I felt it
When I spoke
To the judge,
For my son,
Years of shell work
Encasing fear and sanity, cracked with each glance, falling away. Everyone listening.
I was left lost
Like a snail losing it's shell
Mushy and vulnerable
A Pulpy mess.

Was it enough
That I said
Or too much.
So much was left out
The Russian Roulette admission
The thoughts of jumping 15 floors from his hotel
So many letters making up words and paragraphs upon paragraphs
of 15 years.
Throwing out a gun
Into the city trash.

How could I be anything more than a mother
Who let the saving flatten her out of existence. Incoherence and pulp.
Will it be discarded
All that effort
To keep him alive
At my expense.
Is that what mothers do?
I'll never get to return. Life doesn't
Let you.

MY LIFE



So now I see life for what it is, a crazy collage of feelings, events and emotions we all endure. Today I saw my mate in Ward 10. Don’t you know that he nearly died as infection gorged his body? They took half of his insides out and he’s hanging in there. I have a truly eventful life – meeting pilots, gothic singers and tattooists. I have tried marriage, promiscuous ***, Class A drugs, reckless driving for that crazy buzz of madness – the wrong way to find happiness. The beauty of a delta wing killing machine floors me, and names like Mirage and Mig lift me to the heavens, for I have lived and seen many things in this **** up called life which now seems to last forever but in reality is only a second. Debbie was my soulmate for a short period; every moment was times by ten, in intense excitement. I know it didn’t last but that’s the way it goes, in the game of life – my life.

I like to think that when you left me, you went straight to church. you listened to the sermon, but you couldn't stand up when the congregation sang.
I like to think that someday you'll stop trying to wash my scriptures off your hands with holy water.
I like to think that I'm that old mattress you had when you were ten; you always said it held the same familiarity as falling in love with a stranger.
the mattress' holes from falling asleep with lit cigarettes match up perfectly with my alibi.

I'm not to be trusted. I'm an angry human.
I grew up with broken glass in my lungs and cracked ribs.
something inside me snaps even further when the sun shapes your body into a shadow on my bedroom wall.

I want to redefine the word 'fire' with your name, and light candles with you. I want to make my walls sweat. I want you to burn up my ****** clothes. I want you to set my books ablaze. I want you to realize the hardest part is never letting go, but forgetting you ever had a handle.

you can't be the flame and the wick.
you need to leave me to burn down, like the altar candles in the front of the sanctuary, for everyone to see.

sometimes I think god hates me; I'm just a pawn in his and satan's chess game.
small and insignificant in value - I almost want satan to win.

after all,
if you are fire,
hell will feel like home.

but then I remember that I'm tired of controlled burns and scrubbing your soot off of my hands.

so I like to think that when you left me, you went straight to church. you listened to the sermon, but you couldn't stand up when the congregation sang.

and I like to think that Saint Jude called me out of your blaze, and that I left you there with all of your confessions and your communions in your own personal hell.

either way, it's not my cross to bear anymore.

with a throated frog
  i re-digest
    my sickness' exhume

(a thing i did
  when piloting
   a conversation
    most polite)

Turning in this day
Turning over in dismay
For here, as I lay,
Comforted in these sheets
A chill turns to a burning blaze
My mind trapped in a dizzying haze

Aching muscle and raspy tone
Weakness cripples every bone
Shallow comes each breath
That escapes my parched lips
To countless others it foretold death
Filmed in countless clips

But, not for I
Not in this day, not this time
Not in this peculiar rhyme
For here I shall not die

To recover
To grow stronger
Prepare for what may come
The war is not yet over
With hope, it won't be much longer
For this great disease we shall overcome.

- Jay M
June 3rd, 2021

sense heavy
  i plough at the day slurred
  pushing putty steps
aching and unfocused
  going about chores
  tackling things ...like...
...have i been delivered head trauma?

unbearable attention is drawn by my visible condition
pain inducing communications are fired at me
inquiry that i bat at and parry pathetic

Can I lumber onward
nauseated i
and be
in anyway productive ?
muscular suffering
this astronaut
this deep sea explorer
is
receiving a poor mix of gases

valve

I discharge ;
   a laugh without kindle
(not from the origin of tune
         and mastication)  
from an orifice of wound

a hack of mushroomy dry fleck :
the taste touches the back of the airways
  and takes to the brain in an ail

    ideas slurry
my actions blur
I fumble about my living space
my balance
        pained ears
fall to floor
      an ug at the back my throat
I laugh from all fours
    vision reddens
unhinged at the jaw
      my neck
shoulder muscles punting
my logged and leaden head lolling
   a laugh of hurt
a ******* of saliva
        detonates on the carpet
is there blood in that  ?
sickness on the verge
                 of being brutally provided

"So dramatic !"
my wife passes me a glass of fruit juice
                             and an aspirin
         preventing the transformation
                a gentle chiding

Another day passes by,
With me not knowing why.

A grin is plastered on my face,
Like a maniac running from something he hates;
yet I still enjoy the feeling of the chase.

The tension made it an ill-looking smile;
then the idea was washed over me.
I feel this way because...

I was useless.

I was useless yet did nothing to solve this problem.
I'll idly do something as I remember all the things that should've been done,

It haunts me

every second,

minute,

and hour.

I was a menace,
A menace to myself and everyone;
Felt like an actor reading a script.

But then again, someone said that life and all is like a play
And the world is a stage.

It makes everything feel surreal,
Like a living dream.

A man tired from the waking day
hangs his keys on the beaded hook,
lets the hat off his grateful head.
He places himself in front of the table
where he laid down his papers,
his skins and his skin.
He put on the table, the day's characters,
mulled them over in the electronic hum of Aleph and coffee flavoured eyes,
rolled them up tight with tomorrow's fears
and set them alight.
He put there a glass ashtray to catch the embers of regret.
He put on the table his dear friend, Old Man Wibble,
the bedlamite seer,
drunken oracle,
"liquid Jesus, straight from the bottle"
and longed for a glass to raise.
He put there the smoke from his exasperated lungs
and the wistful music of his tired throat,
he put there every last syllable and every letter left lingering on a lost lovers lips.
He put hope on the table,
for the weight might crush him as he sat
but not the table,
solid under this load,
to bear weight is what a table must do
and tomorrow will always bring another pile.