Stitches in my mouth
Blood and chocolate
My teeth on a string
Spitting blood

Everything I bite turns to red velvet
Paying in blood
For old ways to make it through the night
Infected wounds
Digging in the dirt
To take out the trash

Stitched back up
Like my stuffed support animal
Having to behave
No drinking

Just suffering, cleaning
Sitting in the noise
Always something happening
Distracting

Dealing with everything
Hanging by a thread
It’s not holding
Falling

It’s not working well
Holding on
Without drinking
And only eating
Red velvet

Rotting food and rotting children
The rot of the heart
And decomposition of spirit
The oxidation of conscience
Microbes consume us
If there are rotting children
In the world
It is because spirit is starving
For a solution
That is beyond itself

I think I killed the mundane,
growing up wishing to be saved.
I think I killed gentle gestures,
through teenage years, craving someone who cared.

I think I killed connection,
living through my twenties, not knowing who to trust.
I think I killed the mundane,
now I’m nearly thirty,
no closer to my fairytale than I was at fifteen

The sin of having a child--

You are the wound
By which they were burned into the world
Burning into themselves
You have to find a way to absolve yourself

There, set yourself above me!
Cut out my tongue and stitch up my lips
Because everything you gave me, oh! I was so ungrateful.
"Just shut up, you insolent brat!"
You don't know what I went through to give that to you!
You don't know what you had,
You are too weak and small to understand!

You're right, you are so inherently good and pure
I should just accept it was what I did with the gift you gave me
I, the recipient of the positive power of choice
Which is not a debate!
I should accept that I have made mistakes!

It was what I did with that gift that was abhorrent
Now, you may have made some mistakes as well...
But I should understand, they were not nearly so severe
As the infractions committed by my selfish heart!

After all, I hold on to the past,
And you, as you say, you just move on.

So i should understand.

You pretend to be above me.
But this universe just trades places.
One day you will get over yourself
And I don't know if that counts as understanding
But I don't care.

And I don't care if you think I'm a leaf arguing with the trunk of its own tree
It makes sense that I would
Self hatred makes sense
Our hemispheres argue until they resolve
And may the pride you have destroy itself
And I know it will and right now that makes me laugh

Because I experience pride but it comes and goes
I don't hold on to things like you.

CENTAUR

Hiding in the hay
me a terrified little boy
& my uncle like a terrified little boy

the voices in his head telling him to be afraid
of all strangers...changes.

He’s been like this
since the day his Dad(my unknown grandfather)
died.

My Aunt’s voice
searching for us...searching us out.

Her shouts like bloodhounds
hunting us down

her words angry & cruel.

Her angry voice slurring us into:
“DonallSeanie! ”

as if we had fused into one being
a metamorphosis of us.

The hay cooks us
and we swelter in our hidey hole

A chicken sits on top
of my uncle’s cap

as if his mind had
materialised into this shape.

He rocks himself
and rocks me.

“Shhhh...boy...shhhh! ”
comforting both him & me.

“Don’t leave me! ”
he clucks

the words scattered around him
like newly laid eggs.

I settle into his silence.

My Aunt’s threats freezing us
in this terrible heat.

His chest hair
tickles my nose.

The cut on my left big toe
throbs through the open sandal.

My uncle cries in fear.

I wipe away the tear
with the ***** edge of my sleeve.

We escape to
the West field

me riding his shoulders

transformed into
a legendary creature

that only exists in myths
fleeing from the realness

...of reality.