to the ghosts of summer winds

in the corridor it weeps        dragging rags across
the floor     quietly it goes to sleep     but then it 
bleeds it bleeds it bleeds     (  more deeply than before  )

      I had my first manic episode in years, but it wasn’t what I remember. I felt so high on energy and on life and I heated the room with fervent dancing in between laps up and down the stairs. I don’t remember ever feeling that alive or powerful. Is this part of my “new” illness or is my memory bad? I felt like I was shooting up wildflowers and playing harmonies with sunlight.

     
      I have nothing to tell you today. But New York feels close. I can taste the smells and smell the tastes and the bolts of my skull are being shaken loose. Let’s take a trip someday and go skydiving. I’ll build an immunity to poisons and work at the zoo. Yes yes yes. I am still tasting the mania.


     I decided to start a group here with profound discussions on living. When my mood plummets, I’ll probably throw the ideas out and sob alone for another few years. I’m trying right now when I normally don’t. What am I trying to do? Getting better is a laughable suggestion; that’s not it. Right now, I’m trying to race the sun while swallowing it and set every room on fire.

september death burrows into
moth wings   i catch the chalk between
my palms and hold the burning reds against
me   sing me september sing me  sing    it’s
not a tune i plan to hear again 

paper skin bruise easy  bruise bruise ea-
sy   gentle rocking    weeping cradles    oh child
don’t you know       once you find the knife
inside you    bruises only grow 

         I’m going somewhere soon. Nobody but you knows where or when, so please keep that secret safe. I’ve discovered something breathtaking in silence. I can hear the weeping of stars and the footsteps of ants. I can I can I can. And what can’t I do? I can’t work. I can’t hold conversations. I can’t walk outside or shower daily. The dentist told me that my teeth have not rotted, and now I brush my teeth a little more. I’ve become such a slob. But I can hear the wings of finches a block away.

         
        I write bad things about bad things with bad pens. I’ve already illustrated I bleed ink, but nobody would know how I do it. It’s another secret, the way I rip my guts out through my skin. Writing is a sickness I enjoy now. It’s a pain like hunger or burning muscles. Like burning anything. I’ve lost count of the scars on my body, but I know it’s well over a thousand. I look like I climbed out of hell, but I haven’t climbed out yet.

       
       I’m leaving for a little while. You know that. And on the way, I’ll read a bad book and dream of New York City. New York City. It has a refreshing pronunciation to it. Two flats and one sharp in a musical stretch of phonetics. I smell the car exhaust already, and the stars cannot weep there.

(or maybe it has heightened me)

deadened smile   fractured palms   they
sing it seeds and echo psalms    but
winter’s chill is not withstood by toxic
buds from rotten woods     saints choke
sinners  break the limbs   but winter quiet
chokes their hymns 

i have waited on the shadows of 
your wake      i hum 
beneath my 
breath epitaphs of 
saints you mangled           we
bled too much into 
each other  bled too much
bled too much too
blue
as if the truth was trash and
no trash was in the truth and
you loved me   yes you loved me
and how you loved me! like love-
knots stitched to tie a noose

      I’m isolated by seas of nails. I’ve forgotten honesty after they drew the last vial from me, tossing the blood up like it was nothing. It broke somewhere, and nobody knows where it could’ve landed. I don’t either.


     I’ve been writing to you less frequently. I’m sorry. I’m feeling so walled off from the world. I am walled off from the world. More than usual. Walking on glass shards I seldom feel but are poisoning my system. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you. To New York. I’m falling to critical levels. I hear static. I hear the live-in in my skull that tells me I do not belong (t)here. I hear footsteps miles out. Sometimes I can still hear my heart beat.


     I’m sorry to the gypsies for dishonoring a cliché with an even dryer plot. I well with apologies. They tick more loudly than my heart ever could. My guts are damaged. They bleed in “I’m sorry”s and pull my knees to the ground. I don’t beg forgiveness for being sick or sad or stuck. Rage and cynicism renew me from time to time. Anxiety blots out the world for me. I don’t ask for forgiveness at all really. I ask for soap.


     If I cried for you could you hear me? Will you keep me close in New York to dull the pain for a little while? I think seeing you close could help. Maybe when we’re sitting inches close to each other, you really will be inches close to me. Everyone is thousands of miles away. Not just you. But I owe them no apologies. To you, I do, I apologize to you, because you’re not scared you might drown in the ocean. 

seal it with blood       she
whispered while their
wing bones scattered dust    it
spilled the booze to 
sanitize its wounded legs     she
broke into its wrists   smiled 
signatures into this ivory of trees

suffocated she
suffocated blossoms and they 
choked on the petals of
her crimes 

        Again, I buckled. I’m attempting to bridge distances between people and me. No room for the word “other” here. I don’t define myself as “people.” But I do have people sweating in my skull and sometimes I think reaching out shuts them up for a while. I’ve gotten angrier because I’m starving myself again. I now realize why people are afraid of me, but they shouldn’t be. They never should’ve been. Or were they ever? Did they beat me to keep me down or did they beat me because I wouldn’t stand up? I’m tired.

     
       What kind of trips will we take together? I could show you some places I love here, and we can go other places, too. We might not travel, but I wouldn’t mind if we did. We can rent a cabin in the mountains when we go to visit Mom. We’ll bring our dog, and they’ll be so excited by the scents and smells, and let’s hope they don’t develop allergies, too.


       I had a bad day today. People were rude and irritating, and maybe that’s why I want to talk to people. So I can prove to myself that they’re not all rude and irritating. Or maybe I’m just lonely, but I don’t think so. Not today and very rarely now.

       I look forward to not being lonely with you.
 

it said “never say ‘we’ never never never let
that utterance spike your stench soaked lips
again” like bloodhounds they continued 
baying red ”eurekas!” to the moon     hunger
throbbed against its palms and it
reached to one and then the other  other  other  

howling dogs    teeth like razor wire as they 
nibbled on its hands    it did not scream it did not
scream it did not scream it wove its tears into
a noose and begged the animals to heel

“let me go i am so far from human” it wept it wept it
said “let me go i am not human” and in its own
remains it lingered and it slept

       I buckled. I wrote something about vampires. Actual vampires, not people-vampires. I almost feel guilty, but they’re easy to write about since I’ve known so many of their human counterparts. Bloodlusting, life-sucking, manipulative and on the surface beautiful, (Nosferatu excluded). I submitted it for publication, among a few other things. I’m writing differently now. More deeply attuned to the beating of a human heart, I think.

       Have you noticed it? I love how deeply you seemed to have connected with my art. Our first conversation was one of the most memorable conversations I ever had, and I’ll never forget the way you made me feel.

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it’s of night of 
ink of starlight that
leaks from
out its veins
and
around
its neck cling scarves of
moon dust      its
breath is autumn it 
is autumn it is   cold and

filled with death 

its pores have weight  it’s
wrapped in dying starscapes and
its prison bars are flesh and

it’s easier to choke on numbers than
it is to choke on food     count the
missteps  gentle gentle gentle strides


will the jail keys release it if it
ends its life of crime?

    behind the
bars it counts
it counts

it counts 

it weeps beneath its
blankets   like a dog
gone to its cage   it
bleeds with fears with
stone regrets and is
soured now by rage
 

coin eyes coin 
teeth   copper
gurgles down
beneath   fever
spills from out its
spout   the taste of
copper floods its mouth 

it strung its veins from
street lights like banners for
its bruises    child whimpering beneath
its amber shelter      knees
breathing on its collarbones and

woman    shadow of a distant present lying
bare and gutted on the banks of a
long-forgotten sewer

I sleep with sadness because sadness stays. It moves my heart to beat and coaxes breath from out my lips. It kisses me just to wake me, and it offers a comfort no one else will know. I can feel its lips and its skin and I sometimes hear its voice, but it’s quiet in reverence of the dead. I am dead, and the embrace I share with sadness stands forever. There’s no surrender to admit when I confess my existence of surrender. Our pulses have always collided, and our veins have always run as one.