1838 Days-Some Bitterness&Sentimental Crap

Michelle Greenblatt

I wake to Kyle typing on my computer

sometimes I have trouble telling him there is a split melon in my stomach

I think he understands anyway

but maybe not the part about its guts seeping thru the mucous

membranes that line the protective edges

so it doesn’t enter my bloodstream

& it does

this is where I learned it. after pounding my head

vigilantly against the stone complaints of others for maybe

8 years while being so hungry my stomach started digesting

itself, melon&all, I finally spoke the obscure, “objectively,

I think, maybe it’s time for restitution.” perhaps it wasn’t

so objective but

someone had to intervene&best it be me lest it be

love on fire hurling days&months (60 months, 12 days) since

I was fucked with a gun&have never been the same, the spark

in my skull musty

though still burning I should have hurled it at him before

he told his friends I was crazy&a liar because that’s when

I started to disfigure my fingers. consider this, then: 1838

days to slash my fingertips so I couldn’t write but then

type with my tongue because I can’t not be what I am. I may still

hold fire, but I’ll never take anything

with me except what I cannot slice off my brain&some recognizable

poems. &Kyle. &Kyle. by the second month I knew my laughter sounded

strained so

imagine what it sounds like now : a sort of shrieking.

how can I help it? for the last few years I’ve been working! on:

punctuation? because I see poetry / lack of it / what resembles it

as something more important as anyone’s self. stick me in a sarcophagus;

don’t think I haven’t been there. lowercase Me to i. i didn’t have a chance

after the second burial but i kept trying. so the lesson would be

i came around knowing once someone knows your legs are shapely

& your face is pretty&so thinks you are a joke [,Ha] the inscription

is nice enough best to just stay there

& trace the boisterous noise with your inner ears

of those crazy enough to not label themselves “Insane” or “Addicts”

but to call you “Accursed”&maybe teach you once you are underground

you can finally learn to uppercase Yourself

when Kyle unburied me I thought of a rose ashed to dust a garden

a garden of dust a different voice I thought I’d try a different voice

& maybe take my medications all 9 of them, best to sheath myself

I’m best sheathed

sheathed shucked when he said he’d suck my purling river

out well he did he certainly did but Kyle wakes me with soft

kisses the river a dry trickle relentless&building a dry mouth

finding saliva, after being fucked into dust, dust revived first into

Bride of Frankenstein&then resembling something a little more a little more with

her own body parts. .

Kyle waits patiently though he wants to kill Aidan&find the fist sarcophagus

& all the cenotaphs he built while I watched from behind a tree

the funeral services held for me

Kyle waits for me to wake up (still) kissing me&waiting for the mustard

seed to blossom.

4.12.2005

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