(whistle)
January 2005
This therapist and I
Call upon the strength and spirit of
The synchronized swimmers
To help survive in the
Ocean of my crying that we’re drifting in
There,
little pink EAT MEs
In a rattle that
Shrink me to keyhole size
Living in the looking glass wise
Crackin my way through
Tea parties with the brand new calmness
That chaos can’t hang with
I’m the one steeping jokes
With nonsensical punchlines
Motorboat trickle to hum’s death

It only takes a moment
To change a smirk to sneer
A world out of your hands now
Backseat betty zombie with the
Sporadic outlashes to prove it
I don’t mind upholstery for sharpening
But freckled backs are a bit more satisfying

Spot a light
Never stepped in
Swing the noose around its shape
Outline and whip a wrist to snap it back
We only ever owned whatever we lost
we can say we gripped it
like confident gearshifters
sliding hands on thigh now and then a little higher
blowing yellows and praising yield signs
splitting define with definite like it’s
abandoned poker coins on coffee T’s needing pockets
to rest their powdered wigs and gods we trust in
inablers with tinted windshields
inherited courtesy the sheriff auctions
faked bidding like champions and bought them
often just another tickmark on the height wall
holding your breath during weigh-in,
the pitter-pat of old habits thrumming through the cilia in ‘lobes
charts and docs scattered between fields and rest stops
welcome centers and hit&run carcasses

and everywhere i go i will split
if necessary at a shudder of the moment’s notice
this paralyzed my chemicals
and I stopped caring
everything the color of tepid
no challenges to be seen except getting past
the fuzz–
my entire self rimmed with it like
oversized margarita glasses
I begged to those with diplomas and licenses
“fix it so i can feel again”
get me off the fucking nothing train
I missed understanding what I meant to say
I missed not cutting people off to fumble over
understudy sentences with main ideas of nonsense
what ever it is I tried to run from to begin with is what I missed
I missed feeling like I was living instead of just
going through or making motions that were not mine
but were you see, since motions made

pretend
in a pill
there was a world sudden offered
in fourteen days you can get
hooked for life
your decisions will be made underwater
your pleasure will be a misdemeanor fog
you will not know what you knew
the self will take a job on some dock
airbrushing t-shirts for tourists
the self will perfect the two-toned asterik
at the end of two-syllable names,
the self will learn how to make a heart in 3-d
but will never remember how to truly tell if one beats
because these things are buried
cells and soot and stomach and thought
daft and done certain a body fought

a milligram war once swallowed nightly