Just a little
Tiny tiny tiny
Don't let them see
It's just a small-medium-large cut
Don't let them know
Throw out your breakfast-lunch-dinner
If they know, they'll scream
Your glass foundation will shatter
They'll leave you behind
You'll be locked away
Do you want to be alone again?
All alone in the dark?
It's quite scary isn't it,
Being alone with me
You know what you must do
Smile
Make promises
Lie
Act calm
Make up excuses
Do what you need to do
Stay out of the spotlight
Avoid
Avoid
Avoid
AVOID
DON'T LET THEM SEE
IT WAS THE ONE RULE
THEY SAW
THEY SAW!
RUN
YOU MUST RUN
GET AWAY
HIDE HIDE HIDE DISAPPEAR
DON'T LET THE FIND YOU
SHRINK SHRINK SHRINK
BECOME SO SMALL THAT YOU CANNOT BE SEEN
KEEP RUNNING
YOU'RE SO CLOSE
JUST A LITTLE CLOSER
LOOK DOWN AT THE CRASHING WAVES
TAKE A DEEP BREATH
RELAX YOUR MUSCLES
J U M P


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OPEN FILE

[YES]             NO


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OPENING FILE


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Name: Alec Crawford
Diagnosis: Depression. Anxiety. Violent Outbursts. Anorexia. Impulse Control Disorder.
Side Notes: Self Mutilation; Keep Patient Away From Objects Capable Of Harm. Occasional Ticks And Fidgets.
DOD: May 14, 2018.
Cause Of Death: Suicide; After Jumping Off Oceanside Cliff, Went Unconscious Upon Impact, Drowned.


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DELETE FILE?


[YES]             NO


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Deletion Complete.


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I said to disappear, right?

Now I'll make sure they never know you even existed.

I play with these words out of boredom and habit.
There's so many of them! From "Aardvark" to "Zoo".
And then you add in all the odd punctuation
Like semi-and-hyphen; And Oh! Exclamation!
(and poor little Comma:  He hops like a rabbit...
He's never quite sure if a Colon would do.)

I play with these words like a cat with a twitching
Small mouse in his grasp all squealing and itching
(the cat... not the mouse... for the mouse is a wreck...
With *****'s teeth grasping the small of its neck.)
The cat is quite happy!  It just takes its time...
While Comma allows the Ellipsis the rhyme...

I play with these words and the dots and the dashes;
Parenthesis  [brackets] and to/or/from slashes-
With all of the keys 'neath my ten little digits
"Somewhat like the cat with the mouse as he fidgets".
I've learned to write well from my Pa and my Momma:
Yet still I feel bad for that poor little Comma.

She sits, emotionally bland,
Speaking mechanically;
Her right jaw, slightly misaligned,
From calcifications of former fractures;
And he is left-handed.
Lime-green circles about her
Distant, blue eyes indicate
That she has pleased him
This past week.
She believes that she
Is Improving, is better;
As the distance between
The necessary corrections
Is elongating, and she doesn’t
Nap as often.
He seems to love her more;
And frequently resorts
To audible amendments,
Or is too fatigued, himself,
To properly intervene
In her enlightenment.

She inhales, fidgets, re-adjusts,
To breathe without pain;
Calmly expressing accolades for
The strength, perseverance,
Of her son who doesn’t fail;
But weeps, in anonymity,
For her daughter who must
Have inherited her propensity
Toward weakness, malfunction.
Perhaps, over time,
He will see fit to guide
Their daughter with
Identical acts of love;
And she will be well.

She stares out the window,
Toward the windswept willow;
Catatonic, citing that
Past years, learning years,
Were resonating like the
Dry-fire echo of the
Empty Chamber in a game
Of Russian-Roulette.
The sound, repeated and
Sustained in dull memory;
The clicks that fed
The ugly tomorrows;
But her eyes sparkle as
She admits to a yearning,
For the strike of the pin
To fresh primer;
And she may only regret
That she will not hear
The Sound
Heralding her freedom.

contaminated...                            

the boy is explained in the dark
                  made smaller and tighter than his thirteen years
        invented a-tread each direful night ;
            in place of restfulness
                   he is tussled :

itchy within                                    
moans of a growth owning pain
domestic air is newly surrogate
the boy flees upstairs
the condition of the home is sickly
             excreted beads from the fibres
a pale mix is gland
                        a perspiration out of sorts
pursed
spritzed
lively          
            then a wing-ed light smog

keeping to his room                            
he sits on his bed to 'wait it out'
the sun downs                        
as fruited ideas                
                   treacle up the pine wood walls
as otherworld tones        
                             flute the flumes that plumb the walls
as his mother clears the dishes
        with the radio on
as the fathers increasing tardiness
        makes the wound hour leaden further

outside
wind starts churning up the monster
hustling the coniferous trees
stoking the forrest for its brazen voice
jeeving hard upon the house
dry *******
inducing a perverse osmosis
within                                              
          pressurized audibility is clayed
hairs on the carpet tick static
              ....  this negative duress

outside
the moon hides its legend            
an autumn owl takes the bough
     just above the boys window
    it hunches into its ruffle
       retches up a pellet of prey
fur and crushed bone
            clatters dryly into the gutter

the boy works his jaw
       relieving his popping ears
the rooms climate becomes sparky
important items radiate auras :
             the scorpion in formaldehyde
stolen from school
                          grandmas mourning ring on a string
                suspended above his desk
        an old key discovered in  the woods

investigation                          
a brief hole in sound
a slim bik of light traverses
  over the boy
    the bed
       and out into the hallway
it winks gone
     and sips of smoke
like lithe neat scraps of silk
start livening the corners of vision

he stands                                                      
open­s his closest and dresses for sleep
      yield to routine

Mother enters                              
    always a human breath                  
                                         of pre decay warmth
      here to make him into his bed
bound by her neat practiced tucks
                         the boy receives her loving words
                                  but she's in a separated world from his
distortion gums up the audibility          
he attends to lips
the blessings don't function right
mistress smudges are left in the air            
they trail from the corners of her mouth
                             with the expressive turns of her head

fending lightly from the room
she blows a kiss at the doorway
it punches a little galaxy swirl
                              and suspends
a heated blue weave of the hand
                    and she is gone

door concluded and the light left on
the wall flower patterns crick and shale loose
    they cash into the flooring
and in turn the floorboards palpitate finely
feathering into a unreliable state

less than a minute later ...                   
fathers presence                              
   makes an apologetic attempt
                                                     at a ghost-walk
sounds clumbered in an aquarium                
    he slides his back down the drunken partition
and talks
   he sells a story of personal wretchedness
some lesson is vague
flammability
the boy takes the readings                  
                  of the distant vocal squall
pauses in the erratic speech weather expect replies  
     but the boy fears this colonized version of the father

though anger
                        father does not enter
rumbles his fists, feet              
                 and frustration at the wall
stands                                            
      and­ punches his footfalls
                  to the master bedroom

the parents
together now closeted
amniotic             
their world fidgets fiercely and swells          
swaddled in their own dramatics
firing blindly                        
their voices
travel the pipes in the walls
back to the boys room
                drowned of discourse
but not the aggressive 'passion' flaring out
they plunder the boys ears

Sudden ! ;                
                  brakked smell of flint
a bird slams the window dead        
crack in the pressure
unbearable penetrating release
screaming the boy host violent
minds that bind are loosened
subpoenaed                                              ­
          the boy recoils and fends this raid
kicks off the bedding
strips free of his pyjamas
a thick layer of his own goes with it
fleecing his actual skin                        
raw stinging exposure
he tugs at the flay of his own rubbery peel
enough layers of dermis in one
grip and pull
to make real hurt
raw of pain
(it feels)
tug-tug
grip
and pull
sleeves off of limbs
and a sappy caul from his bonce
he doffs the leather onto the floor
fresh wash of song
fierce waves of signals hot and cool
he ***** up his matty sheered hide
"**** it !"
pulls up the window enough
vent
an outward 'gush' as the pressure balances
the boy                        
dispose    
      push the viscid pelt out
the boy expels
disgorged into the night

                                              - consummated

People like you always fascinate me.
Mercurial, distant, unfathomable, sometimes harsh,
You remind me of cold waves crashing on cliffs-
Separate, guarded, a depth so icy it calls, hypnotic,
At once the grasping fingers of a brutal undertow,-
"TOUCH ME."-
And the punishing fists of the swells that batter the rocks,-
"Stay away,
Kneel."
Violence and gentleness wrapped up together.
Are you lonely in there?
I wonder if an ocean swirls beneath your skin,
If the pent up power of it ever presses out and strangles you,
Demanding a freedom your bones cannot give.
Sometimes I see you staring out at the rain.
I don't mean to, but I pause and study your profile silhouetted
And for a moment I think I recognize the look on your face-
A longing for that kind of release,
A private, hushed need I've felt in myself a thousand times when the clouds have broken and flung rain at the earth.
A craving so heavy and urgent it becomes a wound, precious but aching.
The silver of the sky got all caught in your eyes today for the barest second, and I knew I was right to search your face for pain:
I've rarely seen a storm reach inside a person like that and grab hold.
I tried not to intrude, not to witness it, but...
You were so still, gazing out into the cold.
So isolated, so contained.
You strike poses like a cut stone, almost hostile, almost fragile-
"Do not lay hands on me.
They will leave no mark,
They will find no purchase.
They will change
Nothing."
When I look at you, motionless as a marble statue [if just as chiseled]
I can't help but think of every time I've ever truly suffered,
How it stilled me,
How the more chaos roiled in my veins the more the little humanities of me slipped away-
Breath, blinking, the fidgets and shrugs and sighs that make life apparent-
Until I may as well have been made of porcelain,
Brittle and hard and
Compressed.
I wonder what turns you to stone.
Pain? Wariness? Apathy?
When I see you, arms crossed, face closed,
I look at your eyes
And they reach.
As the rest of you presses into itself, crushed into hard lines by a mesmerizing desire
To push the world away,
Your eyes betray something slight inside of you that seems to ache for contact, for escape.
It is that part of you that bids me look.
That little, desperate glimmer of yearning that makes you a hurricane on the sea,
A wild, frustrated, chaotic force of nature
Barely held inside a marble body.
You're like a play, did you know?
Caught in amber, caught in ice,
The push and pull equal, opposite,
And tragic
Because they are impossibly and flawlessly matched.
It is this tension that makes you beautiful,
Not your sculpted face or smooth chest:
I can never be certain if you feel trapped by the very loveliness that brings things to you,
More vast than it allows you to be
And more complex.
I know only that when my porcelain lips clinked against your marble ones,
I recognized you
As something a little bit like me.