My Abandonment Issues cordially invite your Abandonment Issues to usurp their lack-of-****-togetherness with a fusion of festivities!

What: A.I. Fusion Fest
Where: Sunny Padded Land
When: Now - You Can Never Leave

Activities Include:

- Acro Yoga
- Tandem Biking
- Graffiti Affirmation Wall
- Cuddle Puddle Grotto
- Synchronized Trust-Falls
- Sock Puppet Heart-to-Hearts
- Fear Archery w/ Custom Targets

Don’t miss the main event!

Three-Legged Race

Utilizing all the greatest affixing technologies (including, but not limited to: rope, Duct Tape, Super Glue, Gorilla Glue, wet cement, bungees, resistance bands and all variety of *******), the race will begin by the Fountain of Unknowns, ascend over Mount Paranoiac and finish down in the Valley of Chillax AF, where there will be infinite punch and pie.

No need to RSVP. You’re coming.

:)

the night before
the moon grew bold

I felt the darkness
move in from above
in ominous grey
opaque

it reached for me
half asleep, I
acquiesced

relinquished
pillowy clutch
splayed sheets
like legs

for his
chatter bones to chill
where my sallow
is tissue thin

his hail knuckles
affixed to wet tongue
drug me to the floor
raking my hollows
over and over

reeling terrors
on sepia filmstrip
some scenes repeating
some to-fro rewound forward
some hovered gory ending:

frigid tools cutting
to expose my insides
stirring entrail with bone
tugging ruddy strings
to see what sounds
they made as I
buckled; choked
on my leaks

I closed my eyes
tried to escape body
but he projected on
my shuttered
darting

knotting esophagus
around the backbone
fingerpainting my end
on worn flesh walls
in char-red spectrum
choreographed in
perfect harmony
with rote fear
chanting

this is how
you die -

alone

I felt it all
happening.

dangling my happy
memoirs with nooses
ungraceful reanimating
decayed draggy dancing
Xs where bright eyes
were once upon
and wide

open

every ache and
smothered secret
chirped by dark faeries
too quick to swat

but when all
the pushed down
were given mallets
they crescendoed
into discordant jarring
and in its peak came
a piercing shriek:

so loud -

all stilled
to look around

I couldn’t tell
if the voice
was him
or me

but after terror climaxed
the hear ripped and
grip released

I allowed myself
to loosen, breathe
headthrob slowly
melded into felt
beats:

limbs and tips
all pulsing
relief

and I
could see
no one was there

but me.

wielding expertly
book in my own hand
thick with tested maps

to exquisitely torture
every tenuous strand
in my fragility

escort stress by the wrist
compound cravings caged
echoing faintly at hole bottom
where chalked stars summon
emotive salve revolution

my poetry was trying
to be something:

pretty, deep, unique

as if cosmic recycling
can ever be solitarily
special

that’s all just
suped-up vanity
lighting one’s own face

now I just try to paint
authentic real on
my vanilla ***

with crinoline skirts
flung overhead

I walked it
to keep me from
walking back into
the slaughterhouse

read renewed obit daily
spattered on asphyxiating
pulmonary walls when
you moved on in
an attempt to replace
our magical rarity

maybe it was for
the exact same reason
you put the gun in
your lonely mouth

preferring suicide to waiting
for unsuspecting heart
to get massacred

again

choosing instead to stroll
hollow self-made planks
with egoic illusions
of control

I won’t

walk it again
I’m stronger now

though it will hurt if
you repeat the bore
boring stale pattern
into open skull

starting
to flower

it will be no
surprise

and I know I
will be OK
this time

look
I know I
terrify you

quake your bones at
thought of home foreclosed
U-Hauled, stooped alone affront
cold locked door

too bad
there’s no one else
who understands what that’s like
who’d hold your hand and dive inside
your diverting fractured ice in melt
saying silently, as I turn to pools

me.
*******.
too.

while I was locked
and gagged
inside me

I took the time to
do some crucial things
enabling me to
face you
shakily

I went back
to the beginning
ate each and every thing
I thought was a no
and inked over
so hard I
ripped

the paper
with yes

I edited
our timedlines
inside my mind
struck thru rejections
Sharpie marked in insecure
pushpull bulls puncturing
red cloaked fear
with horns

I engineered
utmost empathy
by stumbling through
scenes I thought I knew
in your dusty kicks
forlorn and weary
in a bath robe

and I prayed
with heart splayed
between wide legs
whispering my truth:
your name

life is a video game
we are characters
there are levels
things to beat
to move up

we’re all 3D
when really real is all
4 - 11 D (+)

there are hacks
to level up, my loves
(as far as I can tell in
moments that trump
my everyday numb):

see your patterns
own your ****, traumas
choose love
over all

and make better
different choices

in the face
of torment taunting

then the
record skips
and you find yourself

in a new
orbit

ya, ya, i know
there is a King Koopa mf
at the end, but like
by that time

we will be
stronger

and not
alone