Living in the mind
of the alligator,
I crunched down hard
on strings
that tied me down
to the underworld
as she grinned at me in my sleep,
tossing my brain,
back and forth,
oh so back and forth,
creating harmonies
from my miseries
that had a language
of their own.
My stinging head
lay somber and sober,
and an empathic stare
from a stranger
undressed me in my
well hidden despair,
understanding me more deeply
in that fading instant than
most people who pretend to know me well,
seems these solar flare moments
are occurring with gathering speed,
ticking backwards on a pinwheel.
Shrill screams
shattered windows,
glasses melted down
to their insides,
the mirror was the only ghost
who saw my tears,
heard my haunted moans
from the graveyard
while I danced the Charleston,
swung round and around
by the sly tombstones and trombones
who tried to get me drunk
so I would take them home
to fuck and leave quickly
with the guilt stained to their faces
in the middle of the dawn
who draped itself on our skin
without a whisper
or any explanation.
As the black and blue butterflies
flit to and fro
in front of my hindsight,
the only patterns
that seemed to repeat
were the reaper’s raspy tones
skipping on the phonograph,
and the steam that
enjoyed soaking and clutching
my windows
in the early yawning morning
when I took my youngest brother
to school
so he wouldn’t have
to ride the sticky seated
yellow jacket bus
with its scissor sting occupants,
bumping and smashing
into each other with hormones
and vengeance.
Though I tried to
choke down my insidious pain,
it seeped out of my aching pours
anyway,
not giving a downtrodden damn
or waiting for permission,
alchemy taking tea
with the monsters
I slept with,
watching the people
who I had been there for,
time and again,
wiping their tears away
with my bleeding hands,
they then to leave me all alone in my
retching,
howling,
sorrow,
to hitchhike back home
without even a hint of compassion
on their vacant faces,
just cold stone staring back at me.
So instead of waiting around
for you to be done with your cigarettes,
your lie stained teeth,
your liquored up false promises and
fake adorations,
I wandered away weary by myself,
talking with
the sky spirits,
singing to the tree limbs
in their waking hours,
mouthing words
to the water
flowing down
my temperamental skin,
praying with my face to the earth
in hoping reverence
that grief will leave me be,
even for just a breath,
so I can rise up
with the moonlight
in holy ecstatic pleasure
to forget who I am.
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