2002:
today i kicked the door
to history off it's hinges
my jealous frame:
still too proud to say a word
it seems my folks forgot
to pencil in growth marks
cause they thought their boy
would never grow out of small breath
******* dead, years now buried
and i bare his name
too many syllables
for my father to go back
fish & play football
to stand in the yard and play catch

1994:
my mom, the bombshell in retrospect
broke her back in her sleep
a thousand times
since the stairwell in 87'
she still sits for spills
post nuclear about settling
now from the couch
she's a weather report
spouting nonsense
that makes my father
grow grey, crack remotes
& slam doors to dark rooms
abandoning ship
for "cheers" & "scienfeld"
while my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets his place at the table
and my appetite is abducted
by family photos
my mother says things like
"go see your brother today"
-- Johnny's long gone
don't you remember?
we buried him
the day your smile died

2014:
you are inches from me
******* a stray hair
caught in the fabric of your coat
the last remnants of a dog
we laid to rest last week
and here we are
in the hospital again
people don't shake like dogs
finality is found
in the eyes of humans
passing archways
into shallow rooms
where plague and prayer
are the only songs sung
round the stagnant clocks
it makes me wonder
if the clipboards cry
over being the last thing
someone ever writes on
take a number, have a seat
stay a while
i am back, 7 years old
& there are different doors now
they buried the ones
you kicked in that night in '92
when my lungs
were filled with holy water
you never stopped smoking
*i never grew out of asthma

One hundred to five to one to one
no one
They don't need your apologies
Come around the stand and say that to my eyes
you don't see
They don't crave verdict driven "sorry"s
nailed to a cross by a stone gavel
Burn that haunted cross
As the hearts and souls of the teaming
wish they could do again
trying to stand against definitions of self
definitions of manhood
little girl, only thirty-three years old
silenced in fear, silenced by fear
as the confident voices blow into her ear
1...2...3...4...5
times two
a grip that claims, that yells, that demands
a redefinition to the meaningless phrase
I love you.
Three months--- screams are muffled in horror, quieted verbals
ringing where only one can hear
Seven years---body is sliced by knives as she looks in the mirror
and sees a human hole.
How can you live, how can you say
that you know that everything will be all right with time
Who gets time?
Not ninety-nine thousand
demoralized, demonized, unrecongnized,
set free with a fine, or gone undefined alltogether
as Fear's closet of nails confines a million
ostracized and mortified
unable to band together
thank you judicial priority.
One hundredth of abusers given time
two years later out again
But one hundred-thousand others
hear you tell them
how to heal a womb ***** unsacred,
how to stand against a beast stripped naked,
how to quickly turn a limb placated
before it comes down to bruise her swollen rainbow skin.
And you justify a girl ripped open
entered in agony, her ***** broken
the first time she was eight years old
the hundredth time she was nine.
And you sympathize
as the sad man cries behind the podium
how can you not understand that no means no
no means don't
no means stop
stop means help me.
He understood that
he understood and he disregarded
every being on this rock for his own sick pleasure
I care about you.
he said to himself
Where were you when she got drugged in a bar
Where were you when he was ambushed by orange
Where were you when her husband refused to hear her terrified words
Where were you when they pleaded to anyone
Please please please please, Oh God make it stop
Now where are you behind your news desks, your podiums, your microphones, and your clipboards
when they risk their lives to ask for justice
when they cry out for the safety of their daughters
of your daughters
only so child souls aren't slaughtered
as they are thrown into a system that insists
they are not good enough.
A system of blow-up dolls, of pop songs, of stripper poles
defining a woman as only a hole.
He stole my innocence
You stole my dignity.
You stole my dignity, you stole my daughter's, my granddaughter's, sister's, aunt's, mother's
when you insist that the fix
is covering my body
shielding my ******
and saying no.
No is what I say to you
No is what I say to your apologies, your sympathies, your pities
She shouldn't have to get down on her knees for him
or for you
You say you've seen everything
Maybe you've seen everything
Films, shows, the **** scenes of everything
But you have not experienced everything
And I pray to God
that you have not done everything
But as far as I know, you haven't done anything
And legs and mouth and hearts
will be torn open
as hope is stripped from the holy bodies of the screaming unspoken
over and over and over again
Ninety-nine thousand lives you do deprive
where were you when she died
terrorized when the judge whispered
1...2...3...4----

‘This is a pleasure. A composer in our midst, and you’re seeing Plas Brondanw at its June best.’ Amabel strides across the lawn from house to the table Sally has laid for tea. Tea for three in the almost shade of the vast plain tree, and nearly the height of the house. Look up into its branches. It is convalescing after major surgery, ropes and bindings still in place.
 
Yes, I am certainly seeing this Welsh manor house, the home of the William-Ellis family for four hundred years, on a day of days. The mountains that ring this estate seem to take the sky blue into themselves. They look almost fragile in the heat.
 
‘Nigel, you’re here?’ Clough appears next. He sounds surprised, as though the journey across Snowdonia was trepidatious adventure. ‘Of course you are, and on this glorious day. Glorious, glorious. You’ve walked up from below perhaps? Of course, of course. Did you detour to the ruin? You must. We’ll walk down after tea.’
 
And he flicks the tails of his russet brown frock coat behind him and sits on the marble bench beside Amabel. She is a little frail at 85, but the twinkling eyes hardly leave my face. Clough is checking the garden for birds. A yellowhammer swoops up from the lower garden and is gone. He gestures as though miming its flight. There are curious bird-like calls from the house. Amabel turns house-ward.
 
‘Our parrots,’ she says with a girlish smile.
 
‘Your letter was so sweet you know.’ She continues. ‘Fancy composing a piece about our village. We’ve had a film, that TV series, so many books, and now music. So exciting. And when do we hear this?’
 
I explain that the BBC will be filming and recording next month, but tomorrow David will appear with his double bass, a cameraman and a sound recordist to ‘do’ the cadenzas in some of the more intriguing locations. And he will come here to see how it sounds in the ‘vale’.
 
‘Are we doing luncheon for the BBC men? They are all men I suppose? When we were on Gardeners’ World it was all gals with clipboards and dark glasses, and it was raining for heaven’s sake. They had no idea about the right shoes, except that Alys person who interviewed me and was so lovely about the topiary and the fireman’s room. Now she wore a sensible skirt and the kind of sandals I wear in the garden. Of course we had to go to Mary’s house to see the thing as you know Clough won’t have a television in the house.’
 
‘I loath the sound of it from a distance. There’s nothing worse that hearing disembodied voices and music. Why do they have to put music with everything? I won’t go near a shop if there’s that canned music about.’
 
‘But surely it was TV’s The Prisoner that put the place on the map,’ I venture to suggest.
 
‘Oh yes, yes, but the mess, and all those Japanese descending on us with questions we simply couldn’t answer. I have to this day no i------de-------a-------‘, he stretches this word like a piece of elastic as far as it might go before breaking in two, ‘ simply no I------de------a------ what the whole thing was about.’ He pauses to take a tea cup freshly poured by Amabel. ‘Patrick was a dear though, and stayed with us of course. He loved the light of the place and would get up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the mountains at the back of us.’
 
‘But I digress. Music, music, yes music . . . ‘ Amabel takes his lead
 
‘We’ve had concerts before at P. outside in the formal gardens by AJ’s studio.’ She has placed her hands on her green velvet skirt and leans forward purposefully. ‘He had musicians about all the time and used to play the piano himself vigorously in the early hours of the morning. Showing off to those models that used to appear. I remember walking past his studio early one morning and there he was asleep on the floor with two of them . . .’
 
Clough smiles and laughs, laughs and smiles at a memory from the late 1920s.
 
‘Everyone thought we were completely mad to do the village.’ He leans back against the gentle curve of the balustrade, and closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Completely mad.’
 
It’s cool under the tree, but where the sunlight strays through my hand seems to gather freckles by the minute. I am enjoying the second slice of Mary’s Bara Brith. ‘It’s the marmalade,’ says Amabel, realising my delight in the texture and taste, ‘Clough brought the recipe back from Ceylon and I’ve taught all my cooks to make it. Of course, Mary isn’t a cook, she’s everything. A wonder, but you’ll discover this later at dinner. You are staying? And you’re going to play too?’
 
I’m certainly going to play in the drawing room studio on the third floor. It’s distractingly full of paintings by ‘friends’ – Duncan Grant, Mondrian, Augustus John, Patrick Heron, Winifred Nicholson (she so loved the garden but would bring that awful Raine woman with her). There’s  Clough’s architectural watercolours (now collectors want these things I used to wiz off for clients – stupid prices – just wish I’d kept more behind before giving them to the AA – (The Architectural Association ed.) And so many books, first editions everywhere. Photographs of Amabel’s flying saucer investigations occupy a shelf along with her many books on fairy tales and four novels, a batch of biographies and pictures of the two girls Susan and Charlotte as teenagers. Susan’s pottery features prominently. There’s a Panda skin from Luchan under the piano.
 
These two eighty somethings have been working since 8.0am. ‘We don’t bother with lunch.’ Amabel is reviewing the latest Ursula le Guin. ‘I stayed with her in Oregon last May. A lovely little house by the sea. Such a darling, and what a gardener! She creates all the ideas for her books in her garden. I so wish I could, but there’s just too much to distract me. Gardening is a serious business because although Jane comes over from Corrieg and says no to this and no to that and I have to stand my corner,  I have to concentrate and go to my books. Did you know the RHS voted this one of the ten most significant gardens in the UK? But look, there’s no one here today except you!’
 
No one but me. And tea is over. ‘A little rest before your endeavours perhaps,’ says Clough, probably anxious to get back to letter to Kenzo Piano.
 
‘Now let’s go and say hello to the fireman,’ says Amabel who takes my arm. And so we walk through the topiary to her favourite ‘room’,  a water feature with the fireman on his column (mid pond). ‘In memory of the great fire, ‘ she says. ‘He keeps a keen eye on the building now.’ He is a two-foot cherub with a hose and wearing a fireman’s helmet.
 
The pond reflects the column and the fireman looks down on us as we gaze into the pool. ‘Health, ‘ she says, ‘We keep a keen eye on it.’
 
The parrots are singing wildly. I didn’t realise they sang. I thought they squawked.
 
‘Will they sing when I play?’ I ask.
 
‘Undoubtedly,’ Amabel says with her girlish smile and squeezes my arm.

When the emergency room
is at maximum occupancy,
the nurses will lay down
their clipboards and utensils,
clear their throats, and ask for
women and children
to approach the desk first.
To ensure proper care,
forms still must be completed promptly,
and as patiently as possible for the
patient to be processed.

There's the occasional backwards R.
But all is acceptable with a
signature by the X.
Adrenaline coursing
through veins may perhaps lead
the cause of instability,
some instances coarse skin.
A child with the heart of a lion,
shell of a turtle, will always overcome;
rest assured, an insured child,
prints their name with the
unmistakable yet
innocent backwards R still
knows that words are as powerful
as excruciating pain.
Sticks and stones and words alone
have been known to break through bone.

With the twitch of a finger
even Danny Torrance made
the word "Redrum" seem
like a word to reflect on,
if not only a feeling
of constant déjà vu.

Intensive care is a surgeon
not leaving a wristwatch
inside of a patient,
if not a cadaver
whose time ran out.

who needs a clipboard anyway?
the back of a lover's legs are enough
lacking the flat judgement of wood
embracing the fluid of my words
upon the sweet kiss of skin.

absorb me in the cracks of your mind.
soak me into the patience of your smile.
drink me in the holes of your eyes.
lead me into the scars of your past.
lose me in the folds of your heart.

crack open the yolk of my heart
and let me leak into my streets of veins.
allow me to drip into your soul
and sink like grinds to the bottom
of my midmorning melancholy coffee.

the ink of my favorite pen
seeps into the threads of my sleeves.
i sit, watching it spread across fibers
to infect new lands and
conquer old stains.

my ship never had a sail but
my hands are strong enough oars
i can carry myself across oceans
treading night after night
until i reach you on the shore.

For my autopsy, there will be a crowd around my corpse, layed flat upon a dinner table so when they cut into me the dogs know they're in for a feast. I want them to use a pen to open my chest, they'll find my heart over stuffed with love-poems, to feed int oa machine that will determine my exact cause of death. They will find so many vessels clogged with grudges, half-truths, my sons generation will need a triple bypass.

I want them to drag that scalpel across my skin like "Is this how [x] made you feel?", open up my stomach and find enough swallowed pride to lead a thousand men to their doom in some ugly battlefield, not enough paycheck stubs to make my bank stop calling, a note I was going to leave 35 years later when I hung myself in some office cubicle, and some expired tags to a license plate, because I couldn't get the **** out of here.

I want them to speak into tape recorders and scribble on clipboards, open up my lungs that look like the crumpled up cellophane you toss away from a pack of smokes and find all the breath I've held for someone else so the atmosphere can take one big inhale, and choke.

I want them to document the burns and cuts on my hands, her skin was like a stove-top you forgot you left on, her hair full of briar and the finest papercut edges, someone said they were good looking hands but they've done some ugly things, the calluses look like shields, so even when I open up my palms, my guard isn't down.

For the final ceremony they can quarter me because the world has dissected and separated me, I hope my tendons are used to tie together some little girls swingset so I can finally feel all this stres and strain is for someones benefit.

They can take my arms and hands, put em to work to pay off my debt to a government grant like "Nobody smokes on the night shift?" Are you kidding me? Take my lungs too.

They can take my legs and feet and give them to a paraplegic, watch him become an olympic athlete, because my legs are toned and trained from all the dreams I've chased. Maybe someone else can pull these ******* past a finish lane.

I hope they drain all of my blood and use it to fill a thousand pens, and I could save a few good people some strenuous heartbeats, put a little bit of the sandmans real good **** on some bloodshot eyes, hand out some cookies and juice to get the sugar flowing, because everybody bleeds when they write.

Give my heart to a girl so she can write down all her problems and stupid inside jokes on it, and toss it to a corner of her room where she lays down from exhaustion, forget it in her car, at her friends house, on the counter of a desolate library. When she finds a heart with a little more polish, a lot less IOU's and a LOT LESS tolerance to being used, she'll know how to keep it in mint condition, because no amount of life insurance on full coverage, the interest rates skyrocketing through the roof and ironically digging you a hole, can cover the bill, when a heart breaks.

For my autopsy, there will be a crowd around my corpse, anticipating the nap of a vulture with a full stomach, oh and right- about my brain? Good luck with that, their hands will look like someone caught them stealing, and **** the rainforest they're gonna need some toothpicks, I don't even care about the leftover pieces-- but no amount of shiny surgical tools or a practitioners 10 year medical degree funded by the slack jawed desire to make people pay for a check up none of need, will be able to dissect my soul.

Forgiving the initial insane
with news abstained
ingrained
in-brain
retained
by the unrestrained
emotions, untamed
untrained
explained
by lab coats
clipboards
needles and pain
hurt, in vein
struggled in vain
to obtain
the truth refrained
by lips restrained
from medical terms
and privacy red tape
and while our hearts yearn
the anticipation escapes
from voices shaken and strained
by family, friends, staff, and passer-by;s
as a single word has stirred
emotions, devotions
a word better left unheard

Cancer

I stand at the flagstone fountain in the park and gaze across the street at the red brick bungalow where I lived as a child. Am I supposed to intone something? Summon a spirit? Or perhaps I’m the one who’s been summoned? Ghost of myself.

Set into the steep hillside, the house faces west. A boarded-up plate glass window makes it blind in one eye. In the summer, from that window, I watched postcard sunsets. I also learned watching there that the world was TV.  You watched it. It didn’t see you.

On the opposite wall, on a sofa, our family watched on a 15 inch portable Sears black and white with the collapsible rabbit ears men first walk on the moon.  We welled with pride in the space program. I ate Space Food Sticks and drank Tang.

Around to the side, behind the rose bushes, through that small basement window was my bedroom when I was 10. A tiny square of sun on the brightest summer day was all the daylight that ever got in.  There I first felt inside the base of my spine a small hard coldness. The night before, my three best friends had slept over to celebrate my 11th birthday.  Tonight I was alone.  The coldness grew.  It tendril’d into an icy tingle that radiated up my spine and through my arms like a metal cage of disappointment.  

Years later I learned the name of depression. But then it was just  cold inside my spine. And the cold spoke to me. “Davy, this is how it’s gonna be. It’s just you and me. Make room.” “You’re wrong,” I said.  “You’ll see. I’ll meet Ruby Tuesday.” I turned up the transistor radio and pulled the music close to me.

Through that bay window just above, the dining room table, my father and draft-age brother late on summer nights had it out over Vietnam.  

“Immoral, unnecessary, we should not be there,” my brother said.
“You know what happens if we’re not there?” says dad. I was in Korea. When the communists took over, in came the guys with the clipboards. Anyone who spoke English or taught school or owned a business was lined up against a wall and shot.
Yeah, well, we should not be … dying … bombs…bloodbath…reds.

Drowsing I no longer heard the words, only rising and falling pitch, a duet of bitterness, anger, wistfulness, probing for connection And into the night as darkness took hold and the voices merged with the rising and falling rhythm of cricket sounds, harmonizing like sleep.

abuse is a picture that I am forced to paint
with colors I have never seen.
if I draw fists into open arms,
if I sketch an apology in between berating,
if I fill in every empty space with love,
no one will come running for
the child who cried help.

abuse is a phantom limb
still covered in bruises.
white coats and clipboards wonder
how it can still ache when it is no longer there,
infecting me with their doubts.
sometimes it feels heavier
than it did when it was a part of me.

depression eats at my weight until my skin is taut,
boarding up my eyes and locking my mouth.
blame has found solace in this blood,
guilt mutating my thoughts.
my potential used to live here,
but abuse has a reverse Midas touch
where everything that could have become gold
withers in its hands.

Don’t stand for too long
Or even wiggle
Because that's exercise
And exercising is a behavior
Unless it’s time for the daily walk;
Then you must go
Even if it hurts and you feel like a dog
On an invisible leash.
Never spend too much time alone
In a room away from the people you barely know
With whom you are stuck all day and night and
Forced to share toilets and
Puked-in shower drains and
Cramped kitchen counters and
Painful secrets you wouldn’t even tell your mother.
Precious heartbeats spent alone
Are called isolating and they are bad.

A smear of avocado hastily forgotten on a butter knife
Raises suspicion and a quarter teaspoon more must be replaced.
But heaven help you
If you pour a milliliter too much orange juice.
This is disordered behavior
And the few offending drops must be poured out.
Time will teach you
That wholesome rosy-faced girls much younger than you are
Holding clipboards with your life on them
Will treat you like a child
And disregard your hard-earned quarter-century
As a fish disregards an airplane.
Black tea past three o’clock is criminal;
It must be eschewed
Lest the minuscule amount of caffeine
Affect your sleep eight hours before bedtime
And override the Seroquel and the Ambien and the lithium.

And don’t you ever shut the door or flush the toilet
‘Til they’ve come in
To ogle your **** and ****
And when you’ve finally proven yourself trustworthy enough
To shut the door and flush
Never stay in for more than three minutes,
Even when taking a dump.
You will be suspected of purging
And you will be grilled like that eggplant you didn’t taste
Until you beg them to take your blood and say
Please please check the electrolytes and the pH
And I will even *** in a cup!
I don’t care! I just need you to know
I’m telling the truth.
And never say you feel sick to your stomach
Especially when it’s true.
That’s just an excuse people like us use
When we want to yodel to God
On the big white telephone.

Thirty seconds stolen in your room
To brush unruly hair is forbidden
Unless your waist-length hair
Is nearing dreadlock status
Because you might be Up To Something in there.
You can say **** but not fat
Unless you are justifying a tablespoon
Of Catalina dressing
To the Food Police.
You can’t have a hand mirror because
You might smash it and hurt yourself
But you will be surrounded
With lovely, breakable little picture frames
Full of inspirational quotes.

If you’re upset at dinner
It’s called anxiety.
If your heart hurts and skips beats
From years of puking your guts up every day,
It’s called anxiety.
If you need your space
It’s called anxiety.
If you can’t meditate
And you get so bored that
You let a juicy pregnant wolf spider crawl
Over your hand and arm seventeen times
And instead of OM SHANTI OM your inward chant
Is I Am The Walrus
It’s anxiety.
If you tell them you’re not anxious
It’s anxiety.

You can’t have your wallet
And your phone at the same time
So you’re less likely to run away
But they never check to see
Where your debit card and ID went off to
When you trade in your wallet for your phone.
They never notice the triumphant curve on your lips
Nor the slight stiff rectangle
In the breast pocket of the flannel shirt
That is perpetually around your waist.
You will keep these with you
All day and all night
In case someone drives the final corkscrew
Into your ear and you must vamoose
Before you find yourself
Floating white-knuckled in a deluge of blood
Grasping a cheese grater
Surrounded by seeping lumps of people meat.

But this house models the real world.
You are sick and you have no idea
What’s best for you.
After three weeks they know
Exactly how you work
And if you don’t agree with that
You are wrong.
You will relapse one day.
If you don’t agree with that,
You’re wrong and you will die
Because you can never quit cold turkey with food.

You must learn to enjoy the food
That you fight and claw and scramble to make,
To enjoy each perfectly metered tablespoon
Of peanut butter,
To delight in hastily and stressfully prepared dishes
Upon which you are terrified to put condiments
For fear of being told the selection is inappropriate,
To relish weak iced tea with no ice because
Someone took it all and never filled the tray,
Sparingly seasoned with two Splendas,
Carefully handed out and locked away by the keyholders,
Never sweet enough,
Never ever sweet enough,
The real sugar of real life replaced by
Bitter ******* brandied with the saccharine syrup of so-called safety.

White padded walls, they are the only ones that heed my calls. The doctors stand outside with clipboards, questioning my actions. Wanting reasons for my violent conviction. Their time is short, why waste it on me. I'm not crazy, just eccentric. In all I do, I am eccentric. Quick witted, sharp tongued, eyes wide open. These men and women in white coats know nothing. Text book junkies with no sense. I am insane, to a point where its comforting. Never caring for the consequences or repercussions of actions that may or may not have any merit. A hunt for fool's gold in the diamond mines of my mind's eye.I've lost track of the minutes, hours, days, weeks , months, years, decades, centuries, millenniums. Like moments that past as fast as a blink, time escapes my grip.Like my insanity, it comes and goes like the wind.White padded wallsThe only listeners of my callsTell me to hushbut the voices in my head say " you're crazy, walls can't talk".

The white-noise sends him off to sleep,
a sedative pill to ensure a peaceful stay.
The nurses look on through the peep-hole
at night, and thud knuckles on the door
come morning. They are watching for signs
that he is still talking to the stars.
He claims multidimensional beings
can manifest as light,
and correct old constellations
into broadcasts for today.
As the students peer into his cell,
they scowl with concentration
and write furiously on clipboards.
'A high-functioning romantic'
he wrote in self-diagnosis,
and the pills helped with that
in the only way that they could.
He has learned to **** under observation,
a Gorilla in the leaves.
They fog the glass in fascination
at the sleeper in the cell.
Once they caught him *******.
He thought that he should put up a show.
That natural function too hard to swallow
or compress into a hand-book.
In the evening he watches
the sports-news revolve,
wishing his soda water
was something a little more severe.
By night the inner-city light pollution
near-destroys any hope of a message
The pill is slipped before
he has begun to lay his head.
He may be losing his sweet imagination,
but he happily chose sleep instead.

I hate it when my biscuit commits suicide
in my cup of tea.
I hate that TV is about celebrity, banality
and reality.
I hate that even though I have a job, money
still alludes me.
I hate being woken up and going to
bed in a bad mood.

I hate adverts on the radio.
I hate stupidity
facebook debates and vanity.

I hate people who think I'm a traffic light
and those oblivious to where they're going.
People who can't stop relentlessly moaning!

I hate that learning's on the decline
I hate shopping , boredom
and "being dolled up to the nines."

I hate that everybody just waits for
things to get better.
I hate that a 'good' hair day depends
on the weather.

I hate assumptions, non-conclusions
and skin ablutions that don't work.

I hate that the art of conversation is
adrift in this technological generation
I hate time-wasters, calories and kid with
no respects for elders.
I hate that journalism's no longer 'cutting edge'
or about the truth.
I hate profound sayings about too many cooks
and spoiled broth.
That I'm incapable of telling people with clipboards
to *******!
I hate martyrs , can't be ****-ters,
ignorance, arrogance and man-made disasters
The non-stickiness of plasters!

I hate public transport, rush hour
and being stuck inside.
I hate people who wear tracksuits but
never exercise.

I hate queuing and clichés
I hate opinions on mental health
and those who just can't help them-self.

I hate people who relentlessly moan
who can't stop trying to sell stuff over the phone.

But most of all I hate it when

....

                                                         ­           Ah! Forget it .

Pink

Slide down,
Dissolve
and rise; synthetic
inspiration
    manufactured by strangers with
Clipboards
and labcoats
and beakers.
 
And I don't mind, no --
I don't mind your origin at all.
 
Only the destination.
 
          Come to me.

Living in a corner,
Desolate –
Alone.
Surrounding – surrounding.
Suffocating and bleeding on the outside,
There he sits,
On pristine white sheets,
And a dying dream in his head.

Outside the bullets ring beneath his finger,
The gunpowder traces patterns of silk.
It coats his clothes as morning musk.

Inside, a choir sings, happy - joyful;
Hymns of harmony.
Inside he never did;
He never did check in;
Into those big white walls.

Clad in the sky and it's ***** of fluff,
He can't let go,
He can't accept,
He can't define the horrors;
The madness.
Behind his own demons,
Behind his own burdens -
What he could never do.

What happened on the outside?
What happened beyond the sea or white?
The restriction of the big white walls?

Inside, everything was fine.
Everything was crisp;
Everything was clean.
Family laughed at pure jokes.
Children sauntered up knolls full of overgenerous seas of color.
Life was like a fairy tale.
He had a life worth living for.
A life where there were no twists nor turns.
There were no shouts of agony;
There were no firing rings.
He had a sister who still admired him -
Who still stood by his side.
One that he felt he needed to protect.

On the outside,  he knew he ruined it.
He knew he took away her last and only breath.
He says he's sorry -
He prays to be forgiven.
On the outside, he is rarely there:
He is rarely sane.

Daring death,
He will sit.

Outside he will be poked.
Outside he will be prodded.
Outside he sees the clipboards.
Outside he is tested:
Outside he had a diagnosis.

Mental -
Unstable -
Crazy -
Freak.
The words circle his brain.
A hawk stalking its prey.

On the outside;
He thinks to himself, 'this isn't real.'
He tells himself, 'this isn't real.'
His family is still taking their breaths.
The gun never vibrated between his fingers.
He tells himself he's dreaming.

He will always be on the inside.
Even as the years grow old,
And the planets crumble under a fallen touch.
Even if in reality, it isn't real,
He thinks, 'it is.'

On the outside is the truth.
On the outside is the regret.
On the outside id the remorse.

On the inside is the peace.
On the inside is the tranquility.
On the inside is the life.

Living in a corner,
Desolate –
Alone.
Surrounding – surrounding.
Suffocating and bleeding on the outside,
There he sits,
On pristine white sheets,
And a dying dream in his head;

For the outside is an asylum,
and the inside a false paradox.

You won't believe this But it's true
Life is sometimes stranger than fiction, at least in my world it is

Near my house across the road there's an American Style Diner
They do all kinds of lovely Hamburgers and fries, Chicken burgers, Pizzas and whatever
They also do a lovely full Irish breakfast Bacon, egg, sausages, black and white puddings, hash browns, fried tomato, beans, mushrooms big *** of hot steaming tea or coffee and all the toast you can eat
(I've been over there a few times)
It'd keep you going all day long, very nicely thank you.
There's also an Oil Depot office attached to the Diner with Oil trucks parked along the side

Now back in the Winter of 2021 with the Covid scare/epidemic at its height
My Oil for heating the house was starting to run low
So I rang Peter the Oilman across the road and asked him to deliver me some oil
The next day the truck comes over and fills up my Oil tank
The driver leaves the bill in my letterbox
I have the next day off work so I say to myself I'll go down the supermarket tomorrow
Get some money out of the ATM machine and pay the bill (as you do)
So the next day I get in my car, now there's a big hedge in front of my house, like for privacy
So I can't see what's going on along the road
Well I drive down to the front gate and suddenly my jaw, it drops I can't believe what I'm seeing
The Police (the Guards as we call them here the Garda in the Irish) they've cordoned off the road
And are directing the traffic
The American Style Diner has been taken over by a film crew... it's a film set
There's big lights and cameras, all kinds of electrical equipment and Vans parked
There's people going around with clipboards
And they've put up this huge giant Elvis cut out statue type thing in lights
Him in a white rhinestone suit with his guitar
And it's towering over the Diner
And I'm there looking at all this thinking "What the ****??? Is this reality or am I dreaming, somebody pinch me quick
This is... this is feckin' Alice in Wonderland
Between getting funny dreams and having funny things happen to me
I can't quite believe my eyes
It's like the circus has come to town
Or it's like... it's like remember when you were a little kid at school in the Winter and there's snow and you hate school
And suddenly the school boiler would break down and they'd have to send everybody home
It was like Great! Hurray! Chaos... Freedom had suddenly broken out
Here was just another ordinary humdrum day and now something extraordinary had happened.

I could see Peter over in his office, it looked like he'd been cordoned off too
So I decide to go down to the shop and get some money, do a little shopping and come back quick
When I come back the Guards have now left the scene
I count out the money to pay the bill
Then I walk across the road right through the film set
There doesn't seem to be any security men there to apprehend me
(maybe they know I'm just a local, no one says anything, I'm like a ghost )
I walk real slow, with my profile jutting out like a bust of Julius Caesar
I'm half hoping someone will shout "Hey you! Stop!!!
And it'll be this Director or Cinematographer with a lot of camera lenses around his neck
And he'd be looking at me through one of these camera lenses
And he'd be saying excitedly "That face! That face!! it's just what I've been looking for
It's exactly what I need
It's... Why...It's the Face of 2021"
Alas! It's not to be, no such luck
I wave in at Peter in his office
His door is open, I go in and say "What's going on ?"
He says "Their making a movie or a TV series I think it is, they needed an American Diner so they took over the Diner and done it up'"
Peter's there standing behind this persplex plastic type (see through) screen
And he has this strange black plastic type mask on his face
He looks like Hannibal Lecter out of Silence of the Lambs
There's a side window in his office and outside on a bench all the actors are sitting there waiting to be called for the next scene
I say to Peter "Is there anyone we know, like Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, Angelina! Angelina!"
"No", he says,"their all young actors, I don't know any of them"
Looking at Peter I say Y'know they should be making a movie about you, you're a real live hero
Everyday over here, rain hail or shine, during an epidemic, keeping the country going, keeping the houses warm, the businesses running,
(I was reminded of that Greek god chap Atlas who used to hold up the heavens)
Then I say nodding my head as if I've just figured it all out
"Y'know what, their making the wrong feckin' movie
You're the Star here, they should be making a movie about you
I'm gonna have a word with the Director
Peter starts laughing
I have to resist the urge to tell him Y'know you'd make a great villain
I pay him and thank him, tell him he might be a movie star next time I see him
When I'm back outside again I start walking real slow again, it's like the film Sunset Boulevard this time
"I'm ready for my close up now Mr DeMille"
But alas! no one heeds me, it's like I'm the Invisible Man again
I think to myself "I'm getting worried, The Hand of Fame it's getting closer every day
I can feel it
One of these days it's just gonna come out of the heavens and scoop me up
And bring me off with it some place

But who'd want to be famous anyway, reporters nosing around asking you silly questions all day, trying to stir something up
People staring at you all the time and taking photos
Would be a pain in the ****,
Wouldn't mind making some money though
The old pension fund and all that...

Like the four horsemen
They're walking two abreast
In brown with clipboards;
Bulging satchels hang by their sides,
With brochures and pamphlets
For me, who looks down from my window,
To ponder when they leave.

The crowd on the hill is talking,
Gathering, nothing's still.
All ages, colors and creeds,
Smiling, grasping, awaiting his will.

It looks like earth they're offering,
Year after year the same.
Casting nets, these fishermen,
Fishermen beget.
They're card said they were sad to miss me.

They take it from the young and old,
The ill and hale, and all between.
They are the cream between the wafers,
These Guides and their cookies.

Based on a horrible dream!!!!!!

Chapter 1
The Viewers
The blood dripped out of the nasty **** across his chest as the beast ripped vigorously through the ribs. The beast could hear the loud pounding of the heart jumping up and down covered in bits of flesh and bone. As its inwardly curved razor sharp teeth drew closer and closer, a screech from across the hall came from a little boy. He had a yellow shirt, torn up covered in blood with half of his arm ripped off showing nothing left except for a small loose broken bone dangling by a couple veins. The boy was screaming words at the beast, and I couldn’t make out what he was saying, the beast pounced off me and started to sprint down the hall. Only a few meters before the boy it jumped onto the wall and leaped past the boy taking his head clean off his shoulders with not a single movement of it legs. Then i saw the tail whip itself about shaking off blood from the boys body. The beast turned around slowly. it had a grin on its horrifying face as if it was enjoying this it then sprinted up to me with an opened mouth then everything went black.
I woke up from the deepest slumber with a shocking scream, as if all hell broke loose inside my mind. But this time it occured at only 1:45 instead of 2:00. It’s occurring earlier than usual, could this be a sign that it will be happening sooner than expected. Or thats a least what i thought as i climbed out of my old tattered sheets. I opened my eyes to the smell of newly cooked eggs, and the sight of my roomba bringing me breakfast as it tries to maneuver its way through the carpet. I think to myself “it’s going to be another great day”, as i go to get the meal from the little robot. I waved towards the glass panel where the doctors are standing writing on a clipboard. I shave off the hair of my beard as the razor blade softly touches the skin on my chin.
As i was getting dressed i was having flashes of the dream, i was starting to get light headed. The doctors were seeing my heartrate rise, my blood was flowing rapidly through my body. My nose started to bleed, with a rush of blood i fell to the floor squirming around like a dying worm. My eyes started to shake in  my head, suddenly i felt almost like there was a sharp point trying to find its way through my head and push out my eye. But it was failing miserably, it was already in my eye trying to find a way out. It sees the light, its going through the my pupil as it punctured a hole in my eye causing it to blow apart. Almost as if someone had taken a small shaving knife slicing across the retina allowing the inside of his body to find a way out through the head.  Blood squeezing out all over the side of my face. With a handful of worms starting to pour out of my eyes onto the floor you can already tell it was another failed experiment. The lab coats didn’t care about it, they only started laughing throwing their clipboards at my bleeding corpse. Then one man steped forward and said “ there’s no need to get mad boys we’ll start running tests on the little girl next….. Just you wait Josaia, I’ll bring you back one way or another.” grinning from cheek to ****** cheek he smashed my head with his foot causing the blood to splatter all over his lab coat. Then everything after that was plain black with the faintest voice saying “on to the next one, I’m done with you, you stupid insect”.

Chapter 2
Swallowed
I was in my bed fast asleep, waiting for the drugs to kick in as I’m thinking ” I can’t wait to die today”.
Then I felt like the bed just got swallowed by the ocean and blood started to fill my lungs as I tried to breath. But to my liking I can somewhat breath a little while the blood is flowing through all my pores. My skin starts to stretch, making holes in my arms and legs. As the bed fills with all my blood, my skin rips off, piece by piece.  With skin overflowing and falling off the bed, my final thought is “I finally get to see you again.¨
Out of the silence, I hear the gurgling of the blood in my throat and lungs. My stomach explodes all over the wall and suddenly the six legged creature is standing above me. The demonic beast, its rows of teeth rotating back and forth, ***** the gore and guts out of me with its enormous tongue, curling the organs into its mouth.
I can see that this thing was once human, with its heavy eyes glaring at my face, trying to see that I was more than just a meat sack waiting to be eaten.  For this moment, I am the monsterś life source. In this minute, before it goes to finish off my family downstairs, the creature is somehow keeping me alive.  
As I try to close my eyes to die off,  this thing, this Ït¨ won’t let me.  The monster  wants me to see something. I hear a voice inside my head say “Stand up I want to show you something amazing.¨  I do what it tells me. I stand.  And then I start walking toward the blood covered stairs.
The sound of buzzing and thumping captures my attention. Without hesitation I jump the stairs to the bottom.  I see blood splattered over the walls and furniture. The bodys were torn apart and spread across the floor as I looked around the room. The thumping grows louder as it gets closer, searching for me.
!!Then I see her.  One girl still alive, still kicking, with blood all over her face. Her white dress was *****, ******, and torn up. you could see the skin off her thigh it was clearly human, with beautiful tan skin, it had dirt and blood mixed together to make almost rust colored prints up and down her legs. Then the voice in my head said ¨ look closer my boy, blink a couple times if you must. Things aren't always what the seem to be¨, so i blinked and rubbed my eyes a little. The girl slowly turned into this horrific figure. The legs had bites taken out of them, the skin was black and rotten the dress was drenched in blood. It was torn up so much that you could see most of her internal organs hanging out, but still, they were holding on by just a couple threads of flesh.
The little girl i saw only a couple seconds ago was completely gone and replaced with a rotting corpse that looks like it had be here for years, untouched by everything until an animal came in and ripped chunks out of her body to disturb the silence and peace her body had with the world. Her face was torn off entirely nothing left but broken, displaced, rotting bone and flesh. I could see that her body was being held up by strings attached to the ceiling, yet they were stitched into her head and body. Then out of nowhere she screeched, breaking her jaw off its hinges, and she jumped on top of me starting to tear out my flesh and bone.
I could not feel the pain I was supposed to, it was strange because death was not a concern to me at the time. I just want to drift off into the darkness in the back of my mind, and so I did with one last thought of her ̈I am coming Hope we will see each other, once again ̈.


Chapter 3
Obedience
It was an early night for me when my family went out of town to get away from me and my problems, and I prayed to God to send down a sign that i can have one person or one thing become loyal and trusting.
Around 11:30pm, I was suddenly awoken by an unearthly screech, it sounded like it was coming from right outside the window. Yet it still sounded like it came from right next to my ear, it sounded enormous and deadly with its piercing screech. I got up from my comfortable bed and went to the window only to see a silhouette of a giant creature leap into the darkness only meters away from where it was standing. I thought to myself that it must have powerful hind legs for it to jump that far. My mind was racing, thinking about if that creature only ran away because it saw me or if it did that on purpose, I can not stop thinking about whether or not I locked the door.
The next thing I knew, I heard banging around in the kitchen and I thought I heard a growl of some sort. Then the steps started creaking with a heavy thud, the beast is getting closer. It can smell the fear inside my mind. I can hear the light small breaths easing closer and closer to the door. The monster is at the door, I can see it’s shadow staying still right in front of the door. The seconds ticking by is increasing the tension between the terror in my mind and the horror beyond the door.
With a mind full of twisted things and different ways the next minute can go, I didn’t realize the creature had already opened the door and was peeking its head inside. The things head was pale with small strands of hair coming out the top, the teeth were sharp with blots of blue at the tip. Its horns were the most torn up almost like they went through a tree shredder, and still made it out without a second to spare. The face looked like a wendigo but had longer ears and more of a sharp dagger like eyes set on one thing and one thing only, meat. And from the looks of it I was the only meat around for a while.
From the second our eyes met I knew for a complete fact, my life was over. The beast started to walk up to me, and without hesitation, I put my hands out in front to protect myself. It just stood there for a quick second then it leaned its forehead against my palm and started to growl something then stopped itself before any sounds could come out. I said out loud “what the **** are you doing, do something”, upon hearing this, the beast says to me in a calm but deep voice “Is this what you wish me to do”?
I gaze upon its face as it says these words, as if I have never heard anything talk before. I never knew that the beasts of the forgotten woods can speak the same way as humans. The ones that speak to people when in their natural form are called familiar’s. I have never heard of one in real life, these things are usually in video games and story books maybe even folklore.
The creature spoke with fragile and gentle words when it said once again “is this what you wish me to do?”, I had no clue what I wanted to say to it. Before I could think, I said “what do you want from me”. The creature answered- with these exact words, “for you to command my soul. In doing so, you will wash away my eternal damnation, curing me to go back to the place for which I would call home and you heaven”.
I was staring in awe, when it stood there for a good minute or two. I then mustered up the courage to say “what do I call you from here on out? Or do I just name you”? The beast spoke in one of the most soothing voices I have ever heard when it said “Arzania rolice was my name before I became this hideous demon, devouring humans who defy the natural law of the wicked.” with a resentful manner when it ended that sentence.
I then said with surprise in my tone, “so you were a woman”. “Were?” said arzania with a bit of anger in her voice. “Were!? I still am! For your information during the day I originate back, and turn at night.” she said with that little bit of anger turning into sadness.

Waiting rooms with gray walls and spotted brown carpet,
Scattered with crying babies and outdated magazine stands
Tideous clickings of pens on clipboards writing in medical histories

Everyone is waiting on something here
and for the first time, I don't feel sick in the lobby

Smooth words with hungry conversation stay my new elixir
While the impulses in my brain dispell
and the world dwindles into states of impertinence

Who knew good company could soothe the cure for a neuromaniac

When I want to be seen
I want the world to turn it’s head and admire me all at once,
Bask in my glow and worship every inch of me.
I am sculpted from marble and ivory,
Every inch of my skin is precious
I shine in the sunlight like church windows on sunday.

When I want to be invisible every glance feels like a knife in my back,
eyes like daggers
ordinary bystanders morph into hallway critics
Clipboards out pens at the ready
A special page to circle my flaws
highlight my insecurities
underline my fears
I am all at once vulnerable in a place where vulnerability is a very dangerous thing to be.

There was a girl
A sad girl
With hair like untamed ebony
And eyes like tombstones and the universe
The type of girl that looks at you from under her untamed coal field
And smiles a beautiful thing
A ceramic smile
Soon to be stained by to much coffee
To much rot gut *****
The type of girl that sits naked in the dark
In a bathtub full of scalding water
The type of girl that fills subway cars full of poetry and lavender
Sitting bundled up in too many layers of clothing for this hot hot summer
The type of girl that works the nightshirt at a Walmart stocking shelves
And spends her breaks writing down story ideas in her journal
Stories about a funny girl
With clipped brown hair

One day while filling the shelves with organic caged beef
She remembers she left the journal out in the break room
And she rushes back to grab it
And stops dead in the doorway
Because someone is reading her words
And she begins to panic
And she begins to panic because the  person who is reading the worlds she has spent months scrawling
is a normal boy
The type of boy who smiles awkwardly at the red eyes she wears like a bandage leaving the bathroom
A boy whose smile is clean and whose eyes are clear
Like a watering hole fed by mountain water in the early early spring
The type of boy that knows she’s a freak and she wants so
so desperately for him to tell her that
So that he stops flashing that sliver of a monochrome crescent moon
So that he stops giving her hope that she can be anything other than that sad sad girl writing stories in the break room

One night she is cutting boxes
Her sleeves rolled up, in one of those phasic moods where she doesn’t care who sees the angry red lines crossing her arms
A scarred ladder leading to unsteady hands
She puts a new blade in and jabs it into the clean side of a box
But the blade doesn’t glide through the smooth brown skin
But the blade gets caught in the gnarled fibers
But the blade is new and the feeling of gliding through the perfect side is taken from her
And she pulls her arms hard while thinking about the girl with chestnut hair
The girl who had shared a box of wine with her last night
She looks down on the floor and sees a growing pile of red wine
And she falls
And people are screaming
And she looks down and sees the blade sticking out of her wrist
And she’s speaking calmly that it was an accident, she didn’t mean it this time
Her manager is on the phone with the ambulance and the janitor is glaring in the doorway
Forever trying to figure out how to get blood stains out from the stockroom floor
And the last thing she sees in the cacophony of chaos is the normal boy
And the grimace of fear forever plastered on his face in her fading memory

She wakes up in the hospital where people visit her like a sandstorm
And doctors come and speak to their clipboards
One day the girl with chestnut hair comes
And no words are said
Just feelings screamed into the oblivion between them
And she knew that was the last time the funny girl would ever visit
Weeks pass, and one day the doctor comes in and says to his clipboard
Insurance ran out, so you are all better now
Even though she doesn’t feel better

It starts with a fifth of ***** after you come back to your empty two-person apartment
Then a handful of pills
Than more cigarettes than your lungs can handle
This slow self destruction culminates when she goes out on her balcony
And sees her neighbor smoking a cigarette next door to her
And he just smiles and says
It never gets easier kid
He flicks the end of his cigarette after taking a deep breath
And the girl with eyes like tombstones and the universe
Watched the cherry red spark fall
As smoke filled the stars in front of her
The man chuckled
But it’ll all be alright
And the girl that with hair blacker than a crow
Nodded into the starry sky

Those grey doors, how when washed away with colour they appeal to the insane.
A dull nothingness, that helps bind the soul to nothing, another ant in the hill of dirt.

Those grey doors, where I found out that you can be reduced to nothing, back to the purity of an animal.

Kicking and screaming, bound and chained testing which pills work with what needles to bring me down.
While he cries out to a merciless God.
And he watches laughing through those grey doors.

Of course to the Gods pity is the lowest of emotions. A dreadful sin, to want to be pitied.
While they test and write notes on their clipboards on Gods image.
a nobody.
a no one.  
A soulless creature to be beat down, for his own good.
and left to soil himself in a comfy hospital stretcher bed.

Of course it was necessary, but I wonder what it would be like to go back through those grey doors.
or the black door which offers so much promise.