I wish to exhale every painful memory,
and wash it away with my salty tears

But my tears had stopped
shedding when I learned
how to bleed instead of cry

Mother,
don’t fright when you
see my blood on the floor,
I was only crying

Our most clear and beautiful image
Is situated in our heart and imaginations..
So I say-
Be that, you are in your imaginations
You will be unique

I want to be
the roaring sun
an angry star
a ferocious need, to blaze a path
forward and beyond, dreams
exposed to light and heat
the days no longer
a haze in the night, misty
from a fresh downpour

But I also crave
a soothing touch, a gentle reprieve
a song quietly sung as I
rise and rise and rise
my face bright but kind
my face in yours
my face which is
yours -- like how the stars
belong to the sky

for Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to ****

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux ****
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
***** girl,
Thumb stump.

I try to see the beauty in a rose
But it smells just like a **** to me.

My pen is filled with lovely words
That I can’t put on paper.

My heart’s aware that it’s been robbed
Of everything that’s velvet

But it beats on in vain attempt
To recognize a bluebird.
ljm

I’m just trying to push
the hurt out through my veins

I’m just trying to
bleed and bruise my way out

I’m just wondering if
I can make my pain physical and valid