I have two bruises on my shoulders
blue as the oceans and marbled white,
storm-foam spilling from my head
and eyes.
That’s not your responsibility--
but what else could it have been
when I knelt silent, scrubbing, palms
red as my sister’s sticky wrists, clorox
wipes balled and piled in the corner?
I am not
steel-skinned, some mechanical being
mistaken for a human with her eyelids
torn from her face, blindless to trauma
and the callouses it leaves behind.
And yet
the oceans on my shoulders blow salt
healing the wounds to smooth, pink scars,
reminders in every mirrored surface:
I am still standing.

streaming moonlight wakes me from demented dreams
of green staring eyes
and blood on the bathroom walls
and shoeless hallways
and blindless windows

they took my purse they took my wallet they took my
clothes earrings phone sunshine air leaves and grass

they took my blood

the north winds cookie crumbles constellations
and wafts her sultry glares through my eyelids

heres your cocktail go home

I will tear holes like stars in the clouds,
swallow the moon until I burn inside-out,
and become a midnight lamp guiding all
the eyes that cannot see the way home.

I remember the velvet Dark like a funeral
dress baggy around my waning waist,
the veil of which blinded me completely,
my windows turning one-by-one into walls--

trapped--yet I’d rather have been locked
because then I would have a door to kick
instead of walls simultaneously too small
and ever-expanding with fine print reading:

Do not mistake pity for love.

Paranoid assumptions connected dots,
nonexistent constellations like vines
around my ribs. The Dark permeated fear,
filled my Self to bursting before I pulled

the veil from my face, stared into violent
light that burned the lids from my eyes,
left me blindless to all the terrible truths
bearing down until my shoulders bruised.

I’ve since begun sleeping with all the lights
turned off and my curtains fully drawn.

conscience bequeaths I must amend this tale
of bravery to expose, I did nothing out of
this world nor above the call of a normal human
I only did what I saw was called for.

Bravery is a short-sighted woe of a fool
at times a man not thinking , seeing
someone in need I guess we have this blindless
to feel to go without thought impose

Our own cost of justice upon what we saw
and time has its limits for the mind
to fully digest, like a fine three-course dinner
we must have time for it to impress

but, once seen, once saw , once
the raw information progresses to the
pituitary gland and adrenaline
flows, instincts take over and we fight or fly

now this time, as this story digresses, I saw what I thought
was an insufferable transgression of a man
beating his dog alongside the road,
a Dalmatian she was, so I took his right arm and broke it.

I only spent one night in jail where they fed me bologna
Two pieces of bread and an apple.
Let me out the day after. And I have wondered
ever since what happened to the dog and
where that ******* is

I want to break his left arm, too!

My father died
And so did something of me inside
A mad rush headlong into love
Converted to desire of man and things
And scorched my eyes from further peace
I got no tranquility from this release

A chapter fell from my book
And as the words were left dripping
From that page where my father stood
A young man approached
A figure carrying ghosts
I thought then a friend, but now a foe

The need to turn and recoil
Left me bare and stoical
I wanted to turn my face away
And blind myself from grief
An urge to strike out hard
Left me low inside

His arms opened, he was still a friend
And forgiveness gave way in the end
A caged battalion of emotions
Cut away from deep inside
The hollow place in my soul
Like a blindless window seen from outside

The soft light burning there
Released the anxious grasp of old ideals
I can't regret these things
It is my tao from which
My new direction springs.