Family

Father needs laughter.
Mother needs peace.
Brother needs something to care about.

"tell me about father and mother."

Father likes to sing.
Mother likes to draw.
They both like to dance.
They are curlicue peals of light.
But they are thin.

"tell me about brother."

Brother's name was not always Brother.
Brother has so much caring.
But Brother has nowhere to put it.
So Brother yells his caring out.
To everyone else, it sounds far away.
But when it roars, it is louder than a thousand jet engines.
But when it flies, it is faster than a comet in space.

"what about sister?"

Who told you about Sister?
I don't know Sister.
Where is Sister?

current events

a little noose in the boathouse,
already shrunken, already low.
a fray-haired girl drinking innocence
and drawing crosses on her ankles to make a shield.
a windy soul whose intents
begin to blow through the cracks.
poison clutching this house from the second floor.
"just make things easier for me!"

the soul of the woman i love
got put inside a madman
and now i can't grow up,
and i want to find some way
to express the mass of regret
drawn over my heart and shoulder,
but instead i just stab and slash
and catch him when he falls and
leave and fracture and embrace.

Nothing of Cities

Fingers pressing on my chest
like holding onto a kite string to draw back the tension.
My ears are asleep behind carnival tents
but the flaps draw back just in the nick of time.
A dozen voices rise in rejoicing
while my raw throat sputters and sits on its hands.
Music notes like an eskimo kiss
and I wonder if that's all I'll ever need,
and I already know the answer.

Nightmares For a Week

When I go back home tonight I will return
to making threats against myself. I will return
to inducing ferity, a new nature like an animal
pushing unhoned teeth through my gums.
I will return to forced sweetness. I will return
to little, obscure reassurances. I will return
to oldest fears resurfacing, hands and teeth,
eyes that refuse to blink, breath, coming
in gasps, the singular thought, no longer
drug-saturated, This cannot be happening again.
I will say this is for a story I'm writing.
And then I will not write about any of it.
If you knew the things that crowd my head.

A List of My Weird Fascinations

-birds
-blood
-angry dudes
-suppressed rage dudes
-Hamlet
-Fear
-physical manifestations of mental distortions
-beards
-loss of sight
-drawing things on myself
-hands and teeth
-earthly spiritualism
-forward motion
-what we all have in common
-plaid
-dreams
-bromances
-Castiel
-things I cannot figure out

A Crippling Fear of Public Speaking

I can't crack my knuckles.
Today I am trusting my brain
to buoy me but my brain
is not trusting my mouth.
My adrenal glands are not
trusting my rehearsal.
My eyes are not
trusting my focus.
Do I get points for speaking
through the throat-seizing tremors?
Does my ranking rise based on
how much sweat pools on my eyebrows?
Do they award merit for me
kneading my hands together so hard
my knuckles crack, and crack,
and crack, and still somehow manage
to stay stuck together?

Happening again. Fuck

Unmoored, cast afloat, by phobias like these,
that catch my throat, drive me to my knees,
make me pray, or meditate, for something new,
but I'm too little too late, too desperate too soon.
Yet I continue to search. I need to be sure.
So that obsession lurks, for the constant lure,
the voice so coarse, the hands and teeth
that bruise with such force, and shape my dreams.

(Is it just me?)