I was asked
If I believed in a god
And when I shook my head
Asked why not?
And that got me thinking,
Why not?

It's quite simple really.

I only see my brother
On very rare occasions
And I've lost my mother to her lover
A man named Merlot.

But I'm not the only child who lives this life.
Jose and Jack
Invade far too many homes
With promises of turning the clock back.
But I only know my story
And how God didn't step in

Two years ago I thought about killing myself
And if I had to write a list of 21 reasons I got there?
Six of them would be days the rain came down too hard for me to be seen,
Five for the amount of park benches I slept on before I learned how to ask for help
Four, for the number of times her hand should have been awarded a speeding ticket for racing across my face
Three for the friends I watched lowered into the ground
Two times I was left curled into a ball wishing I knew why he thought it was okay to take such an intimate part of me
One time that she told me that she never raised a ****.

In comparison it's sad
The list that kept me here.
Really, it's the number three.
One for the teacher who told me I wasn't alright.
One for the girl who stood by me and held me in a parking lot while I cried
The last for the boy who's birthday is forever inked
Into my left arm.

These are things I'll never let be seen.
The simple fact is
It's much easier to smile and laugh
Than to curl up
And ask

Why?

It's easier to say yes
Than to say no
Easier to give every part of myself, trying to help
Than cut the toxic out of my life
Or preserve the positive.
That's just something ingrained into me.
I'm pushing
   and pushing
Because you see, I'm in the habit of full force shoving
(people right out of my life.)
Though I'm not sure where I got it from
Maybe it was my mother
When she thought it would be easier
To send me away
Than take a look at what my brother and I were trying to say.
In the end though,
This trait is a ***** dark part of me
That screams to be fixed.
There's nothing more to it.

So when I'm asked
If I think there's a god
I'll just smile soft
Shake my head
And go on with my day.
Because it's easier than asking
How could He leave us this way?

I laugh a lot.

I laugh at myself because I am hard stuck to find the beauty in the poetry
but somehow to others words flow like vicious currents rip through  ugly ducklings never to be grown to beautiful swans down the river Delta,
the Nile,
we call it emotion, this the true beauty of the words is always flowing page to mouth to mouth to ear,
honey water to be digested by the soul and mind
and some breast stroke some and some do the butterfly and some just ******' drown...
so you could say to some poetry is no laughing matter...
yet here I titter like a child  because I cant help but wonder if Daniel's saying penance or just stuttering the word *****...

So I laugh

I laugh and laugh and laugh I laugh at myself I definitely laugh at you people
I ha ha ha my course thoughts, outwards reflecting anger passion, turning it away
with the yip yawing of jaws and gums flapping in  celestial proportions of denial
snorts and giggles push back emotion drowning out any semblance of fear or hate
because who's to say I can handle it,

call it sociopathic tenancies but I'll make it make belief because we just cant handle the fairy tale we live in
we cant handle that there might be no happily ever afters and we cant handle that we dont have a Prince charming to take care of us
but instead the crown is Crown Royal and you love it, love the burn down your throat,
something to keep you alive something to keep you awake but aren’t the two just one of the same anyway?
What is each day but a dream if automation takes you over rides you out like a machine and pushes 100110101.

So I ask you,
I ask you to listen to the words and the voice,
swim down the river any way you want just get your feet wet because living on dry land is living in fear

But more importantly I ask me
I ask me to do what I asked you to do, but how can I trust me to do what I told you to do when I hardly connect the concept of we and have used it but once in my work, though I am no different than you!

Because what are we if not all the same?

Mother oh Mother. Why?
I find myself
Torn
Between two lives

Mother, oh Mother,
My future self and my past strife
They battle
As I watch with wide eyes

Mother oh Mother,
My head pounds
As my heart
Is pulled two ways
Splitting down the middle
Like the poems I wrote in the beginning of high school

Mother oh Mother,
They were ripped to shreds
And tossed in the trash compactor,

Mother oh Mother,
My heart can't take the same fate
As my first love letter.
Laughed at and ignored,
Set aside when it became a bore.

Mother oh Mother,
you once told me
Don't ever grow up
Well that was a sore mistake
Considering I grew up
Far too quickly
In order to make up
For your ****** up faith
In that ******* bottle

Mother oh Mother,
Do you remember the night
That you shattered it against the wall
(you had missed my head)

Mother oh Mother,
it made for a pretty metaphor
Representing
My life after you
Decided
Facing demons
Was best done
With a little help
From your friends
Jack, Jose and Morgan.

Mother oh Mother,
They never had any right
To take over our lives
Just like him
An invader
Nothing like kin.
No matter how much you insist
There's no problem,
Not even you,
Can begin to understand
What they've cost you.

Mother oh Mother
The memory is clear
As the night you wept,
"Don't grow up to be like me"
You whispered it quietly
Just past midnight
While you sipped on your wine.
Out of  that diluted cracked glass,
Sleeping pills in hand.

Mother oh Mother
Do you remember how I sighed?
Closed my eyes.
Hid my tears,
It never did me well to cry
Not with you.

Mother oh Mother,
That night stands clear in my mind.
I took you to bed,
Tucked you in, kissing your forehead.
Setting yet another glass of clear water, two advil down
This night was repeated far too many times.

Mother oh Mother,
Do you even know?
Every single last day
I was screaming on the inside

Mother oh Mother,
Mother oh Mother,
Mother oh Mother,
Why?

You could say he hates her,

From the way she talks to him, how every rose is ****** at him thorns first - millions of little slashes - battle wounds of the everyman adding up day to day week to week year to year the river of blood leaks to the ocean big enough to drown them both.

He fires back though, and across the battlements of the dinner table sits the enemy shaking a half empty bottle of depression pills, basing how much happiness was left for the month off of the rattling of white capsules against the orange bottle.. She, how could she have ever given birth to him? Some might argue that was all she ever did for him, too preoccupied with her reflection to see the mirror image her son had become with his suken eyes, a rotton apple, a cyanide cynic at the ripe fresh age of fifteen.

So six months later when they both led the cavalry in charge for the umpteenth time throwing dagger words laced with poison aimed high at heads ducked below cover to a safe place (but of course there is no safe place),

Who would've thought when he told her to start taking her pills she'd take them all. Tip top of the bottle bottoms up for the bottle plain white capsules and blood red wine because when she goes out  she goes out like a lady.

Its a sad sight seeing all her family weep at her grave, cry true tears clear and pure. All her family but one, her beloved boy. How dry face and stone visage were oh so heart wrenching.

But perhaps worst of all, is that you could say he hates her even now

"How are you?"
She smiles back,
A grin developing like an old polaroid.
"I'm fine!"

She's determined to never let them see
That each night she needs to just be
On her own so she eats silently and locks herself in her room
Hiding from the ice that her home has become
It almost makes her wish
To go back to words
Thrown like stones

No matter where she turns
It's like she's a ******* burden

First it was the battle of the Titanic
Her parents marriage was far too grand to last.
Next came the sister ship Olympic
Who thought a second try was going to be a blast?

Both were too big, too bright, too cocky to be true.
So she models herself after them
Because when the Titanic hit the iceberg
The first thing people said
Was not, "We should pack up and move"
But
If we take just one more drink,
What would it hurt
Just one more dance
Can't do anything

And really, if that isn't the perfect explanation of her life,
she doesn't know what is.

So for now, she'll keep her eyes firmly shut
Pretending things are right and **** if she won't fight to keep it that way
Silently struggling
Until the day she can no longer grin and say
"I'm fine."

"How are you?"

"I'm fine, and how are you?"

If only it were that simple.

He believes in power of self yet some days just feels helpless
Hardened body and calloused hands help to hold in demons
Fair smiles and warm laughs on the outside of the house of body
but step inside and see this is no home

Broken bottles fly like broken words in a broken family
How cold does it have to be to freeze a waterfall
as cold as he, as he is cold as ice
tears stop on frozen edge, invisible to all but him
because he hasn't let them fall since he was nine
it may seem sad, the lack of expression almost half of one's life
but that's the kind of man built by a father who never pulled punches
he threw them

yet don't feel sad for our dear boy, he doesn't feel sad for himself
he believes in character he believes in strength but he'd never put a child through that hell
never again would that play be renacted
the stage set in a three bedroom townhouse, this here, the broken home
tongues fly to make sounds echo down hallways into their sons room

is this love?

He doubted it.

Slurred words shouted names he did not know

****

*****

****

Days later he figured this had something to do with why he was moving out, why him and mum left
Why pa flew to Alberta and he was stuck with this mess
the lovely pile of pills and drink he called his mother,
in her sorrowful state of crazy


Our large rock continued it's jolly course around the sun, and many rotations later the boy was king
In charge at home, but not of himself, slowly slipping
calloused hands had nothing to cling to
Mum was losing it, keeping her on her pills was hard
and dad was gone,
whether he was leading a good life or shooting debts into his arms he didn't know
he hadn't talked to him in 3 years
didn't plan to either

So this is how it feels for he,
the bruised boy with good intentions,
keeper of pills and watcher of siblings
the man of the house.
You ask me how I am
and I'll answer it with truth

“I'm fine"

And how are you?”