There is a method to the madness, a puprose for the pain
We may not see it now, or even next year
But somewhere down the line, there will come a time
In which we get to reflect, with retrospect,
On the pain that taught us and brought us here
And it will be worth all the tears that fell like rain.

I'm feeling like a king on the top of the world.
On top of the world in the front of my mind
in the moment,
I can no longer hold my composure I've gotta expose it.

Dispose of demons,
drown em
Ima blow it and him out of the water and greet him.
Shake hands, meet him  |        my other half

The doubtful voice that refuses to believe in a laugh,
success, or happiness,
but I'm a pacifist
so I don't fight.
I just ask him this question
maybe to shed some light
on a subject matter that keeps me sweaty at night:
"Who are you, if not me?"

Some sleezy squeaky sounding ***** that's who you are you ******* ****.

Sorry, I can no longer comprehend what you're coughing up.

I'm over you,
        and your under me.
I'm inside out, and you've uncovered me.
Colored me vividly into the person that arose from my better half.

Because I'm better than that.

I'm better than doubt,
better than pity and running away from my problems

I'm better than tossing a lit cig in the middle of a Cali drought.

But I'm on fire, and I'm motivated.
This life, you and I we have co-created,
but no comprende when you tell me that I will not make it.
You ******* *****.
You're mine now, and I'm rich.
Full of fulfillment, and happiness.

So goodbye.
Goodbye, my other half. Demonic piece of trash.

You're gone and when it comes to the last man standing,
                 yes I'm that.

Each time i allow
my mind to drift in
retrospect, regrets
gather like starlings
in the dusk sky.
Memories tainted rose
take their own shape
and imagination
runs amok leaving
wagging fingers
in its wake.

I long for the days when we'll look back on the past and laugh at the fact that we thought the hard times would actually last.

I see a horse, elegant and proud,
I remember riding one into the cloud,
Her head held high, braver than me,
She was shot, that horse, despite her plea.

A firework explodes in the sky,
I remember him, his hopeless cry,
The night the shell came over my head,
And the next morning we found him dead.

A choir sings, it's Christmastime,
I remember the peace that cold daytime,
Boxing day we start killing again,
But that Christmas we were friendly gunmen.

I sit in a café eating beans,
I remember it, those dreadful scenes,
We were so hungry at mealtime,
But stealing rations was a crime.

My son runs around with a toy gun,
I remember how he did nit run,
Only looked pleadingly into my eyes,
I had no mercy- he soon dies.

I am not proud to be alive,
I am not happy to have survived,
I will remember you with all my heart,
In my head we will never part.

Wherever I go, whatever I do,
The war is with me.
It comes too.

Home is a red-shuttered house with over-
grown hosta plants, sold to a Chinese couple
whose translator loved our hummingbird
feeders and the way the house faced East.
We had a swimming pool, frog pond, two
pink bikes and matching helmets--mismatched
childhood memories nine years behind me--

we moved to a ranch, where I painted my room
the color soft, baby grass fighting through
wintergreen fertilizer, the kind my father
scattered over our front lawn, hoping to grow
something above the underground spring
flooding muddy, brown, saturated as we
became when my mother remembered her
locked-away childhood, my father broke
his back, my sister succumbed to self-blame,

and I cleaned up after it all. Our ranch holds
these events in its powder-blue walls, creaks
at night and wakes me from a dream repeating
nine times over--where I stand inside that red-
shuttered house, beside an eleven-year-old
me with honey hair bleached from too much
sunlight, speaking softly: you’re almost home.

I constructed my sister’s portrait in three parts:
her eyes painted full color, bright with oil,
nose in colored pencil, a few shades more sallow,
and her mouth lightly smeared No. 2 pencil,

because I wasn’t sure how to form the words
for a police report never filed against you.
And sometimes I pass you on my way to town,
you still driving that ugly, blue pickup
with that same old sneer on your pig-like face--

I want to scream out my window the way I did
when I dreamed you came to me years in the future,
asking how I’ve been, some lame excuse to bury
your immorality with rice-paper niceties. I remember
my throat tore and bled as if I’d swallowed broken
metal wire as I repeated over and again:
Do you know what you did?
Do you know what you caused?

I constructed my sister’s portrait with three bits of paper
ripped apart and glued crudely together again.