yesterday my feet rested comfortably on the bar of someone else's chair
and my eyelids slid heavy and the world seemed slow
a graph of survivorship curves glowing blurry on the whiteboard
and then words slid from behind a neatly trimmed white beard
". . . .as our bodies are programmed to die."

as our bodies are programmed to die.

thousands of miles away
one gleaming thought against a murky sky
(that's how i imagine it anyway--murky, cold,
stagnant air)
a frantic explosion of lean muscle power
and a body launching into the lake.

he was 17 and in that moment gears somewhere in this world shifted,
numbers were crunched and
some profound device processed the seconds, linking and unlinking them with an automatic, well-oiled certainty

he was 17 and the number on his football jersey suited him like wool socks on winter feet
his stride under the lights a weekly prize to all hungry, bleacher-ed, washed-up life-hunters bundled against october-night chill-streaked skies
they drank hot cocoa and he took three sips of gatorade

he was 17 and his smile
and his curls

and we all hear about hospitals but
this feels different because
he was 17 and suddenly,
instantaneously
his body was just a beep
and his skin turned the color of the walls

first the ICU painted quick brushstrokes across his wrists
then it stopped giving a **** at all

and the water rushed endlessly, heartlessly.

when I shift through memories and
find his seven-year old face in my mind, i remember a gap
where he'd lost a front tooth and i remember sunlight streaming behind his hair
it was valentine's day and he gave me a small smile and a silver charm bracelet in a powder blue box.

i shifted my feet
heard the snap of a binder closing
and all i could think about was
the oversimplification of words
and survivorship curves
and 17 years


and
and

piles of numbers spurting from a computer

and an echo of a splash.

Can't talk about, can't write about, a single thing but loving you
Don't mean to schmooze, my shameless muse, always down for aimless cruise
stare through window glass at tunnel lights that zoom straight past our heads
I walk on air, dodge solar flares, ignites my mind when I'm in bed

I can't stop, cotton to moth
brushstrokes swirl upon the backdrop
slumping over center console
dream about centaurs and scary monsters
shake me awake and tell me its okay
I know it is but it feels better that way

And I feel a nostalgia a sense of old security
the same I got when I was young and fell asleep to the TV
underneath the afghan with unwravled threads and fraying ends
hold onto me while I nitpick the same old **** inside my head

I can't stop, cotton to moth
brushstrokes swirl upon the backdrop
slumping over center console
dream about centaurs and scary monsters
shake me awake and tell me its okay
I know it is but it feels better that way

Tell me baby is it true?
Should I ride or die for you?
can I be your passenger?
or do you find me lackluster?
I can't let it be the thought of you and me
scared that our future is tragic history
and every time I find myself ready to shift gears
something holds me back, some aching type of fear

I can't stop, cotton to moth
brushstrokes swirl upon the backdrop
slumping over center console
dream about centaurs and scary monsters
shake me awake and tell me its okay
I know it is but it feels better that way

Paint me a way home
I no longer want to be alone.

Use your yellow paint
And engulf me,
Into a beautiful world
Without any restraint.

That blue can be used
As the new sea,
Full of life
and full of being.

I will no longer be afraid
Of the wideness of the sea.
I will be comforted by the brushstrokes
Of the new beginning.

Paint me a home
White, with no mistakes.
No smudges
No gray.

Most importantly
Will you paint me?
With no mistakes, no smudges
A pair of new eyes
as blue as the sea.
Paint me and my being.
Make me feel yellow.
Make me happy.

I don’t want to feel lonely.
I want to be painted lovely.

It was the day before Thanksgiving
and we stood outside across the street
from my home.  The sun was shining
in the distance and the deep solid
clouds were frozen in silence.  I
lit my cigarette with a lighter
and tried to breathe in the words
that were running out of your mouth.

You were tired of being with me.
The love that we had was running
it's course.  You were losing your
balance and creativity.  I paused
with each breathless beat, letting
the diction rise in the shadows
and fall upon my chest, letting
its existence settle inside
my veins, as I flicked the
embers on the gray pavement.

My soul was fading yellow with
scarred and stretched surfaces,
aching brushstrokes beginning
with no meaning, while I shook
my head and turned away towards
the silent trees.  A part of me wanted
it back, the tender love that we used
to share over midnight poetry, the
******* we used to do over
R. Kelly's song, Bump and Grind.

But I knew that we were too far
gone across the distant seas.  
And as you kissed me on my cheeks
one last time, I knew I would never
see you again.  I watched you walk
away in the distance, a smoky love
diminishing in the ashes.

You don’t know what it’s like to dig and dig and dig in the dirt with bare hands
digging toward fecundity
I am trying to find the honest words
Buried under our mother’s bones
But all I have now is the dirt under my nails, and
because I am a woman
I set my bucket of soap and water down hard
I scrub the blood out of the wood
My knees tear open from supporting my own weight and soak the floor
Every clean movement forward is erased by the brushstrokes of my own body
Please
Don’t tell me you know something about housekeeping
My body is an apology I can’t scrub clean

Smoke weaved like sinew of an ethereal hand and caressed my fingertips, slowly moving up my arm
Wispy tendrils lingered gently upon my shoulder as sunlight poured down from the heavens
The incandescent monsoon flooded the vibrant courtyard, leaving shaded puddles in its wake
Darkened caricatures of trees and grass crept along soil as a swaying audience, captivated by the symphony of a million chanting leaves
Ashes like snowflakes danced in the wind and left charred brushstrokes on cobblestone parchment
In the midst of the warmest breeze, I sat frozen, awestruck, constricted by aesthetic chains
Picturesque details stitched webs that bound me
But no spiders sought my flesh
Instead I fell prey to the hope of seeing such beauty again

2-** Fire

I look into her beautiful brown eyes,
and see a depth of soul revealed.
The brushstrokes of her past, a quiet language.
Sunlight catches the shades of amber,
blinking away secrets of the night.
She wakes and looks into my own—
a simple, jade-green stone in a stream.
And I wonder what she sees when she looks.

I feel her pain as if it were my own.
But the spark in her eyes remains.
A love that lives in a place of quiet sorrow.
It is not for me to know the beginning of the hurt,
only to stand on the mountain with her.
To feel, without judgment, the tears she holds back.
Her soul is a world I am blessed to be a part of.
I see her life, and I feel her worth.

I look at the woman of immense emotions.
So fragile, so soft, so tender.
And yet, so strong, so resilient, so independent.
I watch as specks of gold light up when she smiles,
the flicker of wonder at a simple thing.
The intensity of her stare when she catches me watching.
I see the faint glimmer of who she was,
who she is, who she chooses to be.

My soul is bound to hers.
The spark in her eyes is my reason for living.
I cannot read her thoughts, but I know her heart.
I am on this shore, a constant observer.
I feel her pain, but I see her worth.
My love is a testament to this journey.
And through her eyes, I do not just look.
I live.

I painted irises
in watercolor whispers
seduced by a new season,
violet pastels of autumn blushing
tall within the burnt orange,
sprinkled in falling leaves
amidst the scent of
juniper and pine
as I dream of your eyes,
mahogany blossoms
inspiring soft feathered brushstrokes,
for absolute beauty
always does that
to me

Drawn on strings of moonlight visions are whispered in love notes and poetry
Future brushstrokes on the echoes of eternity
Enigmas in candid but if you look closely
Sun petals
Soft tempos
Giving solace and solstice to the sun-kissed and weary
Delicate and hardly above skylines and kiss me’s
Daydreams and the uncanny act of tripping on galaxies never lasts through the laughter and the sadness in the symmetry

Despite the next level of genesis in trinity
Stands the heretic consumed with the brevity of setting free
Amassed and exhumed the expanses of longevity
Sporadically bloomed now the tragic is ahead of dreams and shivers in the night
Unparalleled and strung by kites and carousels and river streams
Never made of sense in seems the abstract is the kin that breathes in metaphors and similes
Terraforms and then it leaves entranced within lost reverie

Such is love and loss and finding peace

And across the stars I’m still finding me

Past our past,
Yours and mine,
My soul yearns,
As I walk by silver clad trees; 
A favourite parked orange vintage Saab;
And memories newly raw, too.

I

Then quite extraordinarily,
The Cosmic Whale,
Stirs in my solar-plexus,
And my objectivity dissolves,
As conscious consciously hears:
The song of my inner Gypsy,
And look!
My Narwhal,
Up among the stars,
Beyond days and nights,
Roaming free,
Scything milky ways in half,
Fireballs disrupting,
In infinite timelessness,
Beyond the pull of gravity,
Where no vortex holds:
The 'othering' whirlpool,
That keeps us compressed
- as a collapsed star -
Gone!
At last my Cosmic Leviathan blows
- ALL is released and falls away.

II

Such is my Cosmic Behemoth:
The funnel *****
And inside out,
Is turned.
As at last on course;
Whoo! Whoo! Whoo?
But no-one replies!
The navigation station is empty:
This is motion without traction,
And no acceleration,
Slipping atoms would only slow!
The flow,
No windows either on the view,
As even visual truths are but fleeting,
And words muddy the clear unconscious streaming,
As the journey beyond mind begins.

III

The worldly maze recedes,
A bird's-eye vision steers the empty ship;
No harbours are plotted,
From here on
- endless flight in night,
Without end,
Wings blaze occasionally nearby,
A host of fireflies pattern the cosmic pool,
A whole immensity in which to dance.
Space,
Growing,
Stretching,
Expanding outward,
Not as we would have it, but as it is beyond our eyes.
Where space is born,
Again and again,
And so!
Exults in nothing,
A self beyond understanding,
In silence thrives,
Where sense logic makes no waves.

IV

The Cosmic Whale is off,
All attachments gone,
Like a flake of skin,
A fold in time -
Falls off.
The anchor dropped,
Is not retrieved,
What use is I -
When the clock's monotony no longer counts!

V

The surface disappears,
The ocean depth submerges,
In the cabin
The lights are dimmed to monochrome,
As navigators know,
Blind sees the furthest.
Charts are soon forgotten,
The imagination leads:
Ueah, the Cosmic Mind,
Vast and free
In all directions!
No need to plot a line,
Instead like the humble earthworm,
Who in darkness fertilises:
Beauty, how unimaginable, how unknowingly,
Is by all that envelopes guided,
As from the cracked ***!
Which in Reality was suffocated,
The source is nourished.

VI

As my Cosmic Whale plunges the deeps,
Look to the expanse:

     The eternal behemoth whose flight
     Everywhere provides,
     Guileless and unobjectified.
     A subjectivity that knows no
     bounds,
     Is unto itself unknowable.

In brushstrokes.
The universe,
Is as it rolls Created.
Where logic has little to do,
As all,
Already simply is.

if we were to assign emotions to colors -
passion would be where magenta and orange kiss the horizon at sunset,
joy would be the yellow of my socks every easter sunday that i can remember,
and melancholy would be just another shade of blue.

i told him,
i am not done with you yet.
three weeks post breakup,
we shouldn't feel as unfinished as we do.
like, in the ridiculously complicated narrative of he and i,
the author got up one day,
scribbled a quick ending,
and then set the novel on fire.

i read an article in an obscure magazine
about Shelley Jackson,
an artist
who got thousands of people
to tattoo a singular word
from a story onto themselves,
and then sent them back to their scattered existences.

maybe that is what this is,
another scattered story.
another vaporized narrative.

i can feel it in the air,
but not pull the phrases together.
it's like trying to hold onto smoke.
our story slips through my fingers and gets in my eyes.

if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my ribcage would look like a Jackson *******.
my head would be a paintball arena.

i am so full of indigos,
and mustards,
and crimsons,
that Van Gogh, himself, would dip into my palette
and claim to have never seen such beautiful sadness before.

i don't know if it hurts because it still matters,
or if it matters that it still hurts.

i feel the frenzied ache of creation in my gut.
i am not a painter,
but my mirror is showing me
the immaculate collection of brushstrokes
i have become.

a few weeks ago,
i was approached by an artist who offered to paint my bruises.
to collect my contusions with watercolors.

what a beautiful intention,
to immortalize the growing pains,
memorialize the bumps along the way,
to make something permanent
of these perpetual transitions.

if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my pride would be gold-plated and rusting from use, like my grandfather's watch,
courage would be the pure green of every bud that has dared to grow through concrete,
and love?
love would be prismatic,
like spilled oil on asphalt.

a rainbow one moment,
vanished the next.

Mercurial Ambrosia / Profitis Ilías and Cinnabar

From the rudiments of the votive offerings that were outlined from the Megaron, a grammar was looming that sought terminologies in the lexicons of those who would intervene in the ruling party of the same patron twin; in such a symbiosis by naming him Mandragoron.  Vernarth came already ready after the fringed platform of the Acrotera modules, and in his affirmation of how he will appear before the plinth of Athenea and Zeus, who were awakening from a reminiscence of the Nemeton Druid, to go in the responsibility of the active life of austerity, and in the greyish roots of Zeus's oak that was rummaging, attend to the lively brushstrokes of three-dimensionality of the "V", which could be seen concentrically in the Pergamon frieze. The "V" emerges from the sculptor's cardiac center of escape and perspective, in the polys-perspective of gigantomachy where Athenea apprehends the suffering Alcyoneus by the hair in a deadly belligerent perspective and in convulsions of Satanic enthronement; Alluding to the apocalyptic epistle of Saint John the Apostle, on the vertical optics of the great Maker of pnemo-images or aerial nuances in the semi-open eyes of the giant suffering in Alcyoneus, with lost encumbrances from the maternal power of his matron Gea, for a polytheistic empire and adverse towards the border of the Christ anointed in unison, and of the better-known reliefs of the Athenea panel. Her contracted forehead and her belly convulsively are constricted, which only leaves us suffering and mortal fear. In the arranged thing the giant loses contact with the mother of him Gea of him; Disappearing land leaving you vulnerable. The sacred serpent of Athenea will **** Alcioneo by biting him on the chest (ibidem Vernarth's suffering pectoral from Bumodos, Tel Gomel.)

Nike will consummate the victory, and then from the exhausted stadiums of the Pergamon amphitheater, Wonthelimar will bring the Victory with the other "V" of the goddess Nike, also borne by Athenea Nikephoros. From this duplicity both are transposed into Vernarth's "V" as an initiatory pseudonym; that will graph the reinforced twin of the Hellenic genesis of Wonthelimar, articulating from this Prótypo with the genesis of the cardinal Mandragoron that will be architectural and deified Vernarthian hierarchy:

Cardinal Mandragoron

- North : Vóreios  (Zefian Boreal)
- South  : Nótos    (Austral of Borker)
- West.  :  Dyticá   (Sunset of Leiak)
- East    :  Aftó       (Equinoctial of Kaitelka)

The Cinnabar Tsambiko, had bushy inclinations with the Mercurial Ambrosia, for the good of large metropolises of Mercurial Pollen, for those of a single deity coming from polytheistic Pergamum, in a flaw that is centrally concentrated in the monotheism of the Mandragoron, which will rise from the rocky of Mount Profitis Ilias from the height of the rhizomatic basalts, to condemn those who betray them, if they are stripped of the Lepidoptera. In the same way akin to a bucolic immortal, in dietetic miraculous, for basal ingenuities of nomenclatures, from the focal point of indigestion that dies with the digestion of sacred food, led by healing perceptions and sensations of the well-known world of ferment. It could be a Backoi, Kykeon, or Nepenthe, preferring to be swallowed by the Titans, to later filter honey that evaporates and volatilizes towards the Sulphurous Cinnabar, containing the bi-compound and sacred Mercurial Ambrosia, to later be disposed of with a vile gargle to the disposition of mortals who were to be immortal like Heracles. From this mythological infundity, the potion for Vernarth is abstracted from smearing it on his nose and on his pectoral, so that his wound that did not heal does not rot...; perhaps his Hellenic heart in rubble anticipated the destruction of future archaeological works. Or perhaps to imbue it in the chest of Achilles, like Vernarth, but it would be so as not to resist fasting. Liquids with entomology and Lepidoptera from Gethsemane in flocks come to clean the scabs of the heroes, who are only able to resist such effusion and subtle prophylaxis, stinging Prometheus a single sip in this new Mercurial Ambrosia.

just when
i thought i burned that bridge
i realize
somehow in shock each time
that you cant burn
stone

you can see the shadow
of charcoal brushstrokes
outlined on the gray surface
it crawls up the sides

one day
ill take a sponge
and scrub away those ashes
it will be "like new"

see those weeds?
in the patch of green
before you walk over
the dying bridge
they are
criss crossed in daisy's

ill pick them all
until all that's left
is yellow for
miles and miles

isn't that nice?
i thought so too
so how bout
you find your knees
and settle down
so you too
can pull weeds from the ground

This was once all that we knew.

A world in parts before we knew

     it

as such subdivisions as this, that and

more beneath that still: there was

once good and evil, god and them,

the rest of us, and

Jesus, simply looking upwards after

he flung himself forth from the dust

to the sky and the light was bleached

off and the colours leaked from our

eyes to our canvases. What more

can I say before we take more

of ourselves away from each other? What more

before you implant me into some other's

body, and the prayer completed,

and I am finally a computer? In

the meanwhile my eyes will look and

my neck will strain as the sun sets and

so does my little life: how long have I

wanted to see you again, o lord, since

my first scream of myself all so long

ago when I left my mother's salt

and was flashed into the flood of your

      world?

How long, o lord, will you have me here

to see your work through these ceiling

songs, such sonorous ringings, fleshy

twists and turns of paint as muscle

and what's that behind the cloud?

     Your finger

appareled in such golden rays?

Endless. When your ships brought such

dark skin as mine across these

times and spaces, what?, where you

surprised of my dreams to see it,

     this,

all engulfed in flames?  And

yet here you are and here I am and

here is the quiet my birth your

glory your joy the brushstrokes

the colours and the full fleshy taste

of my non-belief, leaking into my fingers,

sticky, frisk, and always.


    When I leave these, they will fall

and crumble. It will all go. In the hallways,

as I walk away: several big windows:

     Rome, sunset.

    When I leave these, they will go

and disappear. Into salt. Those large windows:

blue-shadowed branches begin some small slow dance.

     When I leave these temples they will dust

and return to dust the soil of our hands.

And the trees remain beautiful.

I ne'er half thought of you as best
Painted, frozen on canvas, still, set?
Static & unmoving...  but I do rest
In my bet you feign'd it. The man Thus, he is as a criminal! If hold he Must you as possession -Beauty's Pageant.
A sun proving to ne'er grow Stagnant.
Go'th then, swept in wind, smooth &
Seminole, with no frame to so seal In
YOUth within his lines -rather reel In
Lines of my rhymes to sustain YOU Ever
Both A's & Q's. No pause, Sure Forever.

Inks & links rather than oils soon Cracked &
Dried out, faded with careless Neglect
And old Time, proving Spell checked
Words, ripen'd on a vine, (freely repro-
Duced,) is better than stretchers 2 show
In one place, wired/hooked on a dim wall
Of your captor. His penchant 2 refuse call,
Or to face, why your smile wert so small.
Unbeknownst to the brushed up painter,
Who with gobbledygook stained your
Heart, but took you as his Sitter bitterly.
So if your Silence art your bitter Mystery,
Then book Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
As my pen chants only 4u -a wonderwall.

The country road seemed endless
And the clock was unbearably slow
So I watched the sunset instead

It appeared behind the horizon
Framing the hills with
streaks of orange and gold

Each tree stood out sharply
Like it was painted with tiny
brushstrokes dipped in ink

Just above the trees the sky turned
to a light green
then faded to blues and purples

And I will never be able to explain
how the green blended so flawlessly
into the orange

But at one point I caught sight of six birds
flying in a crooked line across the sky
Each black wing outlined in gold

And I was stricken
Because no matter how fast I drive
I will never be free like them

Behold the smooth transition of brushstrokes and bristles to the field of marigolds.
The sweet friction brought by divine hands, is the depth you were searching for.

And as the storm rolls in, high on the technicolor clouds, you take a moment to catch your breathe.
Next thing you know the rainbow wildfire blooms from the painted raindrops, setting the flowers ablaze.

It is a world created of mind made matter, and if you cannot see the parallels, then you lack the imagination!

Any fiction can carve its way into reality, that is the truth of all worlds.

That is the key, forge your ambitions and blow the doors wide open.

I used to not
Be able to distinguish
The brushstrokes between
Our lips when they pressed
Together.
But now all my paintings
Remain
Unfinished.

A nature scene memorialized
        in brushstrokes and pigments of color.

A painting to be hung on a wall
        and admired from across the room
There’s no longer a need to visit
        a habitat that is gone too soon.

While urbanization continues
       placing wildness behind the dollar.

As if we’re the first two brushstrokes.
As if our hands
together clasped emerging out of serene water
everything. Spending our time
chasing light in shadow
acting nonchalant about it.

From her window we saw
headlights moving up and
down the city. Their light
against the glass watercolored
by raindrops.
I remember how the curtains held her.

If I could peel just the flowers
off her wallpaper, suspend
them over us in midair and
have them come to life––
In the heat of it all, I’d let them
fall in slow motion.

Standing on the ledge
I can see below, jagged reminders of happiness
Treetop dreams of echoes traveled
Toes tipping the cliff face, pebbles fall
bouncing to their own beat,
unlike that of my heart,
staggered and frail

Peering down on those lives,
white picket fences in quilt top designs
like tiny ants, moving about,
frolicking between corn row wisdom and apple blossom beauty
Never once looking up to see
this man who knows he can not fly
reaching for the depths calling his name

A strong gust of wind whistles
beneath dark clouds mingling with my stare
Still moments have escaped,
replaced by the emptiness that is my mind
holding only one thought, one view
footsteps, a straight line, uncounted
in a fashion of leaving…far below

Golden horizons beckon
of a last setting sun, one final time
Flowing rays of watercolor brushstrokes
That I…we once enjoyed,
hand in hand, singing songs of a forever love
that fell like autumn leaves in silent
multicolored tears, puddles of drained melodies

I cling to my hopes…
like a crooked root protruding,
grasped tightly for fear of falling
Yet all along know I must…let go, release my dreams
I find so hard to forget…your kiss, your smile,
your laugh filling my soul with joy…but I can’t
if even there is the slightest chance…but there is not

Standing on the ledge…someone push me, please

i.
i feel you in my bones sometimes,
on those nights when the silence screams almost as loud as your lingering words,
when the portrait of you is stitched onto my aching eyelids,
thrown together in a mass of lazy brushstrokes from a dark palette.

ii.
i light cigarettes,
but i don't smoke them.
i just watch them burn out.
fade.
crumble.
like we did, endless eons ago.

iii.
it's clear to me now that,
like the land and the sky,
you and i were simply never meant to meet,
never destined to touch.

iv.
sometimes,
i can bring myself not to feel so hollow,
if i think of the better days,
when your smile wasn't a façade
and your love for me was a looming oak
in this great big forest of daft, dying weeds.

v.
but it's not worth much, anyway,
because the truth
is that your smile shines
just about as bright as the stars in the big city,
and your love for me
snaps
like a silly little twig.

vi.
in all honesty,
we never were,
we just tried to be.

vii.
you know,
i walk endless roads trying to forget you.

viii.**
it doesn't work.

(a.m.)

(a poem in several Haiku and Senryu stanzas)

The molten gold sun
on cerulean canvas
breeze borne cirrus clouds

flawless days stretching
like sun-kissed bodies - crisp white
linen cabanas

lips roughly sore from
innumerable kisses
we shimmer white hot.

Lulling rhythmic waves -
heaven's extravagant taste
- on leisure sculpt days

masterpiece pleasures,
love’s instigative brushstrokes,
paint compelling joy
.
.
songs for this:
Our Day Will Come by Amy Winehouse
Heat Wave by Linda Ronstadt
Viva La Vida by Coldplay

I have written enough to fill libraries about you.
I have painted enough to fill a museum or two.
I tried capturing worlds with words and universes with brushstrokes and everything in-between.
Did you know there are over a million words in the English language? And only 10 million shades can the human eye see.
I didn’t. It took your presence to realize there were so few words to describe your eyes,
And your absence made me notice every shade of gray caught in the damp morning light.
Flowers will grow from the dirt beneath my ribs and the world will die a million times over before I forget to write about you.
I hope you don’t stay forever, but I pray my words do.

you call me *****
label me with broad brushstrokes
to paint onto the tableau of
my life a permanent stain where
you think i don't already see one.

the joke's on you.

trying to sully an already *****
contaminated crime scene
you won't wipe away fingerprints
seared into my skin
by those who also
saw me as that *****
were you disappointed when you saw
i already had ruby red marks
of hands wrapped around my neck?
because your flying shrapnel
accusations make me wonder
if you wish you had
gotten there first.

*****.

though the declaration stings
it certainly doesn't take me
by surprise when i
see that word stamped across my
forehead any time i look in the mirror
the syllable lives between my legs
and bleeds my secret shame
but i can't let you see me cry
i can't let you know it hurts
i can't let on that i would do
anything to purge this stain.

how could you understand
that i see my reflection in
***** in the toilet so i
shove my fingers farther down
my throat to recreate
that feeling of drowning
the gags that created me.

*****.

i want to blame that
violation
or even my erratic neurotransmitters
for morphing that flaxen-haired
nice girl
into the gnarled old
shame-riddled creature who sits
silently before you
being named *****.

but it was no one else who
led myself to this place
who traversed dimly-lit rooms
of iniquity
and was reborn as this contemptible creature
i take up my cross
my new mantle
my ******* scarlet letter.

you make me want
to run through the streets screaming
to stand on a street corner
preaching the gospel
of my culpability
have you heard the news
of our ****** executioner
the *****
the label feels even more
familiar than my own name.

i don't deserve a name.

take my clothing and dress me
in rags
strip me of my name and address me
only as *****
my life will now be only
passive acceptance and
those hands will explore my hidden places
though they are as unknown
as Disneyland on a gilded
summer day
but you can watch my searing shame
in the invisible white hot tears
only i know.

don't touch the *****
or you might fall victim to
my contagious disease
of optics and opinion
myself the lowest caste of society
relegated to empty halls
and abandoned structures
where i am abandoned as well.

you seem surprised that
the *****
would be fiercely independent
would be accustomed to
being alone
but who stays with a *****?
who takes her home to
meet the family
my independence was merely
an adaptation
Darwinian evolution ensuring
i would survive
to suffer another day
another trial
another sentence.

i understand now why
criminals are handed
multiple life sentences
because i'm punished daily
deservedly so
i would **** myself and if
i came back i would
cry out for more
more pain
more lashes
lay me bare and cut the skin from
my bones and call me *****
never stop
never let me forget
what is burned into the back of
my eyelids
a memory connected to
that word
my name.

i was given that name
by violating vandals
who spray painted my guilt
all over myself
and i can't escape that night
whenever i close my eyes and
pray i won't wake up
or pray i'll wake up in some other body
uncontaminated
a form that was never touched
virginal purity i wish i could
somehow repackage and
re-insert into my ****
to purify the orifice of all
those who branded me
*****
the mantle i took on myself
and made manifest.