Sculpture On Linoleum
Salvaging a piece of my soul among scattered pieces of my pressboard furniture and my childhood television
The Spice Girls stickers peeping out from under the destruction
Smiling among the ragged ruins of all I held dear for years
Alas, they are only things but as I pick up the pieces I cant help but to believe it’s a metaphorical emotional sea
In the winds my angles breathe searching for a way to find the dark recession of my mind
It’s a crime to beat but not to yell, to steal money and bodies however it is all a form of hell
In my subconscious decisions Freud was right
I pray for you to open the window at night as the smoke chokes me and my tears drown me as my fears continue to fight me, pile drive me into an abyss of theory while bliss sees my crimsoned eyes and runs as fast as it can to another side
Still I try to close my eyes and hide but I’m wearing this bloody wedding dress and ill never be a bride
When it comes to love I’m not obliged just hoping for something to soak up the tears I have cried
I want to smile before I die
The pieces of glass shattered before my eyes as an evil mad man held an axe to my screams breaking his way in and stealing pieces of me
I lay on the floor with the shards cutting me as the blood flows to become a soliloquy on the linoleum with lightning struck sand
I squeeze the pieces into my hand so maybe I don’t feel so much from the inside
As I stare at a maniac with wild beast eyes I pray that you will make it quick
That the axe will split my synapses and membranes quickly so I don’t remember this moment as my last day
So I pray babe you do it now so I don’t have to dwell and all will be swell
Death to come as fast as it took you to break the barriers that kept me safe
As promptly as you took the swing to put a whole new kind of fear into me
As I waited for the black tunnel of salvation you ran away
I hoped you would have stayed and finished your mission
I am the one now who’s picking up the pieces
Creating a sculpture on linoleum of my window panes
The more I think the harder it is to clean the broken dreams and rid myself of the memories so I just sit silently and cry among the garbage tornado of you
Flying through the skies are cyclones of your daddy’s drinking, your schools priests, addiction to every narcotic please
Now the wicked witch is back and all your shattered life pieces snuggle inside of me like a pessimistic relationship and tapeworm disease
Who’s the one sitting on the floor?
Me
Then I recall the years it took of starting over and over to build myself a home of possibility where I could escape broken homes and forgotten dreams
The hours clocked to achieve a few possessions and the man power spent on keeping it all clean
As I look around it crashes back onto me a wild tsunami in my soul of seas
The books and pages turned the tests passes 9-5 living and visa payments
Every bit of anything I have ever done in hopes of a better life all around me
A sculpture on linoleum
Then how do I explain this to the landlord?
How will I keep out the below zero degrees winter breeze or even begin to explain this to my friends and family?
Will I call the police or just pack up my stuff will I still live here and work my cozy job or should I just give up and use the broken glass to kill myself?
What will become of you Mr crazy needy, what will become of me if I cant enable your manic depressive addiction disease?
I hate myself even more and more for still caring
My head has developed its own pounding and the screams are blaring
I have no answers to these questions as I am too afraid to move they just seem rhetorical
What’s left of me are the shattered dreams and broken pieces I spent 20 years achieving
In all things now I have stopped believing ill never again be singing only screaming
What’s left of me?
A sculpture on linoleum
Already Dead
I tried tried tried to help you
I wanted, yes I really wanted
More than anything, in fact
To rid your mind of those demons that haunted you for all these years
To rid your mind of the thoughts that told you
I am not good enough
I will never accomplish much
I am afraid of love
But an angel cant change that terrible face
The part of your soul that has too many names
The pull of the drugs that said you’d be ok
I was never enough for you to change
It was too late when I realized that no one else could change you
Now I watch these people walk idly by and think to myself what else could I do
I have filled book after book of poems inspired by you
None of them have really been about you
They have been about the things I wish I never knew
Because of you
In spite of the truth
Now my own demons take their cue
This cue doesn’t sink any eight balls
It only makes me dream of a nasal drip and that lovely salvation eight ball that slowly takes all the thoughts and dreams you made me forget
I’ve told the story of your axe and your imagination
How you could create such putrid and disgusting names for me
How your strength was one I could never beat
But those thousands of words were actually about
me
I have never spoken or even thought of those other things
I am kind of afraid of the tears they might bring
Fearing the songs they would make me sing
Of how your eyes were like that blue green of greek oceans
That no one else could see
Because if they were ever close enough to you for you to take off your glasses they would sting and puncture anyone’s life wings
And you knew you were already dead
No one knew when I walked out that door
That you screeched like a child locked in his room
Crying so loudly “what did I do!”
Your tears filled an ocean that week
Somehow they ceased to fill me
Or maybe how cute you became on a good day I asked you a question or said your name
Like some nights I would wake up and you’d be staring at me, stroking my face with those greased up marijuana hands wondering just where in the stars and heavens you ever deserved such luck
My anger made you angry
When I triumphed you smiled with me
But when I cried because of you it was the biggest irony
No one else knew of these dirty men that had taken your childhood away
Or how your daddy drank so much he would love you finally
Throw you up the stairs because you heard the words he used to you and you decided you’d use them too
I’m the only one who knows after his father died how you caught him at the kitchen table crying
Just like I caught you some years ago
I was the one who told you it was ok to cry and held you as your sobs shook the mountaintops that we drove our ATV’s on
Who else could ever love someone who changed so much
You were a little boy to me and I never meant to leave that boy lost and lonely
I wanted to take care of you until your baby face became wrinkly
But my love was not enough to fix you and the rock of me cracked beneath your pounding feet
Ever since that I could only see the bad
Not of how we rented movies, bought chips, ate pizza , smoked a joint and everything in the world for that one moment was alright
What about the time you came to our room and said
The cat has been hit
I asked if he was ok, he was our family, my baby
Your face turned red as you held back so many tears when you said not really
He was downstairs in a box, eyes open and bleeding
How we weeped as your tenderly put him in the backseat and we cried so hard and buried him forever beneath his favourite tree
Oh, that old wooden shack
A place destroyed by you a center of so many tainted memories
A dwelling too smoky to see through
With its woodstove, we cut so much wood that winter so we could be warm but no matter how many logs we threw on the fire by the time we’d wake up the tea would always be frozen over
From the moment we realized we were in love the moments we wished for and the moments we wished never happened
I cant really remember the moment when I realized
It was probably a more general progression of things
Fights too hard we tried to change too many eyes we pleaded with to stay the same or to save us from ourselves, from each other
Or maybe it was just that one morning like every other
Maybe it when I found those words and actions that you should never really say to another
Words that should be reserved for your lover
It was in the way you seemed so content as you destroyed everything that mattered to me
The way your lips curled into a smile when you saw how much you could make me cry
You know I have never cried like that since
When you said to me “bitch, shut the fuck up”
Or when I rather die than make love
How much I cried as you laid me on my side and did it anyway
There was no magic in humping that lifeless body
My soul had already flown away
Remember how you yearned for me to touch my friends
I told you I’m not into swinging
Fuck I am not even a lesbian
Or the years you said you’d get a job but just to survive I still had to work my ass off
The moment I realized you would never wash a dish, that you’d make no money and think with your dick
The way you treated me was a definition of abuse
You could pick me a million strawberries and we could cry at The Notebook
Kiss and make up
Sing cute songs about each other and pretend these black clouds never existed but it would all be a lie
Id forgive you and the next day would just be another chance to make me cry
Another bargaining tool for my bank account
More drugs to fill you up
Another reason to die
It’s day by day
It’s pretty hard to erase 3 calendars, 4 Christmases, 14 provinces
All those nights of whispered promises
Forgetting to care when I sit up and my stomach become one roll of fat
Or that this week I neglected to shave my armpits
That without makeup I still have the same freckles I did when I was 5, the same pimples I did when I was 15 and sometimes you know I just look like plain shit
And that I sing Judy Garland in the shower off key and I get constipated like once a week
Who cares about that now?
Who will ever love the nasty shit that is me?
Without you who can I ever be?
Who is this girl that is so free?
But I do know one thing
I’m the only one to ever get close enough to see your blue green ocean eyes
Far beneath your forgotten dreams
Underneath your glasses
By the time I got that close
I knew I was already dead
