Happiness

Happiness,
is an oddity,
a foreign & acquired taste
to the tongue that has never
sampled it before,

For one who grows
accustomed to devouring
the bitterest bits of life
its sweetness can be
entirely overwhelming,
& yet, almost addicting,

It hits the senses sharp
and thick, like the aroma
of Christmas dinner, heavy
to the mind and overwhelming
at first,

& God it can be painful,
Like pouring rubbing alcohol
onto infected wounds, clearing
the disease from your flesh
and curing the sickness in your soul,

How can this be that you have come upon such
a miraculous remedy to your maladies?

Slowly, so painfully slowly,
you adjust and re-adjust to the
possibility and reality of happiness
being 'forced' upon you,
& then you grow to enjoy it,

But God it takes a long time...

People look at you strangely,
as if they have something on you,
these 'happy' people, who spent summers
seaside with family, on vacations, being
supported with love & kindness,

& all the while you know that it
is them, in fact, that is the oddball,
For who really lives like that?
Not one of your friends could recall a
family vacation that didn't end in tears
and abusive words being thrown about
carelessly like an old duvet,

But oh, the sweet savouring of
this whole 'happiness' business
is too delicious of a morsel to pass
up,

So you don't pass it up at all,
no,
you simply stay silent, all the while
secretly giggling and giddy with glee
down inside like a child who is
seeing bubbles for the first time,

For, in fact, you are seeing bubbles
for the first time, in a way...
and how delicious they are when
they pop on your nose and tongue!

Fairytale Nightmare

Death hands me a palm
full of diamonds & 
I eat them, almost religiously, 
...Is it sacrilegious somehow? 
My only peace stemming 
from these Magic Beans 
that - once planted in my 
fertile guts - produce a most 
lascivious and beautiful 
beanstalk, 
One that pierces through my 
core and as it grows to numerically 
impressive heights (I am flying into 
inky, black cosmos!) pops my skull 
from it's resting place upon my neck 
& takes it along for the ride,
Up & lost in space, up into 
heaven's dome along with 
million's of glittering, skeletonized, 
crystal stars that have become 
Christ-like in their whiteness 
to my drug-induced, stupefied 
eyes,
Tracers flying past me, along with 
the rest of my life, I am forever 
trying to grip time between  
the sandpaper tips of my 
Klonopin-powdered fingers... 
Somehow, though, I cannot, 
For the fine, silken dust causes it to 
slip right through my hands, 
Shattering on the floor the 
moment the clock strikes midnight 
& the spell is broken, 
& I am Cinderella covered in 
her lazy, figuratively spoken 
ashes & flying along in my 
goddamned pumpkin carriage, 
& with my eyes glowing a 
magic-lamp jaundiced gold with a wet, 
red, pill-swollen rim - I fall 
from space & my tattered rug of a 
magic carpet & into the depths 
of the Sea of Depression, 
My diamonds have turned back 
into black, crunchy coal in my 
bloody, juicy intestines, 
& I am drowning with mermaids 
that have turned into sharks with 
their starved, ivory smooth, white 
teeth, 
They desire & crave my salty, crimson, 
medicine-laced blood in all of its awful 
metallic tasting gore, 
& as I am drowning, Death pulls me 
from the deep, sea-foam green saltwater 
and places me in front of Belle's castle, 
Holds out his hand,
In them, the offerings 
of yet more diamonds, & of course, I take 
them... 
...Lest I be devoured by a different type of Beast... 
& it is such glorious fun playing Jekyll & Hyde... 

Medication

I roam the acid-fried streets of this 
drugged out city, passing citizens 
with mouths' stuffed full of 
Physician's Candy, 
So sedating or energizing 
that one can never truly function 
again, 
& I, of course, would be lying 
if I said my own cabinet (or bloodstream) 
were empty, 

& we've all got reasons, millions 
of reasons, as to why our chemicals, 
chemistry, sanity, is so far-fucking-off 
that we consume fist-sized gulps of 
pills in a frenzied, angry crunching
between our teeth - so hard, sometimes, 
that I am amazed that our teeth and 
mandibles don't shatter in our pill-whitened 
faces, 

One woman - she inhales her amphetamines 
and three pots of black coffee - no sugar or 
cream - for breakfast, slips her lithe body 
into the hottest shower she can manage
for she never eats enough to produce her own 
body heat anymore & heads off to a 12 hour 
long work shift before retiring to the gym, 
where she will run for 3 hours before going home 
to an empty house...

The man in his suit - he takes more Prozac 
than is even healthy, or legally prescribed, 
but his Dr. said that it was alright - because 
he has tried everything else except for ECT 
to jolt him from his soul-crushing depression, 
that wheedles at him daily to jump from his office 
window - or take the rest of the goddamned Prozac, 
so that he can just relax...

& My friend, the housewife, lives for 
her morning, afternoon, & evening doses of 
Valium, 
She swears they keep her sane with her 
five perfectly groomed children and her 
workaholic husband who works late 
at the office with his fabulously blonde 
secretary, 
Of course, I would never tell her 
that most afternoons whilst walking 
by the river I see them drive by, laughing 
as lovers do, in his cherry red convertible 
that matches her cherry red lipstick... 

& myself, personally, I sit most 
days with a bloodstream addled with booze 
and Klonopin, or if I am feeling feisty, 
maybe an amphetamine, 
& I write maniacally in my notebook 
of the people I see, things I know, truths I 
would never tell - to anyone else, 
& rant my Bipolar rants - appreciating 
the fact that I am also drugged so far 
into the sky that I may never have to 
come back down, 

& we all stay up here - like 
angels that have forgotten 
how to fly - so we stay suspended 
in mid-air, the Dr. is God - & we 
pray to him at every appointment that he will 
not cast us out of heaven & return us to the 
bitter, horrendousness of demonic 
humanity...for that would be sheer hell... 

She-Beast

I stand at odds with you,
Circling you the way a wolf
circles its prey,
Hungry for just a taste of your fleshy
personality,
Your mind is captivating,
At least to me,
The fangs that protruded on the day
he broke my existence in half,
Now drip with sticky saliva,
Ready to lick, to taste, to devour,
Yes, I want to devour you,
I want to swallow you in one whole bite,
Chew you and savour you,
I want to ingest you into myself,

You amaze me,
Staring at my beastly form,
Never flinching, never batting a lash,
Never grimacing, never horrified,
I don't scare you?
I don't make you wary of my ways?
Why....
I eat men like you for breakfast,
Snack on lesser men before bed,
Inhale them like delicacies of which I never tire,
And you...
You don't even fear me,

So I circle you the way a wolf
circles its prey,
Sniffing the air for a hint of fear,
If you fear, I will know,
I will pounce,
Sink my salivating fangs and tongue
into and onto your tender throat,
& I will eat you alive,
Because I adore you,
& if you fear - you no longer love me back,
But I circle you and wait,
Because who could ever fully love a beast like me?

Experience

 

 

& I think of that day,

The day that I met you,

How we stayed up for over 24 hours,

Passions petulantly tumbling madly

from the silken curtains of our lips,

The way a summer breeze would flow through

a window,

& I think of the adrenaline of night,

The cold chill of November 2nd,

Breath falling and puffing from our

lungs as thick, white smoke,

& the thick, white smoke of

the cigarettes we sucked into

our brains, like words, words

upon words upon words,

I have always loved words, but - I

do not think you ever knew that,

That is what made me fall in love with you

was your incredible ability to string up words

and turn them on in my mind the way

one hangs lights during the holidays,

You - you and your beautiful words...

They nearly tore me apart for good...

I remember that following morning

after you asked me to "be your girl"

and I smiled and nodded, said "sure"

and we laughed and laughed and talked

more, inhaling and exhaling lives

and stories of past lovers, failures, fears

and hopes...too bad I didn't realize until

it was too late that you didn't really hold much

hope inside of your soul

Only those empty words that you would

use to bewitch a vagabond poet like me...

We laid in the grass that morning, soft, cool

grass beneath the trees in the park, watching

that one strange, old squirrel with it's silvery

tail,

You laughed and said it had thrown a nut

at your head once,

Looking back, it should have thrown more,

You slept for a while, entangled in the web of my

limbs,

Sleeping soundly, as if you had not a care

in the world,

& I remember thinking to myself "I hope

this is the "one",

I hope he becomes my Prince Charming,

But you never did,

Merely reminded me at every turn how I

was Cinderella,

Just a beautiful person who belonged

in the ashes at night, cleaning, scrubbing,

and cooking,

Laundry and having babies was all I was going

to be good for to you,

& working full time,

Thanks for putting me in debt...

But I guess you were a lesson that had to be

learned somehow, some way,

I definitely learned you,

Learned how it feels to be devalued,

demeaned,

disillusioned,

and disappointed,

I also learned how words, on the tongues

of the empty, are just the same -

empty... 

Still Okay

Your name,
That's all it was -
flashing and vibrating
in my sweating palm
as I dried my hair,

Your name,
The thing I currently hate the most
next to the sight of your face,
& yet, there it was, just
blinking its red eye up at me,

I think I heard the slightest
crackling in the fissure you
left so blatantly smudged
upon my soul,
It was finally starting
to turn mottled magenta,
the shade of a freshly healing scar,
& you - your fucking name -
sunk the goddamn razor between its
lines and re-opened it up,
You bastard, son-of-a-bitch...

I clicked ignore,
of course,
what could I say to you
that would make me feel free?
"Hey you abusive asshole, how's life
treating ya?"
No - nothing would suffice,
No crumpled list of words
gasping for breath in my
white-knuckled fist could ever
properly describe how I feel,
Not ever...

I would love for someone
larger or stronger than you
to hoist your small frame up
into the air and then impale your face
upon their cock,

...the way you did to me...

I would love for you to feel
the pain, the shame, the fear, the
hurt, the shock, the illicit emotions
that society hushes women about when
they've been raped,

I wish you could feel it...

I wish you could feel what I feel every single
goddamn day of my life...

You tossed your G's at me,
But you are so fucking, goddamn poor
that all you have is money...
Money...and nothing else...

At least I am still loveable to
some humans, even if I am just a tad bit
broken,

I'm still okay...

Suicide Attempt of a Dear Friend

You called me tonight,
To tell me you were tired of life,
Tired of failing, tired of
flaws that seemed to encompass
your life in its entirety,
Called to tell me that you were
tired,
Well, fuck, baby, we're all tired,
We all want to take that leap
of grand gesture into the arms
of some unknown angel called
Death and have him embrace us
just as we are,
Flawed failures of a God
that loved us anyhow,
You called to tell me your
mother's phone number,
Your words so slurred and garbled
that I couldn't make it out,
& I tried, because I knew what you were really
saying to me between words and epitaphs in
your mind,
You were saying goodbye,
But so drunk and hopeless you couldn't
speak,
All I understood was mumbled
something about your mother's phone
number and sleep, sweet sleep,
the sleep we all dream of late in the night
when no one should concievably be awake,
If, for nothing else, this very reason,
We run out of songs to sing,
alcohol to drink, cigarettes to smoke
and so - we think to ourselves
"Gee, I could always kill myself."
So 1am the ambulance was called,
your name, number, address, all property
of their hands,
The magical angels in white,
Who have, hopefully, come to drag you
away, kicking and screaming to
the hospital, where they will
pump into you a new kind of plastic hope,
and no, I couldn't "not call anybody, please..."
because then your death would be on me,
don't you see?

I could never just let you go,
Not like that,
Not in pain,
We all deserve to die,
But happily, surrounded
by loved ones and friends,
old and wrinkly paper grandpa's
and grandma's - not forty-something
alcoholics who have fallen apart for years...
Not alone, not with your cats, not with your fish,
your online friends, and nothing more - The Doors
playing in the background in hopes you would fade off
into Shangri-La

Couldn't let you go - not like that...