Fear – Aremyfeetofftheground

Apart

Night splints hold teeth in position,
I believe.

There is a baseless fear of dismemberment,
of awakening without the sum of one’s parts,
like the cave of a missing tooth.

I lie in bed running, and too fast.

Of what do predators dream?

Dollface

~In my mannequin dream, she walked with a limp and a clack. Lurched toward me with a doppler shift, as sure as a coaster’s chain drive. Her face- a calamine complexion, flytrap lashes, cheekbones of rouge pasties. And I, rooted, felt the come-hither hell of china fingers.~

A house away from home

Was that house
one of lies
one of alcohol and fear
Were there violences
muffled by bedroom doors
and punishments
sealed by closet doors
Gone without…
gone without

Come to me now
Lay those ghosts in my hands
Let us live
for time is so short

~photo by Ben Gingell / Getty images

Comfort

Around here,

we don’t hold

with sharpened knives.

With lit candles

or precarious positionings.

Life is safe

in dullard’s walk.

Nothing’s our fault,

and we love

the spilt milk lament.

Image from The Concordia

Mutuals

~Fifty said to Fifty~

Time is growing short, growing cold. Know that i will be with you, all the way to the next time. Be on guard, lest I drift into the lock of sleep. Charge through the night, that you may play in broad day. Put away the fearsome fear, until another year.

A white thing

2:43 a.m. and I get up to pee. There’s only the night light, knee height. I shuffle arthritic, steady the wall, when a white thing bumps my eye like a drifting balloon. In a hissed whisper, “bitch” it says, imploding its albumen, stifling my breath. I don’t have to pee any more.

Spirits

I’m seeing more somethings
in the sighing air
Distances to dramas,
beatific in their flash,
are shortened.
Though I once feared the fear,
lungs of sponge breathe it in,
baptizing its fire,
and I am well.
I am well.

Blackface

When I woke up
this morning
I laid there for a bit
Idly went to scratch my nose
then nearly had a fit

Someone else’s hand was there,
with skin of ebon brown
I ran my fingers through my hair
It felt like eiderdown

I went to find the looking glass
to see what face was there
Expecting not the veritas
that I was meant to bear.

This darkened face
this different nose
this cauliflower ear
that now replaced
my beigey rose
and filled me up with fear

How could I go out like this
and look over my shoulder
Walk in fear and maybe miss
the chance of growing older?

Doctor Doctor

cigarette burns
under the sheets

the temporary bee stings
of random needlings

pinpoint pricks purposely played
bait for a loon’s scratchings

mad reveries in broad day
draw attention to comic despair

Oh Doctor Doctor
Can’t you see me burning burning
Can’t you see me burn?

Hero

A scene of old develops and sharpens.
It’s the start of some chapter
in a boy’s learning.

This memory is of being ten.
It has cold misty rains at a train station.
The buying of a ticket
with nickels and quarters and wide eyes.

He is going to see El Cid in Montreal
by himself, with given permission,
maybe implied good riddance,
and certainly a flight to something
contrived, but noble.

It’s a way to forestall fear for the future.
To puzzle out why close people fight
and bury the fallout;
to feel the budding of self-assurance
and, finally, to admire a hero
whom all would love and despair.

Yes, he wanted to be
someone’s hero.