Last night my head exploded.

No one was hurt but me.

No wonder no one will sleep with me.

I'm dangerous.

Who keeps exploding my head?

They must know

How volatile are its contents.

Not much will set it off.

My head has always exploded at night,

Waking me up with a start--

Heart racing, sweating profusely, and

Surviving the blast.

Now it's exploding in the daytime

For no reason at all

Head mines tripped by accidental thoughts

With a perimeter of collateral damage.

She sat astride the thought

Transfixed with horror at it's dawning.

... comprehension'd struck her guts in place of stretch or yawning.

.

.

.

The thought deserved at least a "why"

if not a "what the fuck?!"

But she ignored it

(as implored by shameful, prideful pluck.)

None would want to know the thing.

It shan't be written down.

No beauty there is worth the fling of stones at thorny crown...

.

.

.

So she kept.

And keeps it in

A jar of smoked emotions

Coagulated stickily

Amidst pickled devotions, capered qualms and kippered hopes (if mummied memory serves)...

She keeps it in her cabinet

of cured mind's preserves.

I am palming the bulges of my stomach.

I am scraping the feeling off my forearms.

I am clawing at my clammy scarlet palms with uncut nails.

My head is dizzy, decayed, what's the harm.

I am ripping the plastic fat of my things.

I am peeling my cheeks till they're numb to tears.

I am pinching the skin that settles by my collarbones brink.

Somethings craving the spinning wheel's touch.

Sleeping beauty skin, sweating and pink.

Tell, my skin confines me far too much.

I am intangible, uncontrollable,

I am a psyche, a soul,

I am feelings that feel far too infinite-

And yet, how am I soft thick skin, far too firm, too whole?

How must a finite thing envelope my existence, a riot?!

I am my everything, and yet I stand on ten toes?

I am coursing blood and,

I am coursing thoughts without close.

Rather, make my fillings pocket-sized and planned.

My skin, horizonless.

My skin, dimpled earth.

My being deep in crisp cold soil.

Tremors sweep me,

Yet my skin is deep and tan and old.

Skin beneath the willow tree.

Skin on the bathroom floor.

Skin sunken from the sea.

I'll be skin, forever more.

So I went to the Smithsonian

and sought out the lunch counter

taken from the Woolworth’s in Greensboro

some sixty odd years ago

slipping under the velvet rope

I pick the pink leatherette stool on the end

and wait to be served.

Joining those audacious dissidents

the stench still lingering in the air

catsup hemorrhaged like blood thickened by the musk of history

me the last of them

linking arms with them here

joining in their spectral midst.

The curator is called and comes clicking swiftly perplexed.

“You are in a restricted area. What do you want?” she says in a stage whisper.

“To be served…like the others” I say.

“But you’re not even a…person of color …” she pleads quietly.

“No, and I am not Native American, Jewish, Undocumented, Trans…

they all would be served.”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Just a stuffed tomato with chicken salad …and perhaps an ice tea, no lemon.”

“Who are you?” she asks again

cocking her head like a chicken looking for defects unseen to her naked eyes.

“I’m a mentally ill American.”

Her eyes widen and she speaks quickly into her phone calling for security.

“I have legal rights. You cannot discriminate”, I tell the uniformed men

who arrive and pick me effortlessly off the sacred pink artifact to cast me out.

As I am carried I glance back at the ghosts

eating their grilled cheese sandwiches and sipping cokes clinking glasses together…

the Blacks, Feminists and Gays.

My time has not yet come.

The last outcast in America

not welcome at the great lunch counter of this free and accepting land.

Balls in the air. Juggler of emotions.

I am torn between ending it all, and starting over to try again,

because the end of a muzzle seems like a headache, but also, the pill.

I pace back and forth until noon, then I realize its midnight.

No sleep until the witching hour, for it is where I am most awake.

“Eat something you bastard,” they say, yet I am not hungry for whats on their menu.

Peanut butter on bread, spread unevenly. No milk.

A moonlit snack becomes a meal. A tear becomes a bath.

A thought becomes another episode that I must binge until its very end.

What a cliffhanger.

Finally, a feast that I can eat. Hungry, for more.

I am tortured and mocked by my internal struggle, but I don’t want to miss the commercials, because there could be something that I want to buy.

I offer a facelift in the mirror. Then wash away its filth.

The voices all speak the same language, yet they’re foreign to me, and I don’t understand them, but I listen anyways because the sound of silence is deafening.

The translated captions will have to do.

“Walk it off, you’ll be fine,” they say, yet when I do so, the thorn bushes outside scrape against my skin, tearing and pulling at my weak meaningless flesh.

My insides are now exposed, and I lock the door for protection.

Why would they encourage me knowing I would fail?

Am I merely a vessel for their amusement, until the carnival closes down?

A red nose they make me wear. Am I forced to be their clown?

I dance, I sing, I play. I must entertain them until they are bored with me.

Only then, bloody, broken, and tired can I wipe away the paint.

I fall asleep to realize that I was never really, awake…

it's a blissful universe,

one in which i don't exist

my intangibility gives me strength.

i find solace in the nihilism,

freedom in living fast,

i depend so heavily upon

my mental illness

to kill me before i turn thirty-three.

it's a mutual destruction,

my mind and i,

in a quest to see

which one of us

will die first.

an epic battle of the ages,

fought with sticks and stones,

reverted to a primitive age

of childhood insults.

here i can be a child,

where rebellion means

drawing on the walls

and making faces at the mirror,

or throwing a baseball

through an upstairs window

and dancing barefoot

on the shattered glass

and mommy

won't be mad

because she'll be too worried

about my bleeding feet

and the stains on the carpet

to care

about my mistake.

she'll drive me to the emergency room

and they'll tell her

i'm okay,

because little kids

don't get locked up

for doing stupid shit.

as a child my misdeeds

are inconsequential,

a speck of dust in the maladies of youth.

i can lose myself in the delusion

and my parents will be assured

that it's just

my creativity

coming out to play.

it is a blissful universe,

one where i don't exist.

yet eventually,

i was forced

to grow up

and fill the role

of existence

that i'd been trying so hard

to avoid.

As a matter of Fact

It's not the matter

That smatter I'm

Scraping up off

Lavatory floors

of the big Box

Stall Store's.

It's not I,

my mind?

I'm losing,

and in

Losing It

am looking

forth

--loose-n-e-d--

Shit walked off

on Its own

Accord!

And I know

The Address.

I've tried before

NO TRESPASSING

flapped across

the door!?

Oh let me in

mental

next of Sin,

Don't disinherit

Me from my Will

I'm scraping by!

crud that ain't mine

off from my shins.

I'm deleting

the Beginning

'Cause,

I won't feel it.

The slamming

of the revolving

Doormat,

ain't taken

anymore:

Let's pretend

The End

is a sanitary

Apron tied,

as I'm wheeled

Down the aisle,

dressed like

wedding cake

& crackin' a

plaster smile.

01.29.23

Mental Breakdown Challenge @Melpomene

Show me something

Cuz I've got nothing

Gotta feed the kitty

Feed the kitty

Exhausted the dragon

Traded my heart in

And it's dragging me down,

This searching around,

For anything I can chase

Gotta feed the kitty

Feed the kitty

Time's ticking away

Sometimes I just wanna be sane

Make it through one damn day

With a smile and some accomplishments

Gotta feed the kitty

Feed the kitty

Can’t remember exactly when

Everything turned gray

And the shadows began sticking

To my sallow face

I don’t know what sorrow succeeded

In finally disfiguring me

Crippling my body under the weight

Of heavy rain

The landscape is bleak as bone

My backyard nothing but dark sky

Ghosts no longer linger here

Insects turn to dust

I quietly waste away in fear

From the silence that stalks this place

Tormenting me like a beast

Calling me by name

A cold child under black blankets

I pray under a godless roof

For someone to appear from nowhere

Out of thin air

But there’s no point in talking

To an empty room

So why don’t I just leave

Take my chances with infinity