There was nothing I was ever so ashamed of
that I dumped it in a river to drown,
but one time my best friend accidentally tossed my pink fishing pole
into the bayou when a spider dangled from the line.

We were eight, everything was wishy-washy
because she called herself a mulatto like it were an insult
and my older friends kept mentioning that my mom walked herself

to a liquor store very late at night
twelve-packs bruising her German-colored shoulder.
I did not tell them my father had hidden away her car keys.

Girls teased me and I still wanted to kiss their cheeks at goodbyes,
The Little Mermaid featured at our sleepovers
saying, “kiss the girl,” so I did
but we stopped talking when I bought my training bra,
it proved what was in my skirt, my lips could not touch them again.

You cannot kiss a girl if you are a girl,
even if Disney movies say it is okay because Mickie Mouse
has no ***** to be ashamed of though a wife of the opposite ***.

I learned important things until I turned ten
and Hurricane Katrina unraveled the bayou into my house
and I existed in four different classrooms in my fourth grade year
where nobody had enough time
to learn my name, much less the way it is spelled.

Now, in therapy, the certified insists
that I am a girl who kisses other girls because my mother
only put her lips on a bottle.

But maybe I wear striped dresses just because mold grew that
shape in my home on Camellia Street,
mud decorated the fallen refrigerator so it looked like
a cow some punk tipped over.
I just wish the sidewalk I use to rollerblade on hadn’t flooded.

The things
we reserve for
people we don't know

We met in kindergarten
Miss Wolfe’s class
Into an ear I whisper
A shy boy’s bargain

I knock on your door
Pray the dog
Doesn’t **** me
Seems like a metaphor

Laughter and chasing geese
Stealing glances
And prances in the woods
Sprained ankles in the creek

Your moon-drenched family room
And our primal need
Bodies glide
Into foreign feelings
I concede

We’re both shaving now
Not children
Yet not men
In between and fooling around

In my attic bedroom
Space Jam soundtrack
Hoping my mom doesn’t hear us
My hands on your back

Then moving down
Committing little sins
Shhhhhh
Don’t make a sound

Then the bed of my dad’s truck
Some hand stuff
Never a ****
Never enough

You get up and leave
I want you to stay
I play the radio
97 ZOK

Meredith Brooks
And I hate the world today
Because I’m a *****
But I like me this way

Fifteen and fevered
Down Mix Street
I rollerblade
Turn right on Worth
My love for you
Is such a sad parade

Remember when
We camped on the lawn
Quiet light and secrets
Then that wicked dawn

Dragging us back
Into a world
Where our desires
Don’t belong

We are strangers now
With a little bit of everything
All rolled into memory
Like a sacred vow

I’m your hell
I’m your dream
Do you remember anything?

I recall it all
Your tousled hair
And my forbidden grin
I think you live in Wisconsin

I tripped down a lane of memories
Walked uneven sidewalks
Once lined with trees
Now barren,
Thanks to some "bug disease"
At least not every neighbor is dead

Knees hugged cement
Recalling pastel chalk sketches
Delicate fingers traced
Rugged dips and edges,
My name
Engraved in that one spot where
I failed to learn to rollerblade
At least part of me will live on here

At least until someday

you taught me ABC order.
you taught me to rollerblade.
you taught me about limp bizkit.
you taught me the words to "danger zone".

you gave me my first taste of anger,
gave me my first feelings of terror.
how anyone could feel so much, all at once,
and let it out at something so mundane,
[your punching bag]
and still scare me so much is beyond me.

you gave me my first taste of alcohol.
miller lite, and i hated it.
you made me drink more, because well,
"it's an acquired taste, you know, like wine."
in later years you'd say the same of ***.

i still don't know how i let it happen, really.
one minute we were friends,
and no one really knew how close.
the next minute your hand was in my pants,
and that's the last place i wanted it.

in the next minute we're on the phone,
you somehow got my number.
you're apologizing, and crying.
i've never heard you cry before,
"what the hell is going on, a?"

give you a second chance? to do what?
to apologize? you never had a first chance.
meet you where? when? tonight?
"you know i can't do that."
then again, if you're leaving in the morning.
just this once, for you. i need the closure.

i still feel like i asked for it,
i don't know if that will ever change.
in the middle of the night, still,
i wake up, convinced i'm bleeding.

soaking through my sheets just like that night.
it stains my skin in a way that will never wash off.
the glint on your knife from the moon that night?
leaves a scar that will never fade away.
unlike the one on my thigh. it's gone now.

you took so much from me.
you took my innocence,
and i'm not just talking virginity.
every single person i look in the eye,
i can see potential.
the potential for destruction.

we are none of us born good or evil.
some of us are just good, with evil tendencies.
you, though. you're something else.
evil, with sadistic tendencies.
you're a ******* monster.

but i have nothing to say to you anymore.
i wish you nothing but the worst.
[i hope your **** hurts where i bit it.]
and i hope you hear my screams when you sleep,
every
single
night.

a leaky faucet
a rolling drip
of stagnant water

Every day’s
a full closet
of drunk dancing skeletons
living on the premises

Every day’s
a parade of jokes
of gangrene limbs
and thick black smoke

Every day's
a masquerade
of storm clouds
covered in marmalade

Every day's
a rollerblade
on a highway to hell
an arcade of
an old witch's spell

Every day’s
Groundhog Day
an endless loop
of the same

Nudist Beach Cruiser
Down Rollerblade Jogger's Lane.
Ease of Summer's roll...

I’ve walked
the line
and I’m
dissatisfied

No no nee nah naw. All I can offer you is this. Taking a fist, making a new sphincter higher up the body, fistula in hand. People drown in stomach acid. Tell you what’s beautiful – stomach linings reduced to squares that bud next to each other, cross-sectioned like in textbooks with permeable edges and bubbles bursting inside to secrete. Internally imagined bubbles perambulate between other bubbles, and that is a reality never truly observed in our own dimensions, but it is known to exist. It is known. These are realms where opinion and conviction do not contribute in the truest sense. Divorced. Shut eyes.
~
If you could record thoughts what would you make of all the blank spaces? There is more data than we can imagine. More data more data. Anything you like. More data thrown up in order to process more data. Leave them in folders. Folders of *****. If legs could work they would run. Might. Go missing. Never suicide but maybe go missing. There were tangible things blotted away by fear and hurt. Not hopeful. Borne of this could be something worth looking back on. Time to think. Rollerblade between bubbles now, grass blowing into balloon animals stretches the hair on the head until so thin nobody will want to **** that head anymore. Ears red-zoom in on canals thick with inflammation and damaged chicken-haired cells that aren’t coming back. This will not get better. All that are left are diagrams, cut loose from the original context and lying disused. Pull things together, don’t misuse. Watch papers fall to the floor. Walk away.
~
Using bad language like ‘can’t’ for refuge. Don’t force function; it’s needed, O tearing self from self. Hating your twin. My twin ate me and became unlovableunfuckable. Create creatures instead. Push form into something more organic than organic – how was it remembered. False figures false organs pouring out pigs-tongue, locked in the supply closet. Never go to the teacher’s lounge, it is a terrible place full of function and sweat. Not adult like all other teachers. Let students see weakness, it’s portentous of the future. Never will be rich in the religious sense. Chose it. Bathing in it. Nobody else should get in the tub. Want to run. World’s mercy lasted yet, waiting for it not to last but will only know when more risks are taken. Walk away with phone dead in pocket, no chance of recharge and cause panic – mild distaste turns to hatred, problem solved. Be careful to play a long internal game. Feel epigenetic throbbing.
~
Words are gone, and instead shapes bubble from tangible physical observations, stretching up into things that are different enough to find comfort in. Can’t give it out, can’t be asked questions because none of the answers are explainable. Should swear silence and communicate with images. Words were once all and image nothing prior to rejection and age: mental auto-immunity. Not much left before body selling means nothing, wince when it comes up in conversation, nobody needs to know but compulsion’s to tell everyone. Maybe this is the way to make a difference; show humanoid vulnerability, reminding the world that people exist in all corners and really, we’re ok right? Lets co-exist together and in return you can ******* once more in peace. Never a dull moment.
~
Locked in, looking across there is no window that you can’t see yourself in. Looking back. Uniform heights and weights and squares upon squares, regardless of scale. If I see another square I will *****. Tiled floors here are the same as in the museum; you hated them, so I had a shot. Get some ideas down. Images shifted from one medium to another will yield something. Cannot escape the thought that making non-political art is self-indulgent and irresponsible, while political art is best left to someone else. God only unnerves. Almighty someone else can stand. It is still irresponsible to be small? Take-me-out-of-it is not possible with a clear conscience. Gotta break some heart-eggs.
~
Want help with math – sit on down. Work hard, give everything away, don’t have to think about anything and can achieve abstracted absolution. Plan: How many hours pay the rent and the rest of the drip? Remainder can be devoted to something else. Wreck your body, don’t sleep, and keep shuffling, had enough time of half-recovery. Wrecking your body anyway so make no illusions about a change in pace. Switch now into self-sacrifice. Lock all this stupidity back up, not even you benefit from it. Don’t expect anything. Pay, work, give, and zero needs mental or other. Life seems better that way. Pretend you have no twin.