IV: X
a pro reel iv drip in the longest summer
out.
oh and by the way
i fuel all of my rage into hating you, not because you deserve it
or because i have sufficient grounds
but because no one will answer my questions
and so i'm just left to falter
or linger like some sock shoved deep beneath the bed
and sometimes i stare at pictures of you
cook those images up between my molars
revisit all of those clues that i cannot uncover
at least not by any respectable means
(I could decode it if I wasn't so moralistic)
and then i fucking rip the seams of my knuckles open
bite my own wrist,
get the keyboard wet with my own goddamn tears
because i hate you hate you hate you
what the fuck do you have that i don't have
that i can't weave into my pathetic excuses for words
i'm not an artist, so what
i don't have what you have, so what
i like myself from time to time
and when that comes around
I am a weapon of mass creation
with the brilliance of aurora boureali that
you'll never be able to fucking paint or draw
or whatever it is that you goddamn do
since I don't know
and yes, I'm ridiculous and unnecessary
I have giraffe legs and sometimes I get a little
carried away, but I bet I've spelunked
into places you will never fucking find,
you bastard.
you don't even know what you're missing
and that's the only way I can stop hating you.
or because i have sufficient grounds
but because no one will answer my questions
and so i'm just left to falter
or linger like some sock shoved deep beneath the bed
and sometimes i stare at pictures of you
cook those images up between my molars
revisit all of those clues that i cannot uncover
at least not by any respectable means
(I could decode it if I wasn't so moralistic)
and then i fucking rip the seams of my knuckles open
bite my own wrist,
get the keyboard wet with my own goddamn tears
because i hate you hate you hate you
what the fuck do you have that i don't have
that i can't weave into my pathetic excuses for words
i'm not an artist, so what
i don't have what you have, so what
i like myself from time to time
and when that comes around
I am a weapon of mass creation
with the brilliance of aurora boureali that
you'll never be able to fucking paint or draw
or whatever it is that you goddamn do
since I don't know
and yes, I'm ridiculous and unnecessary
I have giraffe legs and sometimes I get a little
carried away, but I bet I've spelunked
into places you will never fucking find,
you bastard.
you don't even know what you're missing
and that's the only way I can stop hating you.
then she wilts a little
there is a mulberry tree that sulks in the backyard
a little alien to these parts, maybe
but mostly because she never had any fruit
not last October, nor September
when they pried the FOR SALE sign out of the scanty grass.
she had nothing with which to shock
and that was the way she liked it,
cloaked between the ostentatious walnut,
the disreputable pine,
she could easily slip behind the scenery.
the tree didn't like the adolescent oak they
planted like a battalion front at her knees
doesn't anyone ever consider a tree's opinion?
anyways, she never entertained the thought of
another's growth. the sapling would have to wither
while she soaked up the soggy March sun in her
malnourished arms.
not a thought. and then, to deflower her from
the wall: mulberries! pieces of her forcing their
way into her small body as her new leaves
fell with the April rain in fluttery protest.
because newcomers should be planned
--which is why she disapproved of refugees,
whether it was a stray cat or little boy
running from Katrina's hyperventilation--
but May would soon make her more naked
than she had been in November,
adorned only in her own palpable errors.
a little alien to these parts, maybe
but mostly because she never had any fruit
not last October, nor September
when they pried the FOR SALE sign out of the scanty grass.
she had nothing with which to shock
and that was the way she liked it,
cloaked between the ostentatious walnut,
the disreputable pine,
she could easily slip behind the scenery.
the tree didn't like the adolescent oak they
planted like a battalion front at her knees
doesn't anyone ever consider a tree's opinion?
anyways, she never entertained the thought of
another's growth. the sapling would have to wither
while she soaked up the soggy March sun in her
malnourished arms.
not a thought. and then, to deflower her from
the wall: mulberries! pieces of her forcing their
way into her small body as her new leaves
fell with the April rain in fluttery protest.
because newcomers should be planned
--which is why she disapproved of refugees,
whether it was a stray cat or little boy
running from Katrina's hyperventilation--
but May would soon make her more naked
than she had been in November,
adorned only in her own palpable errors.
the frenzy of poetic inspiration undone

I don't live in the past so much as I skim my fingertips over its saturated, amorphous surface from time to time. bounding down our then-seemingly-infinite driveway to ambush my dad in his cranberry pickup, just to greet him after a long day's work. destroying coloring books with my mom in one of her fits of silent artistry.
the longstanding debate of nature versus nurture likes to hang out in my lucid dreams. just last night, it interrupted me as I scaled a barbed-wire fence. I silently cursed the concept, little bits of metal latching its claws onto the skin of my thigh. I didn't want a trickle of blood to slow me down, since I was following someone. a girl with twine for hair and big mood ring eyes. she took me into a house with molded walls. all of its windows were sleeping. and then we went into a big room with stuffed animals--they were all missing something: an eye, a leg, a smile-- with a hole in the floor. I feel as if it sucked us in. perhaps by way of intrusive curiosity...is wondering a sin?
maybe it was hell, and maybe it wasn't. but you couldn't sit up, much less stand. it was pleated crawl spaces of chalky walls, further confused by searing pipes that kept singing my hair.
her face was incandescent and it hurt to look at it because her eyes were big craters with nothing behind them and she wanted me to descend further, but I could feel the pipes breathing faster and she was strangling me with her viney arms and pulling me down further further until
my cat was kneading her claws on my belly through the sheets and waking me up.
*picture not related.
