and you look through me
as if I’m a ghost, with no skin
or bones, as you drone on, bored
like a skipped needle on a record.

I bare my soul
and your clock says that
it’s time to take a walk/feed the cat.

I bare my soul
on my knees, clutching
my chest. I can’t breathe. I weep
a puddle on your floor. And drown
in it once more.

I bare my soul
as a hurricane. You shake
my hand, leading me out
into the wind and rain. My hair
wraps around my face. Fills in
the space between eyes, nose
and teeth. So, I look like a russet sheath.

when ******* fists twist
as a drill into the belly of
a handicap man
that's ill.

It’s a poison arrow in the heart
when you can’t erase the bloated gorilla’s
face from your head. Your child
be dead if he wasn’t pulled
off. The scoff on top of it makes
your insides split.

It’s a brain hemorrhage
that no alcoholic beverage
can fix. It makes you sick/rots
your core this attack on
your son from a ******. It pulls
all your triggers.

of dark clouds hanging over
me. It’s raining black depression
and horror in every corridor. As I walk across
my lawn the grass cuts my feet. Every blade

a steely knife with rows and rows
of teeth. I can’t wait for night when I
can fall asleep to stop the agony. It pains me
when I'm awake. I act mechanically,

as a drone in a swarm of bees. I eat, but
the food is plastic. And it only fills my
stomach with acid. I hear things people

speak. But it does not compute. It’s mangled
as a buffalo after a lion sinks his jaws
in. I look at the day. But the colors
are grey as a seal and have no appeal. I scream in

silence, as if I’m in a padded room. I’m dust you can
sweep up with a broom. My limbs hang
loose. I’m flat as a paper doll you can rip in
a fell swoop. Even the horizon looks rusty and droops.

or stick the pieces together
with Gorilla glue. A child’s eye
that is black and blue can fade.
But you can’t cover

a mother’s brokenness with
a cloak of tenderness. You can’t
wipe out the horror she saw with a cold
damp cloth. ******* hands on

a handicap man is the devil’s
work. She doesn’t sleep at night. The darkness
in her breast is hard to digest. She’s
losing weight and doesn’t eat. White as

a sheet she walks through her day
in a purple haze. Her life’s a pack of Jacks
thrown into the air, with pointy spikes that cut
like knives. Men are scavenging cockroaches

with belly’s bulging from greed. You can’t sow
the seeds they planted like an old woolen blanket,
than you can sew her heart together like
an unravelling sweater.

heavy and slow
hard as rigor mortis
lagging and old
carrying it all on my back
the weight of the world
in a gunnysack

solitary as the cold wind
on the prairie
life gushes by me
friends are poison ivy

I tuck myself inside myself
and sit as a stone
as the moon, all alone
reclusive, shy, and diurnal
writing in my journal

dark and grumpy
clawed and bumpy
drinking from a puddle
head in a muddle over my past
snapping at men
as a telephoto lens

if I flew as an eagle
or swam as the dolphin
or ran as the horses
I’d be less obnoxious

as a stuffed purse
about to burst at
the seams. I was
so green.

My Passion Bulges
as a toad’s throat,
puffing out after a meal,
like a water-balloon,
with a broken seal –
till it splatters. That’s
when I could feel.

My Passion Bulges
now like a fat man’s
shirt, tightly drawn over
the chest until it hurts, riding up
the flesh and splitting the
buttons. That’s what I get
for being a glutton!

as a baby was my
index finger. Wrapping
your tiny fingers around it
snug. I fell in-love with

the squeeze of your
touch. I was amazed by
the strength of your
hand, how it curled tightly

like a strand of hair. And your soft
little nails looked so pale. And now
with that same hand you can pick
me up.

When my dear, did you
grow up?