Draped

What had happened since her face had been draped? And where did the screaming go, there was so much peace in their cries, peace that came with the noise of life.  Suffering, yes; but life still.  She felt a ground unmoisten and crackle nearby and against her skin felt the softened snowflakes that lacked temperature.  She dared not remove a garment, for the pillars of salt she knew surrounded her would no longer remember her face. http://www.flickr.com/photos/caseydavid/6182913122/

A limerick

As she stared off rethinking depression,
And sat through another long session;
Psycology proved,
that she should have moved,
away from her father's agression

Havoc

The "bumps" in my life would be nooses in yours

Fault-Heaves (unfinished)

After endless sweeping, re-sweeping, hosing, spraying, sweeping, my dad finally paved the driveway, so I had to use the sidewalk to draw-constellations of circles with a strong, seamless star, seemingly brighter as I retraced its outline and filled in the frost-heave fault-lines; so real I was shocked that it had disappeared when I went to retrace it after lunch; up, down, over-left, straight right, down/over left, up, down, over-left, straight right, down/over left, up, down, over-left, straight right, down/over left, up, down, over-left, straight right, down/over left, up, down, over-left, straight right, down/over left.

I drew a circle around its absence until my inch thick chalk was mindlessly bloody from my possessed fingers that circled, circled, circled, around the black-hole, through the constellations, as wide as my arm and as small as my palm, circling, circling, and caked-up raw knuckles, brown with blood, to the knuckle with blood, circling, circling, round and round -stop.

Dad started screaming.

The pavement was dry.  It was stickier than fly paper, not dry enough for hop-scotch-chalk or bicycle wheels, but dry enough for me to get away with cutting across to the front door without getting caught... just not dry enough for my dad to cross.  He only wanted to sweep my chalky footprint-cake away.  He didn't even yell at me, only gave me the swaying head with a smiling sigh as he walked onto the hot pavement with his clean bare-feet, a small brush and pan, and a brush thick with tar. 

He sank right down.  Down, down, down to his knees, but not on his knees, in less than an instant as a star -the star I had made -screaming through the road, trying to turn pentacle-sharp corner to edge, metallically piercing a drag and calling up sandy sub-particles, miniature-tornadoes, slashing glass particles, attacking his bare legs and drawing him into a pool of tar, legs encircled by sand heating to glass, ripping to bone

He was sunk in, glued and screaming.  From the pain?  The shock?  And the screeching gets louder, the star, closer.  I hear the screaming, and I had never heard dad scream before!  I ran around the long way to get mom, up the neighbor's hill, around the pool, the porch.

I could hear the TV through the back door.  Its locked door shouts louder than my wrist knocking, forearm pounding, backdoor screaming, "MOMMY!" I unwrap myself from the porch and double back to finish encircling the house to get to the front door, which I know is opened.

My mom comes out yelling at my dad, "The screen's fucked-up!  Hey, Hey!  The TV stopped working!"  She opens the door and stops, dead still; the pentacle draws in the rhythmic circle from the bloody sidewalk, along with...

Spade

$15 dollar virgin hooker waiting for someone's second hand

Truman

 I live so close to sea that I could choose to drown, drop an ankle-anchor and float beneath high-tide

I've seen my sister's flesh entangled in Winger-Sheek shards of slate-like  geologies

(It's how my mom pronounced it, then with sis, denounced it)
In life, I can't go to the Ocean,
I'm allergic to the sun, and the sun
(Being inescapable at sea)

I've nearly died from deer-flies, allergies, and sun-
Hospitalized, I vomit endlessly from its exposure with migraines since childhood
Hospitalized blisters ripping me spineless, bloody, worker's compensation beneath shady discretion
(Even childhood fell me into a Portugese Man-of-war)

When I was five, I dreamed of the "Greek Beach" on the Cape
I pulled the plug and watched the entire ocean suck all that I'd hate
At the time I hadn't understood why
-With ships and wrecks and dirt and death
My mother should drown down the suction of seduction

Since then, I've packed for the beach
Endlessly
NEVER allowed back
Traveled to the ocean only to be rejected

Distracted by seafood dives that never serve me
Flooded in timeshares
Pruned by private perverts

Crashing on jagged Cape beaches that sharply last until mutilation
Wave-pools for surfing; instead drowning children who get sucked into the filter until blood fills in

Packing.  Eternally.  Packing... Going nowhere, drowning on land; anchored by regret

Erste

High school, high school, must go back to high school, get my diploma, which I've never owned.  I finished  college, three majors, two masters' and one life-plan. But must go back to high school, high school, never finished high school I'm so late and now the building morphed. I don't know where to find my homeroom or if my locker is a dryer and if I should claim it with the name on my D1 uniform.  Somebody snarles, but does not move it, and now I need some shampoo.  I think I'm late, I know I never ate, I'm starving, dirty constipated. Terrified, tardy in the hallways cornered- stairs -no windows; no air.  I'm terrified and gasping, now to my bowels grasping, I'm lost and loster, lostest, molest, never finished high school, high school, geometric vestibule, holding cap and gown but no diploma still.  I've done my time, so get out of line and into the dorm with the allotted shelving that still has blankie but not my wardrobe so I double park to avoid the mark and go to college trying to find a dorm.  I move quickly in, but the semester has begun and I have children and no schedule but if I did it would be full time and I can't  'cause I'm a parent now, with two children and need to provide somehow.  I'm in high school still though paying college bills, now the dorm is bigger, room for my imagination to twitter, but there's a hole in the wall that's been sealed since my last visit and the car was moved to a lot that I can't find.  Have to live with my parents, patting, patronizing, spatting, brandishing me with a "told-you-so" smile.  Some other kids have beers but I don't belong there, I try a bar but don't belong there, I try the attic apartment, and something looms there, attacking me was fine but then my kids I said not fine with a billy-club-pen to the attic's den and was constantly hunted until the veins were shunted, so I try to visit private school for a little light instead.  I first taught at it and even bought a house across the hill, but the attick followed, and dry-mouth followed, so I sank into the pavement drive and borrowed another cap and gown, just to wake up and be back in high school, thought it was my school, but the bathrooms filled and clogged again.  No walls, no mirrors, with walls like speakers, absorbing up the muck overflow while booming, screaming, spraying, spaying, breaking, breaking, taking, taking.  I could belong but knew nobody for so long I had forgotten that I could make ends.  I must be a student but my age speaks mutant because I'm still in high school so move outside school to breathe and see where the girls attend.  Girls I grew up with are across the street in the big, white house eating frost-cupcakes.  None left for me, just shit to tend. I go back to high school, the dirty high school, the one I worked at first.  It's commencement day and it's now an array of plastic performances smiles, jokes, wireless abhorrances as though baby never smelled coke. I know their lines the lies the grind the taste of metal-blood and don't know how to sniff, blow or belong so move through the high school halls, and the smell of high-school, the dirty high school, the one with marble stairs.  The iron railing my nose got smashed on when my hair tangled on her hand.  I need a bathroom, they're all filled shitters, no seats, no doors, no flushing, all whores.  So I keep on looking, my shoes dripping, disgusting in a dark hall corner where no-one stares.  The kids are rushing, I feel disgusting, can't find my schedule, I've got nothing but I find my locker, still can't rip it open, unzip the token that can't help but split my ass.  Back to the bathroom don't care -boys or girls bathroom, and the locker room holds dirty looks from both.  I try the toilet, then the next three toilets, but all the cans are full and I'm going to burst.  Nowhere to sit, nowhere to shit, nowhere to puke or pray.  I'm trapped in high school feces, even past doctoral theses, and the nightmares somehow always stay.