at the outset of self foundation
i am bewildered into self containment
for nothing i see is me
and what i am now
lay naked and reluctant
to seek the unattainable goal
contentment
which is in itself
confusion

Arch your fingers, clasp your palm,
touch the keys as if pulling
at the heartstrings of a lover;
back in the looming financial crash of 2007
when a family bought a piano
and a new house,
and a young girl ached Chopin.

With your hand out of the window
and the car on the motorway,
talon hands, poised,
feel the air as a shotput;
smooth, round, permanent - oxygen bubbles
puppeteering pale fingertips
until the window goes up
and the radio is heard again.

Speaking three languages,
la mort, la mort, la mort;
D – E – A – D
the keys cannot spell ‘childhood’,
but her fingers reach
more than an octave now
(her thumb still ******).

Chopin welcomes her
to her final decomposition;
her piano, dusty
and blooming with flowers
through each key,
plays discords
that don’t quite make
a funeral march.

There are lives I haven't remembered
Memories that are like caged birds
Freckles on skin to give recollection of a sun
I have bathed in when I was once young
The moment I find the gold in the pan of dirt
My simplicity is gone
Trays of tea and food only make me want more
Servants are steadily changing
As I get older
Where does youth go as I age?
Who does my brother become?
Is my sister still around?
There is a starting point after 10 years
Before I know it I'm 30 years old
Without a child or husband
Without a home or car
Still living in my dad's house
How do I move on?

The first time I uttered the words, "I want to die,"
I was seven years old, in a ruby red fort.
******* crumbs on my lap, tears crusting my eye.

Later that year my brother passed away.
He left behind nothing but echoes and static.
I hated him. I wished he'd taken my hand on that day.

My home was shattered, but they insist I held joy.
I was unsure of this, so I pondered.
I ignored the cries, buried among my toys.

The first time I made the move to self-harm
I was nine years old, in an empty room.
I smashed and I smashed and I bloodied my arm.

That year I was useless my mother said.
A lazy child, always in her way.
I hold her word's sting more than her hits to my head.

Multitudes of mishaps, I claimed clumsiness.
Scars on my knees, bruises on my belly.
I grew ever fixated on my ugliness.

The first time I wrote a suicide note,
I was sixteen years old, in a classroom.
I told my teacher. "A joke!" he said, or so I quote.

I had a brief pause this year. I met a love.
My marmalade bumblebee, wrapped in warmth.
It confused me. This warmth I knew nothing of.

Merely milk and honey, it must be lies.
I cast it aside, and moved on my way.
A distraction from my scheduled demise.

Later that year, something I have yet to tell.
In the cold night, my body was taken.
I was decimated and banished to hell.

The first time I attempted suicide,
I was nineteen years old, in a garage.
A sleep mask and helium resting at my side.

I knew then that I still wanted to live.
But I was tired, I craved eternal rest.
So, I leapt forward, I gave all I could give.

Of course I failed. My pain was uncovered.
Taken to a stark white room, I waited.
Guided by that bumblebee, we sat and suffered.

The first time I felt myself fall in love
I was twenty years old, in an old car.
With punk rock playing, and your hand in my glove.

Mental illness still riddled my heart and soul.
So I stabbed the love. Abused it. Burned it.
Until it walked away, leaving a hole.

The following years I let myself go numb.
No sorrow, no pain, no joy, and no love.
Wasted away, just dirt under my thumb.

The first time I said, "my future is bright"
I was twenty four years old, in a coffee shop.
Reunited with my most beautiful sight.

This was the year I let myself love in peace.
I grew something beautiful, a home, and a life.
I finally felt my pent up pain's release.

Still I learned, I destroy all that I know.
My family cast to ash, my home ripped at the seams.
Alone again, the demons whisper, and so it goes.

We have reached the end of this broken tale.
I'm afraid I can't speak where to go from here.
I sit here, a mundane man waiting to fail.

who is she?
i’m not saying that in a cute, quirky, self-confident way either, like
genuinely, who is she?
i don’t remember when i morphed from a
bony, pimply, bowlegged teen into a
soft, dimpled, hunchbacked “adult”.
there are still remnants of her--
my forehead still bears the marks of farms of blackheads
and my collarbones are still visible when i allow them to be--
but her
this “woman”
looking back at me is still as foreign as blood pudding.
i still feel the same, relatively, as i did when i was 5 years younger.
i still tend to wear clothes that are comfortable over flattering.
i still feel my stomach tied into itself at the thought of making a doctor’s appointment on my own.
i still feel like me.
but her?
i don’t recognize her.

03.24.19

I.
   i could not stay awake not for another breath,
    what with you pulling air so close to mine,
thoughts persistent, visions relentless
       (to look around, to remember where you are)
do you know who you are (? )
  scoffing somewhere, removed from me
were their eyes to fall upon me
    she is omnipresent, all around me when i breathe-
              gone from here
  

none of this feels familiar,
      not the sheets not the shadows of the room,
     the lights flicked off and i feel-
      heat from your body over the moisture of mine
               (i recognize none of it )
vividly i vision the seams of buildings
edges of avenues, bordered in cars and trees
              bridges i crossed everyday; away
            ( anxious i self inflict, i gasp)


   days stretch on like where are the lines ?
   where are the spaces, from calendars to clockwork
saying when and how and who done it
          to number time, confine the time, throttle-
with the windows always dark,
      a blue sky in a frame on the kitchen wall,
      could belong absolutely anywhere
      and i recognize nothing, not the floor
      not the ceiling where i lay, you besides me
      all day and all night, i see distortion
       (strange to accept and hard to believe )

9:57 pm


II.

strength of something torn from here,
    paradoxical; gone and omnipresent
wrapped in this flesh of yours
    however absent/// longways away from here

    no word of yours or mine could be said
without grain from some other
        fruitful tree;  i see orchards !
they litter the sky
    so much of this life is inescapable

10:09 pm


III.

were i to close my eyes i still perceive movement
    limning of you behind my eyelids, aura
i catch the ghosts of wrinkles, were i to open my eyes
       would be your arms;             ( i need not open them)
     i know by some imbued reflex that
we are kissing, i see it in my head between the ears
      they melt together, i feel it in the stomach
     not on the tongue where you are making a home
nothing exists but the place where we
           reunite like a bird catching a fish in midair

       movement once more, and know somehow
   no semblance of time, no notion of time
then it is your tongue and your tongue only
   which connects me to this earth for i am smoke;
                  liquid, i am nothing else

i am music then, somehow and by some miracle
  you sing somewhere as well,
    might i be the wind, only hyper aware of the way
i greet your body,
    skin vaporized, my fingers pulverized
i settle like dust all around you
i could be anywhere

       nothing but the fragment
of space/// time where you are here with me
         a body that is separate and somehow
        infinitely harmonized to mine

10:25 pm

IV.

                         i see who i was a month ago,
                                                            ­      unrecognizable!
      the path from here to there
                                     has been erased like wind over sand

      a tie has been severed,
                                          to the other life,
                                    she might as well have been killed
                           on a commute somewhere
11:48 pm


V.

at last, words slither out like animals
   a burrow, a hole in the ground
   they were buried, at last you dig graves, collect skeletons
   (it is something you do at night)

one does wonder, what good is reached by
     accumulating laughter; i have never laughed
              as i do now

11:51 pm

--------------------------------------------------------  

03.­25.19

VI.
  
           static whistles in the background
       of an intermediate place
                a place with no name

         i think perhaps i am a furred leaf
                      for i grow roots around water ///

a rocket ship sends a message back where it came from
a planet formerly known as HOME:
[i am safe somewhere]

12:09 pm


03.28.219

VII.  

i clean my mouth of it,
i purify that which has so clouded,
   depths of the murky mind
i wash my hands of it
i dissipate fear
i eradicate guilt
i bathe my toes in a river
     un-tethered from all
which has so consumed me
i breath into lungs
now drowned into action
a pull from my chest, over and onto
heaving gasps of fresh air-

somewhere between our hands,
dust settled:
     ( i let it gather)
truth speaks discomfort,
i **** paralysis!
    fight or flight,
the third instinct, to freeze
may we be rid of it
may the mind be free from all
idle thought and hollow circuits

(a yellow bird flies onward,
a prayer... )

1:12 pm