I banged the door against my ‘little’
And felt the pain through to my index…
Finger
I felt the pain surge through, felt it throb… felt it linger
Felt it ache
Felt my whole body quake, way past my pain threshold
**** this finger

I stubbed my little…
Toe
Against the leg of my coffee table, you know the one… that well varnished little devil
That stands just before the door
It felt like liquid fire
I looked down at my toe and asked it, “You mean to tell me that you didn’t bleed?... you LIAR!”
And then turned to the table and whispered, “You little *****.”

I don’t know how it happened, but...
You made me sob my heart out paper-cut
It isn't nice how you just up and slice
I’m a manly man, I declare… I boast
You can tell by my manly strut
But really, that ain’t cool… play nice, for pain is my least favourite vice
It’s the little cuts that hurt the most.

Morning keeps weeping,
while I wage war
within myself:
Civil battles, composed
of pen-ink & lines,
of unceasing tension & grief.

I attempt surrender:
To cast off the weaponry.
To rejoice: barefoot
on my wood floor,
marred by litter:
Indolent daggers of charcoal & ink.

Time beats me down, a battle drum:
Rhythm moves me onward,
despite my cry to retreat,
Tiptoeing wordbombs & rainbullet noise:

A song to keep me alive
& the wind howls her tears against
my closed windows
& I wonder how this ends:

With ink-explosions
Or with sword-swipes.

This story circles the earth
like a river scribbling a message
of scars and songs and a something-else,
swirling like old-fashioned script
beyond the binding of a book.

A vagabond leaves the trail of words
dropping from palms stained with ink,
blue from a wet horizon.
The salt of three seas press to her lips
as they part.

The wind brings songs to quench her word-thirst.
Syllables soak the world with sound
and the air fills with the smell before rain,

She tastes phrases of perhaps
and imagines the final page as a picture book:
a rowboat anchored with hope.