♒

each small movement in emotion i observe feeds my repulsive monotony
as if any person who is simple enough to mind that i don’t sleep, eat, or know has any idea that my needs are the least important to me. it’s almost like trashing a room of expensive antiques that people admire but nobody wants to buy. i don’t need esteem, i don’t want to know anything
i want to validate that i render as completely useless. i’m an idiot to believe so fervently that i am neither a joy nor a character but continue to rely on just that. i’m dancing around cool sanity but continuing to light any person, place or thought on fire that threatens to accept me
all the cogs and gears would continue to move as if only a trickle of water expounded its meaning if i was to leave this now. ah, but would they move in my favour if i believed each movement in emotion was what made each component turn?

1. The freedom of the wholly mad
to smear & play with her madness
write with her fingers dipped in it
the length of a room

which is not, of course, the freedom
you have, walking on Broadway
to stop & turn back or go on
10 blocks; 20 blocks

but feels enviable maybe
to the compromise

curled in the placenta of the real
which was to feed & which is strangling her…

4. White light splits the room.
Table. Window. Lampshade. You.

My hands, sticky in a new way.
Menstrual blood
seeming to leak from your side

Will the judges try to tell me
which was the blood of whom?

5. Madness. Suicide. Madness.
Is there no way out but these?
The enemy, always just out of sight
snowshoeing the next forest, shrouded
in a snowy blur, abominable snowman
—and at once the most destructive
and the most elusive being
gunning down the babies at My Lai
vanishing in the face of confrontation.

The prince of air and darkness
computing body counts, masturbating
in the factory
of facts.

6. Fantasies of murder: not enough:
to kill is to cut off from pain
but the killer goes on hurting

Not enough. When I dream of meeting
the enemy, this is my dream:

white acetylene
ripples from my body
effortlessly released
perfectly trained
on the true enemy

raking his body down to the thread
of existence
burning away his lie
leaving him in a new
world; a changed
man

from “The Phenomenology of Anger” by Adrienne Rich, 1972

have you ever met someone with a face you just couldn’t recall no matter how recently or frequently you saw them?

i just let out a sharp breath and i swear i saw my entire shadow come out of my nose and i tried to follow it but it was a vague and fleeting patch of nothing like when you look at the sun too long

i think i forgot how to kiss

i was seriously just kicked out of a car but i made it look like i was kicking the car off the road into a black hole so now they’re all apologizing and i still look hot

i’m thinking of changing my passwords to something more scandalous i mean i added 666 to the end but that does about nothing for my rebellion

why do we live in boxes with barely detailed roofs and little to no such intricacies inside
where are the trap doors
when will i accidentally discover a secret chamber with a red velvet cloak waiting for me in an armoire

i’m about as easy to crack as it is to pull down a brick wall with a piece of string. it took me two hours to get through fifteen pages of the book of disquiet and i kept holding my stomach so it wouldn’t tear open and swallow everything it could pull in. i thought if i finally asked someone for help, that it would be easy, and i could say what i’ve said countless times. even if this dismantles and hardens the somber journey that rocks forward and backwards, i can only find it humorous and peaceful that i still know nothing about myself. i have this second, and the next, and the rest of my life to swallow my damned pride

i will pay you 20 cents a minute to hold hands with me until they perspire and we’re looking at each other oddly