from the snow. And all the while, the animals paced, and so did the farmers, wandering deeper and deeper into the rut.

     Tyler sat by the window, watching the cattle huddle together out in the mud, her tea and her breath fogging the window. Her father was out at town for the weekend, though she never really asked why. Monday he would probably stagger home reeking of a medicine cabinet. Another cow might die this winter, she was sure, because she had never learned how to deal with a cow in labor, and the vet didn't like to come by any more. That Tyler wasn't sure of why, but her father was almost certainly the blame for that.

Her mother wasn't around anymore; she left with a furniture salesman to live on the lake.

The television glowered in the corner, the same four channels playing the same four things. Tyler switched them off, but wanted the noise, and turned on the radio.

"REPENT SINNERS REPENT SINNERS! FOR THE FIERY HELL AWAITS YOU! I MEAN YOU, YOU WITH YOUR ****** MUSIC AND YOU JEAN SHORTS! HAVE YOU SEEN THE TV? THOSE GIRLS, WITH THEIR EXPOSED CHESTS AND GOING TO WORK-,"

Tyler switched it off again.

Something had fluttered outside. What really caught her eye was that it wasn't white, like the sky, it wasn't the snow, it wasn't the mud or a black back of a cow. It was something red and shiny.

The snow was falling pretty hard though. She couldn't be sure.

In the quiet, Tyler could discern the mooing yelps of one of the cows. She pulled on her yellow winter coat and scrambled outside. The air was cold and sharp against her nose, ripping away the smells of manure and filth. Even the tobacco from the ashtray was blank; the landscape was nothing but sound and snow and the ******* cold.

      The cows stood in a brace, black bodies radiating heat in the January snow. Tyler shoved them aside, though they hardly budged. Saliva dripped onto her shoulders and onto the ground, little pits in the mud. One cow groaned again, and as she got closer, she saw it was laying on its side in the middle of the brace. A pregnant cow, heaving under the pain of labor.

    She guffawed, trying again to shove the onlookers aside, but it seemed as though they merely packed closer together, and she could hardly get an arm through. As Tyler watched, the cow shrieked in pain.  Cows clamored tighter in the bunch and their eyes swallowed the sight as dully as cud.
"Please, move! get out of the way!"
     Of course, the beasts, they paid no mind. The heifer shrieked again as blood began to spout heavily fourth. The Cows did not even step back. They did not budge as Tyler beat on their rumps, not a flinch. The cries of pain grew weaker and weaker and the legs went from their horrible flailing to the slow movements of a dying moth.
When the scene ended, the cows were no longer amused, and passed on. The heifer was dead. Tyler scrambled forward in hopes of saving maybe the calf.
It was only a ****** rag , hanging sadly from the mother's bowels. no life had touched the wretched thing.
Tyler sighed.
And went back inside.

I know that you are scared
that your father will do nothing but scream and scream and scream
make you into a speck
decimate you
but, my Love,
let me bring you bravery
even from across the phone.
When the sun rises again,
it will be there
Can you see it?
The fire in your heart
I'll lend you mine and hold your hand
I will be your shield
if you provide the sword.
If you let me, let me be your courage
and stand there for it
Even from miles away
let me be your lion.
And we are not flinching.

This is not really a poem, it is more of an essay confessional, something that I need to tell someone
or else, I am worried, I will lose my head entirely.
     And I rather like some parts of my mind; they're creative and hopeful and idealistic.
     But right now, my mind is giving me some serious issues, things that have more or less confirmed that I have gone from a "serious cold" on the mental health scale to "flu and pneumonia".
      
     When I was younger, I used to joke about being insane. In middle school, in that crowd of black-wearing kids who would eventually split into a rainbow of different scenes, being dark was cool as hell. We used to tell each other we were crazy. We'd make up voices in our heads and spout about them in our morose ways- "Oh yes, they haunt me every night. I can see one behind you now. Yeah, I guess you could say that I'm crazy." I did that too, but for the most part, it was an exaggeration, not a complete lie.
    
     My entire life, I've been going to doctors. I was diagnosed with severe depression when I was in third grade. How old would that make me? I forget. Soon there after, I started struggling with manic anxiety disorders, which more or less alienated me from all crowds but those dark ones. Even after that, when things settled down, I went through a series of abusive relationships, so on top of that all, I have a decent case of PTSD.
     Still, all of those things, I can deal with. I've never had to take a medication before; I used to cut myself, for a couple years actually, but for the most part, good friends and a good therapist have been able to keep me alive. That was all that I needed, and really, it's all that I want now, to go back to how I was. In control.

    But recently, this year, things have really been spiraling out of control. It started with violent panic attacks, which I missed school for, and thusly my grades suffered. I couldn't go a day without one, and they weren't the type that makes you just cry. I'd be screaming and throwing things, fighting back the people who came to help me with fists and chewed down nails. I suppose I have always been one to fight in a pinch.
     Those feelings, though, grew, into a vast and crippling fear. I can no longer fight, something I took great pride in. The terror is so bad that I will occasionally collapse to my knees and clap my eyes shut as I weep. I did not have anything to cause it, and this ambiguity and seemingly random weakness bothered me. Apparently, my mind decided that the uncertainty about what I was feeling was unacceptable as well, because I have started seeing and hearing things.

     My therapist and doctor say that I am slipping into an anxiety-based psychosis. I know that the things I see are not real, but the horrible creatures that my mind produce scare me more than any movie, book, or bad boy friend ever have. Last night, I was actually forced to crawl into bed with my mother- a seventeen year old girl!- because I realized that I was having a literal fistfight with a crawling demon that was not there. I only know that this fist fight happened because I had punched my walls several times, and the blood on my knuckles is still there. My knuckles are purple and cracked open from the strain. You see, while I know that my delusions are just that, they are also deceptively corporeal, and chilling.
      There is one that slithers around my room and on the ceilings that looks like a human body would after being left under the river for some time: the skin is a sickening pink, the flesh is gelatinous and leaves a slime trail, and its eyes, when I see them, are not there. Instead, its eyelids are closed and caving in, like a mummy in the Carnegie. Another is tall and thin, ungodly thin, and pale to the point that it glows faintly. More or less, my mind has adapted the Louisiana swamp thing into the clip art it uses for monsters. Its eyes glow light green, but pierce like car headlights. Usually, it crawls with terrifying speed, but other times, it will come charging out of the woods or through my door on two feet, arms swinging wildly above its head. The thing's movements are ungainly when it rears up, and slow, but then you can see its true hight of seven or eight feet- seven or eight feet of skeletal fury- and I find myself rooted to the spot.
    Last night, that was who I fought with. I was tired of him watching me, because that is what he has been doing. Not he, it- if it had been a 'he' at one time, it is a Munich now. Though I digress; when it came charging into my room, the dance began. I was at one time a boxer, and a ballerina, and while I have lost much of my flexibility, my strength for the most part remains. That would mean something, if the Munich was real, but it is not, and all that happened in reality was that I threw my best punches right into the brick of my old fireplace and the new drywall.
  
     The  rest are just shadows, odd figures that I cannot quite understand yet. I will be starting on a medication very soon, and I am frightened to do so, for anxious and passionate are all I have ever been my entire life. However, I cannot allow the things that I have been seeing to progress into true madness. I am a smart person, I know this, and there is a lot of good that I can put my mind to when I grow up if I can just stay sane. Literally sane.
    I will never consider 'crazy' cool again. Crazy people, those who are trying to beat it, are the most amazing people I can ever imagine. I can't even fathom where I would be without my arsenal of doctors behind me. Well no. I can speculate just fine. The Munich and I would still be locked in battle, my mind the only one truly being dealt blows. It would tear me apart. Crazy is not cool. Crazy is my deepest fear that is about to be realized.

I cannot write.

I simply cannot.



Unless writing is merely the description of our own humanity.
In which case, I write very well
I summarize what makes myself
in a form of paper clip flat
and in the black smudges of light
on a hot laptop's screen
I make the pills you pop
when you feel the angst
and I make the black tar you shoot up
into your drowsy veins
I am the writer
I am the dealer
I am the pharmacist
I am a speaker of myself
and nothing less

It starts as a drizzle
massaging the green land
and raises to a down pour
washing it clean again
thunderstorms, even are fitting, pure,
loving the ground with the passion with a kiss
But passion rapidly turns sour,
and carries on too long
ripping the banks
flooding the land
till she is as frightened as a battered woman

Tonight!
Oh what sweet splendors
of travel that pour themselves out and over me!
Not to exotic lands,
but to those far better
the square foot of land that lays beneath us
when I am wrapped in your arms!
My bag is not packed,
there are gifts to be made,
things to be set in order
But just 10 hours!
10 hours after two months!
And I will be yours once again

The excitement,
the rapture,
one week of playing house with you
in the hot summer breezes
of Western Ohio
flat land,
so different from my home, from what I like
but what does it matter?
In your arms, the place could be bent and folded
painted in the wondrous colors of strata
Rose, gold, deep blacks and shimmering veins
of ground water spurting forth.
Pretty shell fossils
and pink quartz
they all exist in your eyes,
in your arms,
in your kiss

little slug
lived his life
thinking he was a snail
until a man came along
ripped off his shell
and covered him in salt

whispering smoke
and twist around me
dancing a tarantella in the corner of the room
that frantic dance
distracting from the truth

you and your doll house ways
controlling the letters
the things that you hear
the looks on your face
i am done
i am fallen
a celebrity in my school
but no less
no less
than a figurehead

Bees nest chucked into a limousine
OCD's introduced to the filth and strobe lighting

I used to be a good kid.
But the suburbs got me.
Stripped away my hope, my individuality
crammed me into a high school
with 45 blacks,
20 Asians
and only about... 3,000 white run-of-the-mill
Shaler-Bubble kids
(All of whom thought, by the way, that being Catholic
was exotic) ,
and made to eat the **** of nothing to do.

It came out in nightmares
their bad behavior
that I stood for
touched and beaten by boys
I bared it
ostracized and devoured
last year I came into my stride
but do you have PTSD?
Can you look into the eyes of another man
without wondering ******* him?
Do you want to hurt the people you love
because you fear,
no, you know,
they will **** you?
A whirl wind of insanity.
What was precarious
was pushed.

No ma'am,
the suburbs got me,
and I'm a burn out by the road
fingers dripping with paint and my own blood
and smudged with ink
I'll drink in your pity
whiskey on my mind
thank you
pass another flask of it
no drug makes me feel alive quite like asprin
maybe love, I guess
don't know how I got that, ma'am
the suburbs got me
maybe I can get out.

watching replays
over and over and over again
for what?
gah, i don't need this stress.
the team is going down.
i'm a hockey girl.
but **** it
* NO
THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A TOUCH DOWN *
Jesus, I don't need this

The dragonflies here are massive
so big
I think they could carry me away
just ****** my soul and take it
tie it up in gossamer webs
that they borrowed
from the spiders
the spiders are my friends
and I could feel safe and secure
a little moth
hardly flapping
*** I don't need to get away

The swing set was an old thing
like the brittle bones of an elephant
so worn that it had started to forget;
that's what her Gramma said, at least.
But Calpurnia Gray loved it
sat in it
till the seat sagged before she sat down
inviting her to rest.

Calpurnia Gray preferred the city
but the suburbs were what she got
and the swing set looked over some deep gulch of the woods
where even the suburbs ended.
Wilderness.

It filled her with such strange fantasies
of leaping through the trees like an ape
tearing off her clothes
and chasing down game
like some odd Tarzan with cobalt blue painted toe nails.
That would be the life for her if only she could go back
back
to the wilderness on the other side of the suburbs.
To the place where concrete monoliths lit up the sky at night
and rivers of asphalt carved always changing paths
for some intrepid explorer
to find a new bookstore
or museum
or something strange.

But Calpurnia didn't have either.

She had the suburbs.

And the swing set.

The swing set that always sat there, that never got away
the swing set that was crumbling with time and stagnation
but at least it was what she knew.

the poetry of youth is almost masturbatory
the stroking of an ego
pulsing thick down your throats
i do not know
what you see in my crude writings
they are nothing
to the wisdom of age
there is no skill here
merely habit

I HAVE EARNED
THIS ******* CHOCOLATE
SO STEP OFF
I LIKE THAT I AM CHUBBY
SO *******
I LIKE MY BODY
AND I AM NOT OKAY THIS WEEK
I AM NOT OKAY THIS MONTH
SO BACK THE **** UP, "HOMIE"
I AM EATING
MOTHER
*******
REESE'S

I haven't written anything in over a year.

My chest has risen and fallen with the track of the sun, like a neanderthal burial covered in flowers.

I have wept for myself, I have wept for my friends, I have wept for my grandfather now in my lungs and in the soil,

but still I haven't written anything in over a year.

I went to the zoo one last time with my confidant, rode up the long elevator so steep I would fall off with a sneeze.

I have felt the last rays of sun before winter, I have felt ice on my eyelashes, I have felt the length of winter, stretching out into eternity, stretching out way beyond what I can touch,

but still I could not bring myself to carry a pen.

I have heard a phone call I've dreaded my whole life, the stony silence of a room full of bad news when the ice cream clutched in my bird bone hands hit the ground.

I have met the ground and the hard concrete, I have met death sitting on top of a cherry tree, I have met a woman calling herself my Nana but half of her is dead,

And I guess I wasn't brave enough to grab a pen.

And I wasn't brave enough to see my grandfather in the casket.

I never saw the wreath of flowers, I never saw his wedding photo propped up in the corner of his little bed, I never saw his chest move and move no more, with the track of the sun, like a neanderthal burial, covered in flowers

but I did see the room full of people when I gave a eulogy
and I heard the lie I told that this wasn't an unfinished story, and I feel death and grim upon me like ancient flower pollen fossilized in awful crystals on my bones.

And maybe that is why I have been too scared
to write
for over a year.

It was just one of those days
when the haze of summer had just started to lull the suburbs
into a sticky heat
of grills and lawn mowers
of air conditioning
(everyone pretended not to use it; windows! barked the mothers, windows!)

and the sweat stuck to the brows
of the life guards
napping in the sun
above an empty pool
the Dawson pool.

No one ever swam there
and the lifeguards knew it
those teenagers, sunning themselves lazily on hot days like this
(and the mothers! They complained about the tans. Cancer! the said.
In a way they were right,
but really.)

The waters were clear but the fences were rusted
the diving boards were falling
throwing themselves off the deep end

Katydids
lawnmowers
those lazy days
and the mothers! the constant nagging of soccer moms
lulled around the pool
on the day
Cassandra
took her
last
swim

Her face was like shoe leather
tanned by no fewer than 98 summers spent on porch swings
plodded slowly,
like  her feet were considering
every
last
step
this woman presented her 5 dollars to the girl at the gate
(some surprised lifeguard, because, you see, no one ever swam in Dawson pool)
and pushed inside.

Cassandra never left her porch.
and the mothers! how they scolded their children for teasing her
(even though they had done the same thing at that age.
That's how old Cassandra was).
Decades of the suburbs
and push mowers
and world wars
stayed like photograph around her face.

The lifeguards stared.
Cassandra kicked off her flip flops and shrugged off her mumu.
In a pink bathing suit she sank into the water.

The age melted off of her as she danced through the water
graceful
strong
the strokes were slow and deliberate
and the lifeguards watched as she pulled herself from one end of the pool to another and back.
She made 16 rings
remembering her childhood
23 more
for her marriage
and then 60
60 rings!
before she stopped.
60 years old, the year her husband died.
The year she had stopped talking
aside from the hushed prayers in church
but she was talking to him; that didn't count.
60 rings.

And Cassandra just disappeared.

No one found the body
no one found anything
aside from flip flops and a mumu.
The lifeguards were nearly scandalized
for letting Cassandra drown
but soon she went from a news story to a ghost
and the mothers! sniped at their children
for whispering
"Did you here about old Ms. Cassandra?
They say she found God."

My name is Haley Gilarwald
and I am a force of nature.

                                          Not too long ago, the stink bugs invaded our city
                                               Unlike aliens or the usual sort, these were just
                           plague.
Like swarms of locusts they came, but they never seemed to eat, rarely seemed to die.
They just clustered.
And wings, sounding like B-52 bombers, they rattled around the bare watt bulbs and roared, and I
Swear
to Jesus God
Drove everyone here mad.

                                                                          I hate the little *******.
                                                                         I sit in my room, typing a dreadful paper for a dreadful class
                                                                         when that hell sound shows up.
(my floors, they are hardwood!)
and so I stood
notebook in hand
and skivvy clad
I played tennis with the swarming thing
they do not die!
like men, they only keep coming back
little war machines
buzzing at my discontent


                          NO MATTER HOW MANY I FLUSH, THEY ALWAYS COME BACK
                                                          THE                               SAME.    
                                                      (I am certain that they cannot die.)

yes
i am participating in no shave novemeber
and if i wanted to braid the rainbows that curl under my arms
you cannot stop me
not with shame
not with punishment
because i am gorgeous
and because i am strong
and if i choose to shave myself
i will
but i won't

He just broke
right
down
Lips pushed up against the speaker
leaning up against my heart
I tried to crawl into the phone
but the holes were too small
and here we are now
feeling like we both went through a cheese grater
and no body said 'when'
when the waiter came.

It spreads, it pops,
and the blister hangs dry
stinging like a *****
so you can't quite put your foot down
Well, neither can I
so let's tie our ankles together
and we'll wander on like kid foot races
lean on me
lean on you
lean on me
lean on you
see, we'll make it forward
that shining city is just three years away
we'll be together
just remember
the first aid kit

orb-castle
of a thousand purple mountains
waiting mellowly
to be cracked open
by the orc siege of eager witches
rock collectors
little kids

The Blueberry tried

to escape from my lips

but instead

it ended in my hand

and back to my lips again.

The fall, for it, must have felt a lifetime
after dodging death once
but
like all things
something found it
a gentle touch turned crushing
snuck up from under it
bringing to the brink and past again

I feel its little soul
squeeze out on my tongue
bitter
sweet
almost overripe, but cooked in brown sugar sauce
it whirled from death so many times
that when I finally came
I found it in its best suit
and I robbed it even of that

Or perhaps, the suit of old age
of ripening,
isn't quite its best
maybe
when it was unripened
and pale
on the bush
perhaps that would have been more fitting
for me to rob him
of his style

There is a girl who goes here
who looks just like you
i'm so sorry i didn't come to watch you go
are you now back to watch me through school?
oh hecate, have mercy upon me
and shield me from this bewitchment!
or at least lend her kindness
like she had in this last life
i was too weak to go!
and you too kind to deserve me!
oh please, forgive me
i'm begging you
forgive me
forgive me
forgive me