Verbal Enema
There’s always someone who’s smarter
funnier, more prolific, quicker to the draw.
There will always be a William, Charles, or
Billy, sometimes an Emily who makes one
feel small.
Administering a
verbal enema
I feel the warmth of words
swishing around and around
bloated…
I need relief
I feel pressure
I’m an IED ready to explode.
I’m sick of holding it in, of
feeling defeated; I’m walking on cracked egg shells.
a climber who’s close to reaching the
pinnacle, so close to touching the top then
losing my balance I slide towards the bottom
and when I’m down, I’m down, near
Hades my golden coin is nowhere to be found;
eternally misplaced, I’ll find it next to my eyeglasses
one day, I deceive myself.
Looking upwards towards the goal I
clamor , ‘what doesn’t kill me
makes me stronger’, as the wise philosopher surmised
before the snap of the bull whip brought tears to his eyes not long before
he kicked up daises from his Teutonic grave.
I raise my voice towards heaven and piercingly ask, why?
how many prayers have I prayed? How many petitions
have been heard?
How many thank you[s], how many help me please, oh God!
Send your angels, I need to be ministered to, I need a miracle,
In a world with so visibly few.
Im ready to spill it all out, I cough out phlegm
while
The porcelain goddess
awaits convoluted stanzas, the ones
that leave rounded yellow stains,
Like the outlines in the snow after my
zipper pierces the silence and
relief is heard.
I’ve shot myself in the foot,
I’ve locked myself out,
thank you for your kindness,
for you patience, for your condescending words.
Everyone’s edgy–I’m tired of being tired,
I want to sleep in my ramshackle bed.
My feet are sore, my left shoulder painfully aches
I’m falling asleep reading the synopsis
on a Netflix movie, the tenth one I’m convinced I want to watch.
Sweet sleep makes my eyes close, it makes
me read the same paragraph over and over again,
until I shut the tablet off, and my alarm clock
wakes me up one more day, and I take one more breath,
washing the sleep off my highly caffeinated eyes;
I stare into the mirror, ‘that’s me getting older I smirk.’
