The dogs are barking again.

I'm sprawled on a heaping trash nest of clothes and towels and papers and plastic bags. I stare at the ceiling. I've been staring at the ceiling for hours. My ceiling looks like the moon's surface: sickly yellow-pale like old cottage cheese and riddled with craters.

Each bark is like a hammer blow to my head.

There are flies everywhere. My head is filled with buzzing. Blow flies and flesh flies and bloated house flies like black motors flying. They descend on the overflowing piles of trash. They dance in and out of the open drawers of the cabinets that lie upended on the floor. Everything in the room is crooked. The kitchen sink is clogged with stagnant ooze, where food chunks float on a sea of oily grease.

Someone runs above me, THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP

and the dogs chase after them barking, yelping, baying like the hounds of hell.

Things moving behind me, things moving in the mirrors and in the windows. There are voices, like swarms of flies, the voices are needles drilling the buzzing into my skin, and there are thousands of them. It fills up the back of my eyes. They are talking about me, but I can't make out what they say.

The dogs are barking and barking and barking. 

I’m standing on the table with a hammer and I swing that hammer over my shoulder and into ceiling. The dogs are going crazy as I bring the hammer harder and harder into the ceiling, punching holes, showering plaster on the carpet and into my hair and screaming face.

Have I been screaming the entire time?

Shouts from upstairs and I hear the neighbor's big booming voice as if he's right there in the room with me, “I’m going to fucking kill him!”

Stomping feet down the stairs, like an earthquake shaking my apartment. 

I throw the hammer one more time at the ceiling, where it bounces off and thuds to the carpet, and I run into the decaying, stinking kitchen with the dingy lightbulbs and grab the wooden block of large butcher knives and carry it back to the door. I tuck it into my left armpit and my right hand lands on the doorknob like a distorted fly, separate from my body.

The pounding on the door intensifies.

The dogs are still barking. The room spins in a blurry funnel of colors and noises, and the neighbor is yelling something with his fists battering the door inches from my face.

The fly opens the door. 

there are moments

at the mirrors edge

or in fullness of flight

perhaps on the porch

in dusk's dim light

the dust from toil

soiled on hands

or in that moment

as I crash to land

to forget (myself)

glimpsing a fragment

and holding sight

as if in grasping

for the night that

ebbs and slips away

then the dog starts up

at the end of day

always

There’s nowhere to cry in college

except silently in the dorm’s unisex bathroom,

crumpling onto the toilet like a wad of used paper...

wishing you could fall in and drown.

Sensing the tears bubble up,

You tilt your head back and squeeze your lids shut,

willing the hot brine to reabsorb

In vain.

You allow yourself one minute.

Sixty seconds to suffocate, stifle, swallow, silence sobs.

Then wipe away the salt mines from your ruddy cheeks

as you stare in the mirror at your pitiful swamp eyes,

wimpy lashes dangling haphazardly from the corners.

You hardly recognize yourself.

A haze of self-loathing fogs up the mirror.

The girl across the hall’s alarm goes off.

It’s 1 AM.

What the hell is she waking up for at 1 AM?

It’s a tinny, recorded sound of a dog barking.

Her beloved puppy from home, you imagine.

She doesn’t turn it off.

Guess she isn’t here.

Guess she’s at her boyfriend’s place tonight.

Incessantly

it barks barks barks barks barks barks barks barks barks barks barks

from the other side of a locked door,

brainwashing you as it rings in your ears.

Your exhausted mind throbs to the relentless repetition.

It’s even worse than the mocking pornographic symphony

of whimpers and moans

when her boyfriend stays the night.

Your tears shrivel up.

Fire broils in your belly –

that fire that fuels you through this misery of days.

Before you flush the wretched thought away with your emotions,

before you look in the mirror

and paste on another Ivy League smile,

you imagine suffocating the bitch.

Shutting the damn dog up.

Ghost on an ephemeral train ride

     can’t understand words flitting by

     universe dismantled - no spare parts

     fleeting images of sepia ashes

     landing place just out of reach

Ghost on an ephemeral train ride

     compelled to roam on endless path

     soul puzzle pieces on weary feet

     can’t sample invisible sun imprints

     a stranger crawling in through my skin

Ghost on an ephemeral train ride

     smog covers indentation of existence

     trapped in steel bars of unknowing mind

     circling empty in the wind’s bluster

     dancing through barriers of paper cages

Ghost on an ephemeral train ride

     Wolves of prey howling for me

     gnawing teeth on my psyche

     I’m a downright stranger inside

     shut jaws of damn wolf dog omen

     before I lose faint glimpses of me.

For the first time since I was seventeen,

I woke up alone. You are gone,

and you took the children with you.

How can I ever get out of this bed again,

much less go downstairs, make coffee,

eat a banana, listen to Morning Edition,

take a shower get dressed go to work

smile say hello?

I can feel the emptiness in the house

without having to read your note;

I already know what it will say.

I can even see your bottom drawer is still open;

I must have been out cold last night.

By the end of the day, the neighbors,

my sister, my parents, your parents, 

they'll all know you've gone. I will probably

still be in bed. 

I will be abandoned. Left. "He left her" is 

what people will say. She's separated.

What would I call it, if anyone bothered to ask me?

I read an article last week, about germs, 

how they are everywhere, and you can't really 

get rid of them

or really live without them,

and it made me think of all the other inferior species

that roam our lives: the dog that barks too much,

the cat that sheds everywhere, the rat in the walls,

the hamster who dies a week after you buy him.

But even a dog who barks too much is just trying

to tell you something, isn't it? 

They use germs to kill other germs:

the anthrax of neglect, the sarin of indifference.

Taxes, birthday parties, working late, sick kids,

a whole life lived on the backburner

and eventually, through the constant shrill,

there comes a sudden and terrifying silence

and you don't even remember

what a dog barking

sounds like. 

I'm a shape-shifter, a chameleon, without karma. I've survived everything that damned bitch has thrown at me. Life, that is. I don't believe in the spinning wheel, because it doesn't believe in me.

Yeah, fuck you, you're all ducks.

I got through life by changing, by adapting, changing my plumes to suit, singing the right tune.

Sometimes, I'm a cactus in a dune. Cowering, bending, but never breaking. Always going with the flow.

But my pet peeve (ha-ha): insolent yappy Pomeranians that constantly tempt fate. Yeah. Shut your dog up, or feel my wrath.

STOP THAT FUCKING BARKING, YOU STUPID FUCKING MUTT!

Oh my God, who am I? Yelling at the dog, for doing what dogs do?!

It's official, I've lost my mind.  Pfft, who am I fooling, I lost it a long time ago.

And now I'm talking to myself. Might as well, no one else ever freakin listens.

Least of all that damn dog. 

All my life

Staring into the

Mirror

Looking into

My eyes

Wondering

Who is this?

Long hair cascading down

Her shoulders

Brilliant blue eyes,

Saddened

A small nose

A freckle or two

But

Who is she?

I sit

Transfixed

For what seems

Like hours

Woof! Woof!

My body jerks

In surprise

Will somebody please shut that dog up?!

Who am I? My mother says I am her amazing, mature young person. My teachers say I am a responsible, quiet student. My classmates say I am a genius, or crazy. But, who am I really? I don't actually care that much for rules. I do wish I would let myself flirt. I don't love being alone as much as I say. I often want to yell back in class. I'm not sure I'm a genius. I am not as brusque as I sometimes act, or as friendly. Am I insane or just strange? Would I know if I was? When all is said and done, who am I?