I am particles.
Mist. Smack. Ice flakes. Grit. Ash. Floating fur.
Loose and moving you can put your hands
Through me
Snag on hard places that hurt more to shatter
Where I should have just drifted apart.
Born blue and yellow
Cyanotic. Jaundiced
The colour of bruises
Pain is always metal
Steel spikes in soft skin
Bullets bearing bald gifts
Blunt blades biting bare veins
Cars carving up carcasses.
Anger began as I swang
Upside down.
Not the erupting volcanic sort.
The old, cold withering waiting kind.
Moving slower than erosion.
Writhing under the blood transfusion
Nervous new Mother.
She needed me to behave badly.
To exonerate her as she mixed glue in the kitchen.
Happy over the congealing pot.
Ready to stick veneer tiles of acceptability all over me.
But they slid off, dropped
The glue weakened by her tears.
Every time I jumped off a roof she would catch me.
One long meandering jump.
Evading her forays into the forest.
In her red cloak.
To find the wolves with PHDs.
Who prescribed the Thorazine.
That would keep me still,
While she sank her teeth into me.
Hoping the saliva in her bite
Would turn my bad bile into good behaviour.
Let’s see who'll crack first?
Always losing my asthma inhaler.
Stealing my own breath.
To hand back to her.
Dancing on the edge of death.
A delightful Snoopy dance of joy.
Head back, nose up, ears afloat.
In a smack serrated voice.
I could tell myself,
'Shut the fuck up willya,
I'm heading out in headlines.’
But
You won’t let me come to nothing
Willya?
Whatever the price.
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