chugging bile and liquor closed eyes smell the innards of a joint wrapped in oilslicked stain shoveling sugar thrice processed into vocal chords left silenced but for the coughing up of shriveled lungs set ablaze to ease the twitching triggered by the mistress doused in white who scaffolds into crumbling nasal caverns to numb the brain that dreams of god in guilty refrain and whips thorny obedience to words siphoned through ghosts of men and obedience to the inflated heads of state and corporate banks who play Skinnard's game and always win millions of yes-men nodding their heads in addiction to artificial green leaves printed with blood and even lovers twirling passion in their beds have their eyes squeezed shut clutching at darkness slick and disappearing at the touch of pulsing fingertips racing to bury themselves in skin and forget the achey organs that lay waiting within weary and smothered from covering up thoughts too sharp to breathe in...

--it's all hide and seek.
running and running and running
from bare and open
vulnerability
shrouded underneath
layers
of reflected identities
and neuro-chemistry
and material fortresses
and snarled teeth
and synthetic bliss
wrapped in bitter bumblebees.

don't you think it's time you swallowed
the wince it takes
to glimpse your fear's shadows?

A single drop falls,
From the heavens,
Piercing through,
The black sky,
Till it lands.
Softly grazing the windowpane,
A wandering rabbit,
Leaving its trail across the glass,

Drip.

It's kin soon follow,
Falling from the sky,
Impatient fingers drumming on the glass,
Drip drop pitter patter,
Tap tap tap tap tap,
falling down and down and down,
Still more and more and more,
now the glass is drenched with little beads,
All leaping and bounding and prancing they fall,
They are newborn fauns splashing and playing in the dark,
And moremoremoremoremore over and over again,
Tumbling down the glass in an onslaught they surge,
Harder and harder and faster and faster now a horde of running gazelles,
Trying to escape their hunter, pummeling and pounding against the glass,
Blearing wide eyes, darting every which way, over and over,
crashing, thrashing, bumping and squirming and runningrunningrunning
And Then thunder!!!!!
A roaring lion through the night,
It's raw power unleashed from the captivity it has been held,
Angry and violent It tears through the air, ripping and shredding,
And when peace seemed a long vanished dream from the minds eye,
Somehow it's found,
Amid the chaos,
And the storm,
dries up,
Pitter.

      Patter.
    

               Drop.

six years after you took your last breath
i now understand what you meant:

to have dis-
jointed thoughts, runningrunningrunning brain always running no time
to
breathe no space
do this-that-this-that
no breathing
how do i exhale(all i'm doing-- inhaling inhaling--)
brain fills lungs fill
which where what when
what happened two hours ago what day is
it when did you get here what have
i said what did you say?

palms fists in eye sockets
dark static dancing dancing
caffeine fired caffeine wired
no sleep
can't sleep
time to sleep?
never sleep

i remember:
that your pills weren't yours
that you cried for help
that you needed sleep to swallow you

that i closed my eyes while you died on your kitchen floor
and it eats me up

and it's only fair, then,
for me to have inherited your curse