You drove away and I thought my nose would bleed
The lump on my head makes me wobbly
Or whatever they stuck in my drink
The roar of that old red engine ringing in my ears
Go die
The boy who doesn’t know how to be in love
Leave me alone to get drunk
On the tears you leave me to
It always ends in tears
Don’t leave me like this
You always leave me like this
Go die
And leave me to mine
The lump on my cerebral cortex is getting bigger
Swelling by the minute
And I’m drinking water
And trying not to let whatever you stuck in my drink
Get the best of me
But I think I’m leaking
Leaking salt water and your own ****** fluids
Leaking my dwindling supply of iron
I’m bleeding
The lump on my head swelling to golf ball proportions
My heart turned to a solid lump
I wait for you to come back and apologize
But you never do and you never will
So maybe if you woke up the next morning
And I didn’t.
Maybe if you heard the words
“her brain hemorrhaged in her sleep”
Maybe if you had to go on without me
You wouldn’t complain about the way I fall in love
And the way you can’t feel ****
You don’t know ****.

After she drank his bitter wine of selfish, pathetic love
She slyly sang him her haunted chant
"The laughs on you", she crooned in her soft malicious tune

At times, she could act with chicane
She had many charms when treated well...
Deadly ones - when not
Oh yes...
She herself may at times have sinned
But he-had the stain of evil, paltry love

Now...Inside her gossamer labyrinth she lay
Carefully, diligently spinning her web
Revealing nothing-and everything
She'd weave her silky snare inside his heart
Laying her toxic eggs of betrayed despair
Spinning her poisonus venom of painful truth

Oh yes...
Her bite is deadly now
She could have been his 'Velvet Rose'
But, he crushed her petals rare
Ending her silken dreams
With his evil malicious schemes
Her spider's web became untethered
Attaching itself by a single thread
To his shoddy veil of evil, selfish love
    Now...She is the hunter
    And...He is the hunted
In the coming eve...
She'd deliver her poisonous, lethal sting
He'd be noones's lover now
Her threads would cut his miserable flesh
Her deadly venom would seal his fate
Remaining nothing more
Than an ancient, slithering shadow
All along the castle walls

For some time a deadly secret she doth keep
"Revenge”, she whispers, while he sleeps

She was once his only lady
With ivory skin and beauty fair
She fed him nectar from her raven hair
His betrayal seared her hemorrhaged heart
She'd warned him with many words and fiery stares

"Thou shalt not indulge in wicked fare
Be ever so watchful, do not betray
Beware, where thou heart doth leave
Take heed" said she, "Just who thy seed deceives".

In her chamber dark at night, this maiden fair
Planned his demise with scourged nectar, bitter sweet
Stirring her venomous, poisonous treat
Or would dagger to his heart she’d plant
Bid him die a dark and painful lingering death
Upon his sleeping body that she'd leave
As she crept silently into his chamber -
These words she bitterly but victoriously said...

"Thou shalt betray no more.
Thou has sinned against me...
Taken my love in shame
"Betray no more", she said".
     But now
Thou is thankfully, forever DEAD!"

Her silken threads had cut his miserable flesh
Her deadly venom had sealed his fate
    Now...he remained nothing more
Than an ancient, slithering shadow...
All along her castle walls

For years
the square inner courtyard,
surrounded by sky-reaching apartment complexes,
accessible only through brief

openings

between the buildings
whose windows looked down
soullessly upon our child's play,
contained my entire world,

and I did not perceive any difference
in the hands, faces, and seasonal limbs
of my friends--

But when I returned
the openings had closed,

the courtyard inaccessible
to an unrecognizable Cincinnati child
whose white face and green eyes
brought only memories--
1884, 1929, 1944, 1967,

and angry April showers
that drowned disapproving windows
in curfews of 2001.

And I do understand.

But,

Would the windows open if they knew
there's black in my line,
way back in my line,
from a time when ships like the Delta Queen--

sailed the Middle Passage
monikered in false virtue
granted by titles like Henrietta Marie--
brought African queens instead of slot machines--

when the fields of mud ran with blood
hemorrhaged from Makhulu's
innocence forcibly stolen
by Grampa's lust.

Now I must window
watch my own daughter,
recalling the lesson
on the names of the week:

You know daddy,
someone just made those names up.

And I can see
beyond her blonde pig-tails--
the darkness of her eyes
recalls the act of shame--

coupled with the sharp wit
of a chained matriarch standing proudly
on the auction block declaring:

These waterways are all connected.

She was a tiny, angel of woman,
mindlessly moving in a chemical haze
Her heart barricaded tormented
from her long, lonely days...
From dancing on the edge of a pin  

Twirling oblivious on a bar room pole
trying to live her shoddy role
Stripped of dignity, ripped of grace
that’s imposed upon her lifeless soul…
As she dances on the edge of a pin

Her teardrops falling, slowly slipping, silently dripping
leaving behind a clear, salty trace
as they slide down her cheeks
like icy blue, watery veins on her weary, tear stained face...
While dancing on the edge on a pin

She dances mindlessly without care
from one seedy bar to another
in faded, jaded memories blurred by her past
Through misty, watery depths she bleeds
trying to quench a thirst so deep
in her hemorrhaged, sedated heart so worn, so torn
by her dreams that did not last…
As she dances on the edge of a pin

She slides down the pole performing her dance
floating in an igneous swirl of aqueous, diluted anesthesia
Demons eating and devouring her soul
through her darkened descent of amnesia…
Dancing on the edge of a pin

In painful depths that twist and turn
in her nebulous, muddled reality of unspeakable memories
that cannot exist in her mind
lest they drive her deeper in a shattered demise…
She dances on the edge of a pin

Childhood dreams
that were stripped cruelly of their parts
her mind wanders in a foggy, semi-conscious state of grace
from hungry teeth marks
left on her innocent, delicate face
Cheap, neon lights bathe ******, shoddy floors
in seedy, darkened bars that smell
of stale cigarettes and *****

Dangerous, dingy, low-rent neighborhoods
leased by lurking, lewd, slovenly men
who try to ***** her every move
She sits on an old, bar stool, sipping amber colored whiskey
from a *****, shot glass
waiting for drunk, salacious men to approach
handing her their grimy, rumpled cash…
As she dances on the edge of a pin

Ten dollars a dance to the tune of one weary, old song
or twenty dollars an hour to some drunk, bleary eyed man
for sixty minutes she’ll dutifully belong
Shadowy features biting at her heels
Unnamed creatures gripping, clawing at her heart
like broken shreds of steel
Her soul so bruised from so many wounds that cannot heal
A fragile, beautiful soul, so battered, so used
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One sad morning the headlines of the daily news
printed one more, sad obituary
of a beautiful soul so badly abused
Her parents were sent a note
from the bar where she’d last worked
that said…

“Your daughter used to work here, but now that she’s dead
will you please stop by and pick up her clothes and shoes"?    

       Death of an angel

The box of fire-starters I had found in the back closet
seemed very simple in their use.
Simply turn the curved side down
and apply a flame.

We really wanted a fire.
Not only were we in need of that comforting presence,
but the spectacular show of  trees and mountains
had disappeared with the sun
and the images of windy lake ripples, although profound,
seemed already years in the past.
We had the night to look forward to,
and our enthusiasm for the stars
would be exercised by our frequent excursions
to **** down some cigarettes out in the parking lot.
So it was decided,
this fire would be our inside entertainment for the evening.

The little black bic seemed a bit inadequate,
but the situation was soon remedied
by the discovery of a larger and quite adequate butane torch.
Now we are in business.
Despite the new firepower
only a small flame caught.

After spending a winter without heat,
in a home that hemorrhaged warmth,
I had become proficient in starting fires
with wet logs and numb fingers,
leaving me with a tendency to add too much fuel.

The little flame was adorable.
it wobbled back and forth on the flat side of the fire starter,
reaching up towards yesterday’s paper
and the cardboard case of Coors from last night.
I felt like a proud parent when it’s wispy tendrils
finally got a hold of the remnants of the pasts dubious reminders.

I’d spent my youth in that one room cabin.
Weekends I would roam the mountains
and dig deep holes in the snow to hide in.
Unfortunately, due to a small oversight,
I had never properly learned quite the trick
for opening up the flue.
I assumed, quite wrongly, that the wee bit of airflow from the fireplace
insinuated proper ventilation for the impending combustion.

A fire alarm
is one of the most panic inducing sounds.
We tried desperately to knock the flue open
praying that the growing fire would have room to escape
and save us from the dismal fate
of burning down my families favorite weekend getaway.

Mere moments after admiring the fragile
and fleeting existence of my little flame that could,
I drenched a towel in the sink
and smothered it out
before any more damage could be done
(which really only consisted of wet ash).

We spent the rest of the night smoking cigarettes,
getting high in the floodlights
and twitching with the panic induced paranoia
the aborted fire left in our chests.

And later, once I had gone back to the real world,
I learned that the flue lever had to move,
not left and right,
but up and down to open and close.

Perhaps an introduction is in order.

We are fields of graves, bone-dust lying soft beneath the earth, footnotes in the annals of history. We are housewives, warriors, mothers, witches, healers, poets, inventors, philosophers, seekers, servants, royalty. We are young and old and middle-aged. We are the line of relentless faces in front of The White House lawn, the chaffed, frozen fingers gripping banners of purple and gold. We are wombs that hemorrhaged from the unforgiving wire of coat hangers. We are the tender and unbreakable who raised generations under the weight of our ***.  

We are legend. We are life-source. We are women.

In any case, we have something to tell you, our daughters, who are so defeated you can barely find a reason to go on. Listen.

You come from the guts of the Universe and are equipped with more power than our society knows what to do with. From cradle to coffin, you face a world which tries to snap you in two at every chance. You are branded with labels as soon as you’re old enough to attract attention. You are *****, ****, *****, ****; weak, silly, inferior, dim, useless. You are good for your body and if your body is not good enough—if your hips are too wide for **** and your ******* too small for beautiful and your hair to rough to be desirable—you aren’t worth anything.

Each time you turn on the television or computer or step outside your home, you are assaulted by what you should be, told to go to war with your sense of self. You’re something always in need of fixing and this only intensifies with time. You are naturally unclean, too wild for your own good. Men won’t touch you unless you are smooth, supple, and hairless—practically childlike. They shudder at any mention of the monthly blood flow between your legs and the way your abdomen clenches and aches, proof that you can create life.

Your most base rights and liberties are still (God, still) the source of violent political warfare, because Human does not apply to Female. You are ***** in billions of ways, stripped and stripped of your dignity, your power, and those sweet stars in your eyes. You stand in the center of a great mob, and their spears are all pointing at you.

We burn for you, are enraged to the point of combustion. We’ll never forget what it was like to be in your place. The memory of such oppression will always be imprinted within us, reverberating long after death. Our softest, deepest apologies are with you, as is our softest, deepest admiration. We hope you can feel it.

We hope you’ll put down your despair for a moment, listen to your heart drumming away, and remind yourself that your subordinance is man-made. You are crafted of the same atoms as Eve and Joan of Arc and Cleopatra, your strength is infinite. You are pure helium, rising, reviving and resurrecting, again and again, on and on.

Lift your chin, raise your eyes, and breathe from the root of your being. Don’t be frightened; we are with you. The fight goes on.

An earnest, sad face standing before me
guitar in hand, at last
I hear the words of a song
written one year before, but never sung
whose score on pages had been let go
to be caught up in the wind
and played almost imperceptibly
in the rustling and swooning of tree tops
Had he said these words to me
I would have known
I would not have been buried
beneath a doubt so heavy
that I was unable to sit upright
fears and insecurities sowing seeds of destruction
aware that all our laughs and smiles
were nervously reaching, like wandering vines
grasping for a place to climb and grow
Leaving meant his feelings could not bind him
so music and lyrics were given
although he burst into tears
and could not finish its entirety
lips tremors speaking “this is not goodbye”
But I knew it was
and I was stunned. Paralyzed. In disbelief
standing barefoot in my driveway
watching his sobbing face through the windshield
without enough sorrow to make him stay
I honestly thought he could not go without me
But I was wrong, I was left
numb, a walking zombie
hearing myself speak
feeling my face smile
moving about as if I were still alive
through the changing of seasons, workdays and holidays
until gradually I belonged to my body again
For years, this remembrance hemorrhaged
with tears from a cancer ridden heart
But now I exist  
on the other side

There stood Colossus gripping tightly
At his injured head and whimpering,
Hemorrhaged for centuries and crumbled
Down to the crying blocks below,
To the crying nation below.

There stood tragedy in her nightclothes,
Caught unaware and unprepared,
But still willing to give the boys a show.
There drifts the smoke and burned up men.
There falls the mighty God of Rhodes.

Hanging now is the thick dust that blinds,
Hanging now is Comedy’s tired head, weeping
From sadness and silence and the ****** dust.
In the roads, the people stand and scream,
In their homes, the people sit and mourn.

Televisions show the Colossus fall,
But the only sound is a news anchor, bawling.
The crushing concrete quenches some
Of the hungry fire, and unofficial officials
Dive into the carcass for survivors.

The Hudson washes down the morning
With debris; and somewhere far off
I am seven, looking at the walls,
Wondering why our class
Doesn’t get a TV.

I begged you once to eat the leavened earth
which aged and became green by violence

You needed to be full and satisfied
discovering that my stomach had dried
which made you remember the excitement of life

One morning in the stems of aquatic ash plumes
that were rising and shuffling to create
a theater of artificial night, the arm of
the high sea hemorrhaged and
buried skeleton eras

We devoured the earth for love and still the Lord’s blue voice
was fathered like dust in light which we could
see only because of the Sun

Slowly ending
Your long fever blew the ash sickness
away and I wept watching
your perfect body disappear
into the shade of the bleeding, green forest

I spy something
Murky red
And in the
Bottom of my cup.
I wash it down with
Something less than
Reluctant
While leaving the
Rust,
Or assumed iron,
To chance,
This one chance
And not to be
Repeated.

Tomorrow,
Now today,
I spy something
Murky red,
Once more tomorrow,
Tomorrow’s tomorrow,
Again and again
And day after days,
Rusty red
In the bottom of my
Cup –
I grow paranoid.

I empty the
“Keep,”
And creep into every
***,
Tea-***,
Pan and/or
Cooking tool
Seeking
Threatening material,
Foreign material,
And lodged in my brain
Material.

So too,
Amid my investigations,
I’d discovered
Alzheimer’s,
Dementia,
Blindness,
A stroke or two,
And in some cases
Death
Had you ingested enough
Ore,
Or so I’ve heard.

I spy
Metal flakes
Atop
Metal constructs,
Heavy,
Soft, caustic,
And broken post
Point-of-sale,
Broken
And now in me,
Circulating through my –
Spleen,
Kidney
And brain.

I’ve developed a
Phobia
For unwanted edible metal,
A curious
Cereal
Resulting from the
Cartoon
Of my
Dying grandfather,
Once an architect,
Now ten minutes to
Tie shoes –
A brain hemorrhaged
Iron, I’m sure of it.

Red petal maw
Growing wide
And Gasping deep
On the sill like skin
Grown Ink bled red
Making scrawled critique in patches
And the poppy addled spring
Blooming rich and red
All over the ward
Till the air smells sweet
And clean and white
Dancing in the rattle draft
till the breath grows soft
And still

I saw the hemorrhaged gorge
of deeper red
That welled inside him
Like the blossom
When I pressed his hand
And held his head

I watched the wither
Beside him in the night
Wondering with him at the dreams of dying poppies
At the furrows of their season
The Welting swollen purple and blue
Heaving
And dripped in IV's
Pluming in blood
And pooling its petals
One by one

Like forget me not
At the crest of spring
Making breathing a shallow
Easy thing
Forgotten among the poppy's blossom

I killed my ego with a pen
Using backstabbing verses
Of betrayal and pretense.

But from all the ***** ink it bled
The pen hemorrhaged to death
Such inglorious ruination.

The blood scribbled on the paper
A nonsensical composition
Now a useless paraphernalia.

I skillfully crumpled the evidence
And threw all dead bodies to the bin
A towering pile of unworthy victims.

I'd gladly replace them with fresher supply
As I satiate my thirst for more intriguing pieces
Worthy candidates for my delightful collection.

It’s not what it looks like.  It’s never what it looks like. 
                                               It’s all wrong
                                                                ­          somewhere.  

Out in the Ukrainian backwoods, Chernobyl looks
like a ghost town some thirty years later.  Intact but
abandoned, vacant—hemorrhaged of humanity.  Like in mass
everyone left the city to buy some milk and never returned.  
Life in the standstill.  Lights left on now burnt out.  Meat
thawing on the counter now mold on the counter.  Laundry
half folded on the bed.  The bath water
ran and ran and ran until the well dried up.  

You wouldn’t know that the soil and
                                                                    the cats and
                                                  the dogs  
                were radioactive
unless you held a meter against it to measure the roentgen.

The hermit crab soft underneath its hard shell.
The mold growing around the core of the shining red apple.  
The asbestos hiding in the insulation.  
The lead in the paint on the crib.  

Sometimes, the things that look the most fine can **** you.

I should be able to hear what everyone is saying...
The sudden realization serves as requiem in the form of a cool steel breeze
one that ebbs and flows to me
recounting a time of mindless days and apathy flooding in
Endless days
and hemorrhaged youth
conceive but don't produce
i'd like to think i'm all in and wise
but I really don't have a ******* clue
at least
not anymore

go back to your roots -- so I dug,
knuckles deep in mud, where the roots were thickest.
Worms tied themselves around my fingers;
it had been a good year for rain.
I dug past tunnels and underground kingdoms
until the soil crumbled
until pebbles became boulders became bone
until spines stitched the earth shut,
scars that once hemorrhaged
something distant.
I dug until my knuckles bled
and dirt puddled into paludal flames.
Sweat glistened in the lava light and sizzled
drip by drip from my fingertips. For miles more
ash choked me, pressure suffocated me,
fire consumed me, ripped me up raw as I screamed,
I kept digging until I scraped the last of molten earth aside
and gazed onto what keeps an earth whole,
what I’ve always known: the liquid fury within.

How many times
do I have to look up begging to know why
My prayers and pleas screaming and thrashing against my fracturing hemorrhaged consciousness
As tears surge out my eyes

how many times
do I have to lay here abandoned
Your touch your warmth your comfort an undeniable desideratum
When you're ice cold right next to me refusing to acknowledge me.

I start to inwardly convulse and collapse
I want to scream
I can feel myself fracture, shatter and rupture.

I want to smear my own ****** handprints over my face and tear out my hair
Lay down on the floor bleeding,  pumping direct out my heart
My love my sorrow my fears and my heartbreak, a thick miasma.

How many times
do I have to implore the moon not to take you away from me
even as I'm Told and Assured I'm Unwanted,
Leaving is an incomprehensible, inconceivable, fantastical CONCEPT
The horror and the fear and the pain at the thought overcomes and overwhelms me like dismal leaden shroud.

My fingers itch for a blade
to come do the work
To etch on my arms
Red vivid proof that I'm hurt

How many times
I don't want to die but I beg for death
I plead with the Man as he refutes me with every Un breath
I beat on his chest telling him I can't go on
Not without you, without you a moment would be too long.

I told everyone
that you were dead.
I accepted their condolences.
Smiled politely,
while my chest hemorrhaged.
Somehow,
that just made sense.

Sacrificial semantics, cardiac romantics, bred into generational poetic descriptives
I am the result of ancestral language, yielding powerful Tenochca dynamics

Who scraped away the dust of the moon and bled tangerine into the sunrise
Blanketed by riveting time, my leaders soured through chaos and sculpted pantomime
An humble cry revealed craters in the sky and hailed reflections amongst the horizon

Who wielded away the iron of the sun and hemorrhaged into the darkness
A pulsating, heartless rhythm that distinguished an iron hand to honorable freedoms

Sacrificial semantics, cardiac romantics, bred into generational poetic descriptives
I am the result of ancestral language, yielding powerful Tenochca dynamics

Black scar of earth shears bow out of sherbet sky
Brown forking river prongs swishing through dead underbrush
Glow of center console in twilight fields
Time steps carefully through this moment

The east sets in pale Earth shadow
Horizon sparkles with waking man-light
Starless sky fades imperceptibly to night
with tectonic indefinance.

There is fire in the west every sunset
And many days I did not look
Eyes hung heavy stone orbs
Articulated via earthen roots

All those roads led endless towards Rome
Where leather seats sweat sweet in steaming summer heat
And Late moon hemorrhaged pure silverlight in the desert stillness
Still my tallow hands flake against the looking glass

The concert is scheduled for tonight.
I must cancel; there is no other choice.
I can’t step into those harsh spotlights
Now that I’ve lost my voice.

That golden throated baritone
Has left me, I’m afraid.
A vein has hemorrhaged in my throat
And threatens all I’ve gained.

It was the stress of all those gigs.
I never turned one down.
I thrilled to hear girls scream my name,
But my health has let me down.

Is it over?  I wonder
Do the doctors even have a clue?
Will I be able to perform again?
Is Frank Sinatra through?

Now with the most recent events,
Got jumped about 3 times because of things that weren’t even my problem to begin with but I have the family name so yeah, my left eye hemorrhaged, if I ever get hit or fall on it I will go blind for good.
Broken and cracked ribs, left cheekbone was broken still swells every now and then.
Oh
I almost died. AGAIN.
This time was when I was drinking with my niece who’s actually a year older than me.
We went for a cruise that was indeed a drunken cruise.
She drank way more than I thought she did and I was drunk too.
We were driving on the road to my grandpas church,
She tried to turn around so we could go back up the road cuz that road ended by the river.
Instead we high centered and slid into the ditch.
We were balanced on a old buried tree trunk.
She tried to push the accelerator all the down to rev us out, that caught the dry grass on fire. And then the left driver side tired caught fire.
So I had to climb out the back left window of the van, and pull her out.
Now that should’ve been it, but I thought I could get the van out of the ditch.
So I ran back into the now burning van,
Grabbed our phones and tried to grab the insurance papers.
Burned my hands in the process but I got out,
And just in time because it did explode not a big one but it exploded.
I could’ve died and somehow I just got out in time even though I went back in.
I couldn’t breathe, it hurt to breathe.
I couldn’t stop shaking and repeating what happened in detail to the cops the emts the doctors and the nurses.
The shaking scared me because of the fact that I couldn’t just stop.
My hands were tingling and they felt like someone used sandpaper on them or something.
The strangest thing was that I kept telling everyone to call Della, the girl that left, my ex. I just wanted to talk to her.
I remember being in the van before I had to Climb out the back, that I kept seeing mountains in my mind.
I saw mountains, the black hills, the yall prairie grass, I saw the desert sands of New Mexico. I saw every place I loved and all I kept thinking was “please whoever’s  listening let me get out of this alive because I have to see her again. I promised her I wouldn’t die or **** myself. I promised her let me get out of this alive please, she’s gotta know I’m okay I have to be okay, I have to stay alive, I gotta move I gotta get us out. I gotta live, I can’t leave her like this even though she ain’t around I can’t leave her in the world by herself I gotta get out, I gotta move.”
I don’t understand I almost died three times in my lifetime and I am here.
I don’t get it. Just hope it’s for a good reason.
I hope it’s worth it, & I will do my best to make it the most of it.