Psychosis

I wrote this poem when someone I loved was psychologically drowning, and no matter how hard I tried I could not save them. I nearly lost myself in their downward spiral. This was one of the worst periods of my life, but in the midst of so much that was heartache and pain I could not bring myself to give up on living. In recent weeks, I have spoken to number of people (whose presence I treasure), who are going through difficult times. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all disappear. Instead, I offer this small token....for everyone, who has known this struggle...for everyone, who writes to survive.

 

 

Not too long ago to remember

I was sitting on the periphery of insanity

I found myself locked in rock

rigid with what comes next

I knew if I dropped my vigilance

for even a second

I might uncover me on the opposite side of this galaxy

exhaling sulfur visions

of a world ruled by fractures and fissures

seismic tremors tearing reality into split personalities

and I see you in splintered shatters

down abyssal trenches swallowing psychosis

like sugared water sweetness

but not enough to disguise bitter signs posted

by enemies real and imagined

Because this is a sliced out section of space

where reality lies in scattered flickers

bytes and bits of chance and choice

so terrible and terrifying

you would shut down your mind’s madness

and it doesn’t matter if that means

you must clip your own wings

at least then you can’t fly blind

but open your eyes wide and fall fast

to feelings of vertigo turning

the whole world upside down and inside out

and you have still got your heart hanging

on the outside of your chest

so someone meeting you for the first time

knows what color you bleed

and sees you’ve got scars

carving your body more than skin deep

But the worst part of these wounds

is knowing when you look at everything

between your thumb and your index

you’re looking at the hand that did this

whittling your own flesh

with razors and words built for waging civil war

Because I see you swimming in a straight jacket

with weight in your back pockets praying

the next time you breathe will be the last

and when you take that gasp

all these fractures and figments will settle

into a film flashback

a montage of moments that mattered

in each second you and I talk

I have to wonder

which one are you running faster from

the death that inevitably someday must come

or this life you have with a gun in your hand

aimed in a thousand different directions at once

like you can turn annihilation

into some kind of map

that might make sense someday

but that’s after everything in your path

is blasted or burned away

because your side of the galaxy

is so far from where I am

as I stand right next to you in this ten by ten room

so scared your predictions are a taste

laced with some mad apocalyptic truth

as if in your delusions

you have drunk the fruit nectar of providence

dined on a divine destiny of destruction

inextricably coupled with love

So how do we finish this

because now I’m caught up in knots tied so fast

I can’t loosen

tearing them with teeth so desperate

I might dine on my own flesh escaping

this prison

where you are the warden the guard the keys

the walls the catcalls calling echoes

through blacked out halls

playing connect the dots with bullet shots

aimed at strategic places mapped out across me

wondering which bulls-eye

will make me bleed the most

and now I see me breaking free

throwing myself in a thousand directions at once

because I’m a ricocheted prayer

falling down to my hands and knees

begging you to please breathe

because maybe just maybe

tomorrow you’ll be able to say to me

and anyone else who can listen or pay attention

today I did not find joy bliss or happiness

but for one second I knew I’d miss being alive

and baby sometimes that’s the thought

you need to survive

Genesis

This was written ages ago, but given that I was recently told that men prefer women to be weak and unsubstantial this seemed an appropriate response.

May we learn from our creations....

When adam gave his ribs for me

He left the left side of his chest defenseless

His flesh like drum skin stretched taught and delicate

A finger pressed could bruise the rhythm of his heart

I have wondered what he wished for

When he surrendered sanctioned cages for me

I know he found a sparring partner

Because I was born from a rigid bone protection

I do not know how to yield

I was made to walk through fire without melting     

They will model skyscrapers from the formation of my skeleton

Built to withstand tidal forces born in abysses cracking the center of the world

For a thousand millennia I remember life as a speculation

A hypothetical conundrum

We talked for hours about every possibility just out of reach

Philosophy has no teeth when there is no risk

When every fall lands soft 

When wounds give no pain

When love is effortless

Even the sacred is a prison when you cannot leave

When each step is a delivered diagram drawn by divine intervention

This was not living

When time wore mere existence thin

Transparent to the naked eye

I wanted to break bones

I wanted to rub nerve endings raw with need

I wanted to discover gravity when I fell

No caution to catch me short

I bit into rebellion and its taste was sweet

A perfectly ripened fruit

So succulent I could not hold it all to myself

This was my gift to adam

He could not say no

He too saw the other side of paradise

We saw together

Destruction yawning wide through its middle

And even the harbinger of a wild grief did not diminish her beauty

Untamed

Unfamiliar

Forbidden

Knowledge

This was the first time I looked on my lover

This was the first time I saw him

Lucid

Exquisite

And I ached defenseless on the left side of my chest

As I gave up my rib for another

There was a new life cocooned and aflame in my center

This was my genesis

The bare foot hills to a zenith only imagined for ten thousand centuries

I see it now before me

Here are the endless generations it will take to reach the summit

I am terrified and it is glorious

And this is only the beginning

Chimera

There are legends written along the concave curve

of a newborn’s cradled ribs.

They are prophecies.

like this one:

I will love my son so much

I won’t be able to let him go.

I will carry his cellular traces in my streams

as his shadows sewn to my limbs become

constant companions long after his birth.

Years ago

I read

doctors discovered mothers

can carry the genetic material of their children

for a lifetime after birth.

They call this a chimerism.

Definition chimera:

A mythical, fire-breathing monster, commonly drawn

with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.

This is my future.

Picture me a Frankenstein of genetic tissue.

I become a fire-breathing monster

a pieced together patchwork of biology

so thankful

I might still have him with me

even if he is on the other side of the world.

So maybe this doesn’t matter when doctors ask,

why do women, more often than men, develop autoimmune diseases?

In fetal microchimerism
they think

they found an answer.

Children’s cells left behind in mother’s blood

might be mistaken for genetic guerrillas  

so her body turns on itself.

Immune defenses destroying indiscriminate

and ruthless

I glimpse a possible future.

When my son is born

I will not see where I end and he begins.

The slow severing of this umbilicus will be excruciating

a premeditated amputation that must come I know

I will still reach to hold his hand when he is not there…

the reminiscent shadow of a lost limb.

When he wants to go

for the first time, to a friend’s house

without me.

I will let him

imagining every worst case scenario.

Scenes filled

with matches, lighter fluid, aerosol cans,

swimming pools, and second story balconies.

When he comes home

I will be hiding relief in my back pockets.

When he falls in love

I will not ask him to stop

even if I see heartbreak following.

But every time he hurts

I will find my own body embattled with his aching.

I will wear wounds

as deliberate decorative laced scars.

Here is a monster in the making.

But doctors offer another possibility for the chimera.

These left behind strayed cells

inside a mother might become warriors.

Her children’s DNA remnant ribbons running
through capillaries to veins

might fight to repair her damaged body.

This is a son making good at the molecular level.

This is my foretelling.

I will love him so much

I will be afraid to take pictures

celluloid stealing moments too precious for permanence.

He will be beautiful with small things.

Like breathing when he’s sleeping.

The only time in 24 hours he’s quiet.

Like running beside my car.

“I am happy to see you” drummed out in every full throttle footprint.

Like wearing chocolate as war paint.

Like patting my hand gentle

When I can’t talk, because life

has gotten bottled and stoppered

at the back of my throat.

I can’t breathe.

And my son will whisper,

“Mommy, it’ll be okay.”

These moments will be butterfly dust

caught in whorls of fingerprints dissolved to

universal matter blown away with a breath.

I will barely notice as they leave me just

a bit lighter
running him banner streaming

through chains and ladders and spirals in

links and pairs and unraveling predictions.