What is death, I ask.
What is life, you ask.
I give them both my buttocks,
my two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana.
They are neat as a wallet,
opening and closing on their coins,
the quarters, the nickels,
straight into the crapper.
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants
and moon the executioner
as well as paste raisins on my *******?
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants
and show my little ***** to Tom
and Albert? They wee-wee funny.
I wee-wee like a squaw.
I have ink but no pen, still
I dream that I can **** in God's eye.
I dream I'm a boy with a zipper.
It's so practical, la de dah.
The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,
is being a little girl in the first place.
Not all the books of the world will change that.
I have swallowed an orange, being woman.
You have swallowed a ruler, being man.
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing.
Jehovah pleasures himself with his axe
before we are both overthrown.
Skeezix, you are me. La de dah.
You grow a beard but our drool is identical.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Today is November 14th, 1972.
I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County,
U.S.A., and it rains steadily
in the pond like white puppy eyes.
The pond is waiting for its skin.
the pond is waiting for its leather.
The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain.

It begins:

Interrogator:
What can you say of your last seven days?

Anne:
They were tired.

Interrogator:
One day is enough to perfect a man.

Anne:
I watered and fed the plant.

*

My undertaker waits for me.
he is probably twenty-three now,
learning his trade.
He'll stitch up the gren,
he'll fasten the bones down
lest they fly away.
I am flying today.
I am not tired today.
I am a motor.
I am cramming in the sugar.
I am running up the hallways.
I am squeezing out the milk.
I am dissecting the dictionary.
I am God, la de dah.
Peanut butter is the American food.
We all eat it, being patriotic.

Ms. Dog is out fighting the dollars,
rolling in a field of bucks.
You've got it made if you take the wafer,
take some wine,
take some bucks,
the green papery song of the office.
What a jello she could make with it,
the fives, the tens, the twenties,
all in a goo to feed the baby.
Andrew Jackson as an hors d'oeuvre,
la de dah.
I wish I were the U.S. Mint,
turning it all out,
turtle green
and monk black.
Who's that at the podium
in black and white,
blurting into the mike?
Ms. Dog.
Is she spilling her guts?
You bet.
Otherwise they cough...
The day is slipping away, why am I
out here, what do they want?
I am sorrowful in November...
(no they don't want that,
they want bee stings).
Toot, toot, tootsy don't cry.
Toot, toot, tootsy good-bye.
If you don't get a letter then
you'll know I'm in jail...
Remember that, Skeezix,
our first song?

Who's thinking those things?
Ms. Dog! She's out fighting the dollars.
Milk is the American drink.
Oh queens of sorrows,
oh water lady,
place me in your cup
and pull over the clouds
so no one can see.
She don't want no dollars.
She done want a mama.
The white of the white.

Anne says:
This is the rainy season.
I am sorrowful in November.
The kettle is whistling.
I must butter the toast.
And give it jam too.
My kitchen is a heart.
I must feed it oxygen once in a while
and mother the mother.

*

Say the woman is forty-four.
Say she is five seven-and-a-half.
Say her hair is stick color.
Say her eyes are chameleon.
Would you put her in a sack and bury her,
**** her down into the dumb dirt?
Some would.
If not, time will.
Ms. Dog, how much time you got left?
Ms. Dog, when you gonna feel that cold nose?
You better get straight with the Maker
cuz it's coming, it's a coming!
The cup of coffee is growing and growing
and they're gonna stick your little doll's head
into it and your lungs a gonna get paid
and your clothes a gonna melt.
Hear that, Ms. Dog!
You of the songs,
you of the classroom,
you of the pocketa-pocketa,
you hungry mother,
you spleen baby!
Them angels gonna be cut down like wheat.
Them songs gonna be sliced with a razor.
Them kitchens gonna get a boulder in the belly.
Them phones gonna be torn out at the root.
There's power in the Lord, baby,
and he's gonna turn off the moon.
He's gonna nail you up in a closet
and there'll be no more Atlantic,
no more dreams, no more seeds.
One noon as you walk out to the mailbox
He'll ****** you up --
a wopman beside the road like a red mitten.

There's a sack over my head.
I can't see. I'm blind.
The sea collapses.
The sun is a bone.
Hi-** the derry-o,
we all fall down.
If I were a fisherman I could comprehend.
They fish right through the door
and pull eyes from the fire.
They rock upon the daybreak
and amputate the waters.
They are beating the sea,
they are hurting it,
delving down into the inscrutable salt.

*

When mother left the room
and left me in the *******
and sent away my kitty
to be fried in the camps
and took away my blanket
to wash the me out of it
I lay in the soiled cold and prayed.
It was a little jail in which
I was never slapped with kisses.
I was the engine that couldn't.
Cold wigs blew on the trees outside
and car lights flew like roosters
on the ceiling.
Cradle, you are a grave place.

Interrogator:
What color is the devil?

Anne:
Black and blue.

Interrogator:
What goes up the chimney?

Anne:
Fat Lazarus in his red suit.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Ms. Dog prefers to sunbathe ****.
Let the indifferent sky look on.
So what!
Let Mrs. Sewal pull the curtain back,
from her second story.
So what!
Let United Parcel Service see my parcel.
La de dah.
Sun, you hammer of yellow,
you hat on fire,
you honeysuckle mama,
pour your blonde on me!
Let me laugh for an entire hour
at your supreme being, your Cadillac stuff,
because I've come a long way
from Brussels sprouts.
I've come a long way to peel off my clothes
and lay me down in the grass.
Once only my palms showed.
Once I hung around in my woolly tank suit,
drying my hair in those little meatball curls.
Now I am clothed in gold air with
one dozen halos glistening on my skin.
I am a fortunate lady.
I've gotten out of my pouch
and my teeth are glad
and my heart, that witness,
beats well at the thought.

Oh body, be glad.
You are good goods.

*

Middle-class lady,
you make me smile.
You dig a hole
and come out with a sunburn.
If someone hands you a glass of water
you start constructing a sailboat.
If someone hands you a candy wrapper,
you take it to the book binder.
Pocketa-pocketa.

Once upon a time Ms. Dog was sixty-six.
She had white hair and wrinkles deep as splinters.
her portrait was nailed up like Christ
and she said of it:
That's when I was forty-two,
down in Rockport with a hat on for the sun,
and Barbara drew a line drawing.
We were, at that moment, drinking *****
and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air,
although it was July, and she gave me her sweater
to bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied
strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine.
(It had gone into the lake twice.)
Of such moments is happiness made.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom,
the pleasuring seas,
the country of comfort,
spanked into the oxygens of death,
Good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffee toast
and we Americans take juice,
a liquid sun going down.
Good morning life.
To wake up is to be born.
To brush your teeth is to be alive.
To make a bowel movement is also desireable.
La de dah,
it's all routine.
Often there are wars
yet the shops keep open
and sausages are still fried.
People rub someone.
People copulate
entering each other's blood,
tying each other's tendons in knots,
transplanting their lives into the bed.
It doesn't matter if there are wars,
the business of life continues
unless you're the one that gets it.
Mama, they say, as their intestines
leak out. Even without wars
life is dangerous.
Boats spring leaks.
Cigarettes explode.
The snow could be radioactive.
Cancer could ooze out of the radio.
Who knows?
Ms. Dog stands on the shore
and the sea keeps rocking in
and she wants to talk to God.

Interrogator:
Why talk to God?

Anne:
It's better than playing bridge.

*

Learning to talk is a complex business.
My daughter's first word was utta,
meaning button.
Before there are words
do you dream?
In utero
do you dream?
Who taught you to ****?
And how come?
You don't need to be taught to cry.
The soul presses a button.
Is the cry saying something?
Does it mean help?
Or hello?
The cry of a gull is beautiful
and the cry of a crow is ugly
but what I want to know
is whether they mean the same thing.
Somewhere a man sits with indigestion
and he doesn't care.
A woman is buying bracelets
and earrings and she doesn't care.
La de dah.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

There are stars and faces.
There is ketchup and guitars.
There is the hand of a small child
when you're crossing the street.
There is the old man's last words:
More light! More light!
Ms. Dog wouldn't give them her buttocks.
She wouldn't moon at them.
Just at the killers of the dream.
The bus boys of the soul.
Or at death
who wants to make her a mummy.
And you too!
Wants to stuf her in a cold shoe
and then amputate the foot.
And you too!
La de dah.
What's the point of fighting the dollars
when all you need is a warm bed?
When the dog barks you let him in.
All we need is someone to let us in.
And one other thing:
to consider the lilies in the field.
Of course earth is a stranger, we pull at its
arms and still it won't speak.
The sea is worse.
It comes in, falling to its knees
but we can't translate the language.
It is only known that they are here to worship,
to worship the terror of the rain,
the mud and all its people,
the body itself,
working like a city,
the night and its slow blood
the autumn sky, mary blue.
but more than that,
to worship the question itself,
though the buildings burn
and the big people topple over in a faint.
Bring a flashlight, Ms. Dog,
and look in every corner of the brain
and ask and ask and ask
until the kingdom,
however queer,
will come.

This one's for me
and I'm gonna watch it burn.
Watch it flicker and pop and crackle and spit.
Gonna take lessons on how to dance with the draft,
also hoping she doesn't ******* out.
I'll make poems out of smoke and shadows
and fading, lonesome, sepia-tone summer photographs.
I want to make dusty picture frames feel like well-loved tuxedos.
I'm gonna see if candlelight can be all the company I need to keep.
Gonna sweep this floor clean,
like it's not what we say, it's what we mean
between the lines of
one too-polished table setting:
one knife,
one spoon,
but two forks for wishful thinking.
I'm gonna eat my fill
and fill my cup again and again,
to the point that I begin to make conversation
with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I'll tell that *******, "My friend, you are drunk."
and he'll tell me, "Kid, look who's talking."
Then it'll be back to a glass
that treats its brim like a suggestion.
Gonna have whisky and black lager and champagne
'til my toes and thumbs tingle.
Thin blooded and numbed;
Steeled by my father's novocain.
Come morning, this house couldn't get more hollow.

In these hallowed halls where I wallow in the way that
I only seem to appreciate the preciousness of days
Once they've passed,
here's what I'm gonna do:
I'm gonna write questions on one side of the wooden window blinds,
and write punchlines to completely unrelated jokes on the other.
I don't know why. Maybe just to **** with people.

I'm gonna reminisce with full streets of ghosts
That glow like kerosene lamp posts
all the while, stomping my feet, just to prove that I can.
Gonna make toasts to the isolated;
to the quarantined and the misanthropes.
I'll boast that lovers are not unlike poachers,
but I'm not gonna mention that in every other under-cover dream
I seem to swoon like ivory elephant tusks.
I'm gonna gamble on Dusk
because I think it's got a little less honesty,
but a little more promise than its
attention-*******, good-for-nothing, go-getter big sister Dawn does.
That flirtations *****.
Gonna give Christian names to half drawn caricatures
of people who only ever existed when the lights died out
and the snow fell heavy.

I'm gonna let the levies break.
I'll go insane, just ******* lose it--
do the Boot-Scoot-'n'-Boogie in a onesie
with the hind flap flying free and the Greek Theatre masks of
Comedy and Tragedy painted on my *** cheeks,
(because no one should ever take their art too seriously)
And I'm even not gonna even care who sees,
partially because there's no one around to watch anyway,
but mostly because I want,
more than anything, to just be me.
Or at least I want to want that.
See, I read somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
unless you can be a unicorn,
then always be a unicorn."
And that really struck home for me because,
even though I've never really ached to be
the ******* love child of a Narwhal and Zebra
(In my imagination, unicorns are
striped and impecable swimmers)
I truly believe that Men will always dream of being Titans
and Titans will always dream of being Gods
and Gods want nothing more than to be Wind--
to twist with lit candle sticks
and teach the lonesome how to dance.

A one-step waltz tip-toed to distract.

But the fact is, I'm bound to take a few back steps.
I'm gonna think about her.
Gonna harbor hard feelings towards back bedroom dealings
that I have no right knowing about.
Gonna pray like a desperate atheist
that they keep their knees locked in a one night stand.
I might break down.
Only once, just long enough to regain my strength.
Then I'll tame the earthquakes in my hands, like I always do.
Gonna find what it takes to move on.
Not just regenerate, but to grow stronger than I ever was before.
So I'm gonna meticulously straighten these place settings:
One knife.
One spoon.
A healthy dose of wishful thinking.
Gonna try my hand again at dancing with the back draft;
I heard she's been aching for a duet,
and with all the life of candlelight
I'm gonna ignite the coal shafts beneath my eyes.
Gonna finally see me as the man I am,
not the titan I wish to be,
because I heard somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
Especially when all you've known
all you've ever shown
is some mythology."
So raise your glass because this one?
This one's for me.

Nothingness.
Imagine nothingness.
That nothingness which is nothing of the nothingness we are all familiar with:
Not that nothingness which is nothing but empty space and time
Like when you open an empty room.
No.
That nothingness where nothing truly exists:
Not space,
Not even time.

A singular point.
Imagine a singular point.
The ultimate singular point that contains all possible points
In the development of the universe
Come out and expand
From the birthing of time, the instance of The Big Bang,
(Which by the way is not a large explosion, as the words imply, but a silent rapid expansion)
Pushing the envelope
Where nothingness begins.

Chance.
Imagine chance.
The random occurrence of events:
Of fundamental particles colliding and uniting
Or annihilating each other,
Giving rise to protons, neutrons and electrons;
Giving rise to the periodic table,
To compounds, both organic and inorganic,
To macromolecules.

Billions of years.
Imagine billions of years
Gone by,
And billions of galaxies filling the sky:
Stars and quasars and pulsars
Planets and comets and meteors
***** nilly hurtling through
Dark matter and ever expanding space,
Yet inanimate still
,
A single cell.
Imagine a single cell
Form inexplicably so,
In a staggeringly highly improbable way
As carbon molecules combine,
Start to throb and pulsate:
Chance bringing forth life
In a barren and otherwise
Lifeless universe.

Consciousness
Imagine consciousness
Purposive, willful, deliberate

Feelings
Imagine feelings
Love, compassion, hatred

Imagine all in a universe that came out of itself from nothingness.

It is hard, of course,
For after all, we are creatures of somethingness!

But at this point
You must have seen the Point
Of all the ramblings and turns in the trajectory of my thought
Tracing the evolutionary course of the universe
From nothingness and that singular point
That without God
All things are
After all
Pointless!
.
And so,
Let us not deplore, as a great poet once did,
That this world “so various, so beautiful, so new
Hath no joy, nor love, nor light
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…”
For what else should we expect
Of a cold, unfeeling universe?

What?
Give us some Novocain?

These autumn sunrises bring a remnant

Of cool spring mornings we spent
In 
moments of content, encompassing silence.

What is the foundation of this feeling

You once claimed to brand me with

Inside other lips?

The truth comes out,
coated in masks,

And unknown hopes,

That we have already proved to be wrong.

Can we rewind?
Can I bring your mind

To understand the beauty of the present?

Will ghosts always follow the trace of footprints

You left when you took flight from me?

But this language of ****** magnolias dipped in salty water

Recognizes the impossibility within her pleadings.

How selfish I become with the possibility of magnificent love.

Perhaps all I do to you now is inflict pain upon the

Wary navigator who sails the ocean of your soul.

I feel the weight of your ship sink into the water well of my mind.
I let it sink into my numb mind.
This juxtaposition fills my veins with anxiety,
For all that places itself in my hands
Quickly dissipates, melting under my overbearing love
And insecure need to be fully loved.

This has led to a natural novocain,
Which I am unable to keep from filling my blood,
And infecting the dear heart within my ribs
With nothingness.

I sink into the comfortable, encompassing black
With a blank stare and shiny scars.
Reminders that this abyss,
Often leads to insomniac slicing.
Watching my own blood leak out with happiness.
Sickfully joyful to see my liveliness,
Praying the physical will call upon frozen passion.

This is the secret.
This is how I could bear to look at you for years without emotion.
Your love sang too true for my many masks to survive,
And my fear of feeling became cold, guilty friendship.
Perhaps, my guilt hoped for your understanding.
I just couldn't commit you to my own insanity.
Too many times have I tried to find fulfillment in lips,
I would never permit inside the lost water well.
You were better off without my tactless attempts at love.
Perhaps, that remains the reality…
Doubt haunts determination.
My difficulty in recovering our old language
Begins to overshadow my bright hope.

So now I contemplate the truth in my journey.
Am I merely chasing down your ghosts
Fighting to show you the value of your own love,
When you are so pridefully aware of its worth.
I wonder if you have ever truly observed my own love?

It existed, long ago, once within childhood
And then transformed into trapped, teenage hubris;
Prideful of my naivety, and what I then called fate.
But almost all evidence has been destroyed,
Out of selfish preservation.
How could I expect you to understand,
I only continue to breathe to rebel against these violent memories.

Yet, my fearful pride continuously tears at my honest ambition.
So, I call upon rhythm to release me.
Bon Iver breaks all my honor,
Evoking all memories of my ******.
Moments of time I keep deep in my silent sorrow.
Only this particular pain,
Allows me to isolate my words,
And continue singing.
I realize I have become lost in the water well.
When will this precarious ego finally shatter?

The silence returns to the mountain night.
Frigid, soft breeze breaks my blank stare,
As I fight with my twisted nature.
I continue to hold out my hand,
Shaking and trembling,
As you stare at me with shocked confusion.
I am no good with promises of the future.
So, I remain in the present,
And believe,
In the vulnerable emotion,
You unconsciously paint upon me.

Synthetic leather cupping my head
while i'm inverted by a switch.
This is getting old.

Pure cane sugartar that sits on teeth,
sits on a canine porch swing
and swings too far, kicking the enamel
siding, wood knots, and greying-thin
windows. More exposed than Brad
Pitt's marriage or JonBenét Ramsay
on the cover of Old World News Daily
in the dentist's office. And there we
are. We're bleached white and burning
beneath paparazzi bulbs and a
a ****** case. Brief case money/
two thousand fourteen and it's still
relevant, still useful blood money.
Novocain lightning flash; burn a tree.
Cali home tucked behind parsley
palms. Fortune teller, baby, O.J. didn't
do it. Not The Juice, not him.
The gloves. The gloves. The gloves.
Comfort of picket fence rainbrushed
paint stripping. Raymour retail
of a mocha-cushion couch half-off
'cause the back's spattered with
toothpaste and taxpayer juice
like Grandma's cancer handbag.
Put your feet up, stay a while.
Don't leave.

Live by the sun; feel by the moon.
The sun has set; a rainy night in early June.
Numb as novocain,
Emotions pouring out like rain.
I can dream of spreading my wings, just flying away.
But I have to get behind the wheel, take on life’s highway.
Even with roads so dark and dreary, wet and slick…
There’s something calling me into the night, calling me quick.
The promise of feeling again lingers at the end of the road.
After all this time an answer, solution…a crack to the code.
But life never projects a straight shooting path…
Sometimes we are meant to slip, or maybe even crash.
Even so, the road splits…to burn out or start walking?
I take a breath, remember the moon…remember who’s talking.
One foot in front of the other… no sense in hesitation.
The sun will bring about another day, re-genesis of my own imagination.
Misty rain kisses my face as a struggle to walk tenaciously.
Feigning for the strength to accept these obstacles graciously.
One step, two steps; pro, cons:
One foot, two miles; pro, cons…and so on.
Just when my heart couldn't feel much colder,
A warm ray pokes at my shoulder.
Tapping back into reality at hand,
I kick off my shoes and let my toes twinkle in the sand.
The moon is low, now behind me, yet always hanging around.
& Before me the sun making an entrance, glistening against the dancing ocean sound.
An epiphany swims ashore.
Another day: to live, to reflect, & to unveil the reason we do it all for.
Embrace life; stay in tune.
Live by the sun; feel by the moon.

Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old ******* her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her ****** an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall ***** herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew to be a goddess
and each night the king
bit the hem of her gown
to keep her safe.
He fastened the moon up
with a safety pin
to give her perpetual light
He forced every male in the court
to scour his tongue with Bab-o
lest they poison the air she dwelt in.
Thus she dwelt in his odor.
Rank as honeysuckle.

On her fifteenth birthday
she pricked her finger
on a charred spinning wheel
and the clocks stopped.
Yes indeed. She went to sleep.
The king and queen went to sleep,
the courtiers, the flies on the wall.
The fire in the hearth grew still
and the roast meat stopped crackling.
The trees turned into metal
and the dog became china.
They all lay in a trance,
each a catatonic
stuck in a time machine.
Even the frogs were zombies.
Only a bunch of briar roses grew
forming a great wall of tacks
around the castle.
Many princes
tried to get through the brambles
for they had heard much of Briar Rose
but they had not scoured their tongues
so they were held by the thorns
and thus were crucified.
In due time
a hundred years passed
and a prince got through.
The briars parted as if for Moses
and the prince found the tableau intact.
He kissed Briar Rose
and she woke up crying:
Daddy! Daddy!
Presto! She's out of prison!
She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear --
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.
If if is to come, she said,
sleep must take me unawares
while I am laughing or dancing
so that I do not know that brutal place
where I lie down with cattle prods,
the hole in my cheek open.
Further, I must not dream
for when I do I see the table set
and a faltering crone at my place,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes
as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat.

I must not sleep
for while I'm asleep I'm ninety
and think I'm dying.
Death rattles in my throat
like a marble.
I wear tubes like earrings.
I lie as still as a bar of iron.
You can stick a needle
through my kneecap and I won't flinch.
I'm all shot up with Novocain.
This trance girl
is yours to do with.
You could lay her in a grave,
an awful package,
and shovel dirt on her face
and she'd never call back: Hello there!
But if you kissed her on the mouth
her eyes would spring open
and she'd call out: Daddy! Daddy!
Presto!
She's out of prison.

There was a theft.
That much I am told.
I was abandoned.
That much I know.
I was forced backward.
I was forced forward.
I was passed hand to hand
like a bowl of fruit.
Each night I am nailed into place
and forget who I am.
Daddy?
That's another kind of prison.
It's not the prince at all,
but my father
drunkeningly bends over my bed,
circling the abyss like a shark,
my father thick upon me
like some sleeping jellyfish.
What voyage is this, little girl?
This coming out of prison?
God help --
this life after death?

Consuming devastation
as if it's life-giving bread
Flesh, a merciless master
Ineffectual thoughts sway my head

With each indulgence
the captor becomes more emboldened
Betraying the true master
to whom I'm beholden

Surrender comes easier
with each new concession
Just one more link
in the chain of spiritual recession

Slaking every desire
as the senses grow cold
While the battle rages
between body and soul

One will be nurtured
the other put under thumb
Sin is spiritual Novocain
just making me numb

I want to
feel nothing for you.
I want to
soak myself in Novocain
when you pass me on the street.
I want to
not be blown away by the way
your hips shift when you walk .
I want to
delete memories of you
like they were data on a disk.
I want to
shove you so deep into a crowded backpack.
That thousands of years could pass
before I found you.
I want to
be like the neutered dog
able to **** away and away
with no consequence.
I want to
close my eyes and think of anything else
literally anything else
like dead bodies decaying
or something along those lines.
I want to
be free from your chains
and I mean that.
You don't seem to understand that
but I do.

Mean it.

Believe me.

I want to feel nothing for you.

Dylan got it first, as he often did,
That American youth were ignorant kids,
Betrayed by the things our parents hid.
And we were insulted just a little bit
But we listened and took the plunge,
Determined to expunge
The poison and let out the Id.

It was up to us not heed the call up
And as one voice we stood up,
Saying, shouting NO!

Twenty or so legendary years for some;
While others sold out, we beat the drum.
Our peers oddly died around us but….
Even as we ‘felt those cold hands’ touch our skin,
As The Capitalists were closing in—
& Some of them were us…
We sounded the drum.

Later on some hippie-punks or is it the other way(?)
Sang about extraordinary girls & then took a fall.
Sometimes begged for Novocain
Which wouldn’t relieve psychic pain,
Like being Ramonely sedated in a concert hall.
Nobody knew what to do with them.
Except to give them fame.

(It was just as bad for them as for the Clash)…
Hell, they almost invented the mash-up.
And too many anti-hippie punks
Loaded on cheap ****** or always drunk,
Claimed all those heroes had sold out.
But Ziggy would’ve known Ash from Ash.

Then came their Blood on the Tracks;
They finally saw what Dylan saw,
Or, if they saw it before,
They got some Real Emotion back.

Nothing has changed and everything has changed,
Said The Heathen…and he should know.

But how do we see, stuck here ‘so far below’,
Not remotely in the know;
They might be on an intergalactic trip
Or as in “A.I”, nothing more than a binary blip?
But encased in virtual ice, how can we live?
Until the end…and even then…
As John wrote, we only get the love we give.

The still English heat,
The ***** promise of July the 1st
Leaves the grass a mottled yellow
And the dappled shade of the purple birch
Almost holy.
Specks of precise and glittering pollen
Rest upon beds of browning foxgloves.
Cats are left collapsed,
Blissed out, lulled into dreams
of this motionless sun shining forever.

I feel your hands in my stomach
And I'm hungry for your grip
As the hot sky only ripens
My daydreams of your laugh.
The thick scent of withering hyacinth
Is the curve of your back,
the taste of your sweat.

A stain of certainty is baked in
By July the 1st.
Novocain for my infected English heart.
Whispering the start of a love that will be
kicking leaves through October
And sharing warmth through December.

Gossamer ghosts
Of what is longed for
In the soul
An ideal tried
To be forgotten
With the aid of poison
And the thump of a beat
Woken by
The thump of a book
Slamming the desk
Bringing me back to
Heavy boots
A heavier heart
The long for a fresh start
And still no resolve
No solution or direction
My loneliness spreading like a
Contagious infection
Except it goes
Past the clock
Over the line
And it
Cuts
So deep
But I’m too numb to notice
Like Novocain
Piercing my brain
While my eyes
Ice over
And my feet shuffle
To the beat
Of silence
I float for hours
A balloon unattached
But no holiday here
Trying to feel concrete in where
I stand
And though my boots are heavy
They don’t stick

Words that were not meant to hurt me pierced through me like a million tiny needles filled with Novocain.
It was not really pain at all.
With those words replaying in my mind, over, and over, the circumstances slowly began to sink in. When I finally worked up the will I could not get my fingers to move as I tried to type my reply.

I was numb.

I blanket my mind
Blurry my view
And nothing but
Fuzzy faces
Fluorescent lights
The hum
Of inane static noise
Envelope my head
Like a shot of Novocain
With the sweet
Sense of distance

Disorientation
Is the only destination
For a world with a compass
Spinning out of control
But to let go
Is to fling into space
Slowly suffocate
And fade away
But the problem is
I
Don't
Care.
Compass
Please fly me
Away from here

Who are you in the in-between?

"Love."

a title. italics space don't forget the paragraph please...

odd space new
face teeth eyes memories

and how to
reconcile?
the odd shimmer of spirits between
the used up
and the still yet
undiscovered

how do you jump
twice
without tugging the dentist's sleeve

to issue: fervent plea.

*Novocain?!

Watch me make things complicated

It’s a gift

So much a gift I never got much further than long division

Or tying my shoes

Or learning when it’s okay to touch people

Turns out

Life is not the game of tag I thought it was

Not everyone touches you back

Never learned that

Gets so bad

I break handshakes for hugs

and then I stand there way to long

I can never go back to my dentist’s office again

After he finally pried me from his shoulders

He was kind enough to loosen the foot in my mouth

Told me I got toes for teeth

And I was thankful

For the suction tube

And the Novocain

Asked him for more

And more

Just enough to numb the jabber in my jaw

Took 2 vicadin after to keep my arms at bay

If I could have

I’d’a told him

Every word burnin holes in my brain

And I am thankful

Knowing that I’d’ve at least stopped at long division

And tying my shoes

I never learned how

not to say all the wrong things

Never really learned anything

When I was six years old
My father let me watch the Omen.
For the three months that followed
I was convinced I was the antichrist.
Every morning I would stand on the step stool
In front of the bathroom mirror
And scour my scalp
For the imprint of 666.
Not even the devil wanted me as his.

For years I thought I was adopted
Because my hair isn’t straight like theirs,
My skin isn’t clear like theirs.
My legs stretch like sunflower stalks
While theirs wilt
Like tulips after spring.
It turns out
Genetics is a lottery
And I did not win.

My body is 90% wishbone
And 5% muscle.
I can’t do a pushup
But god am I good at daydreaming.
I run out of breath after walking up a flight of stairs
But my spine is made out of wind chimes.

My mother once told me
I was the easiest child to take care of.
I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream.
It wasn’t until I was 15
And leaking novocain onto the kitchen floor
That my pent up music
Shattered the wine glasses.
I cleaned every bit of crystal up
And no one knew about my symphony.

I wear my secrets like shawls.
Everyone compliments the pattern,
Ask if I made them myself.
I say “a girl I know helped me.
She is the reason I am where I am today”.
They ask if they know this girl
And if she can make them one.
I say, “caged birds don’t give free birds directions”.

I lay in the bathtub
And push my head underneath.
I listen to the steady ticking
Of the bomb wired in my chest.
Its only a matter of time.
Run. Take cover.
Leave me to the ashes.
Maybe we’ll find out I am a phoenix.
Maybe we’ll find out I am just another girl.
Another swan feather kissing the river.

Maybe this will be a wakeup call.
Maybe metaphors aren’t band aids
And maybe stanzas aren’t gauze.
Or maybe god really does exist,
His home just isn’t in the clouds.
Maybe I am god.
Maybe god is home and I am finally home.

The days pass and I remain,
Remain now only slightly insane,
The strain starts to fade but my heart always feels the pain,
You were like Novocain,
You took it all away,
if only you would stay,
I'd be grateful if it were only a day,
But I guess that day isn't today.

Learned more from this pain than i ever did from a church.
Listening to your gut but make sure you detox it first.
**** be killin me softly, leave me in a Hearse,
Never a good thing when i hear from you first.
Be careful what you see,
even salt look like sugar,
Maturity is not throwing salt when you know you could've,
And not smackin ******* when you know you should've.
People Be like "oh i miss you"
**** i miss me too.
Had to use these teflon tissues to get me thru,
You not alone, **** i wanna be with me too,
Deadass On some days , smiles were too good to be true.
I be business minded when i be minding my business.
And ****** be ******* and ******* be on some ***** ****.
Overcame this novocain,
Recasted the impression of depression,
Ring around the rosary,
Never relying on religion.

Im from a home of funny bones
And My elbows been ashy,
I knew It would take more than macaroni art to kraft me,
And i been itching for this platform
If you ask me,
I used to wonder if i was a real person.
I used to wonder like what's my real purpose?
When i was young ,I taught my shadow to stick to my toes,
When lifes a battle, I fought to stick to mottos.
As a poet i never looked at it this way,
I never booked myself for this reading.
I was overbooked.
I bookmarked my favorite moments ,
I been forever overlooked.
And never understood what "more" ment,
I been overcooked.
The preheating of this season left me bleeding.
This farenheit left me heavy breathin
No fear of heights but Excuse me while I fall from
- grace -
me with your presence and
These broken promises,
Never been transparent to this degree,
Had to leave that monster house.
That was my American horror story.
I used to be couped up,
Had to tell double d to get outta my laboratory,
See mfs want my jazz but not my blues,
They Wanna be in my class but aint payed they dues,
Yall be Morally incorrect,
....More or less...
Lately i been Moralless,
Need to get saved no church bells ,
Put me on the zach Morris list,
These rhymes be like my confessions,
Front row seat to my ascension,
Carry out this life to which we've been sentenced,
Delivery me from evil - with even more incentives,
I dream in MLA format.
Double spaced a letter to my younger self,
Just some **** I wish i told the older me
A ***** laundry list of things I thought ought to be owed to me,
My OCD be blowin me,
Need all my ducks in a row,
My prolonged silence been leading this Crescendo,
Im not playing NO GAMES, fuxk you and your Nintendo.

She is tired of fighting, sick and tired of changes
Weary of the battles, the struggles and the challenges
She left so much, just to possess so little
Limping from holding on at every single angle
Faith came from the fight, now it is night
And she is exhausted, despite having a dim light
Holding on to her little faith for so very long
Clutching it tight, even singing it a song
Her faith cries out, her little faith screams out
Still young but giving everything out in a shout
But she is without concerned. Her pain is stronger
Holding on to her faith seems to make the pain linger
...So, she rocks her faith to sleep

She wants the pain to be numbed with aspirin
Knowing that there's no cure, but a brief separation
Like a bad toothache, she desires Novocain
Anything to relieve her from life's constant pain.
She now became apathetic. Her fire flickered out.
Unfulfilled promises and failed expectations about
How things will be better, how good life will be
But instead she is faced with constant trials and misery.
Wanting something so bad, but cannot get it.
Desiring a change, but it fails to manifest.
So the best thing to do when your heart is sore
From not getting what you want is not to want it anymore
...So, she rocks her faith to sleep

Suppressed her desires into the bed of her unconscious
Covering sheets of darkness over something so precious.
Her faith: covered in darkness, now out of sight.
Then she turned off all hope when she turned off the light.
Allowing her fears to surround her precious faith
That is under the sheet of darkness that resembles lace
Because she lived a life of promises, chasing a dream
But it was so troublesome that she wanted to scream.
Now walking in utter darkness, no hope or ambitions
Just one with her carnal desires and temptations.
Her faith, teary eyed and whimpering, at last closed its eye
And she closed the door of her heart, leaving it inside
And in there is where her faith still slumber
While she lives without a dream, failing to persevere.
Thought that life would be better, but instead
Is living a life similar to being brain dead
...Since, she rocked her faith to sleep

I finally unblocked you on Facebook
Sounds childish to say at 22, but it was a big step
The only line of communication we've had
Dammed up like the hoover
Time, hard at work with his Pick Axe, finally broke through
And the raging warm water flushed my finger tips
Excited
Nervous
Angry
There he is
Unblock
Click
Scroll
Last Post: Dec 30, 2014
3 years ago
My Birthday, 3 years ago
The 3rd one he missed
He did manage to share a sports post
For a team I am positive he doesn't even like
I'm less than a sports team he doesn't even like

It's not so bad, really
I owe him a lot
Without him, I wouldn't be who I am today
Growing up without a father teaches you to wear shoulder-pads, and to check your gloves for holes
I know where to find the best prices on cleats specifically crafted to keep a heart from slipping when it goes through ****

I've become the epitome of masculinity
Numb without Novocain
Tear ducts run as dry at the Nile will, Circa 2095
Your impact to my ecosystem as devastating as throwaway plastic

Am I your throw away plastic?

A whispy hand reaches down to flip over a bronze device of tremendous proportions

Numb is all she feels
As she sees her life s
                                         p
                                          n    i
               ­                       i      g     r
                                         l        a
Out of control.

The only life this girl has ever known
Has been ripped out
Like a rug
Right beneath her feet.

Now, knowing the foreseeable future uncertain,
She feels so much more than numb.
Loneliness, sorrow fill this only child's ****** cavities,
To where the Novocain smiles and laughs of the sun are blessings,
But the sobering dark is a curse.

For only now has this teenage girl set her roots in deep,
Gotten attached to the life
That now proves so temporary,
Flimsy like a piece of paper.
Social nuances and schoolwork
No longer seem to matter in the grand scheme of things,
I'll be gone soon enough,* she thinks...

It's best to detach early
From this ephemeral life,
So maybe it won't hurt so much
When it's all blown away,
Like cigarette smoke in the wind.

Lonliness drives itself into her bones,
Trapping the girl in her own internal world.
One which says
"It doesn't matter anymore."

*The golden sand of the bronze hourglass slips on,
As I slip away...
Begging for a new life,
But praying the old will stay.

love on your lips
like Novocain
we speak the words,
feel nothing.
we smile and laugh,
the coroners dance
the smell of death
it lingers

breathing shadows
burning tributes
to the idols
that they worship
And you wonder
why my evenings are better spent alone.

I live.
I bleed.
I'm on my ****** knees
I break.
I cry.
I fall.
I fly.

you've already died.
you breathing shadow.

There lives the sweetest ignorance deep inside lies
like a parent giving consolation during a hurricane
because sin is easy on the conscious when nobody believes in heaven or hell.
Grey matter, brains neither black nor white,
gasping for air in a world where we've lost the ability to feel
empathy like novocain, stares and strangers with eyes lacking love
waiting to die young and become raised up like a martyr
instead of living the everyman's life.
Self doubt, the most beautiful of all flowers, like blood from a rose thorn's *****
pumping through bodies. The man and his guitar on the street corner,
dressed in his Sunday best, each note a silent prayer.

I wrote a song about you dear,
I filled it with your Novocain
To ease my pain.
And fill the gaps
You had left

And the words,
As haunting as your own
Scattered out on pages torn
Neatly from my collection
Of us.

I sing it to myself
In the quiet of the night
A lantern for a light
I whisper the words
Alone.

Anything to avoid pain
Medicate to a stupor state
Sugar coated OxyContin
****** attraction
Mediate the different ways
With only small intervals
Of pain
Sleep, work, play
Do not think
Snort, drink
Puncture your veins
Novelty for nonsense
Morphine and Novocain
Music to sooth the inner beast
Books, plays, tv
**** movies
*******
Anything to avoid
The deeply planted pain

Replace all of the pain
with this Novocain
Reasons we broke up
It is me who we blame
and it drives me insane.  
All of the pain that you have caused
i can not withstand