Question Touch

Do you have to scrub your skin too?
Scratch off it’s surface over and over
Until twenty burning layers away
From the tracks of unwanted caress?

Remember as the acid seeps through
And you lose that arrogant composure,
That I am only just beginning to play
With these things that helps me ‘process.’

Have you ever had to show your face
When no-one knows the predator won?
Force a smile, a dead eyed, dull grin,
Hoping when friends hug you don’t flinch.

Centre of the tooth, with nerve in place,
I’ll drill a hole through every single one,
Thread through each a fine steel string
To pull them slow with a hand crank winch.

When you’ve walked passed each other
Have you been filled with complete terror?
Did you grasp tightly at your fabric clothes
As though they’ll protect from the shame?

It’s so gratifying to watch as you suffer.
The chemicals turned your skin to leather
It’s time to cut that wailing tongue into rows
I hope I don’t strike a vein, I like this game.

Does the night bring back all the memories
That weigh you down with its terrifying grip?
Do you hope that by the morning sunrise
Your heart would stop it’s painful beating?

I’d quit the whining, there are no remedies
As I watch you choke behind glued lips.
I can’t stand to be devoured by your eyes
But a pin prick will remove their seeing.

Are your days filled with asking why?
Blaming yourself for being the prey,
Breaking yourself down ‘til you barely exist
Pretending it never hurt you that much.

I’m sure you’re all but ready to die?
But you don’t look like your inner decay!
I’ll let you decompose in your own shit
Because a touch is not just a touch.

Faithless Grief

I’m faithless and unashamed 
For God did not give us grief.
Love manipulated our trust
So that chance could gamble
With the futility of our existence,
Ripping the tense velcro bonds
Of hearts grown together.

I applaud it’s gamesmanship,
For it doesn’t laude it in our faces
By any means other than simply
Gathering the grim and gaunt
In coats of greyed gaberdine.
Long coats hanging as if empty,
Made black from the heart’s rain.

I am faithless and entirely alone,
But still gesticulating to the air:
An open chested final demand
To give back the gift of grief
That greeted me at this graveside.
Need I be a god-fearing glossolalist
To return this heartbreak?

Pencil Case

Momma told me not to run with scissors
Lest I pluck out my own eyes
With the rounded tip of the blade.
But she needn’t have feared impaling
For the glittered edge could split reality
Into newer categories of felt or unfelt,
Processed or compartmentalized in boxes
That are to be continuously mislabelled
And indexed under different triggers.

Momma told me not to run with scissors
Lest I pluck out my own eyes
With the rounded tip of the blade.
But she needn’t have feared impaling
For the glittered edge was a siren
That promised to multiple your mark
By severing the ties to reality a little more.
Knowing the hook was catching enough
To long for a longer, deeper verse.

Momma told me not to run with scissors
Lest I pluck out my own eyes
With the rounded tip of the blade.
But she needn’t have feared impaling
For the glittered edge was a safety blanket
Bound in bumps of gentle grip polypropylene.
Soon substituted for safe preschool variety
In the same clear polyvinyl therapy pencil case
As the steel screw fit pencil sharpener.

75ml Measures

We got plastered on the mezzanine.
Giving even less shits than before
With cheap shots that burnt like kerosene

Splitting prescription amphetamine
Into servings of six, eight or four,
We got plastered on the mezzanine.

Supplementing lacking dopamine
Pretending we wanted to feel more
With cheap shots that burnt like kerosene

On the childlike side of something-teen
With store rooms of baggage to ignore
We got plastered on the mezzanine.

Steadily making more of a scene
Baiting ourselves to even the score
With cheap shots that burnt like kerosene

These moments dipped light in sertraline
Revisited in flashbacks galore
We got plastered on the mezzanine.
With cheap shots that burnt like kerosene