The Addict

& She'd give anything to make the pain stop,
Give any little tiny thing she could muster,
Any word, beautiful epitaph, chronology, excuse,
Excuses, she's full of those, isn't she?
But what you don't know is that she once was full of life

She once radiated a glow that drew people towards her,
Once controlled the atmosphere of a room with her cheerful laugh,
Once danced upon stages, reciting lines from a book of words,
Pretended, pretended and loved every moment of it

Now she pretends to be okay,
On this broken, cracking to the cornerstone, stage of life,
Where they ripped off the wing of her costume,
Slashed the velveteen garments she performed in,
Dancing, now, beneath the body of the man who will give her what she wants,
Reciting the words from the beautiful, thick book where she hides until he is finished
destroying her once again

One pill....

Two pills....

Three pills....

Shot of vodka,
Shot of Jack,

Time elapsing...

Finally, release...

They dissolve in her bile,
Seeping through the cracks in her intestines, hitting her blood,
and finally, finally, finally - she is at peace enough to rest

Ambien/Klonopin Ramblings #9,857

No matter how hard she tries,
the silence won't leave her alone

Won't let her breathe in
peace, won't let her smile from the inside

Silence takes his chilly hands
and wraps them around her neck

Sending goosebumps along her
neck bones, down to her sternum

He reminds her that she is not of them
Not of the ones who can function the way they do

Get up, go to work, discipline,
fortitude, friendships, families,
history repeating itself for them

Not her
Never her

She watches them - awestruck
at the simple movements that they make

How the fluidity of their days
liquefy into one another, small raindrops pooling
in the empty bottles of time

She wants to be a part of that
Not much, just her own small square of the world

A tiny corner in the Universe where
she could possibly belong

To someone
With someone
With some tiny one's
Maybe even a cat or two

Husband, House, Cars,
Well trimmed lawn, Smiling neighbors
that wouldn't look down at her for the ink
she has on her skin or the hoops of sterling in her ears

She dreamed of "home"
She dreamed alone
Thank God the Dr. put her on Prazosin
for PTSD nightmares,
Cuz' now she won't have to dream anymore
and wake up to find that dreams don't manifest
for her the way spells used to

Another man,
Another bed,
Another flop of a relationship,
But who cares, really?
She has ambien and klonopin and prazosin
to take care of all the day/night fears and tears

She has her magic spells
They just sit in bottles on a shelf these days
instead of in a book or in cards

If this were Alice in Wonderland,
She would have turned into a puff of
smoke from the caterpillars hookah by now

Just drifting away...away...away...away...

Imperfection

"Am I not pretty enough? Is my heart too broken? Do I cry too much? Am I too outspoken? Don't I make you laugh? Should I try it harder? I try as hard as I can...?"
Kasey Chambers "Not Pretty Enough"


& no matter what she does,
what smile she paints so carefully
upon the peeling, cracking canvas
of her face, she will never be enough

Smiles are drawn on in the morning,
careful, thin, easily erasable lines in case
of emergency - she need only to break the glass
rotunda of her heart
and spray her smile with water, washing away
all traces of happiness

But, God forbid, they see the real her underneath,
ever,
even once,
period...

She tried to be perfect, she really did,
it's something she would swear her life on,
would swear it on God, on her mother's grave,
on everything she ever managed to hold onto
long enough to love

She really, really tried...

But now she sits beneath the tarp
of evening, shadowing and protecting
her as she silently and softly wipes away
the masque that shields her face from the
rest of the world,
she wipes it all off

Smeared and smudgy black, red, yellow, blue,
all swirled together like some disgusting cocktail
mixed by a bartender just fucking around,
She never would drink it - so why wear it anymore?

There is nothing left to hold onto,
nothing left to grip in her world,
so instead she falls asleep tonight,
vodka and razorblades sunken deep
into her throat, her flesh, her soul, to the
memories of a thousand lovers who used,
abused, bruised, mamed, tore and lied

And maybe, finally, finally - she will sleep
and not dream of being chased by the man in black
who has haunted her for all of these years

Maybe soon she "won't be so lonely, and she'll walk on water, every chance she gets..."

Degredation

It's a cold September rain
that crashes to the ground
in fallen haste, spear-heading
itself in the process

You sit, hands worrying
themselves to death in the
ICU, 3rd floor, hotel for the
emptiest forms of humanity
possible,

I'm afraid that if you worry
your beautiful hands any more
that they will be next on the gurney
sliding down the highway to hell,

I agreed to sit here with you, when
you called me, middle of the night, 3am,
her Great Escape finally successful

I awoke to the sound of your initially
inexplicable sobs, "she's gone, gone, gone..."

In the darkness we drove, bats out
of hell, rushing to get to her - but what for?
So that you could caress her broken corpse
just once more? Run your fingertips over the
black, twisted stitches that held together, the
gaping wounds that looked like tiny mouths,
screaming a thousand words she could not say?

Now we sit, waiting on her family
as you mumble about a couple
hundred blue and yellow capsules she
decided would make for a perfect dinner,
followed, of course, by vodka,

always vodka with her...

I hear you say something about her
delicate, ink-stained wrists, split wide,
and how sad, you thought, the way the
pictures drawn into her skin would no
longer be even - the way they were before

I can't focus, for the life of me, I can't -
for that, I eternally apologize, however,
I'm too lost in the beauty of your devastated
eyes, that hide a menagerie of thoughts both
depraved and brilliant

They say there is a fine line between genius and insanity
and you, my friend, have been seamlessly travelling
back and forth on that line for years now it seems

Especially with her...

I watch rain slide down the window panes
of your ivory face, eyes red-rimmed and filled
with the tiniest of spiderwebs - also a deep crimson - the
way I'm sure her bathroom must have appeared to
the inexperienced EMT - who took one look at her
fleshy, meat wrists that sprayed the walls in the gore of her pain
and suffering, and promptly vomited all over the floor...

as if she had not made enough of a mess, already...

You shake your head virulently and in disbelief,
"whowhatwhenwherewhywhywhy??" and in the process
your salty grief covers the lapel of my jacket

'Why can't you just let her go', I wonder absent-mindedly
to myself, aware that for people such as herself, peace would
never be found in the places that she had the predisposed tendency to
look...
In the crack den's, in the balled up fists of
some new abusive man,
and in the dark recesses of her mind,
where she wandered, happily lost
for eternity

"I guess," you finally say, "that she found her peace at last."

'Yes,' I think to myself, 'in a sea of vodka and pills and blood, cooked in the bathtub like her own brand of moon shine..."

Remember Me

I'm speaking to you,

Do you hear me?

Have you ever?

Or am I just the ghost,

Reminiscent and left over from an old life,

Where we were happy,

Do you hear me?

When I scream at night,

Do you hear me?

Or does it come as the vapor of

a sound?

Just enough to stir you from sleep,

& then do you look around,  

As if something might be missing?

What was it though?

A half-lucid thought,

No real importance to it,

You shrug it off & succumb

to the cold, deep ocean of sleep,

Dreaming of everything you love,

But I loved you,

Am I in your dreams?

Will I ever be? 

Was I ever?

I want to know that you have not forgotten me,

That I still linger like a memory,

Deep in the back of your brain,

Someday, when you least expect it,

A smile, a song, an object,

Will rip me to the forefront of your head,

& you will smile & remember me,

Who I was,

& that I loved you  





You Destroyed Me

You left me.

You just fucking left me.

Here, in this hell, a ring
still in layaway, sparkling
and glimmering

Hoping that it would get another
chance to symbolize love
the way it tried to do before

& with these children who
adored you

Hoped beyond all hope that
you would be the one that
they would someday call
"Uncle" after stuffing your
lies down their throats
while perched like a
god on your throne,

& devoid of anything
else left to believe in
we swallowed the
slop of your empty words
as good servants do

& praised you for
your magnificent kindness

Our "hero"...


You just left me

As if the day before
you had not called me
velveteen names that
slipped from your
satin tongue like
branches of ivy

& oh, how they wound
about my trifled head
that burned and cracked
so long ago

Slipped around my
throat - choking me
to the death of reality

What a beautiful death it was

My greatest mistake was
believing that you cared
enough to glue me back together

You did, after all, promise
to "fix me"...

I never did believe that
you could

I never didn't believe that
you wouldn't try

I never did believe that
you would be unfaithful
the way you were

I never did believe that
you would dip your daggered
tongue into the lye that you drove
into my heart, that ate what was left
of it away like acid

I never believed

But you're gone,
Does anyone know where
you currently reside?
No - obviously not with the
woman you were going to
leave me for,

The one to whom you
said "I'm over her," when
she asked you of me

"I'm...over...her..."

Those words rang like
bells and whistles
in my brain, replaying
over and over and over
in the darkness while I try to sleep

How in the hell are you
"over me" when two days before
we signed a contract to a new
home?
Looked at wedding bands?
Priced locations, venues, cakes,
gifts, tulle and ivory silks?
When you stood in front of the
awkward bulk of my family
and swore to me on your life,
your daughters life and your all
magnificent "hatchet" that you
would love me and only me...

FOREVER...?

How could you just be there
and be so damn in love with me
and then suddenly evaporate
into the air like hot steam?

My father always did say
that you were just "full of hot air"
& now I see that he is right

I feel as though I am
going to rot to death in this
enormous bed

The one that I swindled
away for us to lay in forever,

For us to make babies in, plans
in, whisper silently our hopes
and dreams for the future in, and
then someday, whisper our final
"goodnights" in...

I see, now, that I will die alone
in this fucking bed, here, in this
hell, with all of my household goods

My pots, pans, glasses, cups, silverware,
unused wedding invitations, pictures of us,
the blueprints of our life-to-be that never will,
I see that tonight, I will say "Goodnight" to you,
sip my wine, laced with lye, and fucking leave
the world...

Just like you did me...

When you come to find me,
just know, just fucking know,
that every time I said "I love you"
I meant it - but you didn't love me

Because you don't destroy people you love

Entombed

I remember you and

the way you clung to the

pillowed split of my lips some

nights, some empty, hopeless

nights, like salt to the rim of

a glass

I remember the feeling of

your hair tangled around

my fingers, snagging and

catching in the cracks of

my nails

The feeling of your

flesh, so hot, that it

burned the sickness

clean out of my soul

I never, never knew,

not even for a moment,

that you would ever leave,

not once

You were supposed to be 

Prince Charming, weren't you? 

Supposed to be Mr. Right and 

not just another Mr. Right Now?

Weren't you supposed to be 

    " The One" ... ?  

Wasn't there supposed to be some

magnificent declaration of your

love spinning and glittering

on my finger? White tulle drowning

my fears to their eternal death?

Weren't you supposed to prove

to me that you loved me above all else?

Adored me above all else?

Needed me above all else?

But you never did

Just took your sarcophagi

tongue and entombed me

in the mausoleum of your

words forever...

& I lie, rotting in here,

wandering from wall to wall,

up and down the stairs of

this miserable cage, dead roses in

hand, ragged and stinking of

every death except the kind I

desperately crave - physical...

I am a ghost

Trapped here for the rest

of my eternity

& you are gone, finally,

off to the mountains, or the

beach or some hole in the wall

where another empty-eyed,

broken hearted woman sits,

waiting for the man who

appears to be "Prince Charming

I hope you brought your white

horse, you bitch, because if I ever

get out of this tomb...I'm going to

kill you and bury you in it myself...