Art is good
medication so you'll
deal with this creatively.

You've careened into this so
make the wreck,
the chaos
bloom on a page.
It might even help.

You're going to be a comic book artist
because in the face of such things
words fail and lips
falter,  and you
want to knock your head comedically.
You want
to conjure silly star-loops for
smashing into this
feeling.
Knocked-out.
Reeling.
Draw, draw out
and ink in your malady.

Crash!

The worst is when
your heart is the caricature.
A full-page feature,
a splash,
of high-strung colours
begging to be neatened.

Splash!

Your
cartoon heart. An
image of a fat, crimson
apple
like a clip-art pic, got
a little worm poking through
it.

Eating, eating away
to leave a love
or loss-sized hole.
Fat white bubbles announcing
hurt!
so graphically.

Go on and
draw it more lurid. If
the feeling is here, you might as well
feel it.
Let the slops of gaudy red
and green
bleed and
bleed
out of the panel.
Stain it, stain
the gutter
where time happens.

At least it gives the comic
a heartbreaking!
twist.

And then you turn the page.

And I want to tell her that I understand
what it feels like to be fake, insignificant,
and a shadow on the sidewalk of society.

And I want to tell her that I also borrow
the experiences of others --
that I, too, learn feelings
by stopping and staring at personal wreckage,
like a tourist of emotions,
like an inevitable wish of a human being.

Brother,
It's severely strained me to not say sorry
every five seconds because
I cannot answer all of the questions
causing the fog within your skull.
I can't provide these answers
not because I don't want to
or don't know how
it is because I simply cannot.
I'm constantly held at gunpoint
by your elder teachers
who want to keep you polished
in the same state on a shelf
for them to watch.
They don't realize you're constantly
surrounded by kinks in their plan.
Your ears aren't in tune
to hear the evening news.
You haven't learned to digest reality.

You know,
I've always found it odd that
prostitutes practice their profession
in the same places
that kids play pick up sticks
near parents who promise themselves
to protect them
by dressing them up in ignorance.
By lying to their faces
and telling them about the stork
or Santa Claus.
To keep them "pure".
Preserve "innocence".
How does it help to raise your child like a bird.
Keeping them in a wire cage,
to sit on a wooden swing for hours
while they wait for daily meal
and swig of water.
They have wings for a reason.
Calling this "freedom" would be a disgrace.
Let your fowl fly free into the warmth of earth
and explore with guidance
to become new.

Artists do not buy canvases to keep them blank.
Galleries all over the world aren't filled untouched with sheets of white.
Artists buy canvases to create something beautiful.
Let your children become something beautiful.

When did you stop loving me, he asked.
When you started noticing, she said.

I'm addicted to your lips. Yet, we've never kissed..