Tag: spilled ink

Saturdays and the 1 pm
alarm clockon snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration.
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth.

graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky.
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.
it has been a tough change in seasons:
costuming yourself with
sincerity, (you’re vulnerable)
tights and boots
and an expansive blankness
that still drives your body around
to pick up soy milk.

finish something you started.

there you are.
some cooing cobra.
the chills that almost ate
me: winter.   several
in a row.
the darkness and
introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed,
lone and the two of swords.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green or sharp to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster. 

there you are.

“rage” or “the fifth wave”

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there you are,
some cooing cobra,
the chills that almost ate
me: winter.   both
the darkness and
introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster. 

there you are.

“rage” or “the fifth wave”

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shake my head no.

“I don’t intend to hurt myself.”
my thighs are cut with finger shaped
bruise and the smell of
someone else’s
laundry detergent
I am windswept,
gutted and frank,
even in malaise, I
fork my tongue to cut:

“I can only cry at hospitals
and then I usually leave.”
lean in, and they said
be gallant. he has
blue eyes.
“most of my family is dead.
I just want to be seen.”

my throat sore from
conversation. persisting
mucus. the taste of him.
takes my hand.
takes my neck.
takes my waist.
stop talking.

but I just can’t.

“catharsis” or “nine of wands”

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get some rest,
girl,
it’s the
Four of Swords.
they say I must be
heedless to dabble in the
dark like that
and unarmed.

more unthinking;
a fiery capricious
tantrum,
stabbed in the fucking back
and fingers naturally
pointy and
webbed as things
develop into theory,
into pentacles,
into air.
time is a sequence of
cracking joints, more
misfortune and now 

I blend into the wall
when I want and you will
know me by
eyes popping open,
or my purr of a
low growl,
low to the ground,
undaunted in my
new soft black
steps.

you just hang there.

“Arachne”

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typically, an episode starts
at the mantle any time of day
but something has to hit
and it’s usually
three things at once:
stasis plus drugs,
(that means im fucking dizzy and
no one will listen)
an acid wave in
my stomach and
a recurring thought,
(some say intrusive or imply im responding
to internal stimuli)
caffeine, throbs, jaw
tightening into one flat line–
then there’s the timing.

in no particular order:
can’t breathe
can’t swallow
can’t move my legs
and then the heart leaps
start; staggered,

the rhythm is irregular. 

racing.
my pulse burning.
mouth turns to stone.
tongue desperate, bone-
dry, lurching outwards and me
biting it to stop talking.
just want to stop talking.
saying everything that’s happening out
loud and answering their questions
but snapping, imprudent.


i don’t know what I notice first:
that I haven’t exhaled,
swallowed or stood or
  or
that I can’t seem to do anything
nor stop the group from screaming
at me.
desperate choral grove.
the candle on the altar.
blow it out.
no, lick it.
just get up.
listen to me, Cat. me first.
when I’m still, the breezes hit
and then suddenly the room falls
away.I can feel the blackness
pervade as if there is a hand
around my neck;
this ostensive power
beyond me.

i’m clutching the rug,
bottom of the ocean
as the first wave hits.

“the labyrinth”

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I checked the time
before walking home.

a habit.
10:26 pm, no magic
in that but the drizzle
feels good on my bare thighs.
my obsession with clocks
began years ago,
616
313
919

everything in threes,
I am sobbing in front of the
young attending.
and I just can’t stop reading the titles.
begin to pick my lip.
sometimes I feel like I am choking.
sometimes I think I am willing it
through like it’s a choice
to breathe or not.

they didn’t check my throat,
not even once.
sympathetic nodding,
no real connection to the
young man but an hour of
purging. weeping.
wrote me a prescription to see
a psychiatrist about my
self diagnosed OCD.
I am always arranging everything.
I call Monday.
the psychiatrist doesn’t take my insurance.
can just peculiarly count rhythm
hearing a few notes.
and can align thoughts with
crescendo, and can align time too.

I decide to skip it altogether.
collect new rocks for
my mantle.
move art in new corners
spend a day composing.


later i will find out
that i have severe dysphagia,
a nodule in my throat.
and that swallowing is in fact
the most insidious
danger.

there are nights I don’t sleep.

“3:13”

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your house was yellow.

my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self,
their own inculpability,
fragile glass faces
slightly cracked and me,
stunned,dripping a
flattening virulence,

telling them about themselves,
breaking and then
pushing them out.


I really miss your hands on me.
the way you held me in
sullen incubation.
I remember the oldest incantation:
the thrust I was given,
some gleaned anticipatory luck:
      God gave you a chance and

              an unfinished smile.

we needed a spark.
I grin full tooth to show you
my new porcelain canines.
now the frame is melting
and so am I
in the cradle of tar black trees,
I fight the urge to bow
and suddenly tiptoe
all around you;
two inches taller than you remember
and my tongue hits your neck
like a quill.

hold your breath,
I say and
baby,
I’m a smokeshow, they say.
wait
for some other current to take me.
bite your skin.
let the tips of my
fingers dig in and

  there are no exits.

“chrysalis”

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consumption is the theme.
consume me.

it’s the new moon in pisces,
3.13 2021.
made a playlist for this
it’s all  winter 2017.
it’s sometime the summer 2018
and you send me a video of you
playing keyboard as I watch the sun
bleed from the clouds on acid
and a mushroom tincture.
combining plot points,
you synthesize too?
burned retinas, sigils for
this.
it’s the beginning of the pandemic 2020.
I’m in spain,
learned Spanish saints and their
prayers for this.
I’m in a bath.
I’m in your arms.
learned the lines of cathedral, loss.
I’m slowly cutting a line from my shin bone
to ankle with blade.


I’m in Philadelphia in the
middle of a warm bath
and just shot my head up and
gasped, birthed with severe
carpal tunnel so much that my shoulder
might be dead, it’s numb
and my wrist so bent so it’s
hard to open things, use spoons,
write my dreams and
inflammation,
two broken knees, a
closing throat, dysphagia,
growling stomach, thinning
clavicle and waist,
lockjaw, confused
but surmising I may be alive,
eh, I say out loud.


the child cannot bear to lose.
we have that going for us.
watch the soap bubbles swirl
my left hand, study the middle finger:
only a half a nail, I notice.

“ARTEMIS”

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rub petals on my shoulders,
jawline. warm,
heather water.
feel their disintegration
in hand and
for the first time,
my fingertips found
utility, want.
feel the lift of the
veil. the word DAD appears
in lavender soap bubbles.
my nails are Easter purple pastel
and I remember the way my dad
said my name as I ran to collect
each plastic egg before anyone.
the child cannot bear to lose.

rubbing roses on the back of
my neck, feel the prick of the nail
cut in half, sharp like
a thorn.
I’d had a vision
of me slicing my fingers off as I chopped
watermelon and hours later, returning
to the yellow plastic cutting board
to clean before the ants found new congress,
I looked down to see the tip gone
from my nail , (look up)
lying upwards on the counter.
had no recollection of the event.

remember my dad saying
slow down    be careful (name)

it’s all one long blur of
portending forethought
mushed by ingested substance.
  indecipherable bursts of running,
planning, writing.
the indelible effects of
surge of memory as you finally
sit. begin to let the chest
rock, cry, and
a daring and
earnest coo when the
boy touches your scalp
for the first time.

“the 8th house of death”

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it took me two hours
to let the ants out
of their  sugar container.

my vicious sneer
melting into your chest
nearby as they scrambled,
running every which way
as I considered retrapping
them, trying again to watch
them suffocate.


they say I’m a masochist
but my men know me
differently. a
sense of loneliness
led me to look for families
which left me enraptured
by cults.

I mark the corners
of my house with
sigil, command.
I’m surrounded by
five mirrors,
in the favor of
male form, my blade lined
mouth opening. 

“The sadist”

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