you were nineteen;
then, you were fifteen —
making love to
your best friend's father,
crawling between your own bones,
and hiding from the truth:
that you are
finite and incomplete,
but that you can be broken.
(and that you loved the acid rain
like you never loved
the snow.)
electric blue,
whiter than the sun,
you burn like driftwood, salt
between your fingers;
just a blur of a girl
on an overexposed filmstrip.
you've folded your heart
into whispers;
you've wiped the gun clean.
and you still wear your mother
like a battle scar.
(yet you were more
than the slipstream ever was.)
you have always known
that there is a terrible romance
in sadness — a passion
like no other.
now you are sinking, sinking —
(white-blue sea glass
in a mason jar, curling
into smoke — your voice
dying like daylight
in your mouth.)
— you don't remember the past.
Freefall
My weakening essence
Is causing me to feel small
Joy is hastily circling away
My life in freefall
My energy is declining uncontrollably
On my hands and knees to crawl
Briskly satisfaction is curling away
My life in freefall
Sparkle of my heart is sinking wildly
Being thrown away in a cold squall
Swiftly my happiness has been fastened
My life in freefall
Breath of my soul is crumbling
Drops of life are tumbling like a waterfall
Speedily my emotions are spiraling
My life is in constant freefall
Love’s Farewell
I kissed your lips and whispered to your soul "come, my love, it's time to go."
And as you lay on death's recline
I took your hand, so cold in mine.
Lying next to your diminished form
My body trembling,
keeping yours warm
Your rasping breaths came long and low
I said again,"it's time to go."
The poison stung just like knife
You were my love
You were my life
Our hearts together beat
Soft and sweet
And in the next life
Again we'll meet
Strapped Down Tonsils And Screaming Silence
I’m waiting for my head to finally break the water. I’m numb and the silence scares me far more then the dawn of day ever did. I try to smile but my smile is broken, and I can feel how I’m slowly losing my mind. I try to caress my wounds as if to tell me that everything is going to be OK, but the new encounters of my childhood has somehow trapped me inside myself.
The void can only be described as grey holes filled with silent screams of prayers. If I only possessed the right words to break the silence of the dawn of day, these horrendous nightmares played again and again in the echoes of my beating heart, would slowly fade and I would be able to breathe again. I blame my body for being so selfish. Wallowing in that place that I knew I was to come to in the end, after years floating in impulses that could have killed me more than once. Stuck, bearing the illusions of carrying the pain of the world on my shoulders. Or the feeling that all the evil mankind represents are out there to get me. Or how the insecurity thrives in me like poisonous whispers of how they are all going to abandon me. I’m not sure who all of them are, only that I’m not worthy of love.
If I would ever learn how to play my cards right id have tiny men strapping down my tonsil so that I would not ever speak again. Not ever scream out forbidden words of how they violated my sanctuary and made a mess of my stream of consciousness. Maybe it would all be forgotten. How every thrusting movement towards my mouth slowly eradicated my right to claim the identity of a healthy young girl. How it were to kill me again and again and leave me in this endless battle I cannot loose, Because if I were to ever cave into this confusing pain the truth represents, I would not ever make it back again alive. I would float trapped inside my mind reliving my worst nightmares. I would cave into spasms and be catatonic before anyone could find the magical word I pray for every day. The one word that would make all the pain go away and leave me at peace with myself. Impulses would manifest as beautiful pictures in my head of how I would get hit by a car and blood would fill the pavement and create an illusion of peaceful bliss.
I find it highly ironic how if you were to remove the sound of screams and the driver crying in agony of killing a person, adding some beautiful tunes and filling the pavement with snow. People would love it, beauty in horror. The Shrieking kind of pain that can’t be described, the kind of Shrieking pain that can only be felt when you are trapped in it, and being trapped feels like an eternity, an eternity that is long forgotten as soon as your head breaks the surface of the water and you are able to see, feel and breathe again. When your pain is long forgotten, you turn to ignorance and look down on the poor souls wallowing in gloomy nights fearing the day, where you wind up being at praise of your own strength, and ignorance. How people suddenly find themselves looking at Frieda Kahlo paintings in all its horror, admiring her pain, being ignorant to the reasons for her pain.
Maybe these new encounters are exactly that. Me, slowly becoming a painting. I would freeze in a position and time would stand still. No one to ever abandon me again, no one to ever force objects in me, and if I would only freeze then, if that of what they did to me, were to be my final pose, I’d be a picture of the horror men represented. People would shrug and get mad on my behalf and understand, and time would forever stand still. Maybe if I froze in this scream, eating pieces of my hair, people would look at me with amazement and sadness, stating that this girl has gone really mad. Maybe then I would turn into a poem that some young raped girl would read and find comfort and strength in. Maybe if I pulled out my tooth and caressed it carefully saying "there, there.." people would get me help, or maybe they would just walk silently by pretending not to see me. But maybe then would they come home to their loved ones, thankful for what they have, and what they never became. I’d be one tooth poorer, my long hair would be long gone, but at least I’d be someone of significance. Like if what happened would have not been a total waste of my senses.
Yet I’m left in this sea of troubles, Unfrozen and not dignified enough to claim the burden of deaths cold whispers behind my shameful back. Seeking for the warmth that is to be found in mankind’s deceitful smiles and calming words. Maybe I’m weak, searching between the puzzles of broken promises and fallen norms. Where the grip of love is nothing more than mere pictures of what we once dreamt of, reading old fairy tales. I find it funny how we had to change the original stories of Sleeping beauty and Hansel and Gretel. Maybe within that we can find the answers to the human psyche. Where our beloved princess in reality got kidnapped and raped. Where incest played a major part, and where the nobility that we find in the disillusioned word mankind, is proven broken. Maybe the men behind the blue door were right, maybe I truly were a princess. Only they never needed to change the hard facts to turn it into something we could live with. They never had to turn it into pretty stories we could read to our children, painting pictures of an ideal world that does not exist. But if we find it necessary to hide this for the children, why didn’t my dad, my king hide it from me. They must have both died when I were young, I guess.
I know for sure my mother did. She was the Fairest of them all, she would be the brightest star and her laughter would fill our kingdom with happiness and joy. My dad would reach out for the shattered pieces of his kind heart, and carefully almost clumsily pet my head and tell me that everything was going to be OK. Hiss clumsy strokes would be as if my mother’s very essence, her soul would let him find hope in humanity again. I don’t think anyone fears as much as my beloved king. He were never a knight, not ever a fighter, he claimed the right of the throne through my mother’s devoting love. My mother, the queen, would have the sun in her eyes and as she would lift me up and swing me around she would fill my heart with music, and my intestines would sing.
Until one day I went to a place where waves of emotions succumbed to rules of forever hold peace. A man that has not seen the land of confusion will not understand that the very embrace, that a kiss of this greedy silence contains every poisonous action mankind represents. The very penetrating sin of greedy manhood, and the void their shaking hands could never fill. Leaving them to wander the depth of earths secret weaves, where every story creates a reaction and every reaction leads to a new story, the place where minus plus minus never became a positive. Naively thinking that that they could find answer to philosophical questions in empty glasses and endless clouds of smoke. So they choose to enter the halls of forgotten childhood, and left me buckling restlessly in catatonic salvation. Where both me and six craving hands failed to live, and somehow their action gave us a connection I never once asked for. But their childish need of control and closeness took over their broken minds and left me to wander in shock between past and present. As if there were some secret codes that would connect the pile of flesh and bones and chemical reactions that I am, and that it in my past and future would create beautiful drawings in black and white. Motionless, numb, unable to create new drawings, new stories, only pray that someone would awaken my senses again. I'm stuck. Searching between pictures of past and present unable to find my pen and draw myself into history again.
Gone Forever
I suppose I set myself up for the fall. Taking a job in a hospital with no prior experience and no idea what horrible things people do to one another, themselves and worst of all their children.
My trainer tells me that sicknesses come in waves in the emergency room. Car accidents when it's snowy. More gang violence in the summer. Full moons bring in the psych patients. Tonights special is post-holiday suicide. Five people have tried to take their lives this evening. For all different reasons. Six if you count the man overdosing on heroin. This is just my first night.
Two days later I happen upon a man handcuffed to his bed. He is sobbing and tells me about the woes of being a sex offender. He asks me if I know that one conversation I have with someone can make a difference in their life. That kindness can go further than I can understand and could I be kind to him. I laugh and tell him I am always kind. He calms a little and I hand him my pen to sign a form with his one free hand. Next thing I know he is trying to stab himself in the neck with my pen. Luckily, he is intoxicated and I wrestle it from him and run out of the room. Frantically I look around and see a nurse. I say "That man just tried to stab himself with my pen!" Clearly amused by my terror she says "You must be new."
The next day a man comes in from a car accident. I am just observing and I walk into his room and he is all smiles. I smile and say hello and confirm his name. I wonder what he is in for. I look down and see his thigh bone broken and sticking out of his skin. He continues to smile and the Dr. says "Morphine" and gives me a wink.
A man is taking his clothes off at the ER entrance. He is saying he has bugs on him. I immediately change course in hopes of avoiding bringing bed bugs home. I don't want lice either. Later I ask if they put him in quarantine of some kind and the guard says "Oh no there were no bugs. That is George, he is addicted to meth and comes in half naked often. He is just hallucinating again. "
A woman is screaming "My baby" outside of my office door. Over and over again. She collapses on the floor. I invite her in. She tells me how her husband tried to punch her while she was holding the baby, but accidentally hit the baby instead and they made her leave the ER. She tells me people at the hospital are treating her like a criminal and won't let her see her baby. She is moaning and security walks in. They have brought a Social Worker. Security tells me they have been dealing with her all day. I am upset at this. They ARE treating her like a criminal. I tell them they are hardened and should always try compassion. I whisper under my breathe that I never want to become like them. I defended her. Two weeks later my co-worker tells me that the same woman was arrested in our parking lot after beating her other child. That was the moment when my doe eyes became slits and full of suspicion.
