I don’t care how sorry you are /
Because I have seen now /
The error called “us” /
Is bigger than we are. /
Our tiny insignificance /
Has already burned and turned to diamante ash /
There is nothing to say, to ash. /
It is my wish /
To rage in smoke /
Just as I learned today /
Babies born of smokers /
Usually end up with emphysema /
End up with holes in their lungs like lattice work in chantilly lace /
My least favorite thing is to think of the future and its slick, short, night-clubbing inevitability /
It looks like a darkening banana skin coming down the elevator, hitting basement on repeat /
Vanquishing hope to avoid the insouciance of age, invisibility and the dreg of illness. /
Sometimes I let myself briefly wonder /
What I will die of? Will I be alone? How much will it hurt? Why do you never get used to pain? Is it any wonder they strive to build artificial life? /
Other days it is hard to keep from dying, like the flower opening her lillied face to a desert and seeing the absence of nourishment. /
As I stand /
In ash /
Waist high /
You were /
Not as important as I led you to believe /
I say this, not to crush you /
For I have refused that need to inflict hurt /
On anyone but myself /
You simply never realized /
Because you’re not as brilliant as the outline of hot wax on fingertips /
A well shined bronze, shadows of madness, cages in novels /
That I was half a person /
Unable to understand how to inhabit a world of well oiled souls /
Where people work out to avoid cellulite, even if they are dissolving like white sugar cube inside. /
It’s what you do /
All of you /
Automatrons with data phallus, souls without windows /
I used to think it was real brave or real, real /
To wear my hemorrhaged bandages on the outside /
But it wasn’t. /
There isn’t room in this crowded world for the sick /
Let alone the well /
There wasn’t room for me /
In my parents marriage /
In my well brought up friends houses, with straight backs and braided hair before seven am and tepid eggs in their fragile shell /
No room in my own life, of empty vases because I don’t want, have never wanted, to pick the flowers, the wild scent /
I can’t even kill ants, swarming me, biting my frigid skin at night /
Like once you did, train track lover /
When we were demons and goddesses and liars. /
I wasn’t tutored in appreciation, or deception of how to survive the hanging /
Life bequeaths those of us born in violet hour /
And when I was born, my mom /
Lit up another cigarette and looked outside into the bleak world of wards and cut up hearts /
Not wondering how I would survive /
Her yellow child, her wallflower bride /
But how she would. /
When I was old enough I wondered how I would too /
Over and over, like practicing ballet will invariably deform your toes /
I grew misshapen in my ghosting despair /
While all around me, others who were well and adjusted and filled with jam and feathers /
Wondered what they’d have for tea, who they’d go down on at the office, where they got their hair dyed and how to fix the run in their cheap stockings /
How to bottle it … How? /
I am flying above the world on the key around my neck, the lock is in my bones, it rattles and disturbs me with its pricking /
People tell me to remain calm but I am already doused in gasoline and alight on the lyric pyre /
You watch with a bucket of water at your feet. You stand still and unmoving like every time, nothing is done to save /
Choose a side. Choose a side. Choose a fucking side! /
My nails grow long and bullets make polka dots in my dress like punctuation without sense /
Once more I am the young girl trying to dance away her hurt. Once more the Winter is hot and nothing freezes to kill the pestilence /
A man said on the TV the other day that he had no desire to better himself. A cult leader told us we could become gods if we just lowered our cameras. /
I wanted to learn to tie the knot in my core, right. /
There are golden tickets in the sky if you look long enough /
And it is not even bloody /
Fireworks night Charlie. /
I don’t care how sorry you are /
Because I have seen now /
The error called “us” /
Is bigger than we are.