Mother Sharptooth

Mother Sharptooth

My father had his chance to get away
But he let the buzzard back in the room,
the whirl of its leather wings
like the sound of a tearing shower curtain.

It filled the room with years of screams,
Of blood, the smell of piss on sheets.
It swooped in with a rip and a rag,
Eyes like cigarette burns and it lit
My father on fire. Red engulfed his arm
And my small naked body.

After, I set on the steps of war,
Half blocked by wall and green carpet,
The room smelling of beast, of copper,
Of broken men and fingernails dug into legs.
My voice sunk into my arms and I
Held it, let my tears baptize into safety.

The monster came – in its eyes the look
Of pulled out hair, the puncture of rage into a face,
The long tooth that hung from its mouth
Bit me too, and I wonder if I am still bleeding from the wound.

Mr. Wilkinson

When it is time, he snuck into my room and closed the door and stood above pushing the anxiety into my dreams like stuffing sausage links.

New Definition

Two screens become three screens become

Four screens become the osmosis of the body

Become the machine, become the stick of metal

Into cells become the pool at the bottom

of the screen of the world, become wisdom

become calculation through calcification,

become the oh holy body, become

the sediment in the gear, become the chain

in the mind, become the labor pain and

I become out screaming))))))))))))))))))))))))))).

Road Rage

Little Mustache, and all those braids,

Hours in the chair, my ex used to tell me,

Hours in the chair in the heart of Saturday

And she would come out smelling of coco butter

 

And that tattoo down the length of her thigh…

But back to you, sir at 90 miles an hour,

What little time we have together,

You and I and what did I do, took it out on you?

 

The speed of the road,

Where the lake meets the river,

The trees and the vines and I hit the highway entrance,

The road sparks showers under your tires.

 

What lives in that mind,

With the cries from the back seat,

The ritual chant of “daddy, daddy, daddy”

The body just grips wheel and goes solo.

 

And when the clouds set, and fingers lowered

And we both follow the words that build our lives

Our bones follow the same words, read the same books

Written on same skin and do we break form our car trip knowing that?

 

IBS

for my stomach

 

It’s what bakes you; breaks you into your cell fibers –

The constant rubble in the belly followed by the dirty exhale,

The slump and shame of one more night –

Light cut into the corners as you tear at the innards.

 

The spit in your eye that each morning brings –

It’s not that easy, not that cliché a start –

It’s not “I eat until I hate myself”;

I eat so I can hate myself more –

 

Pile on until the flow starts coming after meal,

The same reason I don’t brush my teeth enough,

And the toilet speaks to me, that fat lipped ghoul

That feeds the pit of the world –

 

The vile stew that I am half made of –

The boiling pit of my bowels that boil

In the brain that boils my bowels

And I find myself sitting and hating and waiting and wiping it all away.

Hail the Bladder God

Who knew that my etchings twenty years ago – would be real,

lovecraftian bladder god, demon of the eternal piss,

constant cutting of my internal hard strings,

I now sing your praises at the white urinal church

in constant change against the amorphous balloon

with its knock-knock-knock – the sign of change on the door

that comes with every dump and refill,

In My Black Pit Stomach

 

 I finally know what the feeling is.

 

It’s like my father being stabbed,

scissors jutting from his chest like a door knob,

a red coat rack that does not stop

throbbing, twenty years later

and I am too afraid to touch him,

 

to tell him that I want to take the scissors out,

I want to let him rest in his forgiveness,

tell him that his god is my god,

that I am too old to make his mistakes.

I just don’t have the stomach for it,

literally I cannot hold my liquor

even on those days when I need it

like he needed it

like a pair of scissors in the chest.

ToyBox

Dead Horse Bay

Every Treasure comes here, at the end of its life. It comes here and we let it know, – It’s OK to let go.

Phantom Limbs

 

After that me and my good times

got evicted, eviscerated,

thrown from the moving car

tumbling into the ditch

meeting broken sticks and plastic bottles,

all ground into my face.

I sat up, body a broken beaver dam.

 

I dragged muscle and skin

to the top of the hill –

a dead goat of a body,

mind muddied with thirty years

of not wanting to make

a ripple in the pond.

 

And as another oblivion warship

hits sixty and transmutes blue into speed,

the only clouds in the sky

rip the sun form their stomachs

and blood pools down my face,

through the hair on my knees,

 

So I begin to pull the pieces of stick

from my arms, my face,

each blemish, each wooden mistake,

every stake that killed me.

I pull them out and hug them close,

holding each one like a phantom limb.