I’ve been to the ledge,
looking into an abyss
certain that I
wouldn’t be missed
and even if one person did,
they’d be better off in a world
without me in it.

I’ve seen shadows creeping
while I was almost sleeping
halfway between
waking and a dream,
with a spiderlike scribble
crawling across my blanket
that I couldn’t smash
or even shake off.

I’ve been swept up
in a manic moment,
then began drowning
in an endless pit,
and almost died in it.

So many self-inflicted
near misses, electric,
pill bottle, and razor kisses
but my body insisted
on living when my mind
wanted a quiet end
to the painful buzzing.

Some say it gets better,
and for me it did,
some say all you got to do
is keep trying to live,
some day you will make it.
It’s one struggle at a time.

But sometimes people
go into those dark caverns
and never come back.
It’s not a beautiful death
just a tragic final act.

-2021

anxiety reaches around the corners of my heart with spiderlike hands and pulls on the ends of my hair with unfeeling fingers
follows me just out of my line of sight but close enough for me to feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up
i turn but there's no one there
or is there?

anxiety reaches around the corners of my heart with spiderlike hands and raises its hackles like i'm someone it doesn't know
follows me far enough away that i sometimes forget it's there
but close enough for me to remember where it was
i turn but there's no one there
or is there?

anxiety reaches around the corners of my heart with spiderlike hands and pats my arm a little too hard like a drunk stranger
follows me like i'm its only way home and if it loses me it will be lost in an unfamiliar city at night
i turn but there's no one there
or is there?

I don't feel it, You say. And, pray tell her
name, my sir, that i may find she thee and prithee

Bear me off to southern sounds, fallow fields,
an altar ground, a garland rope of singing springtime snows.

this may be more than i can--;;
                        YOU
                        ARE
 ­                       NOT
                        WOR
          ­              THW
                        HILE

and i had such an awful dream last night--

you said, Bronwen, my love;
and i could not sweep her hair from the floorboards
beneath which you hid your ***** mags from mice.

because you tell me about it.

                                                            ­              WHOAM?
you speak of gOd like dOgs & i am worthless coinage
in the sewers. the sewers find my dress still hanging from your bones.
your bones your bones your piano finger bones
kiss me again

until my lips swell my throat bleeds i do not want you to know how much i crawl spiderlike through the trails of hair in the drain as the autumn leaves the summer leaves the spring buds freeze over hell i am not i am not listening pan-drum please let me say this one last thing:;

he is your accordion player the ***** player man who speaks fluent french and inflected english he is your accordion player on the pipes-----

and you say i do not feel and i reply,

this is too bad too late, chuckle replay as your fantasy walks through the door my team my team she is porcelain lovely see the perfume in your synesthesia colorblind goat footed grandiose Cesar with epilepsy she is your dream she is she is she is!

&meanwhile; the trumpet in soul still plays solfeggio---

1 2 le 3 4 1 2 le 3---1 2 le 3 4 1 3--le 1 le 3 le 1
she is the discord of the seventh in the tenor line
she is membranes she is rain she is towels

                      LEIGH **** IT

if only if only you weren't so lonely i might call you mine and bring you back homely.
IF ONLY-----Charles weren't so busy while you

stare at silver spoons and cherub smiles

and cupid calls you home again.

That year they gave Tess
her first typewriter. She’d
not need to borrow her
brother’s battered old piece
or write down her fragile
poems in her spiderlike
scrawl as her father called it.

The promise came while
she was getting her mind
together in that mental
asylum, after the mucky
love affair that went no
place and left her hanging
there, like one crucified
for all to see and most
to softly mutter and stare.

Get yourself mended girl,
Father said, and we’ll buy
you your own typewriter,
so you can stab away on
the keys to your heart’s
content and bring out
those poems of yours.

He never read her poems,
never read much apart
from the back page sport
or gawked at page 3 girls
with a tut tutting tongue.

That year she gazed out
of the wide barred window
of the asylum at the snow
on fields, at the seagulls
gathering and feeding behind
the faraway tractor as it
ploughed, at the grey
depressing sky, wondering
what it’d be like to not be,
wondering what the woman
with a cast in her eye, was
doing to herself in the toilets,
one night when she’d gone
in to *** unable to sleep.

The typewriter idea
and promise kind of got her
through the dark hours and
the ECT, and the following day
headaches and numbness.

After slitting her wrists (mildly,
a cry for help) she said on the
phone to her father, Come get
me out of this place, help me
get back together. Ok, he said,
Miss Humpty Dumpty, and he
put down the phone, and she
stood in the hall of the asylum
with the receiver in her hand,
the image of the typewriter
before her eyes, those poems
banging on the inside of her
head, new ones wanting to
get out, old ones left for dead.

I met a girl under the quivering black water
washed by the icy sharpness of drowning.
She looked up at me, silent, faceless,
without identity. Breathing salt
from the river with a frozen voice.

Tiny electric eyes scanned
the colossal reservoir with a desire
to escape the surface of watery
dark weeds and coral twig.

The prickling ache of sleepless
blood stuck inside me as I stared
into the maelstrom of identity
swimming in warped silence.

Now I sit, spiderlike, waiting.
The cauldron of night dragging in my veins.

You sit on your brazen altar
worshipped as Venus
for your fake beauty
your feigned sincerity
corrupting anyone who listens
to your propaganda

whisks of dyed blonde hair
fall around your face in layers
so common a haircut
and this, so human
your greatest weapon?

I can’t watch you anymore,
so spiderlike,
catch the weaker men in your web
and with well thought out battle strategies
drain of them of every happiness
until they are broken
and alone

And these games are your life
once, they were mine too
but that was a decade ago
now, I have no desire
to play these breaking games.

from the rust,red soil,
the nastursiums come.

first as tendrils, spiderlike
then, the little, disc umbrella leaves.

green and expectant,
in the sub-tropical,
late,winter sun.

and soon the riotous ladies,
come with skirts of colours
bold and joyous
resplendent in the party wear

then, they will run and skip
in rampant dance,
over rocks, tree stumps
climbing up the old fence.

with pepper in their tongues
and cheerful smiles.

they are one of summer's, most happy boons...
and soon and soon,
they come,
from the rust red soil
                               they come...

Small shadows
of little spiderlike forms
followed the
folds of my blanket.

Terrified,
but never surprised,
or paralyzed,
I swatted hesitantly
at those imaginary
nightmares,
**** little
intangible demons.

Even after
sharp swipes
they still
moved forward,
and I retreated,
not in defeat
but stepped back
and allowed
sleep
to overcome me.

In dawn and
other daylight hours
those little nuisances
never made any appearances.

They merely
made me
question
the state
of my
sanity.