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Maddie Wright Nov 2014
I'll never forget the feeling of my baby brother's fingertips,
How thankful I was to feel his flesh and not empty space.
Hydronephrosis wasn't a word they told me to study for my 5th grade spelling bee,
but it somehow because my most frequently used word for the first month of his life.
Along with guardian ad litem, child support, separation
because Daddy hit Mommy, and Daddy hit Maddie.
Supervised visitation.
Daddy hasn't seen him in six years but Maddie saw Daddy just the other day and had panic attacks instead of sleeping.
Every time I see a trait in my baby brother than reminds me of his dad I love on him a little more
So he doesn't give a sixth grader PTSD one day.
Hydronephrosis is child's play when they start talking about leukemia,
Or lymphoma,
Or osteosarcoma,
Or whatever the **** it is because they still don't know what's wrong
with my 7 year old piece of heaven,
my proof that pure, unadulterated innocence still exists.
I missed two weeks of school
to make sure his dimples always showed
And to make sure Mommy didn't fall apart
I was supposed to be her rock
But my own tears wore me down.
I eroded.
Like grains of sand slipping through fingers, I watched him slip away.
He almost died in my arms.
I missed two weeks of school
And still miss days when he goes to the doctor
I'm waiting by the phone for when a check up turns into a diagnosis
Praying to a god I'm not even sure exists anymore
To keep me alive
By keeping him alive.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.i'd hate to write out a claustrophobia; there was a second who dreamed of Crimea; and who doesn't abhor infatalism; living with parents ensures a lesson in patience... lets regress! the concept of a nation is an infantile game... history stressed is only worth an immigrant's answer... how sadistic the child craves becoming cult.

it would seem that
modern poets never
left an abode
          of the *****
Virgil, free -
  how medium -
paralysed in and to
a strut -
  merely Dante -
                    recompasse -
loitering
             cry enigma
for the peeling
               onion dome
unravelled:
             lacrima dico miror.
moskiev -
  czyn -  łbędzie modno -
o czym: nagi,
             ***'on ******>dni na pal tsym a,
                    rogi snem!
******-da...
        rojter!
              gra o...
   kat w kata prosze -
na sylab a ni słowo -
krew krajna - ukiem cięta!
sfat gila i gnór
ni słowem ni litem A -
szkla rozbitit 'gnem o
   cior...
                   o szkic i
           garb w tonnym
cie... cieniem!
          ku Kjovi,
lwem na Ów..
                     orszak taki -
że nie taii zgób.

_

   well, that was, the draft,
turns out, i can unearth plenty of drafts
i never published,
given the suspension...
such petty narratives are left
for people who almost always
desire a "freedom" to speak,
rather than a freedom to think...

only yesterday, an argument in the garden,
next to a cherry tree i planted...
people your age travel!
they go to places!
they live!
          a constant reminder:
you need to be honest about
your alcoholism...
   sure... i'll be honest,
they other become honest,
   and i don't have to play into
this solipsistic mea culpa *******
as if: i'm not taking responsibility,
as if i am always to blame,
like... my translation of childhood
naivety is not a curse...
because: if i wouldn't trust people,
and make friends,
well, then,
would i just be your atypical psychopath?!
what were the choices:
either wrong, or not good...
wow!
      a grand assumption:
to be governed by laws that only
favor the rich, but slander
the poor...
            victim-who-whom-hood?
did i name, anyone?
am i rat?
       that's what it boiled down to,
that i behaved like a rat,
i said: more like a fox...
no, more like a rat...
   because i like to walk at night,
when i see women
faking conversation
         over their mobile phones...
to feel, secure?
i stalk the predatory mind-set...
    a woman pretends, or doesn't pretend,
to talk over the phone,
while walking home, alone,
at night, as a deterrent...
        i know how this works...
she'll scream into the phone her location...
i'm not interested,
i passed a woman once,
who just, had to, make it,
adamant, i was not to "****" with her...
ever see a running geisha?
i have...
        i mean: a horse needs a whip,
stirrups, reins,
  a woman like that?
who forces you to react,
to give her a reaction against
the canvas of intimidation?
laugh...
       then you'll see a spriting geisha.

and as i write this?
     in the middle of three candles...
my power-saving bulb went out,
i had to resort to igniting three candles
and sit in the middle of the nocturnal
                    Δ(ηλτα)
        or             Δ(ελτα) of "occult" illumination?
i never know which is which...
sure as **** (c)at
                 is nowhere near to (k)aleidoscope
but, hey, it's greek...
         you have eta (η) and epsilon (ε),
you have omega (ω) and omicron (o)
         you have Φought,
                       and you have ΘilosoΦy...
the stories they tell,
  about languages, that do not employ
diacritical markers,
     but insteal have to balance an orthography...
based upon the "quadratic" system,
for the aesthetic to appease "the gods"...
                EE, OO, FF, foe?
unless you spreschen ***-
           -dish, or high hebrew...
          but still... even there...
               א (alef) and ע (ayin)...
          eh, but the hebrews get away with
the fact that they hide their vowels,
in imaginary niqabs...
                akin to diacritical markers...
the hebrews treat their vowels,
like a people, who would apply diacritical
marks to either vowels or consonants:
plainly in the open.
        so some people have gone places,
Egypt, Thailand...
  i've also been to places...
kant's critique of pure reason,
heidegger's being and time...
russell's history of western philosophy...
i've been to place,
   this world cannot offer me,
a source for solace, or for envy,
    i've transcended the globalist
frenzy of people moving aimlessly...
     i went back, to the beginning of the 20th
century, nay, even further...
sure, let people travel,
       i don't mind:
  but as long as they don't come between
me (fox) and the chicken-shack (books),
we'll be just fine...

      mind you, this question opened my
narrative...
   who makes a better ms. amber (whiskey)?
the scottish, or the irish?
i can tell you, even if it's in a ginger ale
mixer...
         jameson and...
    what am i drinking right now?
                 tullamore dew...
   i mean mainstream whiskey...
              these two specimens?
  competing with, what?
          whyte & mackay... as i'm pretty sure
they can...
   but... bell's? the famous grouse?
the whiskeys that are like laphroaig
and smoked salmon?
         the irish are definitely better
at their brewing than the McDoogles...
ol' paddy McGuire figured it out,
amber, looks like diluted honey...
so it must appeal to the sweet-tooth palette!
well... if beer is the gods' ****...
then whiskey... is the gods' blood...
    have i ****** my life away?
sure... i have...
                  but i've also acquired
a capacity to see more in my mind,
than others have seen with their eyes...

as it happens,
   i sometimes return to my native womb
of zunge...
faster than it would take me,
to retreat physically,
   a drive to Stanstead airport,
loitering,
   a 2 and a half hour flight,
moving around Warsaw,
   before taking a 3+h coach trip
   to an obscure location
     and spending a month or so,
loitering with my grandparents,
in between reading a ****** classic,
akin to Prus, or Sienkiewicz.

— The End —