Doctor, Tell Me

I am going to be. Here,
in a sticky womb,
a living room made for
madness; a sautéed fanciness.

The feast is being set,
just above the chandelier,
they call me by number,
my tattooed slumber calls.

White isn’t always padded
or strapped. Most likely
it only surrounds
the dark blue ring
around the sunburst I look at.

I think I am a painting.
Rembrandt is too gross, but
Picasso, he is enough mystery
to create me.
Half of me sprawls across the cold,
I wait for night-watch to
twist me back to form.

The other girl squats in the corner.
I smell feces and antifreeze.
Do I dream? Can I dissect the fumes of
the dead?
Her charred body crawls toward me,
she removes her teeth.
Everything glitters like a shadow.

Then, I am here. In the morning.
It isn’t the sun that tells me,
but the number, tattooed to
my skull.

Doctor, tell me, has Picasso gone home?

This Sickness

Sickness comes at interludes, when
light burns brighter than
sun stars, when Anger dashes in
to catch the aftermath.

We battle for the scenery.
Touching base, both reaching for
the flag, for proclamation.

It is mine. This sickness is mine
to water or see to wilt.
I find no fault in either,
both are stars of polar regions,

imploding a billion light years away
from me. I will awake with sweaty palms,
the enemy dripping down my back.

I sit in the night, like a sauna,
saluting the grace of the Gods
for keeping what is meant for the skies
quietly away from these hands.

My medicine will come clockwise, sneaking up
on me, on little twinkling toes.
I never miss this time because there is no
better place to live or to die.

Deep White

Demons sleep in the deep white,
a place to rest while
laundry drowns without ultimatum,
while dismembered chickens
swell in heat – sticking to
bits of parsley that grew this year.

People expire faster than milk.
If it isn’t there taste, it’s their
noises or gestures
or lack of reflection.

Kids are running off to school,
I leave the bread in the toaster.
One more day, slice open the demon,
crawl inside

guilt grows off walls
shames eats at intestines
all the people go, go, go
off to let me sleep in the deep
white.

Waiting For Alignment

She says to watch the waves. The tides are mixed, we wait for alignment.
It could take years….and in the meantime my bones slap against the equator.
The water is low.
Fish flop belly up with baby jelly beans dangling in reverse….the tide is turning.

Zenith encourages direction. I am vertical; midheaven.
God is intersecting.

What house do I belong in?
Am I breast and bone?
Am I flesh and blood?
Am I fire and system?

She says to watch the waves. We can go from there. The sun must first come
over the horizon. I strain East. I feed on the ecliptic axis and wait 90 degrees
like suggested. I wait

until I fall beneath the Earth. X lives here. X is virulent and understood.
X is ability and invasion.

She says I have to learn how to be with the disease. Who I am is bound
and fruitless. I will never find alignment when I greet
X in such short periods. X will never release the bacteria and set me
back on land,
on shore,
on sea,
where I can wait with the tides for alignment,
and drown out the suffering.

Janus

By doorways and walls, I pass through
with two faces. I am honoured
and assassinated by fruits and
seeds of the people.

They move their lips, I hear deep shrills.
They whisper like big cannons
at battle. I keep each as a sacred
stone; I throw each as a poisonous tale.

Today, God loves my motion. I merge with
Galileo under seven planets
I am his Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea.

But tomorrow will take me suspiciously.
Medusa will come to show
the bogus end of Venus and her beautiful phase.

White weasels come in pack, they smell her
insidiousness; she sits coy on my tongue
while I am categorized.

Back to square rooms, black chairs,
flat carpet,
doorways,
walls,
I pass through with two faces.
I am honoured by amber vials,
assassinated by the pills.

They move their lips,
I hear fuzziness and laughter…
quit laughing at me
quit laughing at me
I am a statue,
I am trapped here.

And The World Doesn’t Agree With Me

My time is 15.
I am round cheeks
and naked with definition.
I don’t know how to hide under
the thick film that buries me later.

He is built with reddish, muddy hair.
He flares and expands in size,
greater than any other young torso.
I watch him hold hands with Grace
and Innocence, I listen to him
sing with rebellion and defiance.
He strums, and he strums me along
to the quiet, unexposed nights.

My time is 16,
and he has left. He has found liberty;
liberty, or abandon.
I have found a stuffy old pharmacy.
I sit on sidewalks eating tiny tablets, remembering
abandon from times: 8, 9, and 10; it is
sadly comfortable,
like I am with him.

3 months later, he brings back the East Coast.
His air is accented and tired,
thick for me to breathe.
He smells like 15, though, and he tastes like
the cigarette we shared on the night he left.
He brought himself and his guitar
just to me,
and he strings, and he strings me along
to the quiet, prudish night for two more weeks,
and then he is gone.

Now, I listen to the music,
to motorcycles drive by
my dark basement, with strings that
I will learn to play later.
Not yet, it is not time for me yet.

Right now, the film is building.
Right now, I am being defined.
Abandon has timed itself, lined perfectly
with my over-exposed skin.
I need him.

Now.
Later.
I need him.
I will,

and the world will never agree with me
and nobody believes me.

My Monsters

The monsters are awake,
lurking around
upstairs.  They hide out in the most
trimmed places;
stomping through the garden of adequacy, bathing
their filth in competency.

They awake me from agitated
sleep, speeding my attention away from the immune
hard-wood floor to
the bed of pins and needles they have
prepared.

The doctor says I have a choice.
I chose capsules.
(That was not the correct choice, they say)
I agree. The capsules do
not keep the monsters
away
or help me Rest In Peace – a
choice the doctor says is not a choice.

I am left with a capsule and the monsters,
swallowing the capsules with a pitcher of
beer – attempting a “submerge and die”, but they
have wicked
enamel on their
sharp little fangs and the capsule
is made of gel.

My monsters sink in their teeth and
shred open the pill
releasing the promised relief – One monster snatches a
handful and a thousand more follow, till
all the magical comfort
is stolen.

I can’t say I blame them – they
have an addiction. If these capsules do
what the doctor has promised, I would want a
piece of it, too.