you my
dear are
injured in
the worst
way

life's
struggles
broke both
legs, and
now alcohol
is your crutch

Manic Pixie Dream Girl
fingerpainted rainbow
on a flat canvass, you are
cardboard pretty.

Like this pastel-colored cupcake
you once saw on television
with sprinkles and little marshmallows on top
something you know
you can never taste
but still thought
“That must be delicious.”

One-sided postcard
With a beautiful scenery at the front
and empty surface at the back
No words to tell
No stories to give
Just a vacant lot.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I’ve always thought you were beautiful.
with your colors spilling out of your being and your smiles
that could light up anybody’s world
I’ve always thought it was like peering through a kaleidoscope
And you were a perfect symmetry
of everything a little boy could ever dream of.
So as I grew up
I dreamed to be something like you.
And for a while,
Without really meaning to
I was something like you.
People often told me,
“You are so pretty.”
“You are nice and funny.”
“You have a great smile.”
“You are fun to be with.”
“You are different.”
and guys liked me.
They adored me.
most especially when I exist
only for them.
When I am there to pick up the pieces
and make them whole again.

But manic pixie dream girl
I realized I am no dream girl
I am just—

me.

I feel ugly most of the time.
I eat a lot when I’m sad.
I am very impulsive.
I give irrational comments.
I have temper tantrums when I don’t get what I want.
I get scared of the dark.
I cut when I am hurt.
And there are days when I just want to sleep
and disappear forever.

I am no dream girl.
I am just a real girl.
Trying to make it out alive
in the real world.

I am not a navigator
meant to save lost boys.
I am not
a box of crayons
meant to grow smaller
as I color this blank page of a guy
I am not
a white glue
meant to disappear
once I am dry
I am not
a bandage
meant to heal wounds
on careless little children.

I am not supposed to be a fantasy
I am flesh and bones
I am human
with ribcages that are meant to crush
with the weight of a broken heart
I have lungs
I can breathe on my own.
I don’t need a broken boy
to feel that I have a purpose in life.

I am my own destruction.
I am my own salvation.
I am no dream girl.

Please
wake
up.

“Amanda,” she said, in a bold assertion
“We really are the same
Person.” Limp in the dew and
Wise like a sage, no wound cut
No blood shed, yet,
There was something this
Bandage shut,
Something yawning, gaping
But I don’t know what…
How sad! She’s crying, that Amanda,
Shrugging ‘gainst the colic rain
And almost lost in the copes-y veranda,
Weeping softly on
Those concrete flats, wearing “Red Tom’s
And” both “Dating Matts” while
I saw her fear in that moment, appalling, stalling
With soroitous heart, “and fear of falling!”
Binding them tightly: “That’s US haha!”

How many laughs does a limp spirit draw?
—(a disparaged few or none at all…)
Still, she writes, “I am so glad” (a huff annoyed
From Amanda, distant and sad, that I
Can’t tell why “you” ever “joined.”)
But this is not my place, a passerby,
To pick up trash, inane and lonely,
To cast my judgments and inquire—why?

To heal the unbroken with words unspoken
But scratched on refuse, she may
“[heart] you” but refuse you, too
The spirit of [heart] in Amanda awoken
—(But she refused it, too!)
And then be a token
Some stranger takes home.

In west Virginia, they do things different
they don't want to advance too soon
if you don't believe me let me take you
to a west Virginia emergency room

deer hair sutures for stitching you up
then a duct tape bandage on your wound
redneck responses by physicians
doc needs a break to spit in the spittoon

this one is in critical condition
this poor feller has run out of luck
doctor redneck turns to mention
"go get my gun out of my truck"

you said you don't want to hurt me
yet words lash like a whip
rending flesh from the heart
what is done, cannot be undone
words cannot be unspoken or unheard
unapologetic and cold
there is no bandage for the wounds
as the blood falls from my eyes
in sulfur and ash

I use to be like Summer. A burst of brilliant red like when you bite into a perfectly ripe Strawberry. I stained his lips with my sugar-sweet kisses. Like evening’s Cotton Candy sunsets and blushing clouds trimmed with falling golden light, I was your whole sky, morning, evening and night; you marveled at my untouchable beauty, so close but yet so far. I was a Summer storm, rolling thunder and shattering lightning, electricity running through your bones. I was the pitter-pattering rain, tap dancing upon your room, humming you to sleep, every night you saw me in your dreams and always played them back to me. In your sleep you would see me, dancing far away  to somewhere where there was no other-side-of-the-fence, grass was always green wherever my feet touched the earth in between joyful leaps. Where the wind was music in the trees and the grass flowed in fluid motion like dancers caught up in the melody, where the wildflowers bobbed up and down and where the fleeting Robin never left, for there it is always Spring. Yes indeed, I was like wild flowers in mid July, I was the magical meadow tender and warm, hidden away in the pockets of your heart away from the dark, I was a safe haven you happened to stumble upon while fleeing the snapping jaws of the shadow wolves in the Forbidden Forest. Bright and strong like a sunflower, I did not bend in even the most wild wind, and you could lean against me and take in my strength, my untainted, yellow light. Soft and simple but still enough, like a daisy. I made a necklace of my prettiest flowers and hung it around your neck, a most beautiful and delicate daisy chain, my petals kissed and tickled your chest. But I was also vibrant like a Indian Paint Brush, I painted you the prettiest picture, promising passion in streaks of brilliant color, I promised you everything, my roots, my stems, my leaves, my blossoms, everything. And the promise ignited a wildfire within your shivering heart, and spread through your bones, to the black of your eyes, reflecting the fragmented image of me swimming beneath the broken lake’s surface, the white of my skin and the ripple of my hair, you reached into the water blinded, you dug through the sand until you caught me. Oh yes, I was the sunlight dancing on the kaleidoscope forest floor, that you chased trying to catch a handful of light, and I was the fairy circle you wished upon. Yes, I was your Summer.

And as the days grew shorter and the nights became colder I discovered that whenever my mind would wander it would always seem to fall back to you. I remember one night, it must have been in August, the night was pure and honest, and I was caught up in the infinity of the swirling, silver cosmos. My father joined me at my side and pointed up at the sky and showed me the North Star, I had never seen it before. He told me that it was like a compass that would point you home; the lost man’s final hope. Something about that brilliant twinkling star rendered me helpless, I was lost in it’s hypnotizing light. I stared at that star for the rest of the night wonderstruck by it’s beauty and the comforting thought that it knew the way to anywhere you wanted to be. And as the Sun ascended the horizon’s heavenly staircase and peaked in a mirage of smudged pastels for the first time in my life, I felt lost, I felt lost without that star. I all of a sudden had so many questions but no answers, I grasped for sure footing in my jagged thoughts, but was startled to find that you kept popping into my mind, as bright and clear and undeniable as that, stupid, beautiful, bewitching star, and I found myself wondering if somehow, someway, you had become my North Star, the compass that could show my wandering soul the way. And as the world was morphed into view under Daylight’s knowing hands, I realized it was true, you were my last hope, you were going to take me home to a place I didn’t even know, but suddenly was desperately homesick for. And I tried so hard to fall out of alignment with you, to break away from your orbit and run from the galaxy that would soon be us, and the black hole that would **** me up. But I was going up against Gravity, and I was pulled down, down, down.

No matter how I tried, how much I told myself that you were not the only star I could see, that you were not my infinity. But it was futile and somewhere I knew that, I knew that as well as I knew that I wanted you to be my infinity, and I yours. I wanted to create the most beautiful galaxy the Seven Continents had ever seen, so vast and far that no telescope could capture it, and scientists would forever marvel how it came to be. But nowadays, I ask perhaps, If I had known what would happen when the Universe could no longer contain our overpowering glow, what would happen when my North Star exploded? When all I would have left would be memories that would leave a deep scar, but I wouldn’t be able to remember why, leaving me as clueless as I was that first night; when all I would have is whispers that were almost too quiet to hear but would constantly be a murmur in my ear? Have you ever stepped outside and looked up the night sky when the world is asleep and still, but the sky is more alive than you?  Have you ever tried to take a picture to remember the wondrous spectacle Mother Nature and the Heavenly Father have laid out for you? You can try all you want, and use up all the memory on your phone, but no matter what you do, you cannot capture the beauty above you. The pictures if not blurred from your frustrated shaking hands, are simply screens of black, with dots of white that could be dust where stars are supposed to be. And you must walk under those stars, to you they shine so loud and clear, they are right there for God’s sake, but you cannot capture their beauty, you cannot touch them. You must endure the torture of knowing but lacking. And that’s what would happen to me when my North Star exploded into whimsical stardust, when you left me in the pitch black; slowly I am being crushed by the weight of absolute nothingness. And ******, even if I had known this is what would happen to us, that this would happen to me...even if I had known all this to be true, I know I would follow you into that unsure, perilous blue where every man is for himself. Because everything is fair in love and war. And even to this day, over a year later, I would retrace my steps back to that night, and let you destroy my horizon, my faith in 11:11, and belief in shooting stars all over again, if only for a glimpse of you, my darling North Star, Pivoting Axle of my world, my Gravity, my Endless Summer; my Infinity.  

Because soon it became clear that you were my Summer too. You wrapped your loose ends around me and rocked me to sleep in your makeshift cradle like the hammock out back that we used to nap in, do you remember that? You were the pile of books that I whirl through every Summer under the Weeping Willow Tree. You made me smile, you made me laugh, you made me blush and you made me terribly sad. For even then you were my defining phrase and favorite quote that I felt spoke to me the most. You were the birds in the trees singing their fragile hearts out, you told me of Summers past, and how you accidently went backwards and migrated straight into the darkest winter you’d ever seen and couldn’t find your way out of the storm. And that’s why underneath my daisy chain your heart was laced with icy carnations, that’s why your lungs were filled with puffs of smoke that looked like a breath in the biting cold. And that’s why your lips were so ugly, bruised black, purple and blue, proof of what you’ve been through, and every time you tried to explain your torn past, your lips got worse, your skin became terribly chapped, and your voice cracked as you tried to fight back, but the words eventually bled through your lips, so you learned not to speak, because you hated to bleed. But regardless of your cold words and colder shoulder, you were still Summer to me.You were the fireworks on the 4th of July, you lit up the world and were all that I could see, I couldn’t look away, I was afraid to miss a thing. You were the crunch of graham crackers when you bite into a perfect s'more, and you were the laughter when your marshmallow catches on fire.  You were my favorite time of the day, in between night and day, when the sky melts into this glorious turquoise blue, and the silhouette of the pine trees stand out against the fading light. You were quiet and thoughtful, the feeling you get when you sit atop a Ferris Wheel at the the County Fair, you’re a little bit scared, but you can’t help but be blown away by the world below your dangling feet. You were the spike of fear and the adrenaline rush you get when you dive off a cliff into the water, you can’t help but wonder if there are dangerous rocks at the bottom, even though you know it’s too late and there is no stopping your falling body now. But you feel alive, you feel alive and when you survive, you feel unstoppable. That’s the way you made me feel, I was afraid of how much I loved you, how you could tear me apart and push me to the end of the world, and with a brush of your heavy fingertips I would topple over the edge, and I faced the monstrosity of wondering what it would like to be dead, and just before I would let myself go and come to an endless end, you would pull me back up and dust me off, wipe my tears and bandage my bleeding elbows and knees; I was scared that maybe you hurt me just to be the only one who knew what would save me. And I was absolutely terrified of that fact that if that was true, I would still love you. I was scared of you, I was scared of what would happen when Summer came to a end.

I remember I went to California that year for the very first time in my life right before school started. I thought it would be good, to be away from you. I told myself I hoped that you would get bored of waiting for me to come back home and find another girl to give the world, but deep down I knew that I wanted you to wait more than anything. But denial is my thing, as you would soon know all too well, it’s what I do best. So I denied my feelings for you, I denied having any at all. (I still do to this day.) And it was only in California, that I finally realized that I couldn’t keep lying to myself. It happened late at night, as I suppose the most truthful thoughts always do. I couldn’t sleep, I tossed and turned and rolled and stretched but the bed was lumpy and the sheets were suffocating and I found myself slipping away,  tiptoeing across the squeaking floor and squeezing out of the heavy wood door, into the fog and sea salt air. I walked for a very long time. I think when people are near the ocean, and have sins they have to wash from their bloodstained palms, they find a friend in the Ocean, someone to hold their hand and teach them how to stand and walk upon water. And that night, I glided to the ocean like a ghost whose tables had been turned and broken, and now finds itself the the haunted one with blistering splinters that it can not see, left over from a world that could not be; made up of broken promises, what if’s and missed moments they can never get back. The Ocean’s magnitude overwhelmed me and neutralized the quiet chaos bubbling beneath my skin. The rabid froth and spit of crashing waves put out the fire that was eating away at me and the undertow pulled me into the blue. I floated through the undefined blur of the the aqua world. I ran my hands through the rocky sand and felt the urgent weight and staggering cold of the water pulling me under, but risking my life in that current among the frothing foam horses racing against the Moon’s tide made me feel so alive. I am no mermaid, I cannot breathe underwater, but for the first time in seemingly forever I had air in my collapsing lungs, and I didn’t know you could drown on dry land until I was dying in the sea. But it was not my time, and I awoke washed up on the scraping sand with water in my ringing ears, knotted hair and no feeling in my blue fingers. I sat there on the diamond sand for a long time until I was strong enough again to lift my arm and slowly I reached into the sky, and grabbed my North Star and pulled it into my heart and where it glowed, I scrubbed myself clean of my history and orthodox scriptures with the salt of the sea and was born again free of frown lines. Something about the Ocean brings clarity, and yes it is dangerous and chaotic, it could destroy the world and wipe us all away, leaving not a trace of the human race, but the Ocean is a lifeboat, a saviour of many in a way. When you find yourself faced with a whole new infinity, a horizon that only ends when it meets another, you are small, and you are still. You are pinned against your past but then can remember how to breathe again, you exhale the toxic smoke swirling in your lungs and inhale the mist. Exhale the past, inhale the future, breathe child-for you are here, no longer there. You are small and you are still but you are real. And that night I learned two of Life’s endless lessons. First; People love what kills them. Faced with death you are flooded with life, it ignites your brittle bones and breathes music back into the silent calamity of your echoing heart. People love what kills them. Second; the person you think of when you stand in front of the ocean. That’s the person you’re in love with. And I thought of you, you, you. I thought of you and I never stopped. And it’s killing me.  

But I knew something but really nothing of death back then. So when I got home a week before school I asked if we could meet somewhere in between. And we did. Beneath glaring flick of fluorescent lights in the gas station’s parking lot that didn’t stay any open later than ten, surrounded by everything ugly about humans, rusty pennies, tumbling plastic bags, stomped out cigarette butts and smashed beer cans, you held my hands and kissed me for the very first time, and suddenly, the world was beautiful. We walked hand in hand for the longest time, but found ourselves just a block past the lonely parking lot, by the town’s fountain. We sat there and splashed out feet in the ***** water enjoying the feeling of being. You had brought a bag of Skittles and sorted the red ones from the rest, and when I asked why with a laugh you sheepishly admitted you remembered that I thought that the red ones were the best and that the lemons made my face wrinkle and nose tickle. I poked fun at you for remembering something that silly, but truthfully it meant the world to me, because it meant someone out there was listening to even the simplest things I had to say. And in the fluid reflection of those pool lights rippling across your perfect face, I could tell that even though that pitiful fountain was no ocean, that you were thinking only of me. That night we shot ourselves into the dark like shooting stars and fell into each other, that fateful night was the night we became each other’s North Star. But in the end, no one knows where that star is taking them, they call it a lost man’s compass and the last hope, but if he is lost is his compass not broken, or else wouldn’t he be home? Is hope then of no use? Are North Stars just poetry to salvage doomed souls? I often wonder if, regardless of our faith in each other’s sense of direction, if that night was the most we ever knew each other.

You told me you loved Cheezits, and Lucky Charms with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. You admitted that you chewed your nails to tiny stubs when you felt to much because all you ever wanted to be was numb. You confessed that you had trouble looking at your dad the same and saying,”I love you,” to your mom and tried to explain why video games were any fun. I pointed out all the scars on my legs and how I got them, whether it was from tearing through my childhood neighborhood on my Barbie tricycle or if it was from running over gravel trying to outrun myself and everything evil that clung to me. I muttered between my  hands and embarrassed giggles why I was terrified of fish and flies, and you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe. I recalled for the first time the night mom died and everything that followed that night, awful night that never seemed to end, and with a quivering bottom lip counted off everything th

"There are monsters on the building," she said in the sad song of a West Texas drawl.  She sounded like she did when she talked in her sleep.  We had paused there to examine the doorway the way people do when they know something frightening and important will happen to them on the other side.  

Somehow the banality of the details seemed at odds with the profundity of the situation:  A hot breeze taunted us with the smell of garbage.  Pigeons did their stupid strut and pecked and **** on the sidewalk.  Manhattan pedestrians slogged past through the May heat wave in a sweaty river of hurried lives, each stranger a subtle hint that perhaps our pain wasn't so profound after all.  My own rivers of perspiration seemed to drive the point home.

Molly had more than once accused me of being attracted to the dramatic, and she was right.  In response to this weakness, this juvenile habit of seeing myself as a hero in the story of my life rather than just another person in the world, the God I still half believed in seemed to be punishing me with mundane aggravation as we prepared to defy him:  crowded subways, humidity that pressed in from all sides, growing stains in my armpits.  Now that we had reached the building the half-believed God added a master stroke of lewdness.  Squatting on the threshold of our destination were a pair of gargoyles [cement artistic tradition combined with superstition] that peered down at us with obscene toothy grins.  

Molly tugged on my damp fingers, and asked again,  "Greg, why are there monster's on the building?" Her eyes seemed both accusatory and desperate for affection, but her voice was sleepy, like she was trying to pretend it was all just a dream.

"I don't know," I said.  "It doesn't matter."

It was true.  It didn't matter accept as a symbol in a story that somewhere deep in my mind I was shamefully conscious I would someday write.  Disgusting but unavoidable for the boy I was at 19, a boy who wanted to be important someday, wanted to be important by being "a writer," and didn't see how he could ever be anything else.  

"Write what you know" they say, but I was just an upper middle class white kid, nothing important had ever happened to me.  This was important.  This was life and death.  Most of me lived it but part of me watched from outside.

We went inside and found the elevator, then the waiting room.  I held her left hand while she filled out the forms with her right.  I told her I loved her, trying to say it like a transcendent spiritual truth that could make all the facts of our situation irrelevant and sweep them off somewhere they didn't matter.  

Then a nurse came and took her away.  

It offended me that despite the life and death business conducted behind the wall, the waiting room looked just like any other.  Maybe worse.  Worn out office furniture in generic shades of brown.  Stacks of magazines that looked like they had been procured second hand from some cleaner pricier office where happier people sit and smile about life while they fill out forms and wait.

I glanced around the room, careful to avoid eye contact.  There were two other men, one white one black, both looking sad and dejected, staring into space, thinking of the women in that other room I just like me I figured, wishing there was something they could do.  

I selected a magazine with half its cover missing.  Celebrities at a party.  Celebrities at the beach.  I put the magazine down.

I should be feeling more than this, I thought, and that thought seemed shameful too.

It was still a question about me.  The pathetic existential question that has always gnawed my television generation:  Why can't I just be real?  The question brought more shame.  Why are you asking these questions?  This inner monologue  ...  they are killing your son in there!  They are ripping him out of the girl you love.  Shut up and just feel!  Or don't feel, and just shut up.  

Searching myself for sadness I found again a numb disgust for being outside myself and looking in.  

I thought of praying but an image came to me of Jesus struggling to carry his cross up a hill.  He was being chased by His Father who took the form of the God of old paintings, a long white beard, muscled body, the eyes of a tyrant. God was leading an angry mob, scaring Jesus up the hill to his death, screaming at Him:  "This is what my son was meant for!  You don't have any other choice!"  It was not the sort of image I hoped prayer would inspire.

Finally I arrived at the thought I was avoiding:  Molly crying on a cold table, machines inside her, everything happening too fast.  I had asked if I could go with her and hold her hand.

"No," the nurse had said with a touch of scorn, like the question was not just dumb, but an insult to women everywhere.  Why would she let the guilty party make things worse?

A few yards away there were doctors working machines inside the womb of the only girl I had ever loved, taking the life of a child I would never know.  But even if I had wanted to stop them, which I didn't, it was too late now.  

It was the first life and death decision either of us would make, and even though I would try to console her with the idea that we had chosen life, our own lives, our own futures, right or wrong, I knew we had also chosen death for our first child. Death always brings sadness, and despite whatever happiness we might still enjoy in the years to come, this sadness would would linger with us, in some form, forever, unless we came together to conceive another child and raise it.  This is not what Jesus told me.  This is what I told him.  He listened but he didn't seem to care.  He had no time for *******.

Molly appeared in the doorway to the back rooms where I had not been allowed to go with her.  I would have liked to go with her back there.  I would have held her hand, made her know that we were doing it together, that I was equally if not more culpable in this death than her, and if that were not possible, and it probably was not, at least I could have held her hand.            

But I was not allowed back there.  She went through it alone with strangers all around her speaking in professionally sensitive tones.
      
I put down the magazine and went to her.  Her face was blotchy, and there was still dampness in her eyes.  She had been crying for awhile and she was crying still.  A nurse's hand was on her shoulder.
      
"She was very brave,"  the nurse said, like Molly was a four year old who had just made it through her first hair cut without squirming.
      
"Will she be okay?"
      
"Yes, but now you need to take her home so she can rest."
      
The nurse disappeared.  I held Molly, and kissed her forehead, and told her how much I loved her and always would.  She did not speak and her body felt lifeless in my arms.  I led her back to the elevator and then out into the Manhattan bustle.  The humid heat had reached its most brutal hour, and I began to sweat immediately as we walked towards the subway.
      
We passed a deli.  I asked if she was hungry and she nodded.  I went inside and used the little money I had to buy a sandwich and two bottles of juice and we found a bench in the shade and sat there to eat.  She ate a little and drank some of her juice and then finally
spoke.
      
"It was a spot."
      
"What?"
      
"It was a spot.  They showed me.  It was a little black spot on a screen."
      
"It's okay, Molly  It's going to be okay," I lied.
      
"It was my little girl, but she was just a spot.  They showed me and then they took her away forever."
      
"I love you.  I love you so much."  It was true and all I could think to say and it didn't help much.
      
I brought her downtown to the financial district where I was staying that Summer in an NYU dorm with a friend from High School.  We were there to take film classes together.  Our parent's had allowed us to spend extra on the best housing, and the dorm we stayed in was actually an apartment on the 14th floor of a building with a doorman across from South Street Seaport.  It had a kitchen, high ceilings, and huge windows with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, and even a
separate bedroom.  Fortunately Rick had allowed me the private room so he could have the larger one with the view and the television, so there was a place for Molly and I to go behind a locked door and lay down.

We got in the little bed together and curled into a combined fetal position.  I kissed the back of her neck and she took my hand and placed it on her pelvis where I could feel the bandage rustling under her sweatpants.
      
"Can you feel it?"
      
"Everything will be all right," I almost said, but it felt like garbage on the tip of my tongue and I had not yet grown used to lying except to myself.

I hadn't known there would be a bandage.

"Yes.  I can feel it,"  I said.  This, at least, I knew was true.

I lay there with her like that with my hand where our child had
grown for a few weeks and we fell asleep.

When I awoke, the room was gray with dusk, and Molly was snoring peacefully.  I got out of the bed carefully without disturbing her, sat at my desk, and opened my favorite drawer.  There was my small purple glass pipe, and a little baggy stuffed with the high quality marijuana that in my experience, you can only find in New York City, the Pacific Northwest and American Colleges.  I filled the pipe, lit it, and pulled hard, holding it in as long as I could and then coughing intentionally on the exhale for the fullest effect.  I repeated the process until the bag was nearly empty, lit a cigarette, and sat at the desk with my feet up, looking back and forth from the
high rise across the street to the young woman in my bed, contemplating life and love and God and the future.  

In that moment, high as I was on the drug and the city and the relief of having made it through the day, it truly did seem that everything would be all right.

I had taken to writing poetry a few months before, and I found a
piece of paper and began to write another:

God sat in the abortion clinic waiting room
while they killed his only son.
"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
"I don't know.  It seemed like the right thing to do."
      
I thought I had the beginnings of a very good poem.  I hoped maybe, someday, somehow my poetry might change the way people thought about things.  I was young and stupid and ****** and my mind was about to crack open completely and let forth a torrent of strangeness.

I was very sad.

-2001

fightingcopsnaked.blogspot.com
brickdumbsublime.blog­spot.com

I look at my chest the way I'd look at a wound
I know it's a part of me,
I know it's there,
But it feels temporary,
And a little gross,
Like when I sliced my thumb
On glass at 1am.
My binder is a bandage
And it's hard to take it off,
Because I feel the wound open up,
And my back hurts from wearing the bandage,
But it's so much better than
Seeing where my skin splits in two

I arrived at the church at 5:30.
It took me a bit to find the place

  there were only a couple half-inflated baloons
  to mark the occasion.
  Those, and a small sign with an arrow, which led
  
      down some stairs and into a cafeteria.  An
      older lady greeted me.  She had a calm smile
      on her face.  The kind that comes with age, that
      says that you've been there, done that.

"Are you here to give?"

           Of course.  Why else would I be here?

  "Yeah"

She leads me to a table that has a number of tall dividers
set up on it to prevent people from peeking at someone
else's personal life.  Like I care if you've had syphilis in
the last year...well I might if it weren't all men in here.

I start filling out the form.
No, I don't have an STD
No, I haven't spent a time totaling more than 5 years in the UK before 1996
No, I don't use drugs
No, I haven't had a fever in the last 24 hours
No
  No
    No
  No
No

I do admit that I have been out of the country recently.

I hand my sheet to another lady.  "Where did you travel to?"

    "Japan, mostly Tokyo and a few places just outside"

    "Carol, could you check Japan on the list?"

She turns to me.  "I'm almost certain that's OK, but I have to check".  Another contented smile.

I sit down to be interviewed, we go over the questions once more.

    "Alright, I just need a small sample before we begin"

She takes the sample with a small contraption that
fits over my finger and jabs a small hole.  She runs
a quick test with the blood, letting a droplet fall
in a test tube filled with a blue liquid.  

The droplet sinks to the bottom.  She checks a box.

Apparently we're good to go.

  I'm given an empty blood bag and a number of rubber-banded vials
and pointed towards a circle of beds in the middle of the room.

I walk up and a portly gentleman takes my bag and asks me
which arm I'd like it in.

"Right"

I pause.  

I want to be able to check my phone while I'm doing this.

"Actually, let's do left"

He gives a grin.  "Here, hold both your arms out"

I comply.  I immediately notice that my right arm
has a very accessible vein.  We're doing the right arm.

Oh well.

   "Let's go with the Right"

I smile and sit on the plastic seat

He swabs my arm with that wonderful orange/yellow dye
and gives me a stress-ball to squeeze, to help the process go
quicker.  He comes back with the needle.

I look away as I feel the uncomfortable breach of my skin.
It's a small pinch followed by a dull sensation, my body
telling me "That isn't supposed to be there, get it out".

         I hate needles.

I feel a light sweat break and my breathing quickens
ever so slightly.  It's ok because the hard part is over
I squeeze the stress ball every few seconds and I chat
with the man.

His name is Nick, and he's been doing this for a few years.  
He used to work in a restaurant, and then he worked for a
flooring company.  
He remarks
    on the fake grouting that the floor in this room has.  

You  can tell that he loves his job, that he's satisfied with life.

He comments on the t-shirt that I will receive for doing this

(because who would do it if they didn't get a t-shirt, right?)

He says it looks like a blueberry snowcone and tells me a
rather entertaining story from his youth about blueberry
snowcones.  

I pipe in with my memories of the Tropical Sno  shop we had
when I was a kid.  

The bag is filled, the needle is removed.  A bandaid is placed,
and then my arm is wrapped with a smily-face bandage.

I give him a left-hand shake and go sit at the refreshments table

I drink a Pepsi.  I hate trail mix.

After about 10min or so, I get in my car and drive home.
I put on the blueberry snow-cone colored t-shirt and sit
down to read a book.  I think about the people working
at the blood drive, and I think about how happy they
seemed.

I wonder to myself what the difference is between someone
who gives blood and someone who gives time.  I have friends
that travel the world for the Peace Corps, living in third world
countries with no running water, no niceties.  I think of friends
who could sit in blistering heat, helping to build a house for
someone they don't even know.  I think of myself, who thinks
that donating money to the Leukemia foundation and donating
blood to the Red Cross is somehow equivalent to donating sweat
and an able body.

I should really do more
maybe then I'll earn that smile
that those folks wear so proudly

A human bandage for others,
we forget we too need tending.
****** & bruised,
it's okay to give yourself
a bandaid too.

"I know your vexed great spirit, miles away, a gentler more playful you thrives on a journey of life. There among a ridge, the plateau where you dance, leaping, ripping yourself out of the air,escaping towards the light. Free from the weight which chastises and locks you up. Out of the medicine cabinet quaffing your deepest breaths, urging your hours shorter and shorter. You cascade like glass buttons scattered on the desert floor, let those wet cloths be forgotten, may your sorrow disappear amidst that great arenose simoom.  When the ghibli makes you stutter before the bright outlook you once displayed, do not forget to visit the flowers that bring you the most  peace of mind"------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------ It's here. In the pile-ons, wrapping around your head like a cool, wet bandage, keeping out a headache, or the rancorous guilt of an ugly night. It sits on the top-layer of your forehead, beading off in fresh droplets of self-pity, uncomfortable and self-defeating restlessness and despair. I rub it with my hands, removed each new wave of desperation and soothing your hairline with a swath of my hand. I raise up, your cucumber colored walls, that bright pink bedspread, nothing different ever changes. The masonite paintings still there, that old familiar **** carpet, a thatch-work of menage-a-tois and fifth grade-style arts and crafts. The light bulb has been out for six years, third drawer right-side down is still stuck, a mystical blow dryer blocks it closed, and the door won't ever quite close- I take a shower with the world wide opened and you trailing a fastening steep. And so your fever rises, your feet soak in a tepid iron clad bed frame while your mind rattles against your skull. Thirty days have past, lifeless, echoing in this wicked upstairs chamber. The West Wing. Slatted blinds, the white dresser, the Chanel books, the pool party photos, the blue swim-meet t-shirts, the fake gold trophies and the true gold hairs on your head, my fingers dash across your forehead again meeting your brow with the cool folded washcloth, I reach for your back and you turn, slightly rolling; something routine, unsteadied, even wicked limps in a stress ball inside your bottom lip. It's just a quiver. Nothing different ever changes. It's the devil inside, and I am nowhere to go. Maybe midnight or maybe twilight. Every hour of morning is another hour of night I'm ever taking my sleep back into. I don't count the days, just mark them in the thoughts of worry that flurry through in brief thoughts. I am obsessed with care-taking now. Three hours have passed since I showered you out of your black party dress and sparkly Gucci slip-skirt, since I took bits of post-digested food from your hair, held your nose with a tissue and told you to blow it all out, again, another night of building a sick room and sauna. I never tire, I just make arrangements, I build a small room and I wait the weight out. Nothing different ever changes, and I don't expect the unexpected or dare to meet your smile again.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------ Three months ago, thrifting on Valencia and 26th Street. Walking from Blue Bottle to the Bay then to the Breakers. I climb atop A Buena Vista with man Adam, you scale a mountain-sized hill with your teal green and cherry red Nikes. We make a photograph in front of white dogwood blossoms overlooking a steep Ravine to the East. A bird chirps, a homeless woman barks, and four children smoke cigarettes and joints in a treetop. Every ***** goes up and down, each footstep dithering amidst our biduous ascent. I buried you last Thursday beneath the dogwood, your cherry red and teal green gym shoes planted at your doggerel.

After my first hospitalization I began writing. I signed my name, about five times, proving to the staff and myself that I was ready to be discharged. The envelope held against my chest contained reading material, a diagnosis, and copious sheets of paper with lightly drawn animal sketches. Two weeks in a hospital, sitting at a desk by a caddy-cornered television, holding a styrofoam cup of decaf coffee, I'd sit listening to news stories while skimming through piles of xeroxed copies of coloring books. This became the precursor to many more manic months that would eventually and periodically follow.

Adolescent behavior is uncertain, but a child that runs off into a wooded enclosure to scream until collapse is significantly more uncertain. More often than not, when a child screams, an adult comes running. But when the source of the scream is just as misplaced as the child, it will only become an echo lost to the wind. When feeling lost becomes a constant what else is there to do but draw a map, or in this case, animal sketches.

Have you ever cried hysterically while laughing? Not producing tears from a belly ache caused by momentary elation, but two conflicting emotions? Imagine dowsing yourself in gasoline and running into a burning home to get a drink of water. Picture yourself flying through the air, wind caressing your face, but you can't fly, and right before you hit the ground you only just realized that you jumped. No child can prepare for this, as much as an ignorant parent can help their child clean wounds that will not scab over. Medication will become a bandage, and if the wound can never heal, the bandage will eventually be ripped off.

Art therapy before therapy was introduced was sitting on the bedroom floor, fashioning little cut-out rectangles, hole at the top, and string pulled through and wrapped around my big toe. A blanket pulled over my face, just to know what it was like to rest in peace. But you know, kids will be kids, or so they say.

Aspirations to be an artist should have been the first clue that mental illness had come and was here to stay, but the dreamers of the world ruined that. You start painting happy little trees, and two months later you're medicated in a hospital room with the faintest idea of what a tree even looks like, let alone the fact that because of these unimaginable trees you are able to breath. But you are breathing, and slowly you are able to grasp a pencil, and soon after you are able to draw these trees, these happy little trees that you not so long ago had forgotten about. And you lean your face down, nose touching the sheet of paper, and you inhale. You feel reborn. Not exactly home, because, well, you're not home, but you're comfortable in your new skin. This new skin leads the doctors to explain to you that you are manic. You nod your head, obligatory nodding, seeing as how your mind is elsewhere, many places in fact, thinking of all of the ideas you'd like to put on paper. And soon enough you're signing your name, multiple times, being discharged with your diagnosis. This is your enlightenment you're told. This is the first day of your new life.
But it's not. The cycling wasn't explained. And you failed to read the paperwork given to you that was sealed in the envelope. Instead you tore it open to procure your drawings and discarded the rest of the contents.

Those drawings lead you to college. To be the artist you know you are.
You bleed for your work. Figuratively, at first. Until you decide to find a new medium. You put yourself into your work. Red smeared all over a canvas. Curled up in a ball on the floor, losing blood quickly, eyes slowly closing. And when you wake, with tubes in your arm, and hands secured to a bed, you wonder what season it is. And what the trees look like, whether they are barren or blossoming.
Then you smile.
You smile because you remember what trees are.

If only you could find a pencil.

Your path has been covered
With broken glass,
And they're wondering why
You've been running so fast.

You're calloused but strong,
You're tough but in pain,
You're unstoppable,
But your glass is blood stained.

Your whole life has been danger,
You can handle anything,
But even the strongest,
Need a safe place to stay.

So come walk with me,
And we'll find a new path,
I will bandage your wounds,
And lead you to soft grass.

Let me be your safety,
We can turn your shattered past,
Into a stained glass window,
Lighting up our new path.

(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these,
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.

                (2)

This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot,

The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest
Who plumbs the well of his book,

The bent print bulging before him like scenery.
Obscene bikinis hid in the dunes,

******* and hips a confectioner's sugar
Of little crystals, titillating the light,

While a green pool opens its eye,
Sick with what it has swallowed----

Limbs, images, shrieks.  Behind the concrete bunkers
Two lovers unstick themselves.

O white sea-crockery,
What cupped sighs, what salt in the throat....

And the onlooker, trembling,
Drawn like a long material

Through a still virulence,
And a ****, hairy as privates.

                (3)

On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things----

Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness.  Why should I walk

Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles?
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,

I am not a smile.
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man:  his red ribs,

The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon:
One mirrory eye----

A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room

An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.

Where are the eye-stones, yellow and valuable,
And the tongue, sapphire of ash.

                (4)

A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.

It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful;

They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.

This is what it is to be complete.  It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit

Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?

They propped his jaw with a book until it stiffened
And folded his hands, that were shaking:  goodbye, goodbye.

Now the washed sheets fly in the sun,
The pillow cases are sweetening.

It is a blessing, it is a blessing:
The long coffin of soap-colored oak,

The curious bearers and the raw date
Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.

                (5)

The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea
Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows,

The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife----
Blunt, practical boats

Full of dresses and hats and china and married daughters.
In the parlor of the stone house

One curtain is flickering from the open window,
Flickering and pouring, a pitiful candle.

This is the tongue of the dead man:  remember, remember.
How far he is now, his actions

Around him like living room furniture, like a décor.
As the pallors gather----

The pallors of hands and neighborly faces,
The elate pallors of flying iris.

They are flying off into nothing:  remember us.
The empty benches of memory look over stones,

Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here:  it is a stopping place.

                (6)

The natural fatness of these lime leaves!----
Pollarded green *****, the trees march to church.

The voice of the priest, in thin air,
Meets the corpse at the gate,

Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell;
A glittler of wheat and crude earth.

What is the name of that color?----
Old blood of caked walls the sun heals,

Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts.
The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters,

Necessary among the flowers,
Enfolds her lace like fine linen,

Not to be spread again.
While a sky, wormy with put-by smiles,

Passes cloud after cloud.
And the bride flowers expend a freshness,

And the soul is a bride
In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless.

                (7)

Behind the glass of this car
The world purrs, shut-off and gentle.

And I am dark-suited and still, a member of the party,
Gliding up in low gear behind the cart.

And the priest is a vessel,
A tarred fabric, sorry and dull,

Following the coffin on its flowery cart like a beautiful woman,
A crest of *******, eyelids and lips

Storming the hilltop.
Then, from the barred yard, the children

Smell the melt of shoe-blacking,
Their faces turning, wordless and slow,

Their eyes opening
On a wonderful thing----

Six round black hats in the grass and a lozenge of wood,
And a naked mouth, red and awkward.

For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma.
There is no hope, it is given up.

Why?
It's a painful memory that appears to be settling in for life rather than preparing to leave,
It's been heard by countless millions, and none of them can understand how it sounds to me,
I haven’t been as happy since hearing it as I was when I heard it,
It's symbolic of the most significant turning point in my life to date,
The lyrics are so perfectly foreshadowing of a problem that I couldn't fathom that I’d have,
It has a stronger connection to memory than any other song,
It represents the perpetual unhappiness that I refuse to believe controls me.
I'm unhappy.

Where?
A car that I haven’t seen in years,
On a street I barely saw enough of,
In a town I wish I could visit again.
A happier place that I can see but can never return to,
Personified by a face that's disappeared from here.
Somewhere I miss, yet somewhere I hate;
Somewhere that needed the version of me that died in that very place;
A cemetery.

When?
Happier times;
A collection of moments which are infinite from within,
Yet minute from without.
A time when I could define myself,
Through the vice of another person;
Albeit vicariously, it was the last time
I was able to define myself.
I was everything; I was the world.
And then the world ended.
Happier times that I can't and won't return to.

What?
A song;
A memory;
A beautiful beat,
In a story that nobody's telling.
A soundtrack to a movie nobody wants to see,
A composition that will fall on deaf ears;
Yet still be heard by the world at large, call it irony.
Something nobody can take away from me;
Despite how tenaciously I've tried to get rid of it.
A succession of noises that would be meaningless to me,
Were it not for the memory.
The memory.

Who?
She, I, and the drivers of some road in Georgia;
Drivers that didn't notice then and don't notice now.
She, driving, demonstrating, performing;
Has driven on, failing to notice.
Me, her, and the songwriter, I suppose;
Me, a person I don't know,
Replaced by a person I can't.
The songwriter, collecting her checks and trophies,
Probably not a **** to give about the troubles
Of some ******* who heard her song.
Us, a concept foreign to me;
Unbeknownst then, well studied now;
Still as foreign as that state,
That city,
That road,
That car,
That place that I can revisit,
But never go back;
Her.

The Song?
Because I'm unhappy;
In a cemetery,
During happier times that I can't and won't return to;
A memory
With her.
I need more words.

Words
Nevermind, I'll find someone like you.
I wish nothing but the best for you.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said:
Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead.

But that's not right.
I won't find someone like you;
There was no you.
I wish anything but the best for you;
You selfish child.
Please forget me;
I'm nothing worth remembering.
I've forgotten everything you said.
It rarely, if ever, lasts in love.
It always hurts.
Laughable,
The things I tell myself to bandage
A wound that doesn't appear.
The clichés I give meaning to are

******* pitiful.
Just about two years and counting.
Two psychiatrists,
Two half-assed ******* suicide attempts,
Dozens of classes,
Legions of friends,
A handful of people so much like you that they'd failed to notice there is no you,
And you're still talking about this
Pile of ****.
Who's talking about it?
Me? You?
Nobody.
It's white noise;
Habituation at play.
A memory not worth remembering.
Three years of piano lessons,
The lines of my scripts,
The best films throughout history,
Even the Eagles game from last week is

Worth remembering
This,
This moment in time occupied by just another pop song,
Time spent with a person no longer there,
Family member after family member, anecdote after anecdote,
Things not to say or do in front of her hulking ******* of a brother,
Approval of people I wound up discarding.
What now?

I need more words.

Where were we?
Fresh year, fresh start, and the Eagles were still a winning team○;
A dorm, a drunken haze, a bed, a city unparalleled;
Untested grounds for a young idiot
Like me. She certainly did
And wasn't afraid to show it.
Independence, experience, maturity,
And a stunning mutual lack thereof.
Problems, buried like the worst ******* time capsule ever.
Happiness (unsustainable)
Love (attachment)
Future ()
A candle burning down to its last wax can’t relight,
And a pile of wax won't help me see in the dark.

But who needs candles anyway?
I'm better off without candles,
Playing with fire can get me burnt.
And besides, lightbulbs are brighter and more efficient.
I’ll install lightbulbs all over the apartment,
Once I can figure out how to turn the power back on.
Oh, there aren't power lines running to this apartment.
(sure wish I had a candle right about now)
Maybe the light from this cigarette will help.
And I could sure use a cigarette right now
Because they’re playing that song again.
Surely I can find some better music than this.
This station seems nice, let's see what she can offer.
They're playing that song again.
Over and over again.
Is it just me, or are they always playing that song?
It's always that song, no matter what.
It's all I ever hear.
Pop radio sure is terrible these days, right?
Sure is.
Can't walk down the street to class without hearing

That ******* ******* song.*

(
Nobody else is hearing it.
I'm the one singing it.
My life's a ******* joke, isn't it?
)

○The Philadelphia Eagles were 10-6 in 2010, 8-8 in 2011, and 4-12 last year. And during the ‘still friends’ period, we watched the division rival Giants win the Super Bowl together. I ******* hated it.

Who was your ******* rock? The one you relied on when others relied on you? I was the keystone who kept you together and kept the others together unbeknownst to them. I was the bandage sealing the wound from the bacteria of the world, from the ill thoughts and mean-spirited things of the world. I was your ******* crutch that supported you and helped you stand upright in this world. But just like a crutch, like a bandage, I was discarded once the problem was summarily handled. I hope you bleed out next time.

We all have our secret hideaways, we all have our cures, and our bandage solutions, and we all have addictions.

You will eat to fill the hollow kindly provided by someone who's left you lying in bed at night, wondering why you weren't good enough, or maybe even just enough, to make them stay.

We all carry earbuds...more like soulbuds. Hello music, goodbye world, goodbye sorrow. We all break down, no matter how hard we hide it, no matter how well we can disguise it...eyes can't lie, but they sure can act.

And we all try to bandage our wounds, though we're the worst doctors. I puke smiles, you puke smiles, we ALL puke smiles...

but no one's meant them for a while.

She wants to be shoved up against a wall
then coddled when she says her back hurts.
Slitting her wrists in a lavender bath,
she wants you to bandage her up.
"I want you to hurt me," she'll cry.
And you'll be confused when she plays victim.
When you look into her doe eyes, don't be fooled.
She's a monster.

Dear friend,
You are somewhat new
But I already like this
This feeling of being normal
This feeling of being happy
These are the feelings you bring.
I take your things because
They are small reminders
Of what it's like to be content
And unfortunately
I fear that one day
I'll fall in love
But I know that you'll
Help me up
Disinfect my cuts
Bandage my broken body
And send me on my way
Until then,
*Love always
CsR

stop whining
about that mascara
that smeared on
your pretty little
face

stop exaggerating
that one small
bruise on your
knee you got
two weeks ago

because some people
have a bruise on their
empty little scarred
hearts they can't fix

there is no bandage
for the hurt,
the pain,
and the suffering

Cover this body with layers upon layers,
Each one hiding the secrets I don't want
To tell. They yell my ***, Scream it out
Shout it and others follow suit.
Four letter words may make violence but
S-H-E causes earthquakes inside me.
My curves curse me to wear my **
Chromosomes like neon paint
Warning sign: This person was born
Female. Born into an imaginary category,
Forced to conform. My mind
Is at war with the mirror eyes staring back
Those little details sticking out
Highlight them, cutandpaste to another
Body.
Maybe this bandage will keep me safe from
The gender police maybe people will be
Confused and not ask Maybe they will ask
For once and not assume.
Maybe I'll lose enough oxygen that it won't
Matter.
Matter is all I am, atoms twisted together in
Disarray and how can you call that Anything but what it is.
I defy this binary, refuse to walk the
PinkorBlue tightrope.
Let me fall and land in purple.
Let me live in the inbetween.

Lettuce is love, lettuce is life.
You walked up to McDonald's and ordered a mcdouble
I was behind you in line, looking for some trouble
I said, "excuse me sir, you know mcdoubles don't have lettuce, right?"
He said, "yes, but I can't eat lettuce at this time of night"
I was getting angry at this point, not gonna lie
I was like, "come on buddy give it a try"
He started backing away, a little intimidated
The farther away he went, the more I felt the hatred
How can he not want lettuce?
This dude's real close to getting fought
The cashier interrupted my thought
"I can get who's next in line"
I said, "cool, I'll take a McChicken, it's a bite of heaven
Actually I take that back, I want eleven"
You already know i didn't buy them for the chicken
I bought them for the lettuce, it's tasty finger lickin'
The cashier says "is that all I can get you tonight?"
I turned back to her said "naw, gimme a medium Sprite"
Got my drink and my McChickens, then tried find this guy to fight
He's at a table munching on his mcdouble by himself
I caught him looking enviously at my McChicken, lettuce spewing out health
I sat down at the booth beside him
Told him how I despise him
For not getting lettuce, how could one be so arrogant?
I threw a punch to his face hard enough to leave a dent
He yelled out in pain, tryna run away
The cashier notified me that the police were on their way
My fate was inevitable, but I did it for lettuce
It's been 3 years now, been locked up ever since
Lettuce makes me happier than ever, it's my only friend
My favorite thing in the world, nothing and no one can contend
Moral of this story: get lettuce on your sandwich,
Unless you wanna go to mcdonalds and end up with a bandage
I can finally conclude, after this long strife
Lettuce is love, lettuce is life.

I once slept
with a few sophisticated rats,
5 to be exact,
on a pull-out couch
from a garage sale
in corona, queens

they had ivy league IQs;
double majors in
evasion and skullduggery,
and a crush on my left thumb....

the  one you ****** on as a kid...,
posited dr diaz,
my shrink with an md
from the lesser antilles

like freaks,
they came out at night,

in indian file...

as the raging moon dipped
below my cracked glass window,

and  a cimmerian shroud
swallowed its receding light,

and I snored...

on the couch,
left thumb hanging loose
near the floor
where a heavily highlighted
textbook lay wide open...

cued by the dipping moon
or the rhythmic rasp
ripping through the room
like a stihl chain saw,

the curious 5 whisked
over the persian rug,

or was it soiled chinese?

like I said
they had ivy league IQs....

thus my heavily cheesed
wire traps
remained engaged

but cheese-less...

as the curious 5 converged
around the couch
for dessert...

~

I skipped mgmt 301 at 10
and dr diaz gave me
a rabies shot:
4 doses ig,

a sterile bandage
for my shredded left thumb,

and a referral
to his realtor...

~ P (Pablo)
(8/8/2013)

I threw away all my dignity, I decided it wasn't worth a fight. Spent to long trying, praying that I'd get it right.

I took a match and caught that tree, that shaded marriage vows. Watched it go up in flames, and found the strength to walk away some how.

I bandage the wounds left from you, cut by that blade of poisoned lies. Took the knife out of my back, now I'm severing any ties.

I sewed my lips shut with straps of leather, that once belonged to you. I packed my bags and filled my pockets, in hopes of something new.

I carved Divorce into the wall, with the shattered shards of whats left of me. I took that blindfold off my eyes, so I now can clearly see.

I promised myself that I'd never share this.
Then I read it at open mic night in front of you and your mother.

Because the longer it has been
Since the last time we looked at each other
In awe
In love
In shock that we found one another
Amidst the **** in everybody else
The easier it is
To paint our story a hue of rose
To take the broken shards of trust
And make my mind weld them back together
Because as the days pass by and the calendar pages are ripped away from their future
I can’t help but regret not being able to rip those pages with you
Because when you held my hand and promised me your heart just at that very moment
But you couldn’t give me a guarantee of forever
I still felt that if every church caught on fire and burned to the ground
If every Bible was thrown into a fire and disappeared into oblivion,
I would still have faith
Faith in you.

Because every sweet nothing you whispered into my ear
Was written for somebody else
You recycle your lines
Your poetic lines
On girls you “can’t live without”
Oh
I can write stories
About a boy who writes poems
And thinks of himself as a tragic, cynical soul, whom no one understands,
Who falls in love
With an attractive whimsical girl with a “wild soul”
Who commits petty sins and dyes her hair wacky colors
And helps him reconnect with the beauty of life
And completes him in a way that nobody understands
Sorry it didn’t end up like that
I’d much rather look at reality just as it is
Yeah, you can write poetry
But I can write truths
And the truth is, you held my hand half-heartedly

Can I pry your fingers from the things that you hold onto
But have a bigger hold on you
They slowly dragged you down
Under the waves
And are drowning you without a sound
Can I try to make you smile
Can I block you from the rain
Can I stick you with a needle
And **** out all the pain
That permeates your bones
Travels through your veins
Pumps into your heart
And suffocates your brain

Every single day is just another gift
But if it’s not wrapped up with a bow
And handed over with a smile
Can it really be worth the thank you note?
They say anger eats you from the inside
And hatred burns you more than the one it’s meant for
I feel the ground underneath me shifting
Feeling less and less sturdy as the days go by
The anger surging through my veins like burning magma
Letting it drip into all of my cracks
And the madder I get
The hotter it burns
To the point of eruption.
Because lava can level an entire city
And once it hardens in my cracks
I’m going to just give up

Listen to what I am not saying
To the worlds I have yet to breathe
To the life I haven’t given all of my emotions
To the sound of me being weak
Listen to the scars I have carved
Less than gently down my skin
Listen to the pools in my eyes
Before they begin to drip

You’re fading like a bruise
Like the ones your mouth left on my neck and shoulders
With its loving pressure
Your lips, which parted to ******* mouth like it was salvation
No longer part to speak to me
You whispered my name like a prayer
Now you speak it like a curse

I kissed you like forgiveness
And you held me like I was hope.
We held each other like bandages hold two separated pieces of skin together
And prevent the source of life from spilling out.

You’re fading
Like a bruise
Like the one you left on my mind with your brilliant conversation and meaningless poetry
Like the one you left on my heart
When you opened it and poured your love into it
Only to draw it back out
Like a needle ******* the life out of me at the doctor
I wasn’t given a bandage to stop the bleeding
But I’ve figured it out.

I’ve never heard of a man
who can make flawed look so beautiful
the way you do
Forget-me-not green
But you have forgotten me
Left a bruise on my life
That I’m not sure
Will heal
But I’ll keep ripping petals off of flowers