are you
satisfied
with yourself?

are you happy now? now that this,
this has happened?

look what you've done. look.

you've massacred social norms, you've completely demolished every existing standard of how people should behave. you've strangled the life out of Mr. Smith, and everything he believed in, from the very tippity-top of his upper-class Anglo-Saxon Puritan upbringing to the very tippity-tip of his well-oiled
nose.

you've blown our minds.

and you call this, what, art? self-expression? Psh.
*******

why can't you go do something, y'know,
useful (for once)? helpful to society--

become a doctor and save lives,

or become a scientist and find cures, heck,

even become an architect and create ******* roofs to put over people's heads, because,

honey

everyone would love to say what they want, whenever they want, in some abstract, convoluted way and put it smack in a gold frame and hang it up at the MOMA. then get applauded by men in pinstripes and handlebars and dainty damsels in petticoats...

or, shunned...

but walk away from the carnage patting yourself on the back for the mortally unfathomable machinations of your mind.

and we're the ones that don't get it? please.

it's you who doesn't get it--

wake up, man. And live as a functioning part of society,
please.

2 AM:

i'm falling in, and out, and in, and out,
of sleep.

my mind reaches:
arching forwards,
slowly uncurls a single finger

pinkish joints blossom
one-by-one

the slightest graze of fingernail
and what i think is real bursts into a million,
iridescent
spinning globules sent
skittering down a marble hall,
who knows how long?

but sometimes there are no marbles--
there are only shooting stars

masses of hazy, gaseous yellow
pixels, flickering and glitchering

in the corners of my eyes, hover
at my brow, drop at my feet ah...

a sadness devoid of
emotion.

like androids,
dreaming.

i swallow hard and the act breaks me in two, a deafening crack and the crease on my neck gives way like grandma's Russian doll i thought would never open again

and time suffocates me, whisks past my face fills my nostrils and mouth with pearls of despair fill me as if sliding into place, a destiny slept-on, overwhelms me with its frothy rush like a cup someone overturned in the bath.

the passage of Time
through the tunnels
of my mind

renders a weary passenger,
(impossibly burdened
by the slight breeze
grazing cheek and
rushing by)

He yells in frustration,
a ringing in my ears

plants fists in the walls,
a throbbing in my head

when i close my eyes,
i picture the passage of Time:

white-knuckled, clenching the steering wheel
his back is buckled, a bitten-up pencil,
and the haunting rattle of wet,
staccato breaths

"i want to escape"

and i am sorry--
eternally, sorry

girl, when did you let
your love leave you?
did you think that there
was nothing you could do
about your sweet imperfections
the focus of your obsessions
that make you wish to be born anew?
girl, why do you shrink
from your mother’s touch?
have you lost your faith,
think it won’t do much
good on you, her sweet child,
too broken for prayer
she’d tried to raise a witch
but you only see failure
girl, open your eyes
and clear your head
why not give yourself
some warmth instead.
use ginger, mint and cardamom,
honey and a stick of cinnamon,
to concoct a sweet brew
that will return to you
the love which you are due.