the burnt offerings of her heart like shark’s teeth blackened by selfish anger and the skins of snakes left abandoned on your doorstep. you try to fit the ashes together into a coherent whole but instead breathe in the soot of all that you were and could’ve been. old. older. sitting by the window along the highway watching cars skid through the onramp as hubcaps shot out and clanged against the curb. tears welled up in your eyes because you knew even then that your innocence was gone, you were already gone and it was only going to get worse. remorse without regret, regret without remorse, or something else entirely? he had married your mother just before thirty and all this violence that you now are has been rearing it’s head since you did as well. when will he stop dying? when will you learn to live peacefully and without pain? an accumulation of wounds and the wounded, of guilt and clenched teeth, the rage goes on indefinitely and your children grasp at your fists to make them into hands to hold across the divide.
Category Archives: frags
abandoned pieces, fragments, scraps
scissor slice mouth
the scissor slice of her mouth
scorched earth
scorched earth policy of blowtorches and napalm and self destruction of burning bridges and never looking back of my spine set aflame and hot whispers scathed across my mouth and I spin wildly like a top seeking purchase some smooth surface to cool my heels
the chill is black over ripened skin
the chill is black over ripened skin flayed open with maggots and caked blood. like the word on your lips as it cracks across your tongue and breaks your teeth. had i not been ruined, had i not been. i heave out morsels from the pit of my stomach and stuck between the gum and cheek with a measure of bile like no other. green and red, chunks of forgetting, longing, a sense of gained ground pitched over a porcelain bowl, flushing it all away to stand up again.
the weeping of a widow-house
broken-shells along finger-spines for word-stems like the tongue-dry feel of your ever-mouth. how much longer the sun-black? twist-corn inversion of marrow-splint, a something-more lost, a some-less-more forgotten-kind, a sad-sad-fire-anger, like the weeping of a widow-house. and i-there, and i-stare, and i-crackling, kindle-ash scattered ever-nowhere.
when cornered
you know nothing of me you will never know me look all you want search all you want you will never know you do not want to ever know the rage i hide behind this thick skin the instinct to protect what’s mine after all that has been taken from me i will protect this i will mutilate myself i will scar myself until the outside matches the inside to keep them safe from the devil within me from the infection i was and am and always will be from the sickness that cracks the world in me into rust and bleeding and puss and garden shears struck through pried palms and tongues frozen on barbed wire fences and tires burning thick black plumes into nostrils cleaved open you do not know the lengths i have gone through over nothing what i’ve done to anyone when nothing even mattered but here and now with all that i have left i will gouge you all i will render you all i will bare my teeth and i will howl and i will show you the sort of animal i truly am when cornered and nothing that ever threatened my own in this world will be safe from harm
doing saying
doing and saying are different but words should move they should move you out of a room where bodies hang on meat hooks over your bed and the entrails brush the pillows and the stain of everything you’ve done becomes a whisper taught to children with mangled limbs and cleft faces
brick silent
and the silence is like a brick in his mouth that he can barely chew and she says I’m sick and he tries to ask how long has she been this way but his tongue is stuck on the mortar and she says again I’m sick of this and he tries to fit his fingers between the brick and his lips and she throws off the sheets and looks for her clothes and he imagines she will never find them because he cannot tell her where they are
project snowflake: notes: amanda, ian, breakfast in bed
and she has breakfast in bed with ian the way normal people do with a cinnamon raisin bagel for herself and a wheat one for him. he globs on the cream cheese in a way that makes her laugh and she doesn’t think about the others, she doesn’t think about harry or tom. instead she bites into it, telling ian about her next project, telling ian about the dream she had. he listens and nods and chews, a dab of cream cheese caught in the corner of his lips. suddenly she kisses him there and he kisses her back and the bagels fall onto the bedsheets then fall onto the floor as they tumble over each other.
cut and paste
there’s a man with a pair of scissors and a pile of magazines. he cuts. he cuts out her face and puts it here. cuts off her hands and puts them there. he smokes viciously. he flips through each magazine, frustrated hands. he cuts and pastes on whiteboard an obscene shrine. the eyes most important, seductive and sleek, predator eyes, eyes focusing on prey, eyes without remorse. her body means nothing, interchangeable, always. and beside her, him in a tux, him in speedos, him with a fine hair cut, him cut up and in pieces. him torn from glossy pages, him never as he was. perfect and whole.