If
my velocity is negative on
paper, am I going the wrong
direction? If I am accelerating in the
opposite direction of my destination, (if
I slow down I mean), is it good
or bad?
How about when a train is positively speeding at a high
velocity towards
me accelerating positively
in my direction Do
I run?

Chubby cheeks! aww
www like a chinadoll so
pinchable cute adorable --
incurable

Self-worth
measured in:
1) pounds and
2) passing glances from

strangers

Turtle he is a
turtle however he
is a hot turtle

It's two thousand and
sixteen -
isolation has never been so
difficult to achieve no
dropped
call no Unseen text certainly no
lost letter will do the
trick
nowadays

there is no excuse to give your motherbrotherfriend for
staying a resolute
island in the internetted
sea of archipelagos, so
overcrowded with
bridges and boats that I cannot see the water unless
unless
I make the
space

You call me
beautiful but you
don't see
me

what you call
beautiful
is your own
reflection with
maybe a bigger frown than
you usually
wear

Model
Mode
Mole
Lode
Ode
Dome
Dole
Doe
Om
Meld these letters
Model the word

pick a pocket or
pick a tree
but do
not
pick
me

I'm not claustrophobic or
scared of the dark or
scared of people or
anything

Really

I swear

It's just--
I can't go
outside at the
moment can't
get dressed wash my
hair open the door find
my keys lock the door walk
outside just
can't do it right
now

so I trapped myself
here
staring at a screen until

Healthy melissa you need to eat
Healthier she says as she
eyes my tightish jeans, the belt
bisecting my hips splitting each in
two
I eye them too.
Healthy is in the
eye
of the beholder

The picture is blurry or
maybe I'm not seeing clearly
either way I've resolved to
dissolve this moment in
time, and I absolve myself of all
ties connecting me to that
image that laughing
face that at one point
must have been
mine

When I was small I said “Mom
my tummy hurts” and
then kisses and maybe a spoon of liquid
(icky) tylenol followed and then
All Better!

Now
when I’m bigger in shoe size, in brain
(in tummy)
Now when
my stomach starts to bubble and
roil and twist I know the source
is not candy and the
cure is no longer kisses and
I need so much more I need
slow breaths and
slower
thoughts
and
no maternal concern concerning
itself with my intestines, small or
large

So
I hate
HATE
washing dishes. But I don't
discriminate (pots and
pans and spoons and measuring
cups are also on my *****
list)

So
when I bake
in a microwave,
in one bowl,
with one mixing fork,
and no measuring tools,
it's sort of kind
of a bit of
a miracle
when the baked thing rises
AND it
tastes
ok

sonorous symphonies simper at the
soirees of my sincere
sibling while I
stand by
scowling

Wipe me clean of bitterness:
left over is a bland weak limp
thing who cannot stand
out in a meal, gets
eaten for lunch
no consequences for the
stomach that restrains me

Voicing my verbiage takes
valour and validation--
one more vintage than the
other, I vow

When something terrible faces
me, I choose option
three
(the one cavemen never
thought existed):
freeze

yep, I am an inventor of the invisible
indecisive
slow-thinking
coward

I spy with my little eye...
a bigger eye behind.
a nose between the two
some lips sketched in
below, very
red
a chin hangs from the jaw, like
a stubby
stalagmite

see here's the
thing: this
thing  happened one
day but I
don't know what
exactly

You're So Skinny,
you say to me, I Wish I Had a Waist
Like Yours, you say

like it's a compliment.

But

I never agreed to spice up your
own personal recipe
for low self-esteem If
you persist in this
body belief I
will no longer be your
body's relief Go
find another Skinny to
feed your grief

I made up a face in
my mind it was mine but
smoother, cakier, glitterier,
camera-ready to take
on the persona of the dry, spotty layer just
beneath the
surface

There are precious few at ease
with moral ambiguities,
so we act as though they don't exist.







              ---Wizard of Oz in "Wicked," lyricist Stephen Swartz

if I moved to the moon (like
Xenon) the number of pounds I
contain would be 83.3%
less
I would be less
according to a scale on the moon

me and my dad used to
fight over who
got to have the coveted, comfy, not-made-of-disgusting-yellow-foam
feather pillow
it wasn't really much of a
prize, I guess--
the feathers were so dead the
thing was practically
flat
but
it's the principle of it, the status that
a feather pillow brings to
my sleepy eyes-shut head

most of the time,
I won
he probably let me because
well
he loves me and
that's what parents do
But
he'd still fight
for that pillow he knew
I couldwoulddid fight
back

now, I walk into my bedroom and
see that feather pillow
already on my bed,
clean sheets,
neatly arranged

I wish for the fight

Growl growl ru
mb
le rumble gro
wl

(my belly protests my healthy
lifestyle)

think Piggy
in Lord of the Flies he'll
tell you what's up about glasses
(before he dies)
although Betsey Johnson could maybe say
something too judging by the frames
she wears to complete her hair 'do
myopia mangles sight but will
never extinguish
light

I see you go towards
the light of
streetlamps, get ******
right up into the heart
of the electric fire
and
burn
(or melt I
suppose)

a Typical Self-pity Poem this
is... see my list
of perfect woeful moans:
I ache all over from
crying alone and
clenching my jaw and
scraping the bone
I crave independence
but cannot bear it without
help
I know too much to think
I hate my world--
yet I preserve it in ink

I don't judge you
out loud
I laugh when you want me to and
smile at convenient intervals and lulls in
conversation in
life

Hulpin tupero ska
ti la sol va va
VHAT
VHAT
tol si naso ta ree
pina nahno kandoo
lo
VHAT are you saying?
VHAT can I understand?

Food
Of a sort
Don't eat the aromatics though
Massive indigestion may follow
Appreciate what you can consume
Potatoes, paprika, meat and oats are awesome

I take the lamp out
of its box and stand it on the sill of
my new apartment. I ***** in
the bulbs, plug it in, turn it
on.
Done.
But
what to do with the box it can't just stay
there
by the window
taking up space for
however long I'll be
here.
But
when I move it would make things
easier
all the special-
shaped styrofoam would make things
easier the lamp wouldn't
break
when I move next for sure.
But
I've just arrived Why
am I already leaving?

Shirley Temple's curls were
gorgeous, - manufactured or
not - bouncy, shiny,
sweet

Mine,
on the other hand,
are a bit frizzy and unruly and
not very
bouncy after the first jump

Maybe they'd behave better in
black and white

I collect secrets
gathering them up like
a squirrel holds chestnuts in its cheeks
I hold them, in anticipation of
leaner times
that way, I will be
fine
fine
when winter arrives -
when I am left
alone

He likes - liked - to
watch tennis and gymnastics and
always insisted he pay the
check (even when we had to make sure there
was cash in his shirt
pocket for him to offer)
he refused to use a cane
at 95
because he didn't want to look
old he went out to lunch
every
day

until he didn't

I’ll make a haiku
It will not say what I want
At least I’m speaking

Elle sat on a scantron sheet;
She soon logically deduced
That this was not the proper place
To settle her caboose.

So she rose from her seat and,
Removing th'offending page,
Once again Elle sat herself
Inside the testing cage.

Frankly
my dear I don't give a **** That's
how Rhett said it with no pause between
dearI no comma or breath just
smooth denial of a fact we all know is
kind of true but mostly
false because of course
he loves her
frankly
he gives a ****

Just in case of
stormy weather I
have storm windows which
are also optimal for
keeping me warm at
night

Scratching my scalp I
feel the little ***** of white
dandruff then - there -
a scab I can scratch and
stow under my fingernail so
satisfying I want to
find another one

no such luck

The Tortured Artist a
term so redundant it
should fuse: Tartist?
now that's a
title I'd advertise

It's like:
if I'm depressed, then my
poetry is a gazillion times
deeper
more serious
better

people
praise Coleridge, Poe, Van Gogh or
Sylvia Plath or David Foster
Wallace maybe because
people
are glad that they aren't
the ones to sacrifice sanity for
Good Art

art is
artists are

art is worth the pain only
when it's not
mine

Do as I say Speak
when I say Wear what
I say Trip when I
say Fall Rise Cry when
I say

Be as I say so I can keep
You

(no I will Not do as you say nor
fall nor cry nor
Stop
when you say)

A man tosses
pizza in the air--
what?  you thought he
would toss something else?
There is a hole
now, just there between
his first and
second knuckles that stick
out, forming a
fist

Today I put some
shirts away and cooked some
chicken in the microwave I am
getting better at that -- doing
it is not so hard now that I've
gotten a hang
of it again I even went
outside for a bit in jeans
in the sticky summer four
o'clock (not my smartest
thought) but I went I
felt the sweat and sun and I
smiled

Raza
sounds like the Ra'zac in real life is the
word origin of "race" is the
world origin of "I hate you because I
can" I race
away from race and riot quietly in my
mind
without hope of
escaping my body my
flinch
away from a black
man walking my
instinct to correct double
negatives when really they aren't
not
right;
I'm not right

Terrifically tragic transportation
Transpires on the tempestuous
T
Boston buffets bystanders with
Banging, belching B-lines branching
Into one of four long
Limbs

I tear it limb from
limb
definitely carnal, I'd say
(although not very gory--
it's cooked) the grease coats my
insides my fingers are shiny
my nails get a sheen as
the skin slips between
my hands my lips my
tongue it
tastes
so warm and wet and substantial
a real thing
a live (dead) thing it tastes
good

Reading readily rewrites my
reactions --
results in wondering what is right and
what
isn't

My body is baudelarious.
Hilarious,
no?