they’ve shuttered their peace;
(While the walls still are talking to me—)
Comfort eludes and the price ever grows
Of consciousness I don’t care to defeat;
So I wait. And I wait. But the active-hold fate
This breath-catch in the pause that I taste—
I keep asking and asking and begging in place
FOR ACIDHEART TO LEAVE ME TO MY DREAMS.
What if the fear while I am waiting
Eats all of my chest-peace and time?
What if the sound of the rhymes I am making
Does not carve a hole in the crying?
I seek for the cure of the physical dent
That stutters, alone, in my heart;
But the price, the prize, to pry it from me
Is to cost me what I cannot re-find.
Houses crumble.
Cards slide down.
When the nightdark slips its sallow hands
soft, without a sound, deep into my lungs;
Then I fear the cutting-light.
Clouds may come, promise relief, but the
storms eventually must cease.
And the sharpened rays that stalk my days
are like
shrapnel-in-my-teeth.
Contemplating.
Spaces scream.
Break the silence with urgency;
Unwind/unwind/unwind my gaze;
The mind inside is bright with disease.
I control the dark, I make it safe;
Invite it in, let it bring me relief;
Speak and speak and speak-the-steam—
The boiling-within will not let me
bleed.
Regret is red regret is dead
The long-cooked remnants crawl in my head
Melted flesh, diseased reprieve
I cling to the rot that is emptying me
Once it is gone — once I am clean —
Will the buzzards miss feasting on the bones of my grief?
A catch, a breath, a thought unrequested
Be calm. Be still. You are safe.
Memories are phantoms but they do not have hands
Just because you remember it doesn’t mean you have to feel it
All
Over
Again.
Let it lay in the reflection
where this moment began.
Your capacity to feel does not have to be—
Afraid.
I pass memories that now taste like decay.
Where I saw glitter, now there is glass
crushed up into hazards
lining my path.
I walk on until the dust becomes strawberry paste.
It smells not half as sweet; and the metal-scent stings my teeth—
But I will keep chewing the fat.
Until the blood is spent, I will
not
leave.
(I have spent enough time in premature grief.)
No one can shield me from the lash
No current will return me to the shore
I am drowning in the deep-black
I am fighting to be restored
I do everything I should
I follow steps designed to fill me up
So why am I deceived? Thinking to bleed will help me win?
I want to break the glass and let it feast upon my skin
Shattered, glittered hurting that might make me
feel real
again?
Still my dreams taunt me as if you’ve returned;
Like illness lingering in my lungs
long after the fever has been expunged;
A rattle in my chest—
Bones, bones I cannot bury
from my breath.
We sort and crop and cut and pick
Slice our veins and hearts to the quick
We act out our minds of imagined wit, we
Lose ourselves in the sorrow we sip
I ache for reality but cannot
Identify—
Just Me, No More or Less 