Part One - Before

A number, solid and thick,
cumbersome to bones and
dragging, hanging skin at the hip,
to the turkey whose chopped for
Thanksgiving.

Stuffing,
rotund and bulbous,
pleading a little man. He screams
and screeches with tumultuous
cacophony to tremor thrills.

Black in stiff to the green garden above
with dirt, soil, and brimstone
covering, entangling the cavities
and depths of my hollow, decrepit
storage of milk-white blood.

How I felt - how I feel.
Tangled, mangled, strangled,
to dismal, pitiful efforts of
morbid, malevolent engenders,
in attempts to persevere little light aglow.

I continued - past - and
continue still, all towards present
and future endeavors, which feel
stagnant and mundane to the
comparison of happy sin.

Slow it began,
and then, all at once,
it rolled and trolled like
a falling, rumbling snow
ball. To the bottom of the hill.

Blue stitches slithering down my legs
and cold air stretches within
so as to purple-ize and achromatize
the prickly, erect hairs
towards my bony ankles.
Dip down, drip drop - decline,
the numbers do. In the mirror,
a silver lake so full and wide
fills me with thickness and roundness,
and changes to sullen somber.

Lips pout like bleeding puppies
forward to the tip of a bird nose,
mimicking with twisty trickery
in attempts to persuade me
that it appears whole and just.

I don’t believe it though -
it is false, faux. A clown’s mask
painted in honeymoon reds
and raw whites, to the heel
of slippery soles to hilarity.

People gather, come to a circle,
circumnavigate my head,
wrap a thread around my skull,
loop it through the hole in my ear,
and pull, and pull, and pull. 

Mother knows, sees, listens
to the growl of my gut and
the heliotrope of my nails
as they scrape and dig,
burying itself.

She notifies a man -
the man who replaced my dad -
and he, a doctor, diagnoses
me - the me that is not me. So
far gone, yet sleeping next to my eye.

Then many a people wait for me
at the door, at the window,
in the office, in the room, in my head,
to call to me, to yell to me, to
only, it seems, to suffocate me.

Alone and awashed by God’s pity -
a waiting game for my own demise.
Empty and vacant, no soul
glissades across my harp strings -
no music ever sings.

One… two… three…
da dum… da dum… da dum…
To deepest ponder and
bewilderment does follow
and I laid in bed stiff as rotten teeth

in a dead man’s skull. For months
and months, lingering and walking
for better moments, or
days where I could awaken
from haunting dreams.

See them regularly,
twice a week, and
sometimes only thrice a month.
They seem unearthly,
pristine and clean

and immaculate. Furnished with
their stethoscopes and devilish
visages, only to sink me
further. No boat at dock -
no safe harbor, haven, for rest.

An army of lions:
attacking and cutting.
Adversaries in disguise as
glistening soldiers bordering
the palisade that be my only thought. 

I don’t care for happy endings,
for the only thing due bliss
is the unreality of simplicity
and only children believe in such
cruel and tactless fantasies.

But it has come to last
and no more do fears
plague my daydreams. And
I only know that mine
just happened to land a little lower.

A friend to say, “You look
great! How did you lose
so much weight? You make
me hate myself!” So joy to rise
into me and fill such conceptions.

Such thanks urges me
further into complete and utter
apathy for my own well-being,
for the very bloated, emaciated
teen boy before me.

Then Mama,
warm in rosy flushes of the cheeks,
debriefs me with her research,
and informs me of
my self-decimation, erosion.

Still nothing contemplates
cinema-like treatments
to fix the clockwork
dragon breathing fire
into my scathed walls.

Darkness, rolling and rolling,
pressing, compressing, impressing,
down on my spine,
to infuse sleep with its tentacles,
slipping and sliding across my abdomen.

Furthermore down the loins of summer:
Endless ablaze, anew hills,
pale and wickedly bulbous -
to the extreme of settling deep within
conscious towards jubilant suicide.

Part 2 - After

Days vibrant and renewed
to the eyes of a new kind
and the understanding
of a new mind. Crawl at first
and learn to walk and then run.

Apples drop due to gravity,
and birds’ wings flap ‘cause the
wind would be so lonely. Now
I have found something quite
so right and know a better meaning.

It’s always been so simple,
plain before my eyes,
on the wall and on the door.
Like honeydew in the spring,
or the ambrosial of green tea.

Nevermore do I cower and shroud
to the crack in the wall,
nor the mirror in the bathroom,
and watch my face fall. Now I
stand erect and take it all.

Lionheart I am in most days
of love and life. A friend, so
gregarious and handsome as an
Adonis, conferred amity to a
fellow, lost soul like me.

In him faith restored to
unmeasurable climaxes, and
he helped me un-mist the mist -
clear what dismal rain patter
beat against the windowpane.

A walk in the sunlight
once paralyzed my skin,
but now it's pixelated,
incandescent glow ignites
a love so warm for myself.