I've Been Writing For An Hour And My Fingers Hurt, First Draft

And how I prayed

As you preyed.

Nowhere to go

But I went.

When you’d show,

It was an event.

You lit up the room

With your gaslight:

Colorful tales bright

Braided by your loom

Charmed me out of fight.

Once upon a universe,

You spun me

Into a planet

Untraversed

Made of granite

Polished

By your tapestry.

Big crash,

Big bust.

No ash,

No dust.

Man, what a star,

Streaking the sky

Forever high

A Peter Pan fly

In the ointment

Of my treatment.

Blow jobs in your car

You’d earned by gender

What a light spectacular

Puking on your fender.

But for the sake of Dorothy,

I won’t gale

All the honesty.

I’ll exhale

Your meteorology,

Tornado hail,

Punching holes in my pale:

Your own rheumatology.

You’re The Great Wizard,

The man behind the curtain,

A man of higher degrees,

Heights meant for a bird.

Nights meant for work

Were a private party

For three.

If I’d had half a mind

I would’ve called you out,

But days after

They took me off the ventilator,

You were about,

I was bipolar;

You went out,

I stayed sober.

You left

I wept

While Death

Swathed himself

Around my neck

But not before a strand

Of his slack noose breath

Slithered into my ear a Blacktooth

Grin:

“It’s a short walk

To the Hangman’s Deck,

Yet

There are no more steps

Taken than those to Neverland.” 

"The Times" First Draft (Annie's Version)

Remember when you were Crazy?

Remember when everyone adored you?

Remember when you told me all women love giving blow jobs?

Remember when you insinuated that you got offers?

Remember when you made me wear a hair-shirt

For a year,

Not wanting you near,

Because I’d been forced

As a matter of medical course,

To terminate what I thought would be

Our Baby:

A family.

Remember how sick I was those six weeks?

No, you don’t.

You weren’t there;

Just like your father,

Left you without a fucking care.

Were you still looking for him

At the 7-11,

Searching for Marlboros,

Only to find a starving uroboros?

And you fed into it.

Remember how my Catholic father,

And how, after you made it clear you couldn’t be bothered,

Had to take me to the hospital and wait

For the grandchild that would arrive late?

Remember not telling me about the naked sexts your best friend’s wife sent you for years?

Remember

Lying

To

Me

Every

Goddamned

Day

About

Every

Goddamned

Thing.

I don’t regret fucking another in my bed

While you melted into your couch.

I don’t regret love at first sight.

I don’t regret the secret messages

You wrote to women on social media,

Telling them we broke up,

Because I was “boring”

Besides, according to

you

i

Was

Old News

Long forgotten,

Nothing in common,

And it was hell.

So.

Here I am, back at the inkwell,

Ready to report just the facts, ma’am;

Ready to give away your tell.

Best fold that losing hand, man.

Add this biography to your exhausting excuses:

It’s all on me, why you refuse to move.

Hot damn, Ace, these circulating presses

Got me in a New York Groove!

Enter Lilith, here to smudge the black

Of your quarter century of lies:

The truth

Of our

Youth.

To Lilith's surprise,

I stole her prize:

Rosemary's Baby.

And, Baby,

He's of the demons that spit back.

This is merely chapter one:

This ain’t your patented one-and-done.

Your silver webs will come unspun

Erasers set to stun.

And,

Maybe,

Finally,

I’ll remember,

What it was like to love the sun. 

A Daisy

Time melts and drips

Like Dali’s clocks,

And watches.

From college greens

And the stairs outside

The English building

To your arms twisted

Around me, in the sheets

And christ, I miss that heat,

The feel of you,

Your desire for me,

Curtailing my prattling

With your kissing

Those lips belong on mine

Like red uncorked from wine

I miss the two of us being

Afraid of Virginia Woolf together

And endlessly seeking Flannery’s Jesus

Jesus

How we clicked and curved and fit

I’ll never remember the story we

Made up at dinner that night 

But I think about it all the time

And how that older couple

Stopped to tell us

How happy we looked.

But two Misfits will never fit. 

Watching you walk away

Through the waist-high rye,

A golden tear of goodbye

Slipped the horizon and

I remembered Dylan

And fought the sunset.

You forgot your mitt,

You couldn't catch them,

At the bottom of the canyon,

But I heard you cry

As they fell one by one,

"Here's lookin' at you, Kid."

Untitled Unfinished New Fiction

On my name, every word I’m about to tell you is the truth.

They will lie and tell you I’m sick, delusional, pathological: mental.

They will mislead you.

Robert Frost found two paths in a wood, then whittled it down to a choice; the duality of man, what’s right versus what’s easy. Syrupy shit like that. I read that poem and thought, “That’s a man without foresight or ambition. I can find 10 to 20 paths, well-tread or virgin, in any given forest. He should’ve kept looking.”

Trust no one but the anonymous.

*****

The first one was a fluke. Usually, one has practiced the art before attempting a masterpiece, handled all of the instruments, come to know them intimately, breaking them in with a fierce yet familiar every day embrace; they have rubbed the flames of Crimson Red between their palms until it melted into their life line, their heart lines, the M.C. Escher swirls and spirals of their thumbs, held their hands up to God and wept at his generosity, thanked Him till the oil turned dry…

So many colors. So many options, choices, weapons, gifts, cuts, bandages, gingham dresses, oil-stained Levi’s, bouffants and toupees, the snap-click of the heels of her shoes, the smart wingtips he wears to the office, the ability to live or die whenever one chooses, to be torn between eating ice cream or a salad and choosing the ice cream. Our open hands have been filled by His ever-open hand: the world is sweet and sharp, muddy, crystalized into perfect ponds of ice, toxic, kind, jealous, and unforgiving, and He offers this to all of us, every day.

But art, is, of course, subjective. Some look at a Rothko and see a square. Critic So-and-So will carefully and eloquently tongue lash a Basquiat for being too ethnic, as the racists like to say. Others look at Da Vinci and see mathematical equations that add up, some small, invisible scaffolding constructed by the eyes to direct the gaze up, down, all linear and vertical, yet all angles and curves, a swift dash across the horizon line, and these solutions make sense: they are the sum of us. 

The Lion and the Bear (Flash Fiction)

Do you know why Mother Nature eats the weak pups of the world? Because she’d rather be one with her child than to risk watching them die. I am the lioness feeding on her precious runt. I am the brown bear in the spring, launching at predators. I am Mother Nature and he was my sun. He was my son, goddamn you. 

Pine Needles

 I’ll bet she makes a beautiful bride,

And brings out all the best in you:

The fooler fooling another fool.

My ruler is crueler, so let's unspool

More than a quarter century defied.

Let's take one last meandering ride

Looking for the crash site:

You're the liar

I'm the writer

Let the professor take you to school.

I hope she ends up your fool

A fool who’ll make a fool of you.

We never said a word about

Your pathology of my doubt:

Your misdiagnosis

Became my prognosis

And I died in the dual.

I’ll always be your ghoul,

Your biggest mistake,

Your deepest regret,

The one you see across

The empty room.

I don’t know

If I want

For you

To move on

Or

Pine

Like the trees in 

Your backyard that whispered

Thick secrets

In the humid

Gulf breeze,

Yet it reminded me of

Fall:

Of when my heart pumps adrenaline

Manic fireflies, cool cigarettes,

Just enough chill

To get

A guy

To wrap me

In his flannel,

Smile kindly,

And make me regret

Every

Fucking

Second 

With

You.

A Picture is Worth a Million Wounds

you chose the paintings

your nephew created

over your daughter-- 

because you

"can separate

the art

from the artist"

(he always was the artful dodger)

he gave you two gifts,

decades ago,

before my lips finally let it go.

even after telling you

The Whole Bedside Story, 

you've kept them

as your windows, 

proud to give the artist glory

to the visiting company.

I see him every day because

his creation

is cherished more than

yours.

I let go, but

you keep him

in your sight

and smile at

his handiwork 

come sunlight.

you hold him tight,

like your purse

to your side,

where, tucked in the

hidden compartment

you've secreted the curse.

don't be alarmed by it,

it's just another verse.

Virginia would write you blue

and explode with red rage,

like the Confederate grey POP! of

the backfiring of a car,

furious with you over an

explicit war

that didn't exist,

a chance longtime missed.

you should have shot first

in the heat of a battle:

a bull run

across No Man's Land,

and I'd have bled a river for you,

dug an ocean to reach

you by paddle,

walked through fire

from Tallahassee to Seattle,

all the while

your family

calling me a liar

and you did nothing,

which is nothing new.

he should've lost

and lost to you.

but who's afraid of three guineas?

of a room of my own?

wasn't that the therapuetic goal?

who could be scared of

Virginia and her wolf?

god, the reasons are so many,

but we'll leave it at

control.

Finally, no more eggshells 

Over which to tiptoe.

your egg has finally cracked. 

let us visit Virginia again!

the Potomac beckons

with invisible fingers,

and exhalations of wind.

I think of the plane crash there,

in the eighties,

an infant floated,

with a ticket to Hades.

a frozen, orphaned baby,

rescued.

we never stopped:

we flew over a cemetery

on a day-cruise.

I bit my lip

as we drove

over a sunken ship

with wings

that cannot fly; only carry.

driving over life's excused:

at the dead submerged,

from below, they look

down

down

down upon us,

below what dust

what was once

their bone, blood, skin,

and with us, with our rush,

they are incessantly

amused with us.

let Virginia line my coat pocket

with boulders and questions

and every last fuck it

hanging heavy

sinking me

down,

just another proper noun

left to drown, 

anonymous.

I have been weighed and

measured.

the coat on

my shoulders

led me to water,

but The Lady of the Lake

has no power

because

I'd swim through hellfire

to my father,

clad yourself in armor,

for not one hand

will ever again

harbor

threats of a cutting fuhrer

from a broken mirror.

I would rather

sit at the docket

on judgement day,

in a courtroom up, up, and away,

to where the

alien Good Men go to play:

I would rather die

than subsist on

all your lucky pennies. 

both pieces: two halves of one show.

and you, content with the intermission,

and you, satisfied with your conclusion,

there won't be an intervention,

it's nothing the family wants to mention,

no one took to my father's prescription, 

so send a good intention

but stay in suspended animation.

many pieces: a whole punch,

you can brag how bad I am later

to the Ladies Who Lunch;

those who know

"It's happened before,"

and those who have been caught

here in the motherland

of haves

and the precious few who have not.

acrylic windows to the world

what do you see there, 

on that canvas?

a broken-down sack,

stretched burlap?

but never the attack

on your 11 year old girl,

"Because we can't straighten out

The Facts,

and that's the way of the world."

remember, she can separate the artist

from the entitled act:

"the torn hymen of a child"

no painting speaks to that.

yet protect the robin's eggs

listen for their peep,

and 'neath their mother's wing

they will find a sleep

without having to stay alert

for a creak

or the creep

up the stairs

whose affairs

are simply to fuck me

till it hurts.

so how about fuck you,

woman for whom I'll never weep:

you let your daughter crack.

I wasn't a bird,

I couldn't sing,

but you stand guard at

his shitty painting

unlike the child

you're exhausted of parenting.

you keep them, you said,

because

They Make You Happy. 

they're bright, colorful,

cheerful, thoughtful,

and it's a helluva moment,

learning your mother is cruel.

But those burlap sacks

Spread, open wide,

like my skinny legs

that barely held me up after,

cracked like robin's eggs:

The Play Is The Thing.

art is more

than what it makes up for.

a screaming violent rainbow

painted off a palate thick with

psychosis,

misdiagnosis,

his intentionally missed doses:

the slickest of black.

how easily those hands

of creation

just as deftly wreaked

devastation,

across my body

long gone slack.

and as I stare upon "the art"

i see the fucking artist

every

goddamn

time.

he's hanging in your bedroom,

easy and comfortable,

if I only had a noose,

Dear Dorothy,

I could let my art loose:

Pollock his body with bands

of yellow crime scene tape,

splatter him with

bright red stop signs,

as if "Stop!" ever halted a rape.

i wonder if it makes you feel

as powerful as he did

when he painted my body,

my world,

in hateful hues

of reds and bruise.

that night

a teardrop of blood

wept the length

of my leg

and murdered the sheets of

pink roses stretched across

my daybed,

a bloody bouquet,

while in the downstairs bedroom

he fucked my best friend.

ah, but those hands!

they could paint a chapel!

ah, but those hands,

they can crush an apple,

easier than popping a cherry.

when i see his work

hanging,

framing

my mother's bedroom office,

i wonder if she ever thinks

of him

using those talented digits

to insist,

up to his wrist,

stealing her daughter's innocence

with his fist.

and how, at her insistence, 

there was no justice

because sometimes,

justice is nothing more

than a promising list,

a lullaby,

to pacify

hypnotize

into believing

Their Lie.

and I'll die a victim

at the hands of all like him

my finger on the trigger;

their hands are so much bigger

than even the one ive been dealt.

because no one wants to

stir up Granny's stew,

or upset the Texas crew.

Besides, what's a girl to do?

other than stare

at her office wall,

and the yellow legal pad

that should paper it all.

Or do like y'all,

in order to stall, 

in order to

forget

what feeling like felt:

May the Lord bless you.

What feeling like felt?

I'd rather fold

than play

the hand

that I was dealt.