Tuesday, Tuesday...

I wake up naked in my little bed and roll several feet onto the floor.

The ceiling is always entertaining to me.

Laying in silence, I contemplate whether I should shower and do my errands, or *******.

My cell phone buzzes to let me know that an echo of one of my longing cries for a sense of connection has responded from the void.

I'm ******* ******.

My train of thought was finally getting somewhere deeper. Somewhere deeper than the considered ****** gratification, prolonged for as long as I can distract myself from reality — which is pretty much until I decide to experience the tantalizing taste of what death might feel like; a doppler of pleasure similar to an airplane flying overhead followed by a weakening of consciousness, limp limbs and a brief moment of thoughtless bliss: surrender.

I push my sorry, soar neglected body into a somewhat upright position in order to reach my phone, for which some ******* reason, I think will let me know the reality of my worth.

I press the 'power' button to confirm that I will not find what I am seeking outside of my self. I set it back down and think that I am the only person who would know how to love myself best, but even I don't know how to do that.

Well, that killed the mood.

So I stumble out of my room to search for some food in the refrigerator, but it seems that I only ever want something that is magical and out of reach. Typical.

Most of the time I really hate wearing clothes. I'm pretty good at it, though, I suppose. I used to lurk on fashion forums when I was a closeted freshman in high school, thinking that maybe people would appreciate me more if I at least looked aesthetically pleasing. I was right to a degree, but not in the way that I wished to be.

I throw on some pajama pants and an old white v-neck with some holes in it.

In the corner of the living room, my green backpack sits slightly crooked with its grey straps lying lifeless on the floor. Someone I loved but will never love in the same way again gave me that bag. It's got a bladder I can fill with liquid and a hose with a ****** that I can **** to keep me alive. It's really nice to have when it's as hot as two ***** rats in a sock outside.

But it's brisk and the leaves are crispy and falling from the dried out grey-brown branches, so I reach inside past crushed pieces of dried sage and bits of tobacco to grab my leather-bound book and ****** a ball-point pen off the table because I like to feel the resistance against the page as I write and I just can't get that same feeling with those **** pens with the bleedy cartridges that I leave in my pockets when I do a load of laundry and it leaves ink stains on only my favorite shirts. I really love them too, though. For other things.

But today I want something that isn't that. Today I want something different. So I shuffle into my sandals, and tighten the velcro straps and run out the door. The air hits me like a brick wall of happy sky breath. I'm not wearing any underwear, so I feel somewhat liberated from oppressive societal paradigms as I skip to the street. Across the road is the tree line to a million acre pine reservation. Leaning against the telephone pole, I wait for a car to pass and then sprint out in front of one that's trying to turn onto the street. I feel absolutely giddy as I do so, and keep running until I'm half a mile down the trail, another half mile away from the lake, panting with glee.

Miss Nisa impetuous young lady!

In Bangkok I met her at OTOP She was impetuous
I loved her
She spit on me
I love her
Anyway!

Her dad was fantastic her mom was so nice to me...
Her uncle tried to **** me with a bash to my bleedy head.

I ran down the street to go hospital
Then deported to Japan
What the ****?
...did I do wrong?

she's the reason my knees are bleedy
she makes it easy to be so needy
she kisses on my achy feet
and ***** the coffee off my teeth
she makes me be a very good girl
she makes every one of my toes curl
i want to smell the way she breathes
i want to make her flower wreaths
she's prettier than pity pink
she laughs like teeth hitting sink
she has a really mean right hook
i love when she makes that look
she only bites me when i plead
she's all i'll ever really need

Who bowls without being too speedy?
Who'd bowl 'til his fingers were bleedy?
  For England he should
  But selection no good
Lancashire's leftie, Gary Keedy.

I WILL NOT CEASE FROM MENTAL FIGHT

"Hush...hush!" he'd
suddenly shush

us kids
going" "Wot...wot?"

"Snipers!"

"Where...where?"
we'd whisper half scared.

"Everywhere...everywhere!"
he'd hiss under his breath.

Even in his beloved
red and yellow rose bushes.

( Fred shot in the head
still bleeding in Picardy ).

Or the *** in
the garden shed

which we'd storm
with a barrage of conkers.

"The bleedy blighter
got away!"

They had followed him
home from Flanders.

Or just...
never went away.

Mother said he'd
lost his....

but he'd play
marbles with us

kids
all day.

Rubbed his tolley
against his bonce

"Big Bertha"
he'd call her.

"Yer losing 'em...yer losing 'em!"
he'd sing with great gusto.

We had to let him win
or he'd swear like anything.

"Stop dat slanguage!"
Mother would swear at him.

He sang saucy French songs
"mes saucisson mes amis!"

but only when he be-
-came squiffy

which was more
than often!

Mother begging us:
"Don't listen...don't listen!"

But we inky-dinky
parley-vous'd with him.

A chorus of us kids
belting out:

"...Oh I didn't know how
to tickle Mary

but now I know how!"

"War is all about
saving your skin!"

Most of his mates
lost theirs.

He still calls them
by their names

as if they are
just...there.

"The ghosts of the sofa!"

They sit and watch
the radio with him.

"Manchester Utd 2 -"

He sings ADIEU LA VIE
and cries in French.

Left his left leg
in a trench

but still loves
to dance.

"I dance as badly or
as goodly as I did before

no less...no more!"

More and more
often he hides

under the stairs
eating raspberry jam

or marmalade
in the dark

crying now
in English.

Hiding still
from the Wipers' snipers.

He hates apple and plum
"all we...ugggh...ever got!"

And loudly the cupboard
it sings.

"...without food so long
I've forgotten where my face

is..."

(Fred lost his...)

I always remember him
coming out to salute

surrender to us
as he recites

in a little child's voice.

"When the Rock of Gibraltar
takes a flying leap at Malta

you'll never get yer *******
in a corn beef can."

i am thirteen years old and i think love is a hand
because that was the first thing that made me feel good
and i think love is supposed to feel good so
love is the hand of a boy four years my senior and
love is a hand that holds a joint and
between puffs of marijuana smoke touches my face
before telling me i’m beautiful
and makes promises to call on the weekends while he’s
away at school
but i’m only thinking of whether or not i
made ninth grade honors english
and he tells me he hates his parents
for expecting him to go to medical school
after college
and for expecting him to become successful and
for expecting him to have money
and a family
and a white picket fence
and i wonder what it would be like for parents
to expect anything from me other than
to stop slicing at my skin and to please finish what’s on my plate
at dinner
but when he asks what i’m thinking about
i just tell him
“love is a hand”
and he looks at me funny with squinted eyes
and i know that his mother does not cry at night
trying to hide bruises from her daughters that already know
that love leaves burn marks on your skin
when love is a hand.

now i’m sixteen and
love is a hand
that shoots up when it sees me
in the hallway between fourth and fifth period and
i’m not one for hugs but when love is a hand
i’ll take two around my waist
to lift me until i yell to let me down, let me down
leaving my cheeks burning red
and flushed from embarrassment
because love is a hand that has never touched me
between my legs and *****
and love is a hand twice the size of my own
that dialed my phone number to tell me
“i asked her to be my girlfriend and she said yes”

i am seventeen and my skin has burned
from staying in the sun for too long
when we went to the beach in the middle of august
and played thumb wars for hours but
you always won because your love was a hand that
was much bigger than mine
and after you kissed me you told me about her.
you always left your windows open, allowing my skin
to freckle and for the sun to leave his
hand prints across my face because you were too
scared of how i’d be if you had left your own

so now i’m 18
and i’m crying
in the mirror because i can’t make out my memories
and i can’t tell which hand print belongs to you
so i cry until i can’t cry anymore and my mother comes into
the bathroom and looks at me in the mirror
and rests her hand on my shoulder
and silently says “i love you”
the way you always did on mornings over my stomach with
your love that was the last hand that burned my skin
on that tuesday night when we watched the ****** suicides
when you told me there was someone else
that there had always been someone else
and that i was the other.
and your hands went frozen and numb and stung
with frost bite to ease the burn that you had left across my belly.

now i’m nineteen and all the boys are the same
they all bite their fingernails
because they’re trying not to love so they chew and they gnaw
until their fingernails are bitten down and bleedy
and your love is a hand that slapped me across the face
because you didn’t have the nails to scratch.
i should have seen it coming when i saw you
bit your fingernails
or when i saw you didn’t touch me except
between my legs and
*****
or when you got burns on your fingers from joints of marijuana
just like my shoulder blades in the sun
and when you got paper cuts all over your palms from
looking at photographs of people that you hate
and i can see that your love was never for me
because i could not love your hands.
and love is a hand.

now i’m 20 and my hands are cold
because in the winter they hide in mittens
hoping that the heat might burn them just a little bit
but it never does
and my love is just a hand,
hiding in a mitten hoping to be lit on fire.

He slapped her
She was on the floor
Bleedy and teary
Wiped and then she stood up
Once more harder this time.
                                     She said

Would you tell me what you've done
when I was mad at you, blinded by the fault
feeling betrayed, untrusted,
scared to die and unable
to live up my love to you?
Heart of your clockwork, but shaped like some box or a *****?

Would you tell me the truth of where you went
if I can't but to embrace you with my empty-feeling rage
imagining you leaving
whichever other betrayals you dared and so weak for a smile
you last meal I'm given at this end of my green mile?

Where are you?
What do you need?
What do you want?
Who are you?
When was the last time you weren't gone
from my life, you took my hand when I took a knife
and was missing your kiss
put into a white coat
and shackled for life
next morning you were out of sight
thanks for another eternity of spite
baby.

Left alone,you're a *******
born by a monster with a warm cove
of course I'll also **** the sole dove
you are still avoiding my words
and you're trembling
smashing yourself with pipes and bottles
planning six-hundred battles against your brain-dead cattle
and can't ask your wife for five dozen and six extra lives?

I'm dead, I'm a void,
you pray the name of Chaos
Greek word for emptiness
destroyed trust, you don't understand the pain you inflict onto me
you build your own prison but you want to be free?
Don't make me laugh 'bout your misery!
You play the fool, dream of the Empress,
but should be your own card
called Hopeless Distress
Mistress of hurt by painlessness
do you ever try to imagine what, how, why I feel?

Useless? Meaningless? You guess those issues are the source of your and my stress?
Who taught you to babble such nonsense?
What else don't we know 'bout your brain its impulses?
What my love hasn't brought?
Мy efforts for order, all you sense is what you're calling a bloated, incomprehensible mess
"Darling, wanna play a game and I grant you three attempts to guess?"
"Babe, excuse my digress, this is a hard digest."
You rob me my words in the warmest ways
hold my hand through the bullets which are targeting gays
is this real? You're scared, my mind is tricking me
Am I ugly? Needy? Emotionally bleedy?
Your pupils, terrific and massive, the only hint your soul spills
'bout the moments you want what your fate wills
Rome is surrounded by seven hills
you are surrounded by three grams of Ritalin pills
what do you think I am seeing?
You blinded me on first sight
conjured this moonless night
and hurt me.

Finally, shut up and die!
We're both waiting.
You have the choice and end up blading you arms
what a symbole of wicked pharms and self-harm
you're crying alone
and I'm crying alone
crying my love with my phone by my mouth and ear
and you don't feel at home?
Then tell me whereever it is you wanna go
please let your heart speak
no shame show, no crave blow
your love, not sour but sweet, not like some kind of cheese.

Tell me
why do I love you?
Who is this ill fate I'm falling through?