Prozac and Tic Tacs
That's what keeps me sane
One keeps my mouth clean
The other Scrubs my brain
These small sweet little pills I pop
One

                now two

                                         now four

I wonder what would happen if I took a couple more

we stole things. it was a game we played. just a stupid game between a good girl and a good boy trying too hard to impress one another.
you slipped a packet of tic tacs from the display at the register of the grocery store into my hands, and as a reward i kissed you out in the parking lot, love and laughter falling from my lips. it didn’t matter that i don’t like tic tacs.

We're just tic tacs
Stuck toppled over each other

In a box
In a pocket
In a purse
Or a socket

Just tic tacs waiting
We'll be bought and eaten

Used selfishly
Eaten in ones
In pairs
In threes
In handfulls

As a snack
To be sold
Freshen breath
Eaten when bored

Just tic tacs in a box
Juggled on the road
By people bigger than us
Who can use and abuse

Dispensable tic tacs
One after the other

All the same

BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR TELEPATHIC PROSE
Lee Sharks & Jack Feistfrom Pearl and Other Poems

1.     Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

2.     You are your own best advocate. Insist the world acknowledge your poems as artifacts of tiny doom. Accept nothing less. Threaten to smash yourself in the face with gasoline and set your hair on fire. Leap over the seats to aggressively stand inside the world’s personal space and get up in its grill. Take this container of Tic-Tacs and smash it on your forehead. Crush each Tic-Tac individually into your eyeballs and ask the world if it likes your poem, and if it likes your poem, then eat your poem: “Do you like my poem? Then eat it.”

3.     Always seek constant approval, then punch your cat in the face.

4.     Arrive alive. Don’t text and drive.

5.     Always write poems all the time.

6.     Never professionalize writing. Professionalism is the last refuge of responsible people looking for work.

7.     Your life is your poem. Take care to write it biographically. Failing that, invent false biographies and post them on Wikipedia.

8.     Get as much education as you can, then ****** your education in the face to save it from sloppy education. Get enough education to respect your contempt for education.

9.     Give it all that you have, as deep as it goes, as desperate and total as taking a breath.

10.  Also be pedantic mundane pig-critic of precise punctuation juggling and ruthless crossed-out darling murdering of your own puny sentences. Save every draft and revert to original after enormous work, then drown yrself in the bathtub. Remember: editing is organization.

11.  Be long-sighted prodigy of skeptically believing in nothing, but also believe in destiny, but quietly, and hit yourself in the face for naivety’s sake.

12.  You are a seamstress of words—place each stitch carefully, deliberately. Develop a series of rituals and perform them, without variation, prior to placing each word. Allow the frequency and intensity of these rituals to grow until you spend hours, each day, touching and retouching your left index finger to the tip of your nose in a rhythmic, counter-clockwise motion, in sets of thirty revolutions, in order to place a single character. Spend years of your life shut away from the world, wasting away into an awkward, unhygienic shadow of your former self, and have, to show for it, a two-syllable word of Germanic origins on an otherwise clean, white page. This word will be redoubtable, the bedrock of your writing career. Go on to spend vast sums of personal wealth and total dedication, alienating the remaining handful of long-suffering friends who continue, despite all odds, to solicit the memory of your humanity, in order to learn the arts of metalworking, Medieval alchemy, and font design, recreating a metal-cast, alpha-numeric set of Times New Roman font, from scratch, going broke long before “numeric,” and with only the half-formed germs of the characters W, N, and sometimes-vowel Y.  hat are such retrictio s to  ou?  ou are a poet,  ot a mathematicia .  ou are a creature of steel.  ou  ill  rite a  e  and better  orld, a  orld  ithout the letter   , forgi g it, o e smoki g husk of a  ord at a time.

13.  Turn over a new leaf. You’re not getting much done like this, anyways, let’s face it. Break the chains of your censoring, conscious mind; tap into the spontaneous well of unconscious human brilliance that springs from the source of dreams. Thwart the stick-in-*** tyranny of your internal editor by making a commitment to write constantly, without ceasing, editing, or even thinking, no matter what, ignoring the anally retentive quips your brain will no doubt make. Make a further commitment: you will not only write, irrespective of internal censorship, but in a way that is unconscionably terrible, on purpose. Your writing will be, by turns, embarrassing, infantile, automatic, and marmaduke poppers—or shall we say, antagonistic to the indoctrination in repressive concepts such as “sentence” and “word” of your reader, who is always, and only, you. Let your writing be a spiritual discipline of Bat-a-rang pancakes and lightly alarm clock, ding—your toast is done.

14.  Always Alka-Seltzer eyelids all the time.

15.  At last, you are ready to make it new, to ****** your darlings, to first thought, best thought, to your heart’s content. Your adverb will be the enemy of your verb, the difference between your almost-right word and your right word will be the difference between your lightning bug and your lightning. You are ready to have a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, then censor the s**t out of it. You are ready to turn your extremes against each other: Unlearn your apple pancakes and burst through the mental barriers; then slow the flood, let the lovely trickle out & edit, edit, edit. Capture spontaneous gem of native human genius, then marshal vast armies of technical knowledge & self-discipline to ensure it glimmers and cuts.

16.  Believe in things like destiny. No really—the path will shatter you so many times your shards will have splinters, your bombshells, shrapnel. By the time you get there—which you probably won’t—even your exhaustion will be tired. Exhaustion of mind and body will have passed so far beyond the physical, and through malaise of spirit, that it will emerge on the other side, as physical exhaustion again. In the face of this, nothing but a little Big Purpose will do. Besides, a little ideology never hurt anyone. Feel free to be all Voltaire with your bad self, in public—but don’t give up.

17.  After all of this, when your will is finally broken (again), and you have given up for the final time (again), start over. The former model wasn’t working. Refashion yourself and your writing. Lather, rinse, usurp your noble half-brother, and repeat, until you get somewhere, or die in the trying.  

18.  Achieve consistency of voice; it is the signature by which you will be known. Your “you” should ring out clearly from each individual letter. In this, the writer is like the salesman. Like a new car, neither the writing’s merits, nor the reader’s needs, will be the final, deciding factor. Ultimately, the deciding factor is you.

19.  Unlike a new car, it is difficult to drive a poem, to use it to get to school or work. Unlike a car salesman, a writer does not wear enormous ties.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

21.  Then again, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Throw things up a little bit. One day, put on your hobgoblin hat, the next day, your small mind.

22.  On second thought, re: #16-17: Stop here. You don’t look like much of a writer. Save yourself the trouble of a deep investment that is sure to yield no returns. The prize is big, and not many take it. The Iliad showed us that the prize of writing is life eternal, and taught us to long for that promise; but the Odyssey taught us not to bother. There are many suitors, a single Odysseus. While the husband wends arduously homeward, Penelope weaves impending glory, an evaporating glamour, enchanting them, until he arrives. We are in for a bad end, if we chase another man’s wife, or a prize not rightfully ours. There are many suitors, a crowd of them. They begin as a chittering swarm of bats and end in the very same manner. You cannot have what is not yours. What is yours, no man can take. So, like Emily says,

I smile when you suggest that I delay ‘to publish’—that being foreign to my thought as Firmament to Fin. If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her—if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase—and the approbation of my Dog would forsake me—then—My Barefoot Rank is better—

23.  Therefore, take these Sturm und Drang commandments to the trash heap. Return to step 1, as the only useful piece of advice: Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

(c) 2014 lee sharks & jack *****

from Pearl and Other Poems:

http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid;=1429895012&sr;=8-1&keywords;=lee+sharks+pearl

I come from innocence:
shared VHS tapes,
Disney movies rewound so many times
they got jammed,
late nights spent searching for a lost Elmo doll,
orange Tic Tacs,
bedtime stories by Dr. Seuss
and later, J. R. R. Tolkien,
when Saturday mornings meant
waking up at 6 to watch cartoons,
and sleepovers involved liters of Mountain Dew
and Godfathers pizza.

I come from a magical world
where number 4 Privet Drive is my second address,
Big Brother is always watching,
and sleeping with windows open are invitations for Peter Pan.
A place where Mr. Darcy is my soul mate,
I have two dogs named Old Dan and Little Ann,
to follow a white rabbit is encouraged behavior,
and if you asked me who my hero is
I’d answer with “Sydney Carton.”

I come from opposite sides of the map:
One half includes
Springfield raised grandparents
giving me 20 first cousins,
29 second cousins,
annual family reunions at the lake,
home grown tomatoes,
and alcoholics.
The other half is four thousand miles away and includes
only two cousins,
phone calls every Sunday before two,
and phrases like “Weltrusten” and “Ik hou van jou”
that sound as English as “Good night” and “I love you.”

I come from transformation:
dance recitals where wearing lipstick and hating it
turned into High School
when we all started wearing eyeliner
because it made us look older,
summers soaked in sunlight
are now dampened with summer jobs,
monsters no longer lived under our beds
but in our heads,
clumsy first kisses went further,
romances disappeared
and were replaced with heartbreak
so agonizing
even chocolate couldn’t help,
funerals became imminent,
trophies won at basketball camp- age 7
mean nothing
when you’re told you’re not good enough- age 17.

I come from friendship:**
stupid fights for no reason
always meant brownies the next day,
five dollar Photobooth pictures at the mall,
scary movies we never finished,
sneaking out at three in the morning to swim in the neighbors pool,
and surprise birthday parties
complete with Silly String.
Learning that it’s okay
to let someone see you cry sometimes.
Dumb ideas like wagon racing,
and glow stick fights
that left welts on our arms and legs.
Lord of the Rings movie marathons,
girls night out at Buffalo Wild Wings,
riding bikes down the middle of the highway,
mix CD’s,
Red Mango runs,
words of comfort,
advice,
love,
and seeing the beauty in each other
even when we can’t see it in our self.

****, this coffee's really sour
I've been drinking it for half an hour
Wanna hear a poem
Wanna hear a poem
Wanna hear a poem about a cauliflower

[Cauliflower's foolish
It doesn't fit the theme
I'm sick of all your nonsense
I'm tired of your memes]

Woman selling knickknacks
I'm not eating tic-tacs™
Your words were put in brackets
Check out my rhyming tactics

I see that you're not one for fun
Your a cloudy day, I'm the shining sun
My absurdity
Is the key
To happy for eternity

[You're clearly deeply broken
And only you can cure
Your fundamental problems
But really I'm not sure

The only one who conquers
Is one who really tries
So stop with the gorillas
Since everything will die]

Maybe you don't understand
My foolishness goes hand in hand
With making things that are the best
Like giant squids and turnip fests

Order, chaos, streets and bogs
Them, White, Color, Talking Frog
Odd on top but clear below
From ash and fire life will grow

Then again I see it's true
I am right and so are you
Maybe we both have a claim
In this crazy poet game

[x_x
Okay]

That didn't rhyme!

[It doesn't have to]

I love you

[Mmm hmm]

she's a jumping bean,
bouncing off walls,
breaking in her velvet muscles.

a princess crown encompasses her cranium,
eyelashes like butterfly wings,
fluttering in a breeze.

wearing tic-tacs for teeth,
a smile designed by blind men's hands,
construction of a masterpiece.

eyes aglow with eagerness,
bleeding aquamarine,
flooding my pupils with luminosity.

giggles like dandelion seedtips,
a supplementary appendage,
attached to my forearm.

she blankets me in gentle bear hugs,
curling around like pink yarn,
frayed at the edges.

Elaborate a little on the empty space.
canvas
Fill it with spills.
It all seems so accidental, did you bring your credentials?
Passwords linger throughout the discussions,
reason & recognize
Act with the valor of lightning and they will stumble like thunder... Timber.
Down falls another point on the pop chart.
Playing tic tac toe till the the tacs tic down by the toe, action falls into a drifting memory and crumples at the custodial hour.
Feet pounding time on the tiles
Repititions, turning inches to miles... Progress??
Does the diety of a paragraph outshine the novel drifter??
I mean, both read only one line at a time...

In my childhood bedroom closet
There's a little white ledge
And I kept on the edge
A collection of the trophies I'd won.

The trophy most prized
Was a small rubber guy
That sits atop of a pencil.

Graham booth was the boy
Who gave me the toy
As he smiled a goofy smile.
He looked like a 10 year old Backstreet Boy
Not a Howie - but a Kevin. Or a Brian.

My other trophies include
- I wouldn't want to exclude -
A small piece of rock
That I got
At the Bytown Museum
In grade 4.
Ms. Lewis' class.

Graham Booth was there
(With his boy band hair)
And he told me the rock was
Quote "neat"
End quote.
Sweeeeet.

My beloved knickknacks
(Oh! And a box of tic-tacs)
Weren't the only things hidden in there.
Under the front right corner
Of the soft white rug in my closet
I kept
My soiled underwear.

There were 2 pairs of underwear
Hidden in there,
One purple and the other ones blue.

The blue ones -
Well they weren't great.
Was it something I ate?
Couldn't put them in the laundry basket
In any case.
Couldn't tell my mom
For the look on her face.
She'd wish "Could another child
Take this one's place?!
She's ruined her ******,
What a big disgrace.
Those beautiful ******,
One purple, one blue!"

So I'd let no one see it:
My closet of secrets.
Some treasures
And some other ones
...Poo.

I miss the little girl you used to be,
you're now just a shell of who I used to see.

Your eyes used to twinkle as you found something funny,
but now they are dead and you barely smile, honey.

You used to dream the impossible and had hope in your heart,
but I've seen the way the world broke you - now destruction is your art.

You couldn't be protected from the evil presence,
so you escape reality with the drugs that give you pleasance.

You used to cry when you grazed your knees on the floor,
but now you don't even flinch when you cut your wrists to the core.

You used to ask why people would want to die,
but now you understand all too well as you lay in bed and cry.

You used to pretend tic tacs were medicine as you popped them on your tongue,
but now you sit with hundreds of pills in your hand wondering whether life is worth it; you're only young.

You used to be full of life and enjoyed most of your days,
but now you're dead behind your mask and you're always in a daze.

He may have won the last eleven battles as you tried to end your life,
but I am telling you that you will win this war this time and above him you shall rise.

I miss the little girl you used to be,
you're now just a shell of who I used to see.

Eloise in a Christmas tree,
swinging a straight razor
at the children below.
  Never held enough
as a baby.
  Never in love
just a maybe.

Eloise's father
in the living room,
drinking the news.
  Those *******
******* and *****,
  he screams.
Never held enough
  as a baby.
His mother smelled of
  a late night and
pineapple blend *****.

Eloise popping Prozac
like Tic-Tacs.
  Fantasizing about
shooting the school body.
You sonuvabitch,
her father screamed.
He penetrated--
She screamed
  and writhed.
Wrists held.
Body pressed.

Beans and toast
  for dinner.
Mom left dad because dad
  isn't big enough
or makes enough money.
Enough. Enough. Enough.

Eloise was supposed to be
a miscarriage.
Her dad lost some toes
when he missed a log.
  Chop, the axe said.

The world is a swinging place.
Whispering in the dark.
A hushed frenzy.
  Mix and **** out,
her gun let out a shout.
Eloise, queen of the
  student mass grave.

Eloise's father turns on
the news.
He drinks liquor instead.
Eloise on the t-v.
Oh, woe is me.
He went to the shed
  and blew his head
clean off.

The world is a swinging place.
The world in a frenzy.

I wake up every morning
To stare in the face of death
I love my wife with all my heart
But not her morning breath

I put tic tacs under her pillow
And even a bottle of scope
But do you think she'll ever take a hint
Well I'm guessing probably nope

I'd swear that woman eats road ****
Or something crawled in her mouth and died
When she puckers her lips to give me a kiss
I look for a place to hide

The dog won't lick his **** anymore
He licks her mouth instead
Don't ever tell her I wrote this
If you do I'm as good as dead

Okay, you know I'm only kidding
I'm not really being mean
But you know what I got her for Christmas
Yep, a bottle of listerine

Today
When I see you in front of me
You run through a thousand words and bits
Of
Bits
Of lives you know
I am part-werewolf part-pop reference
Part great archetype part lover
I am never whole I am never me

There is no insight

Today
when
The blue of your eyes
Is only as vivid as the paintings I’ve seen
They are not your eyes
you have taken them from the blue of time
you’ve dressed your self and yourself
from cruelty in factories
and the love of the cloth

today
I am losing it
You are millions of people
A shaky picture of a picture

It must always be like this

There is no insight

Today
When you unravel the things in your purse
With gumpacks tic tacs god and a weapon
I don’t know which one you are
Who have you stolen you from?
Say existential crisis again
And I’ll disappear into the walls

There is no inside-out insight
There is no in side-out in sight
There is no in side out in sight

It was a sliding scale,
and its not,
we arent,
we love in fear,
or play out the jaded concept,
of what love is,
we avoid emotional intimacy,
like a ****** transmitted disease,
we bathe ourselves in,

and we are scared,
we chose the empties,
so desperately afraid of something whole.

we are the generation popping pills,
like the tic tacs of choice,
we numb ourselves to the point of loss,

BUT ITS OUR RIGHT! ITS OUR CHOICE.

and we lose consciousness while breathing in,
worrying about what we once were,
and what is now,
afraid of the dark, we try and bathe ourselves in flourecent light.

shackeled to the shame
of the emptuiness of our years,
pretend we dont hurt, push the feelings aside,
just to belong,
we love in fear,
to escape the consequence of decisions,
but we are forever deciding,
and indecision is a choice even though its still deciding,

lovers lost in a war,
fighting a battle of selective memory,
and we drink amnesia like it's the cure
(it isn't the cure)
and we give ourselves away,
without dictation of the currency,
in which we exchange,
and we'd be lying even if we handed out the quotes,
and please dont tell the truth to slander my life of lies
because it could ****** well **** me,
it becomes a ticking time bomb making changes i really cant commit too,

Get back
You need a tic tac
Every time your lips flap, I’m convinced that I sniff ***
Bet you spit plaque

This balance is unsteady.
I am  no wanderer.
This is no conquest.
“Would you rather have this moment?
Or that one?”
Othering myself into eternity.
Plop that in your goblet
And drink  it up.
Huge, cool gulps of consciousness,
Whirled creation.

I spend my freest time
Dancing in the stuff that spills out of me
When I’m just too full,
My soul confetti,
The lumpy fungus that grows  
While I’m not looking.
Undulating in the ins and outs.
Roll in it, rip it up, squish it together,
Choke it down,
The sticky glaze of “I don’t know”
Getting my fingers *****

I sleep in an acid washed dreams
Inhaling and exhaling every part of
This constant spin cycle  
That stirs my existence
And shakes me like a cocktail.
Rest easily, cradled in the fluff
Of all of the possibilities.
Eat them like Tic-Tacs
Smell the minty pleasure of it
On my breath
When I splatter my being against the walls.

My life is a lemonade summer
I dream in sweet bits
That sting my throat like sour candy
Back into reality.
From there,
I daydream to car keys
knocking the dashboard
Sing to my own chaos
And laugh to my drumbeat.

The day begins before it should,
and every minute is squandered,
before I jump into the car,
spilling hot coffee in my haste.

Then the rushing wind blows past me,
running through my hair in the dark;
headlights keep up with the sharp turns,
and the thumping stereo lifts me.

Parking, on time, walking briskly
to ensure the grandest entrance
to give a formal impression.
My echoed greeting meets my ears.

Hello, goodbye, I take over,
holding my vigilant station
as I toast bagels with butter
and wait for them to call me up.

"Ashley!" comes the petulant cry
and I manage to answer her.
"Coming!" And I take a slow sip
before heading up creaky stairs.

They want me to pick out their clothes.
They want me to help them get dressed.
I say, "You can do that yourself,
I'm here to do hard things, like cook."

Teasing, admonishing, waiting
for children to do what I asked;
I take one more sip of coffee
and the cup is gone far too soon.

Soon, they are eating their breakfast,
and I'm prepping backpacks and coats.
Something spills, and I clean it up;
then she says she forgot her shoes.

I tell her sister to get them,
but she won't go up there alone.
So we three climb the creaky stairs,
and come back with their socks and shoes.

We run out the door, lock the garage,
and jump in my car for a ride.
"Seatbelts?" I ask before leaving,
and they both ask me for tic-tacs.

A minute away, and I park.
They jump out and both wave goodbye.
I smile and wait for the school bus.
I drive to my next job, next door.

I moved on her
I failed
I did try and **** her

That’s huge news there

I moved on her very heavily
I took her out furniture shopping
She wanted to get some furniture
I said I’ll show you where to get some nice furniture

I moved on her like a *****
I couldn’t get there
And she was married
And all of a sudden she’s got these big phoney ****
She’s totally changed her look

Woah – woah
Yeah the Donald has scored

I’m gonna use some tic tacs in case I start kissing her
Im automatically attracted
And when you’re a star they let you do it
You can do anything
Grab’em by the *****

Hello how are you?
You know Billy Bush?

We’re ready -
Make me a soap star

Melania said this was ok

Come on Billy don’t be shy
Get over here Billy

It’s hard to walk next to a guy like Donald.

We were heading to the aurora borealis with tic-tacs in our pockets and mossy footprints in our pasts,
I was finding wrinkles on your face and tucking them under your pillow cases,
Filling up on cherry vanilla coke and you,
Laughing at your jokes, but breathing for your laughs.
Goodbyes became “see you soon”, but we regressed faster than we reached the bases,
I was left asking my heart where you went and all I received was,
“Come again later” or “Maybe next time” like a monotonous 8 ball.
I checked for Pabst Blue and trophies, but I got acquainted with the empty cases.
You always told me not to get my hopes up, to keep the ends of my strings clean.
You heeded a warning as if you had an expiration date,
But I think I forgot to listen for bombs ticking over the sound of heartbeats.
They always told me that if it comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb.
Well, if that was true then why did you set my life on fire, treated me like Diego Rivera,
Like Frieda Kahlo, this love hit me like a tram.
Can you really violate a person’s privacy,
Once they’ve pushed you naked, into a crowd?
Because finding your diary yesterday was bittersweet, but the only sugar was reading it aloud.
“I’m coming home, but instead of doorbells to signal return, the singing of her pulse is my only melody.
The only thing to resemble a welcome sign was your hair dripping on your chest.
My only blankets were your nimble hands and your hollow breaths,
My favorite song is a compilation of every word you’ve said to me.”
But now you’re hosting tea parties, but you’re sipping chardonnay,
No recollection of my address because you’re occupied by your high-class party,
Spending hours upon hours discussing La Primavera,
When you’ve not listened to classical music in over a decade.
Now I’m left wondering what song rattled in the back of your head when you sped off in a high-speed chase.
I could tell you who won, but again,
Don’t think I can keep up with your pace.
It doesn’t matter much now that I didn’t love you like a happy ending,
Nor did we resemble a love song,
But our love was like traffic signs: cautious yet reassuring.
It was like avoiding cracks in the side-walk, without any rhyme or reason.
But it turns out; humans are not able to see all on-coming traffic,
Swerving away from an on-coming object is no longer effective once you’ve hit it like a brick wall.
You filled my head with pages of filler paper, allowing me to scratch the surface,
Never truly knowing you, claiming, “It’s easy, it’s simple like this”.
I never knew simplicity to hurt like hell.
Now you’re hosting tea parties,
But you’re chugging the last of the Rose,
Being with you was like La Primavera,
It has been excessively over-played.

Last night, all the teeth fell out of my head.
You said it was a common dream,
but I wore away my gums with the bristles all the same,
and swallowed the mouthwash just to make sure
my insides were clean enough.

But then again,
perhaps my organs are not the correct organs
and the mouthwash is now dissolving the walls of
my simulacrum stomach.
Plasma will drip from my gaping, toothless maw,
the color of pea soup.

Grandma hated pea soup.
She said it was too opaque to see
the glass shards at the bottom of your spoon.
They would slice up your tongue
and you wouldn’t be able to call 911.

My tongue feels too big, overflowing onto my molars.
I chew, scraping off the taste buds,
whittling down the swollen muscle,
so I don’t swallow it in the witching hour:
your sleeping ears deaf to my wet choking.

I am eating saltines without soup when you come home,
in the puddle of mouthwash and blood my stomach spit back.
Your mouth runs over with “****,” your own teeth like rows of tic tacs.
I worry they’ll fall out soon, white and small against the linoleum.

like candy,
we wanna taste the sweetness
without the consequence
there's a nagging sugar rush
trying to explain something
to me in this frenzied manner
like if I don't grasp it fast enough
I just may
..........crash.........
tic tacs clacking down the path to somewhere
and I've only just dipped into my candy stash
tomorrow's agenda promises Hershey kisses and snickering calories
because everything so good
is essentially somewhat bad

I read some writing advice once
It said "Writing isn't a competition"
well I'm sorry to tell you buddy
but you can go right to hell
because If you're words are published
yeah I'd congratulate you
and then I'd be write at my typewriter
notebook or laptop
sharp scrawling and tic tacs
because I love the bottom rungs
of unpublished writers
throwing their entirety against a brick wall
over and over again until it starts to crack
and fall apart brick by brick
until we see that beautiful view behind it
and everybody who makes it
is just another grain of sand in the hour glass
making me nervous and restless
impatient
so everybody who makes it
is about ten new poems
and I'm not rue if I will make it
but I'm going to try
it's all I've got

When we **** I shout: s. o. s. la vida
‘Cause our bed is more like a corrida
But when I stare at my ring with a pearl
I ask myself again, am I that girl?
When I take Mexican tic tacs with Corey
I feel like Christ is sending me that glory
But when I’m on the ground and start to curl
I whisper to myself, am I that girl?
And when I’m dancing ******* on a bar
I feel like killer **** movie star
I finish twenty lemon drops and swirl
While crying to myself, am I that girl?!

I always used to wonder why you were so cold. I wondered why you never left your room and why you could never be seen. I remember the night I listened into your room and you spoke so lightly. It had been months since I heard your voice so clear. You said "take me I'm ready"
I asked God why he made you so sad. I asked God why he let this man do this to me. I asked God why you held that rope so tightly.
I remember the first time I ever cut my wrists, it was crimson and bliss. I asked God why he let me do it. I asked God why he let you do it.
I remember watching you pop them like tic tacs. I watched how fast you could clean the house. How fast you moved, talked, and how loud you screamed.
I asked God why you didn't want me. A man answered back with a hand. I asked God why I deserved that. I asked him to not let you go.
I remember when I sat outside your door asking for a hair dryer.  I knocked for 10 minutes. When you finally came out I saw the look on your face. I asked God why you wanted to die. I asked God why I did too.
I remember when you got taken away and I eventually stopped asking God such things.

once, you opened a box of Tic Tacs
and I smacked it out of your hands,
and I watched as all of those
little mints fell to the floor.

you looked at me in shock
and asked,
"why did you do that?"

and I went silent.

I didn't know how to tell you
that it was impulse, because
Tic Tacs make the same sound
as benzos do when they're rattling
around inside a pill bottle.

__________

once, we got into an argument
over something stupid,
and we yelled at each other
and we both said things
that we didn't mean.

you got up to leave
but I had stolen your car keys.
you couldn't go anywhere.
I locked myself in my room
and you fell asleep on my couch.

the next day,
I gave them back to you
and again, you asked,
"why did you do that?"

and I went silent.

I didn't know how to tell you
that you could've crashed and
your car could've gone up in flames
and you could've never made it home

and if that happened, the last thing
that I would've ever said
to you would be "I hate you."
and if that happened,
I would never forgive myself.

__________

once, I woke up screaming
and you tried to comfort me
with a hug, and when I felt that,
I hit you as hard as I could.

when your nose
finally stopped bleeding,
and you had gone through
and entire box of tissues,
you looked at me and asked,
"why did you do that?"

and I went silent.

I didn't know how to tell you
that almost every night, I relive
experiences that I wish I never had.

I couldn't tell if I screamed out loud
or if it was only in my head.
I couldn't tell my nightmares
apart from reality, because
my dreams always feel so real.

I couldn't tell that it
was just you hugging me,
because your embrace
reminded me of the man who
held me down once and
hurt me in ways that I'll never forget.
I didn't know how to say that
every night, he reappears in my head.

I spend all day fighting off my past, and
when I let myself relax to go to sleep,
I let my guard down. and he returns
to haunt me all over again.

__________

once, you packed your bags
and you told me that you were leaving.
you were crying and so was I, and it felt
like my entire world was imploding
and on the verge of collapse.

I wiped away a tear
from my cheek and asked,
"why would you do that?"

for a moment, you went silent.

and when you answered, you told me
that you didn't know me,
and I realized that you were right.

every time you had asked me
who I was, I went silent.

when you asked about my trauma,
you were asking me who I was

and this whole time,
I hadn't realized that my trauma
was such a big part of me.

I hate having to accept it,
but I know that it's true.

my trauma made me who I am,
and I don't like that person.

Little white lights and little white pills,
Hoping they both do something for the memories sloshing around in my head,
**** them like bacteria?
Little bit of alcohol,
Shrivel them up with that bitter bitter,
***** ‘em out with my head under water,
Voice out far,
I’ll put on a show,
Strutting around on that hardwood floor,
Emerge stage right, through a prop door,
Blow a kiss to the crowd
At the end of the show,
If I pretend hard enough,
They’ll never know.
But won’t they,
If they find the empty, orange vials,
While I’m caking on stage makeup,
All the colors of denial,
And they know those aren’t tic tacs in my bathroom sink,
And it’s not apple juice
In my iced down drink,

But I can stand up, dress up, and play with the rest of them,
Run with the best of them,
Binding my panic in,
Tangled up in mic wires
And hair pins
As long as I medicate
Don’t communicate
And wrap it all up
Wind it all in
Nice and tight,
Not a hair out of place,
Big smile on my face,
That’s it,
Maybe that’ll do it,
Maybe I’ll get better this time.

sometimes I feel like my brain is melting and likely to ooze out my ears at any second but sometimes I feel like my brain is swelling and the pressure is too much for my fragile skull and my head will explode and it will be hell to clean up.

sometimes I feel like my skin is too tight and one wrong move will cause it to split open and reveal bones and blood and gore but sometimes I feel like my skin isn't really /my skin/ like I'm slapping €10 moisturizer on some strange mask that looks like skin and feels almost like skin but just doesn't feel quite right on my body.

sometimes I feel like drinking ***** like its water or swallowing xanax like they're tic tacs and washing everything down with cookies and maybe a bottle of €4 wine but sometimes I feel like drinking peppermint tea and eating sweet red apples and the only constant is that I never feel like nourishing myself properly whether because I don't deserve it or because I'm too exhausted all the time I'm not sure.

sometimes I feel like I haven't earned the love and trust and intimacy I crave and that's why I don't ******* have it and sometimes I feel like **** for thinking that because I know realistically I have family and friends and blah blah blah but the idea of speaking completely openly to anyone terrifies me to the point of xanax ***** rinse repeat and I think maybe that's what I want
that being someone who definitely will not leave or want to or be disappointed no matter what I do and maybe that's another reason why I can't talk to the people I have because I can't bear the guilt
my shoulders are so knotted and tired they can't carry the disappointed faces too.

sometimes I feel like the biggest hypocrite alive because I tell myself one thing and my brain fights me on it and I can never tell who's winning only that there's a mess now because I didn't listen to the facts and sometimes I feel like this mess is exactly what I need because I don't know who I am without it.

sometimes I feel so much my toes buzz and my eyes black over and I can't breathe or stop sobbing but sometimes I feel nothing at all and I think I know which one I prefer and I think I know it's the wrong one.

what is it like to feel steady.