I have tied heart strings around my neck
and hoped the blurred vision of my
somewhat self destructive nature
would take away the optic curses
that disallow me to see what I cannot heal.

Sharpened question marks
hook into the aged rings in my flesh.
Left out for too long; forgotten.
He tries not to cry as
suspended interrogatives pull at limbs
and hang body over a myriad of "who?" or "why?"
(I forget which).

I am both the antique puppet and the
incandescent hole in the puppet master's chest,
taught to love my wooden creators
and fall in love with anything
that helps me forget about the skeletons
within my bloodstream.
Pull my strings.
Watch me come undone.

my fingers, the same fingers
that played the guitar  
I mean look at your fingers,
the same fingers you licked
after getting the sticky pale red juice
from a cherry popsicle on them  
my fingers were dug into the tall grass
my mouth, the same mouth I kissed Amelia with,
the same mouth I ate hamburgers with,  
was pressed against the ground so tight
mud was getting stuck in my teeth
and my ears, the same ears
that heard my first sounds
were filled with colored noise, with black noise
with screaming from people I thought I knew
and those mortar and AK 47 rounds that came as fast as hail stones
and then those same ears started ringing,
but ringing is not the right ******* word
because it doesn’t sound like school bells
or phones you are eager to answer
and I can’t describe what is sounds like
and anybody who does wasn’t really there
but it is easy to say 45 years later it was
like something you knew, but you didn’t know
whatever it is you knew, and contradictions
are imperatives and declaratives, not interrogatives  
like the people of “the world” think they are  
and people of the world are filled with interrogatives
and you are filled with answers
that won’t come to your tongue
because you are still spitting out the ****
from the rice paddies and the lies you needed  
to keep you from sticking the barrel
in your own mouth, but they, those who weren’t there  
wanted to believe even more than you  
so they could still look at you without thinking
the blood on your hands, the blood coming from your lost limbs
the blood oozing into the mire in some script
the dead donor did not know--all that blood
could not be spilled in vain, though you knew it meant little
when you rinsed it from you boots,
or even when splattered in your face  
the same face that smiled for the little gray square
in the year book eighteen months before      
or maybe a million years ago
in the land of affluent aphorisms
and fingers on bra straps
rather than the rock and roll auto switch of your M-16
the fingers, the same fingers
that squeezed the trigger  
and killed something inside you
while the rounds sliced the exploding stinking air  
you were happy to silently breathe

A gesture's worth a thousand words,
intimations of the body articulate:
my gas-passing interrogatives,
your inquisitive belches, remember?

At first, such unspoken jokes seemed crude,
though useful. So we refined them,
and from trees at night mock owl-calls homed you in.
Do you remember eyebrows, intelligent as lips?

In time, I developed tics, snarls, an expert shrug,
a professional groan. And I grew to resent
your sighs, your phony, irritated coughing fits,
the critical commentaries of your silences.

I turn obedience off. I’m living.
You’re inherently powerless, I know now.
It’s not about your muscles, Or your ability to wrestle and slaughter in battles.

It’s the ego that concerns me. The inability to **** ones pride.
I see you chew it, taste it, but never swallow or spit it out.
Is it sweet or bitter I wonder. If it was to be spat out and set on fire, would the product pollute? Yes, it’s poisonous.

Your interrogatives don’t intimidate me,maybe then, not now. A futile raise of your voice at the end of each phrase won’t make me flinch, not once.
you think you’re in complete control, but your voice is faded, it’s
over powered by the ones in my head telling me to
“live my life!”.

I’m sorry I ignored your advice.
Did it hurt your ego? Yes. Good.
Go lick it, feed it. Leave.
I’m fixing the life you almost broke.