and how do you feel today?

White coats parade through the blinding corridors
Some have faces perched on top
others with patent leather shoes polished to perfection
pink and blue and green scrubs shout orders
codes and meds and labs and scans echo
rattle the walls
Hospital gowns wheel loyal oxygen tanks and IV stands through days and nights filled with coughing and fevers and flat lines
Friends stop coming
Families are too afraid to look
But beds are always full
Every oxygen mask stuck to a nose and mouth
Eyes filled with anguish, faces pale and empty
Those eyes, those faces, turn to me
Grasping hands and speechless mouths plead for answers and ask for hope
But I am not yet a white coat
Nor am I a set of happy pink scrubs
I carry a stethoscope and put my ear to a chest
I dream of hearing answers and solutions and dreams and hopes and souls
But I do not yet have the key
So I hear life
And air
Soon I will feel a wrist and thoughts will come
But for now I walk the blinding corridors
And feel the walls shake
I see masks and tanks and stands and gowns and hands and questions
And I stand in awe
An impostor
A guest
Or perhaps just a traveler
Starting out on a journey
To nowhere and everywhere

phantom pain

memory is studded with darts of truth
if you could would you pull them out?
you know they stab and pierce.
it hurts to know reality.
they hold all the cards
and we watch the film roll
actors moving like puppets on drugs
if they gave you the strings what would you have them do?
what would the puppet world be like if you ran it?
you'd stab the puppets in the back and let them stab you too.
all for some morphine.
did you know morphine makes your pain disappear?
it also makes you throw up everything inside you and then throw up some more until you're a crackly shell and you have nothing more to throw up and you turn into dust with the touch of a feather.

acid rain

Lightning strums the strings stretched across the sky
a melody drip drops onto my waiting skin
like warm blood bubbling up through my insides
bringing me back to life.
an inner awakening of nightmares and wishes
shadows and shapes leaping and crawling through the winding recesses of my ugly and
frightening mind.
pockets filled with curses
like Hansel's stones I leave a trail where I walk
where I think
and where I kill
A trail of horror and of beauty where I lose myself and everything I love and hate.
The sky is green, and I blink once, twice - maybe it is all just a dream.
The flash comes again and for a minute I can see it all -
but there it goes and now
everything is black.
It seems to me that after all,
there is really
nothing
here.

today will be the last

Paper curling under your head collecting dust collecting dirt collecting filth
Rags are silks, just a different color feel different
That’s all.

You don’t need my help I know I have more than you have
I have more than you’ll ever have than you can dream about

In your dreams there’s a giant fish that swallows you over and over and over

But you don’t need me
You have your silks
And your paperpillow
do you need anything else?

You stink of urine
Of feces
Of dirt and hatred and guilt and capitalism

I had dinner today.
I had lunch today.
I didn’t have breakfast because I wasn’t hungry.

Were you hungry?

Probably not, you don’t have teeth.
They fell out a long time ago because you’ve never seen a toothbrush.

That’s not my fault.

Coins are jingling in my pockets.
There’s a hole in my pocket.
I might lose a penny.

I dream about being a giant fish.

Swimming and swallowing and being.
Large.

Everyone wants to be a giant fish.

You should be a fish. Maybe then you could have a bath.
And you wouldn’t smell like the government.

Think about it.

a fragment still untitled

It had been announced several days later that they were looking for him. But he already knew. From the moment he awoke on the day Janie dissolved, before she ever told him she felt unusual, strange and funny inside like she would crack open and burst all over their newly tiled kitchen floor, Thomas knew they would come, soon enough.

The men in orange were a strange breed, they were not clones but they had the same empty look in their eyes, the same haunted lifelessness that made them seem like ghouls, that made their cold soulless gaze crawl under his skin and turn his marrow to ice. Thomas loved Janie, and the ghoulish clan of orange-clad faceless non-beings did not understand love. He did not understand love. Janie probably did not understand love, and yet she loved him back.

It must have happened the day Thomas came home from the factory and decided never to go back. He told Janie as soon as he stepped in the door.

“I’m done. I’m not going back.”

“Oh?”

Her eyes met his, but her fingers kept flying, knitting a perfect little sweater for a perfect little baby boy.

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

This was their usual manner of conversation lately, crisp and to-the-point, and rarely very informative. She had not questioned him further, and he had gazed at her sadly, knowing that she had slipped far beyond his reach.

The truth of the matter was that she had begun to crack, deep inside, and he knew it long before she did. There was no baby boy, the sweater was for a figment of her imagination, and Thomas knew Janie would never realize that her pregnancy was of her own creation and had no basis in reality.

He had married Janie the day after they graduated from college, and they had an outdoor wedding in June, just the way she had always wanted it. She had been radiant that day, with beautiful brown curls framing her round, bright face, clutching a bouquet of lilies.

There was only a shadow of that girl present in Janie’s face now, and it flitted across in such short flashes that Thomas could never see it long enough to recognize it before it was too late. Her hair hung limply in front of her eyes, revealing gaunt hollows in her cheeks, under her sunken, still startlingly blue eyes. Thomas loved her as much as always, and that made every day feel like a betrayal, like a best friend who stabs you in the back with a cleaver when you’re just about to tell him how much he means to you.

Thomas was not quite sure exactly when Janie started believing a child was on the way. They had slept in the same bed, as always, but had not touched each other in almost a year. Thomas had started to forget what Janie’s body looked like under her crumpled clothes that no longer matched. Janie did not seem to notice the significance of this fact.

She had started by painting the spare room in pastels, squiggles and streaks that made no recognizable pattern. She thought it was beautiful, although it looked nothing like how a baby’s room should look. He did not know if Janie really could not see what the room truly looked like, or if she did not care.

Next she had made the rounds of their immediate neighborhood, announcing proudly and happily, almost girlishly, that she and Thomas were expecting a new addition to their little home, and inviting them all to come and see the room that she had arranged for their darling boy. They all congratulated Thomas when they saw him next, and he smiled obligingly. He did not know what to say.

Heroes

Published in Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees; by LitNoire Publishing, 2006

At first there was nothing.
and God said, "Let there be light,"
and here we are, in the
dark.
The world began in nothingness
null void.
hardly different today.
dark night
blood in the streets
all i do in response is write this
worthless poem.
we live in a time of typhoons.
emotional whirlwinds.
we tear at each other's throats like
wild dogs.
the world
- our suicidal world -
is on a transplant list
waiting patiently in line for a
soul.
we are the world
we are the champions
who crucified christ
who burned joan
who denounced luther
who imprisoned galileo
who called washington a rebel
who shot lincoln
who killed gandhi
who murdered king
we are the heroes
who have desecrated ourselves.
i mourn not the loss of our innocence
but that our goodness was stillborn.
i mourn that we are callow
that we serve the basest of human vices within ourselves.
that we gorge ourselves on the sour wine of
cowardice in the guise of self-respect.
we are gluttons when it comes to the bitter potion of
human intolerance
if there is such a thing.
we are broken.
broken beyond repair.
perhaps if we obliterate ourselves
we can begin anew
from the ash we become.

19th September, 2005

A Plea

This is a fire and brimstone world
that drags me by the hair
leaving a trail
of blood.
this is a world whose lifebreath is lies.
cruel and blind lies.
but the truth of you keeps my eyes from closing.
the rhythm of your words keeps my heart from stopping.
our heart is stretched taut
a link that will not break
but will pull and pull until we bleed
you and i both
we will bleed

this is a cold world of terror and hate
that has you in a stranglehold
until you choke
and splutter.
this is a world whose lifeblood is deceit.
heartless and unfeeling deceit.
but the truth of me keeps your blood flowing.
the cadence of my words keeps your stomach from turning.
the link will not break.

you have me in your grip
in your hands and in your heart.

Truth, i live for you.

Do not let me go.
Without you i will not breathe.

My heart.
My blood.
My breath.
My life.

12th March 2006