Viking Funerals and Christmas Lights

And in the nightmare

my younger brother drank poison and whiskey

because he craved

to die on his own terms

instead of letting the cancer

turn him into an old man

at 25,

so he threw the elixir back

very fast with his eyes closed

and in true                          

viking funeral fashion

floated dead down the river,

his body aflame

turning to embers and ash.

I found it frustrating

that when I walked 

battlefields

I could always see

the blood drenched boys

running with their guns,

shooting each other

to fund some

fat bat’s purse

while their wives

cry in broken down

churches,

lighting candles to save

their soldiers

from themselves,

after the war

when the bruises started,

and he wept

as she held him

when he talked

of the stars falling

out of the sky

and burning his forehead

leaving a scar.

Isnt it funny

how those freezing nights

seem to crave

all the sad songs

until youre heaving tears

from what feels like the stomach,

til nausea sets in

and you cant seem

to get a full and deep breath?

But then I would go

for drives

to feel the cold air

on my face,

turn the music up

until I could feel

nothing else

but the melody,

drive through subdivisions

to see the twinkle lights

wrapped around houses

and the warm Christmas tree shadows

in kitchen windows

which always made me smile.

Lace and Teeth

Whew,

I couldn’t seem to write

how I think

because my thoughts

were those of a

angel-masked

blood bitch

who was coughed up from

the red boiling gates

of hell that it was my duty

to guard as

the hot metal melted the skin

off the sinners’ bastard bone

which I then lick off

my fingertips smiling sorrow.

And goddamn it

you talk too much,

casting nasty magic

with your hollow words,

raising coffins from the undergrowth

within the syrup sludge

formaldehyde mixed ego,

all phrased in one long whine,

pigs playing

peeping toms in

the windows of

my childhood,

and we got so used to

the ever-staring eye

that as we grew we

learned to self-censor

just in case hes watching

and wanting to be entertained.

We are told over and over

that we like it

until we believe it to be true.

Heaven’s archangel helped YOU maybe

but I fucked her in back alleys

exactly how she wanted it

and she liked it a little too much

for my taste,

but in the end

it was too rough for her

to admit to her

white wedding friends,

so she dragged me,

her almighty secret,

to the cellar,

and to hide her shame,

cuffed my neck to the radiator

with a one-two step

and a curtsy

as she took off her underwear,

throwing it in my face,

leaving me to rot in the damp dark.

Lace and teeth

changing the scene

to the boy next door,

fashion and raging out

to System of a Down

while he popped the heads

off barbie dolls

to make a necklace

out of their pretty

little lip-glossed faces.

Through it all,

my family weeps,

pleading with me

to write of

prancing ponies

and fields of fancy flowers

of which I knew nothing,

and it felt unfair and unnatural

to fake happy

after all the bad boy abuse,

the deaths of father

and brother

whom I still saw every night

as the medium gifts

became heightened

in my periphery,

and unfamiliar ghosts

turned on faucets in my kitchen,

scratched me in my sleep,

and screamed obscenities

at me through

my reflection in the

madness mirror,

And even after all this time

I STILL couldn’t forgive you

for all your taking,

taking,

taking,

always putting the drugs

before my heart space

and never saying you’re sorry,

like you actually mean it

for the bruises on my ass

that I never wanted to be there.

In truth, I hated myself for hating you

through the fog of the damned

that I felt I deserved

because you had told me so.

Thus what could I do

but be me,

in all my gory glory,

silence the

social pressures

of denial and

the never-ending

buying and selling of bodies,

so I took the shotgun

you kept in your closet

though I protested and loathed

the violence of it all

and blew the window out

of your bedroom wall

where you kept

your catechism

so I could get fucking free.

I must write the truth

of the horrorshows I’d witnessed

even if it killed me,

and regardless of the page that enjoyed my pain,

I seized my last gasps of air

before joining my

kindred spirits,

sipping bourbon and laughing loud

under the biggest

weeping willow

Id ever seen.