Im finally ready to talk about my mom
Now that I feel this numb
she died half a decade ago
and I loved a woman half a decade ago
When I was playing video games on the couch
on the corner imagine of that L shaped green couch
and I slowly realized out of the corner of my mind
more out of the corner of my consciousness
that my mother was dead
laying right next to me
Cold unresponsive and unbreathing
It was now looking back on it
a direct parallel to at least two different moments in my life
When my brother died and I stood outside my mothers bed
barely gathering the courage to wake her
often crushing eternities of silence keeping me from prodding her
from daring to say her name much after
I dont remember when she did awoke
I dont remember her unbearable fear
or the wanton panic in her eyes
but I remember my own
Oh I remember my own and
I kept her just out of sight of cognizance
Before moms funeral
the latter correspondent showed
I had *** with a lie
a lie I knew well
But I kept it just out of sight
No just at the edge of my mind
The drive home
with her brother in the back seat
and my *** deep inside her
fertile cheating womb
My Dark Twisted Fantasy
Bent right around me
I dont remember what I said
Panicking
I couldnt look her in the eye
Id only see myself
And I have to keep her out of sight
just on the line
to where maybe I didnt get here at all
maybe not me but another me
isnt experiencing this reality at all
shock they call it i think
fear
coping
dissociation
compartmentalizing
the trauma
the oh not me
I sat there for how long
playing a game I did not remember
as it was going on around me
my mind was already bleaching
forget forget fade to black
and still she laid there
not breathing
covered in her own blood and mucus
in a position that was disgustingly revealing
till they came
and took her carcass away
and I held someone
some family member or friend or some such
not even blinking and her
just out of sight
just out of thinking
until she left
and my weakness unyielding
exited too
only cold reality now reaching

The epilogue
of this ugly selfish poem
isnt all that revealing
not like before
not like after
I havent been able to form a real relationship
even at twenty three
I maybe came close but
Ive realized im very much a broken being
there was some sort of lesson
or personal growth
some sort of fundamental strength or courage
that was supposed to be found in hope
theres supposed to be a happy ending
a someone special waiting for me
no its not whats on tv
its all my sanity can dream
yet i cant share or feel
these dark deathly thoughts
i cannot even risk now
being rejected instead of
alone in my haught
oh ill only look
in the dark corners of the web
and ill only take and ill never give
i dont know where else to look
i never really did
and i have no moral compass to guide
only my experiences now to abide
so the epilogue is simple now:
Maybe I'll see you one day,
Around the corners of these ugly selfish words.

something clicks
and i dont feel like living anymore
not that i usually feel like living
but at this time the urges to harm myself, the thoughts of suicide and death rise to the surface again
and i completely give in.
it becomes harder to smile,
harder to laugh,
harder to eat,
harder to be with others
i just want to be left alone but i want someone to be with me
my already confused mind becomes even more confused
whats wrong with me?
i dont know the answer..
its this episode again
not my usual depressed mood, not my usual emptiness
it is something more, something between the sadness and the emptiness
somewhere scary, and crazy
it is a place where you no longer see a purpose in living
where everything that is not very negative dies
and the demons in your head laugh and dance
my body feels week, my soul is too heavy
why am i alive again?
my muscles shake, my stomach aches, my head hurts, my eyes burn, my heart feels so empty
my hopes die, my dreams.. what dreams?
never had one of those
and the worst part of all of this
is not that i dont know why im feeling this way,
nor that im tired of being depressed every single day
it is when i know i have everything everyone wants in life, i have home, i have parents, siblings, money, education, health, faith, and yet.. i feel this way.

write at midnight. edit in the morning.
write on a mountain. edit on a beach.
write inside a dream. edit & exist in reality.
write in a fever pitch as starlight kisses your cheekbones.
edit in the cold dawn light without excuses.
write loudly with Bjork screaming into the curtains.
edit in silence.

write as the clouds gather around the gibbous moon.
edit as the sun crests the hill & burns away the fog.
write inside, cozy under a blanket.
edit naked, cold on the front porch.
write asking questions.
edit demanding answers.

write blindfolded with your fingers waltzing across the qwerty.
edit bespectacled or with a monocle.
write like a mass ******. edit like a suicide.
or better yet
write like a homicide. edit like a detective.

write toward the open sky with your legs outstretched before you.
edit facing a clean white wall with your knees against your chest.
write because you are innocent. edit because you are guilty.
write during a fit of hyperventilation.
edit during mammoth exhalation.
write with complexity. edit into simplicity.

write, as Hemingway did, drunk.
edit, not sober, but hungover.
see your flaws in the sharp mirror of a headache.

write during sloppy explosion. edit during precise implosion.
write with your head in the clouds gnawing at the cumulus.
edit with your feet firmly planted in the ground.
write during violent collision.
edit during calm separation.

write with a pencil on soggy paper in a hot shower.
edit with a red pen sitting in tepid murky bathwater.
write among raucous laughter & banging skillets.
edit in secret while the kids are asleep.
write like a sadomasochist.
edit like a psychiatrist.

write while running on your tip-toes.
edit while lying flat on your back.
write in several languages with abandon.
edit beside a translator dictionary.
write as you are engulfed in fire.
edit with an extinguisher.

write with careless fluidity.
edit without assistance from amphetamine or coffee.
write with a full bladder,
standing up,
jitterbugging,
squeezing the tip of your *****
closed--urgently
squirm & trickle
your ideas onto
the porcelain page.

lately i've been having these good days
i don't have sad wet cigarette saxophone nights anymore
i watched the sun wake up six times last week
i found a blue bucket of tulips &
gave them to a bald-headed krishna girl when
she sang to me on the sidewalk

i hired a boy to hide in the foyer
& peel a fiddle if i rouse from sleep during the night
or whistle through a harmonica
if i'm wet-eyed during breakfast
i finally got rid of all the pictures you stuck
to your side of the dusty bathroom mirror
except the blissed-out polaroid of us
perched on an old oak tree limb
like a couple of soft doves versus the turreted sunset

i deleted your number because you don't call me back anyway
i stopped mailing letters to your father's house
i haven't listened to the Plantasia record
you bought me since you left
i never feel the gray heat from your
staticky hand warming my shoulder
i forgave you for the blood in my kidneys
& old smog in my mildewed vinyl lungs

i sleep under the running green vapor light
of the moon & stars instead of the frothiest pillows
rippling on an ocean of sheets & project quilts
i finally scoured the lipstick stain from my collarbone
after what seemed like two years
i forgot how your armpits smelled
i sewed all your sundresses into a shower curtain
& i never see your delicate ribcage
peaking through the streams of hot water



i hardly ever notice the noose
you left hanging in our apartment

she calls me
she calls me & I don't answer
she calls to say her grandma
is failing fast & the twins
aren't sleeping & they're angry

come on over I say
I only have two calloused hands
& a sixty hour work week
bony feet & a bottle of
chocolate wine & I ask if she's ever
slept four on a full sized mattress

the boys will be fine I say
bring both elmos
a set of pastel paints
& you can run your fuzzy-sock feet
up my legs & warm your small hands
on my space heater heartbeat

grandma will see good Friday
& easter sunday I say
& probably even her own
late April birthday
barely audible as the boys snore
like miniature sawmills
through peppermint toothpaste
ringed open mouths

the last thing I feel before sleep
is her smile stretching across my
bare chest & her hands catch fire
& wander toward a cooler spot of skin