Painting

When you stretched the truth-white canvas so blinding bright on my frame, I knew this would be the last time I’d see you, ever.

You painted my story in blood-clot-thick words like they’d need help sticking,

but I would have held them tight to my skin anyway, ’cause I’d need them to keep me company.

These people don’t know what I mean when I say I’m alone but not lonely.

After seventeen years of missed phone calls and gettin’ picked up only to be left with someone else, 

I’m used to abandonment, to being alone, with myself.

You painted divorce and disappointment in envy green and camouflage. Too young to really understand,

I dealt with it.

It wasn’t all bad, though. 

In the center you painted pickles and rhubarb crisp, baby brothers who bite really hard

and vomit their own weight in baby formula on my favorite 101 Dalmations dress,

four-leaf clovers and dandelion crowns floating in fresh mud puddles.

With quick strokes and hard bristles you painted Jesus in my heart only to

palette-knife-scrape him away and fill the space with Goddess, ’cause

you really put yourself into your work.

At the time, it made more sense to me that you’d be a woman,

’cause only a woman could paint me in braces and motorcycle rides

but keep the colors soft enough to stay beautiful.

Still, the composition wasn’t quite right

it needed a lesson in mistrust 

so you painted me a boy who was best friend but never lover

and gave him venom to spit, to burn my white canvas skin

when he realized that was all he’d ever be to me

And you and I, God, together we scrubbed him away with spirits

but while his face blurred, his snake-mouth anger left a black hole stain that will never really be gone.

All we can do is cover it with primer and see if we can find the color of forgiveness to drip over it, lightly,

because it’s been six years now and I still have yet to forgive, and

I’ll be a relic in your private collection, God, before I forget him.

That’s when you handed me the brushes and sent me away with goodbyes and forget-me-nots

and told me I needed to finish it.

I can’t paint worth a shit.

I’m too proud to ask for your help, and all I’ve done since then is make a mess of it.

This painting will never sell, and goddammit this baby brother vomit and black hole stains are really soaking in.

Now stop laughing and hand me the paint thinner.

Deviated writing assignment

Screaming face blanketed in joy my heart beats sounds scarcely heard in the vacuum of space my mother’s spite beats rabbits in a jar forcing me to face my mirror and smile like the end of the world filled with zombies and giant spiders doesn’t anybody see the cheese walking across the street in a 3-peace suit and briefcase only made brief by his short, miserable life and I just can’t seem to figure out this guy I want to something spatial and filled with bright color the human eye can’t comprehend in daylight what kind of rationale makes you hand over your gun to the people you should be fighting against and I can’t breathe when I see you but I try to inhale, exhale, forget about everything I knew and just try to soldier on fresh out of the box wrapped in shiny ribbons.

First Painful Memory

Fingernails down my spine
I was only nine
Standing in line
For a game of limbo at the skating rink
I’m on the brink

Eyes brimming with tears

That barbaric, beastly bitch
Somebody get her OFF of me!
Can’t they see
the blood on my shirt?

I run home
Her giggles screeching through my molecules
Hoping when I find my safe haven
Mommy will help me.

Mommy’s drunk tonight
And a whole new set of fingernails
tear at my will to
Keep going.

Single White Female

Single white female
Looking for a man whose dreams she can be the girl of.

Looking for her heart to skip beats
1st and 3rd in a 4/4 time signature.

Looking for a man to be the bass to her treble clef.
The rhythm to her melody.

Looking for that feeling that makes her legs give out so hard they cease to exist.

Looking for passion so dark and stormy the glass shatters while rain licks the blood from her skin, gasping for air, silent, steady, primal drums pounding.

Looking for a mind matching her own, step for step, blow for blow, a thinker, an intellectual. A poet, maybe, or maybe just another cynic to spit acid at the unthinking majority; one of her favorite pass-times.

Looking for feeling again, feeling anything, trying to push away the hard shell and expose the raw tissue beneath.

Single white female
Looking for more than just a good time.

Song of Myself

The secrets of my eyes
Are many
I know what came before
I know what is
I know what comes after

So do you
So do I

The ocean waves churn
In my blood
The desert sands sparkle
In my smile
The lush fruit of creation nestles
Beneath my belly
Between my hips

I am power
Religion
Birth
Death
Perfection of the human bodies
In Renaissance oils
Voluptuous
And beautiful

I lounge upon
A leather couch

Contented, wise,
And omniscient

Come closer
And I will reveal to you
The many secrets of my eyes

Fruit

Apples, oranges,
and bananas.
Food that I love,
should love,
but can’t love
as much as pizza.

Spare Tire

Clad in a baggy hooded sweatshirt
I hide the shame of a year and a half
Gone by

The shame of an extra thirty pounds
That snuck up when I least expected it

Curse pizza and potato chips!
Curse them all!

Poor Student Blues

“Declined” the cashier says
As he hands me the
Thin sheet of plastic
That determines if
I eat today or not.

Declined, declined, declined.
All of my distress
In a word,
“Declined.”

Sick Day

Muddled, murky mind
In a hacking, harrowed head

Bundled up in blankets
Feeling nearly dead

Tomorrow will be better
But for my state today

I need to just stay home
And sleep the sick away

Fleeting Time

Every minute passing
Shall never be again.
Every minute passing
Brings us closer to the end.
Cherish every second,
Live out your every dream.
Cherish every second,
The end is nearer than it seems.