Squiggles on Paper
Words & numbers
on a page,
writ in love
or burning rage.
Gurgling-burbling
through our brains:
happy, sad,
pleasure, pain.
Feelings slide
through pencils, pens
rhyming-chiming
now & then.
Who brings these squiggles
to our eyes?
Friends with nimble
lows & highs.
Copyright 2020
VIDEO VERSION: https://youtu.be/lSIrLsJQRV8
for the love of family
You know the threads. You know them better than yourself.
You’ve seen them since you were little, and learned with the speed of survival to never speak of them in good company. You’ve likened them to forests of seaweed, or the tangled nest of yarn hair on a Raggedy Anne doll. There are millions of them tangled above the heads of strangers and family. You know their every color and shade, and you’ve grown used to their strange, reaching tendrils. Sometimes you find it touching when you notice one wrapped around your wrist, or ankle. Never impeding your locomotion, they just linger, whisper light. A gentle reminder of someone thinking about you.
You’ve come to recognize when someone’s thoughts change by the ripple of color. A flush of blue for melancholy, a shock of green splashed with jealousy. You’ve become so well versed in them that you can read what your brother thinks of the boy in his Geometry class by the bright, lustful pink hue connecting to his thigh. You make it a point not to tell him, just for safety. You both know it wouldn’t go well with your family, not when your father’s head is nearly swallowed by dripping crimson threads more often than not.
Your father is a dangerous man. You’d long since wrestled with the instinct to warn your mother of his thoughts. You knew there hadn’t been a single loving thread to touch her in the entire time you’d been alive.
The strands around his head lash out violently - though the focus of their rage has always, always been your mother. They’ll slither around her neck or head at random times, as if it was a passing thought to do harm. You know she can’t feel them, but it’s still horrifying to turn the kitchen corner and see chords of red thatched across her throat, while your father sits on the couch and stares. Every day the tension rises higher in your house, like gas filling a chamber.
The choice is taken from you when you arrive home one day, and find a tangle of thick licorice red rope stretching from the kitchen to the family room. Your father shakes as he stares at the TV, beer bottle shattered at his feet.
The rope winds thicker and thicker with every passing second, and cold fear slips down your spine. You’d never been the stealthiest of individuals, but your nerves are on fire and making noise isn’t an option. You find your mother in the kitchen, toasting a tortilla as if she didn’t have a mass of writhing, bleeding fibers obscuring her entire body. You bite back the scream in your throat and grab her arm.
She jumps - you quickly smother the noise with your hand.
Truth is stale on your tongue, words rolling off like blocks of cement. “Mom. He’s going to kill you.”
Your mom huffs, but stills at the look in your eyes.
And impossibly. Mercifully.
She believes you.
I lost me
I write everything that comes to mind
I go crazy trying to put it all down into
Two nice lines
I have notebooks and notebooks filled
With useless rhymes and memories
that I’ll forget with time
See I convince myself it’s because I like to write
But truthfully I just don’t want to disappear
I want to leave something
So when I die people will know I was here
Osmosis
Man outside my window
lives my outside life,
trapping me within
my fishnet boundaries.
The skeleton of his soul
stands in piles
of cigarette butts
crunching underfoot.
The man was I
and I was he -
osmosis through glass
as I shut the window,
leaving a borderline crack
to squeeze to other side
of life, prying eyes open
to see my exterior man,
drawing face to glass
to behold the inner workings
of his buried thoughts,
begging to be confined
within his outlines
to entwine
inside his body
of sweeping darkness.
dark is the road
stars wink in the desert night
an empty road and glassy eyes
i whisper lyrics of holy rite
as the shadows grow like tides
there is no cackling moon here
and these hymns are dry
my mouth fills with cement
as the desert breathes a sigh
dark is the road to hell
paved with good intentions
painted in coughing, hollow knells
and death’s cruelest inventions.
the road crumbles what i leave behind
and i’m afraid to look back at all
for fear that the land i ride
will look nothing like i recall
dark is the road to hell
paved with blood and vengeance.
the wind comes on a wail
and there is no right direction.
out of the black emerges a shape
and my heart begins to race
its hunched by the roadside like an ape
it turns, and there is no face
dark is the road to hell
or have you been paying attention?
these roads are made of cells
and they hold so many questions.
below its feet i can see the squall
writhing bodies trapped within
these cells are the road i crawl
desperate to feel anything again.
...
dark is the road to hell,
paved with myths and legends.
be careful of what you sell.
you never know who will listen.
nameless
what is a name by any other than that that holds you hostage?
my bones split into fragments;
you name each one,
define each one.
limbs turn into words turn into chaos--
my skin is etched by scribbles,
did you place them there?
i don't remember who i was before you told me who to be.
there's too many lines;
i don't know where they end
and i begin.