1/16/2016

The days drag themselves
succinct, akimbo-
spitting out the day in spurts and
steadily vomiting the night.

I am never afraid of death in the winter.

And so when I sit in bed
and out of the corner of my eye I see
it- death has always been a sort of

white rabbit, I once felt I was one
crushed in a young girls' hands,
having to carry that burden for the rest of her life

I don't want to say that
I missed innocence, in fact,
I want the pleasure of losing it again (Fitzgerald)

I read so much Fitzgerald that year
perhaps because I felt my life was
on some sort of side of Paradise.

Was clumsily and unbearably in love,
Princeton summers,
Was quite unloved
New York autumns,
Was throughly confused
New York winters.

The men come at us,
fling themselves like a screeching
jungle animal of a kind

But we don't care,
we sit in the park fermenting
like we usually do

but still the men laugh
still they come at us
while our skin sloughs off our faces
and we tell them "I'm dying, don't come any closer"

I felt like my face being ripped off once
but I didn't try to do anything about it
of course.

-

12/15/2015

"You, doctor, go from breakfast
to madness."
Anne Sexton

The engine of my amygdala:
                   so burnt out
I needed coolant, I needed something to prevent my
   immolation
a sort of precautionary measure

***'s flammable
  I'd soon find out
In a crowd of hundred dark and
smoke crawled through my shoulders
    social little parasite
apologize for being an interruption to everyone

   "Wish I could've been there"
Sucrose altruism,
back at the mental hospital id relived
every single second with you

thinking of your anger I read Tennessee William's letters
I loved you

I even loved your hatred.
A girl across the hall screaming
about Jesus and her ****
shouting singing Shenandoah

"But I don't need to be here,"
   I turned to my roommate,
a strong figure I still admire,
"Everyone says that, even with a Thorazine needle halfway down their ***."

They'd had a name for it
Something about kisses, I don't remember

"Yeah, it leaves a huge bruise on
your ***," they laughed in the
tv parlor

there we were
The tristate area's teenage
girls too unstable for the world

a step above "oh, you know how
teenagers are"
A girl with grey eyes

Came in my last night there
"Is it normal to cry on your
first day?"

I wasn't allowed to
even touch her shoulder
and so

with the alcohol and the
Lamotrogine I tried to figure
out where it'd all gone wrong

but it'd been hiding in me
psychotic seed,
a virus carrier a patient zero of my own

tepid insanity!

there's a Heart of Virginia Festival magnet bleeding out onto the
countertop. it's been like this for weeks, i think. i've
been sitting here for weeks. letting the phone ring and
not picking up. a couple of old strawberries molding in
my palm. two ibuprofen waiting to be swallowed resting
pretty on my tongue, melted down to sulfur and acid.
i'm not the right kind of sick for you. bees buzzing inside my
skull, lazy and
sticky sweet. blood dripping from your face to the tiles.
gutted and fresh and stinking, and
you won't stop carving dead languages
into the meat of your thighs, muscle gaping red and raw
you sit in the bathroom of a Macy's and howl,
like youre wild,
like you're hoping someone will round the corner, fists flashing
and ******* stop you.
youre not a Real Boy, you say, spit it out quick and harsh.
thats what momma said- you'renotarealboy.
faster than before. like you're scared. (i know you are.)
my shoulders go up once, twice. what the **** is a real boy?

A reverence and a platitude sit side by side

in an empty theater

One has Jesus Christ and the other has

John F. Kennedy

12/6/2015

"my pill is white.
It is a splendid pearl;
it floats me out of myself."
Anne Sexton


a dose of one
i douse myself with cold
exposure therapy. extreme temperature.

too late
i already did that last year
smoking new ports down to the stub

in 15 degree weather,
frost bite settling in
oh well time to go back inside

and I begin to think a little too fast
one foot in front of the other
my head pulses, a cardiac muscle


on its own,
the nerves pressing my cranium
I wince,

think,
decide that that is disgusting
take three pills and

it is like being held
i almost never feel this way
entangled in a sort of woolen comfort

synthetic tenderness that
lulls me to sleep
forces me with sharp hand
to count the sheep

12/6/2015
"Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence."
TS eliot, the wasteland

I am amberbeetle,
  stoked fire,
medicated ditz

I ramble through the wasteland,
hook foot and slackjaw
and go south in the winter.

you gave me asters a year ago
now they call me aster girl
memory almost always mixed with

desire,
and I
should've been

a pair of ragged claws
but that's a different poem.
We talked for an hour

maybe more
in the summer,
and he said

hold tight,
and I was was frightened,
and down we went.

Swiss instigation,
broken video tapes and
grimacing at sweaty sunsets

sunrises, and
there was no Japanese maple
no silver leaf,

no silver lining,
I read much of the night.
roots that clutch me in

metropolitan
rubble,
and these days

the broken deadtree gives
no shelter, no consummation
no conjugal embrace,

I don't find,
nor am I
the hanged man

"And I'd do it any other way
but when the hell am I gonna get a gun?
and you can't OD on clonepazam

without it being ugly of course."
Dorothy Parker–
I planted a corpse in my yard

Who am I kidding,
we did,
me with some assistance

It was carrion
found in the corridor
did it sprout?

it did,
but not in the way I hoped-
no carrot flowers or crabapple

in fact it was held up
by fruit vines
that illuminated it for all to see

including me.
In the sad sad light a
carved seraphim

melted into the laqueria
my nerves, they're bad tonight
and every night

stay with me
Speak with me
breed

in the rats alley
and lose your bones