wind whines
haze rain
flings dishtowels
dupatta from
balconies.
150 kilometers
from the sea
I feel the chill,
nature bestows
a mini-monsoon,
relief
from summer’s sweltering
tirades.
but what destruction
could this storm, too, bring?

My 115 personalities don't crash with cracked-up loser Sybil whose
furry *** wins love in the dark, 2 sips of cream in a bowl of kibble
543 spooky incarnations ain't wrecked wacky schizoid Sybil whose
**** is prized by Central Park hobos ******* in kitty-littered dribble
or whose ****'s holy with crack hoes shooting dope without quibble



The Selves of Sybil from Wiki:

    Peggy: A nine-year-old girl who believes she is still in the small town in which Sybil grew up. Peggy holds the rage Sybil felt at her mother's abuse and frequently expresses her anger through temper tantrums and breaking glass. Like many of the selves, she enjoys drawing and painting. She fears hands, dishtowels, music, and the colors green and purple, all triggers to specific instances of abuse.
    Vicky: A very sophisticated and mature twelve-year-old girl who is aware of all the other personalities and knows everything the others do, though Sybil does not. Vicky speaks French and claims to have grown up in Paris with many brothers and sisters and loving parents. The dominant personality and the only personality to undergo hypnosis.
    Vanessa: A young, vibrant, red-haired girl about twelve years old, she is outgoing and full of "joie de vivre". Falls in love with Richard and helps Sybil build a relationship with him, until he moves away.
    Marcia: A young girl obsessed with thoughts of death and suicide, who tries to **** herself (and thus Sybil) on several occasions. Dresses in black.
    Ruthie: A preverbal infant. When Sybil is extremely frightened, she regresses into Ruthie and cannot move or speak.
    Mary: Named for and strongly resembles Sybil's grandmother. When Sybil's grandmother (the only person Sybil felt loved her) died, Sybil was so bereft that she created Mary as an internalized version of Grandma. Mary speaks in the voice of an old woman and frequently behaves as one.
    Nancy: A product of Sybil's father's religious fanaticism, Nancy fears the end of the world and God's punishment.
    Clara: Around 8–9 years old. Very religious; critical and resentful of Sybil.
    Helen: Around 13–14 years old. Timid and afraid, but determined "to be somebody".
    Marjorie: Around 10–11 years old. Serene and quick to laugh, enjoys parties and travel.
    Sybil Ann: Around 5–6 years old. Pale, timid and extremely lethargic; the defeated Sybil.
    Mike: A brash young boy who likes to build and do carpentry. He builds bookshelves and a partition wall for Sybil's apartment, frightening her badly when she doesn't know how they got there. He and Sid both believe that they will grow penises and be able "to give a girl a baby" when they're older.
    Sid: Younger and a little more taciturn than Mike, he also enjoys building things, as well as sports. Identifies strongly with Sybil's father and wants to be like him when he grows up.

The plastic straps
that smacked my back,
hurt
when I pulled them off
but I knew they’d
certainly, come back.

Dishtowels wrapped
around my knuckles
as the speed
of my fist’s needs
pounds against
a hanging bag.

Heavy weights
pressed up
or pulled in
repetitions
constantly repeating.

Sweat slickened skin
madly moistened
less from the heat
more from the forcing
of my body to move
fast and hard
across the street
past neighbors’ yards,
then jump rope
till I can hardly breath,

and repeat,
and repeat,
because I think
I need that pain
to feel alive
to feel my brain thrive
and sleep well tonight.

i never met my grandfather till today--

he dies in 1975
and today he was born
at the bottom of a drawer in the kitchen,
his coffin and crib:
he is swaddled in moth-eaten dishtowels
by a nameless undertaker
or perhaps the autophagic author himself

his crib and coffin:
he was buried a lifetime,
deaf to my own cacophonous et cetera

amidst cardboard boxes
he arises, stretches
and sits on our couch, transparent and whispering
his earliest recollections in ink from distant trenches:
he eats sliced-up milky way bars,
listens to little orphan annie and the manhattan rainstorms
as they flood his empty pillowcase;

my earliest recollection is a blank notebook,
never happened,
didn’t fall from the sky till three-quarters of a century later
in drops of impossible invisible ink

in 1934 i smell decades-old storms
and tobacco smoked by children;
today he tastes dough
from hands of women he could have loved

we break toys, apologize to our ghosts
listen to drops on macadam phantoms.

we think tonight was cloudy.

we left identical sleigh tracks in identical snow
laughed identical laughs whose echoes and imprints
are separated only by city and by many, many newspapers.

we remembered the same sun,
the same rain and lightning

and we both wrote that we may be heard
over the century’s thunder
but stopped, hid, tired, retired—

shaking hands
halfway to tomorrow,
never touching—

two strange strangers
left sleepless and motionless in the same notebooks,
the same house:
in the same cradles and the same coffins.