Posts Tagged Isolation
Little Girl Terrorist
I saw this little girl
terrorist, bowling, quite
unsuccessfully. The Secret
Police (Hey, NSA) were hang-
ing from ceiling tiles, arms
stretching down like
confetti, but they never
could stop the balls, and
the girl howled in vicious
laughter at a couple toppling
pins for each one she hit was
another city, and this is why
the number of pins was not
part of the battle for her.
One here or there, “I don’t
need no strikes,” she
screamed hoarsely.
The Unshakable Infantile Spirit, Part I
I’m a baby, and I work hard
to cover tiny me under thick skin.
I wonder if being a baby is a bad
thing, thinking of my most
compassionate self coming
from baby me, but
I cry, and many people don’t like
people who are so maladjusted.
When I’m working the hardest to
cover, I don’t notice, but sometimes,
when my shell is naturally suiting itself
to me, I look at others and I think
I see that they have baby moments,
and those splitting quick images
make me feel less inadequate, less
alone, but I measure my inside
sensitivities against their outside
shells, knowing better, but I see
they don’t need shells like I do.
At some point, babies decide
that they want to be loved by
everybody, and if one comes
along, not loving, babies like I
feel intense pain, perhaps not
understanding the finicky qualities
of mature humans. I am like
hungry babies about some things;
I want what I want right now, but
I am a big baby, and I don’t want
much, if anything. I always want to
sleep like a baby, but for me,
instead of fueling cell growth, it
helps me relieve the pain of sadness,
and when I don’t get enough sleep,
my emotions are terrible like a baby’s,
my feelings are like tiny slivers of glass
being smothered by sharp rocks,
so I do my best to get sleep, but the
adults don’t like this for they think
I am a lazy asshole. When I became
old enough, I started enjoying alcohol
because the alcohol smothered baby
me, and I built my booze shell that made
me funny and entertaining and fooled
me into feeling a central purpose, fooled
me into a sense of meaning, and alcohol
smashed my persistent depression.
I’m a lucky baby because alcohol
decided to become my enemy, made me
hate the world so severely, and inspired
me to quit drinking with many people
who helped me avoid the deepening
path to miserable death I was on, so
I sit here wishing I could tell you how
embarrassing this is, tell you how
my spirit is so frail, so undeveloped, so
you can see how terrible I feel, but I tell you
because afterward, I can let loose, and cry
and cry and cry until you send me away.
.
The Persistence of the Sharp Freezes
The freezes visit too often
on some of the days,
longing for round and deep sewers,
forehead is warn from friction of hands,
mostly the left hand, working to wear holes,
to make openings for the tense, frightened
animals, for their escapes, for relief,
for return to the emptiness that is more
dull aching, more like the squeezing
of an adult’s hand on a child’s tiny arm,
which is far superior in the frozen mind
than all of the stabbing of ice picks
on all of those small, squeaky animals
scurrying about like lost rats in daylight.
My mind feels like that baby’s arm,
and I wonder if it is you, though I know
better, but I wonder if it is you, that fierce
beast behind all of the ice picks, and if
it is, why can’t I block them with my
sullen, stiff, messy face made of all
the tiny frayed, burned, torn wires.
.
Pissy Refrigerator Truck
Spikes of frozen hopelessness permeated
trotting around empty crosswalks surrounded
wrappers crawling along human legs
loose change not falling
wheelchairs wider than doorways
big men cheer while fixing noise systems
lights, maybe, lights reflecting mean walkers
peaceful phone call undone, lost despairs.
.
I’ll Never Be Cured
My brain leaks,
just like my mother’s did,
my brain hurts,
I’ll never be cured.
They throw it back,
they give me shit,
my brain leaks,
I’ll never be cured.
My brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did,
she threw the black pans,
hailed our personal failures,
told us we’d never be good,
but I’ll never be her,
I’ll never ruin your psyche
My brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did,
my brain leaks,
I’ll never be cured.
The world hates,
It foams in my head,
with no smile,
I know I’m no good,
just like my mother said,
just like my mother said.
My brain hurts,
I’m scared of you all,
‘fraid I might crash,
you’ll see my soul crushed,
for my brain’s dead,
excepting total despair,
yeah, my brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did.
.
Let Me Rest After the Screen Is Blasted
I wish I could tell you all,
and fill this tiny screen, say
everything, leave it right here
on this screen, say it all, and then
never come back, sit on my porch,
strumming a broken guitar,
blowing on a wilted clarinet,
smoking a cheap pipe, never
coming back to your world,
telling you about all there is
on this screen, maybe fill the
screen, but tell you everything
and never come back, walk into
the front of a cement truck doing
seventy, never coming back,
fulfilled that all has been told,
knowing there is nothing left
inside me so I can go meet
that Mac, go away quickly
without a peep of noise, being
empty, never to come back.
Take away the severity
of despair, fill my tank
with the end, shut me down
forever. Let me rest, let
me loose from this agony.
.
I’m a Sick Little Child, and Why Do I Lie about it?
When I get angry, I pause
in the tension,
just a baby,
no reason to be angry,
but I’m bubbling angry,
so I hate myself
for that.
I hate the child in
me who will never grow
up, never be cured.
I’ll tell you I don’t get angry.
I get sad, I get depressed,
I get relieved when
lucky, but I lie and say
I don’t get angry
because I don’t want to be
a little child nor a scary
monster, so when
I get angry, I hate
myself and remember
that I was poorly designed
for this world.
.
The Ladies Don’t Want to Be Here
Sadness blows gray puffs from her turquoise.
Plugs don’t plug, and wires cross paths
with irritable tempers floating on the scum
of dirty rugs, where mirrors from monitors
shatter self, bright logs that support nothing
but pink coffins. Some gracefully leave
urgently, if only to save their remaining
sensibility, to float away with sticky wings,
unstuck but for the grace of gods who visit
only occasionly, who (the gods) sneer helplessly
at squeaky, rolling chairs, and the wires spark
despite masterful electrical architecture. The one
with the tubby brain thinks herself important
despite evidence to the contrary, thinks
the customers should love her, arrogantly,
just as management would want, but it is this
that is most insane as we watch time fly
by our worthlessness, laughing (time) at our ugly
building, crying at our tireless, circular motions,
wanting (time) to take us out of the game forever,
and all of this makes me want my Mozart.
.
When it Hits Hard
When the empty comes back, I ask
what’s wrong, try to breathe big air
in, and the air won’t go. The medication
makes me feverish but it won’t fill
my hole, and nothing is allowed into
my empty, so I think about how
smooth death might be. This ugly,
bald survivor with whom I cannot talk
squashes energy death requires,
so I am a broken man, empty,
and I wonder why empty causes
such excruciating pain. I wonder
why some power will not end this,
long for courage to find violence.
Pass, pass, pass, pass, please.
.
In Case You Didn’t Know
A day late, and always short on dollars, here’s my shot at PAD 11, a challenge to write a poem involving the phrase “In case…”
.
In Case You Didn’t Know
The lady in front of you, crawling,
intensely tight, lacking a gas pedal
is not attempting to make you late
for work. She had eye surgery two
weeks ago, and not one of her four
children was willing to take her
to the doctor today, that the boy
presently trudging across the bridge,
looking up as if looking for a space-
ship is not contemplating suicide
by jumping off the bridge as you have
concluded, mostly because you
have never seen someone walk
across that bridge and he does look
spaced and gone from this world,
that when you are thinking you
are a failure, you might be wrong,
that when you also feel gone from
this world, you are here, and some
slice of fucking goodness makes
you persist in this increasingly
futile activity, that sometimes, no
matter how hateful some may seem,
sometimes, some people like you,
that they are battling demons and
they grip tightly to prevent you from
seeing this in them, but you don’t
talk and no one talks to you,
so in case you didn’t know, you are
not alone, but life is the loneliest
plot created by those before us.
.
