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.

Bipolar in the Mayhem City

I know you didn’t mean

to break my consecrated silence with

your bloody teeth,

but I had spent hours before your arrival

opening my third and fourth eyes

to try to find relief

and yet all I could see were torture visions

from the astral plane,

witnessing mamas holding their dead babes

and the blood of the innocent running ragged

through the streets,

feeling then the tantrum demons rise within my brain

who then held my head under the boiling waves

of the underworld,

and I screaming for deliverance,

or at least one full night of fucking sleep.

And when I finally

snapped out of my mind and back to the earth,

I told you in humiliated whispers

that I had been raped

by the devil

in the back of a red pick-up truck

that sat in your driveway, and

your response was to smirk

through your cigarettes

like my pain was a fucking punch line.

So I nailed my hands to the headboard

and swore to myself

that I would never let anyone

witness my

shape-shifting magic ever again,

thus to dull the phoenix burning within,

I spent hours taking shots of absinthe in the afternoon

and popping pills in bathroom stalls

to dumb myself down to “normal”,

whatever the fuck that means,

then sexing rough boys

who always called the next day and

I never picked up the phone,

instead sat in showers,

sobbing for hours,

rocking back and forth with my guilt

while razor blades and

bottles of asprin

sang me their sweet siren rhapsodies

all the way through the night,

into the morning hours,

rise and repeat.

But that was a few moons ago,

or maybe even years,

I cant quite remember,

and I know now

that I am getting better

at giving myself some grace

through the hard days,

bipolar in the mayhem city

(which I queried might just be

the Freud-fused American

psycho-pathology

of our modern day shamans),

yet either way these movements

flung me topsy-turvy,

deeply haunting me and growling loud still

within my heart and head.

In spite of it all though,

I am remembering to breath deeper now,

seek peace stronger now,

focus on my own healing and awakening

more fiercely so that I may

pass love on and heal the wounds of

whomever wanders my way.

Talks with Nightmares and Nature

I held your nightmares close

and we became like old friends,

drinking whiskies in rocking chairs

that my grandfather carved

before religion called him out

of the woods and into the concrete, and

we raised our glasses high and wild

whilst you waltzed

through heaven in your underwear

laughing at the people below.

So I took a deep

syncopated breath

to calm down the tide of suicide dreams,

setting the metronome

back to the beginning of time,

soothing flowed through me

as I held my palms skyward

to the moon

and thanked her,

my sacred mistress, who aided me

in remembering,

oh yes,

that part of me is in

the trees outside my house,

in the rain that falls

into the rivers

and flows

to the Ireland waters

from whence my family came.

I am also deep within the 

earthen ground

which heals all wounds

and culture imposed sins and

sighs to the

mourning morn

until laughter

cracks the sky again

like thunder.

The Devil and Cups of Sugar

I woke up

with dragon’s blood

dripping from my mouth,

remnants of the dream spaces that lingered

in which the mystics    

throughout time came together

in the forests forgotten

to argue over the best recipes

for old fashioned cocktails,

and to hold heated debates on which

witches’ brews were best to give soothing to

the dying and the dead

within us all.

And the tempests

that had so softly slept

in the clouds for years stirred and

now awoke coughing

with the ash and poison

of humanity,

winds and rains

growling anger and vengeance,

pouring down on us hungry,

and we then cursed the sky

because, of course,

our egos could always find

someone else to blame.

So as the rain started to whisper on the skin,

I was the Hanged Man

in your closet,

ever swinging and singing songs

that I didn’t remember

whilst still noticing a slight tightening

of my vocal chords,

scratches in the back of my throat

from demon claws

striving to crawl up my stomach lining,

trying to take over my head

which felt detached from my weary shoulders anyway,

and even so I could still hear my mind

floating down the river to the ocean,

which proved to be effective

in catching

the third eyes

of fallen angels

strip teasing in the streams outside my house,

crashing circus acts and white weddings,

watching humans and

their Hollywood heroes who beat their wives

and received generous tax breaks,

then to be running late to sidewalk rallies

protesting wall street religions,

sighing at stop signs

and popping pills like popcorn

on the way to after parties

and leaving heavy footprints

in the muddy snow on the streets of Detroit,

lighting cigarettes for strangers

and drinking wine with the neighbors

of serial killers

who hid their bodies

under the top soil of the lawns of strangers

instead of dropping by for cups of sugar.

Meanwhile,

I had given up on cancer cures

and your gods of mercy

since I had watched my brother

slowly slip into the afterlife,

my howls of pain and loss

ricocheting through the undergrowth,

splitting my soul in two

so that part of me could follow him

into the ethers and

the rest of my ghost wanders the world

trying to recall the pace of your heartbeat.