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i have a bad taste in my mouth
that begins in the morning when i awake from another nightmare the nightmare is real chaos and violence not wanting to leave the house government lies death and more death and all the people so many people pretending that making the same mistake again and again will have different outcomes it is raining the rain is a conversation i have at night with no one a desperation that only exists in the familiar sounds of nature i keep drifting to the past i am a child in dirty sneakers sitting on a grassy hillside i hold stones in my hand make wishes as the wind blows only some of them will come true none of them will feel as good as this moment when i am alone in the cold thinking of all the different futures that can be
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things are so bad now
in the world that i reminisce about my shitty childhood when there was no virus and toilet paper was a plenty summer was freedom walking the small town streets while my parents were working fear was hidden violence and hate were just a bad reaction like hives or a volcano every family watched tv together because they had to and it was enough to pretend we connected black flies bit you on the beach and it was just another relief to the frigid winters endless spaghetti canned vegetables and the cold slush that filled your cheap boots sunsets on swing sets the smell of hamburger frying in a pan cold winter days my mother smokes a cigarette in a department store while i hide in some circular rack of clothes everything that was supposed to be awful is beautiful now in the closets of my childhood home i found playboys and penthouses and my neighborhood friends had the same experience we talked about it in dead end streets with stolen candy bars in our pockets life is just an ashtray overflowing while mtv plays in the background it is white snake and some half naked girl on some red sports car and you are just a preteen wearing fluorescent yellow there is a dead man in my living room
a spirit a ghost whatever his eyes are hollow eternity his crooked smile shatters the night the dead tell me the future when my mind seeks emptiness when i was still in a crib they watched over me got me to sleep switched channels on the alarm clock radio to my favorite songs just to soothe me but now they keep me awake at night their bones cut into me i toss and turn while their hollow eyes glow in the dark with open-wound hearts they come to me to feel their pain their stories are time travel now i am tired tired of the living tired of the dead tired of the shadow demons that stand behind me in every reflection past pain future pain when the dead hold your hand it is never the present i can't swim
because i am afraid of drowning in deep water in a past life i lost my husband to the sea i had to raise my daughter who in this life is my mother i ran a boarding house i cooked i cleaned my mother/daughter was traumatized after from the death of her father she watched him drown in the waves when all i could think about was now that the captain had drowned that the remaining seamen would rape me and my daughter lifetimes later i get sea sick my mother is still my daughter and my daughter comes from another place a star in the distance i glimpsed in the in between while she longs to shine bright i peruse the darkness looking for answers she wants to connect she is the star in a constellation she can not shine without my darkness but she doesn't understand how i lost my light i swallow the nothing so she can see she is something it hurts my soul to remember when i was like her when i believed in a meaning when i believed that people were good we orbit one another in this vast space i am drawn to the past that other life when smiles were pennies found heads up on the sidewalk when lemonade stands were on every corner in the summer there was a lockdown at my daughter's school this week not a drill a real one i didn't check my email because i was making candles when she came home she was excited and told me how the school had to shut down because all the kids were stealing things from the school because of some tik tok video they could only use the staff bathroom because all the kids were stealing giant toilet paper rolls i would find out later it was because a parent called 911 because they heard some students had weapons the middle school where my daughter was and the neighboring high school were both in lockdown in the news it said six boys were questioned three at the high school three at the middle school they had plans but there was no other information last year i had a nightmare where there was a shooting at her school and i couldn't find her i forgot about the nightmare until yesterday i didn't know her teachers had told her something different than the email sent to parents so i read her the email and she was shocked that night when she couldn't sleep i pretended it was just because she had drank a glass of iced tea too much caffeine but we both knew better we watched this movie she picked out called eighth grade and she didn't want me to leave the room to load the dishwasher i looked away when the kids on the screen were doing the lockdown a man holding a gun pointed at the students and said you're dead you're dead a reenactment to keep them safe they don't do that at her school we both noticed this while i found invisible crumbs off the table to clean and wondered why her teachers had told her it was a hoax the six boys that were questioned will probably be back at school next week in my nightmare she hid in the gym under the bleachers it was in december she sang christmas songs in her mind to drown out the gunshots in my nightmare the dead told me where to find her i was standing in the gym dead bodies all around me i remember telling her when she was in kindergarten to hide it had been her first lockdown and it shook her up she was tiny then and is still the smallest in her class i told her to find where no one else can fit and to stay there quiet until the police call out in my nightmare she did what i had told her but now she doesn't listen to me my nightmare is happening now this world we live in is made up of half-truths no one wants to feel pain to know the truth the truth for me is that this week my daughter's school was in lockdown because 6 boys might shoot up two schools and it was downplayed as a tik tok prank the police are feigning ignorance the news is a half truth protecting us from the information we need to know because they don't know what to do and can't admit that they are just protecting themselves our children are being sacrificed their futures are up in the air with the incomplete thoughts of the incompetent school shootings and covid have a lot in common we don't know how to deal with it so we make our kids deal with it send them to the thick of it while we pretend someone higher up knows what they are doing they don't so this shit will keep happening until we stop it or until the world ends fear is tangible it permeates the skin it pricks the soul my heart has been bleeding since i was a baby i have memories that shouldn't make sense to remember my father screaming while i am stranded in some orange plastic play thing not even old enough to walk yet when a beer bottle is thrown at my mother i am invisible in the corner over the years i watch my mother cry while i hold things in then i watch her go numb her eyes floating in the distance when spoken to my weekend visits with my dad were random and didn't last long he smelled like cheap whiskey and he lied i knew it then as a child and still today i know when someone is lying i thought i could beat my past this history of abuse the father of my child lies with the same ease but he wears khakis and doesn't have needle marks on his arms so he will probably get away with it and like me my daughter won't realize the truth until she is in her twenties and she will blame me like i blamed my mother in the meantime the spirits of dead women and children haunt my home they keep me up at night telling me their stories because they don't want things to end like it did for them it is a lie that there is this light for the victim's of abuse when they die i see the dead and they are still suffering trying to save those like them they are here with me while i suffer watching my daughter in a stranger's home while her father casts his lying shadow over the lives of all those he has encountered i dropped my phone in the lake today while I was taking a picture of a sunset it didn't bother me too much at the time because I have never lost a phone i use them until they die over done deaths like shoe leather steak when I got home and realized my passwords were in some algae ecoli abyss i just wanted to throw the towel in no one calls me anyway and I don't have a job to pay for my phone i make soap at midnight hoping it will bring in enough money to pay my condo fees i give fortunes for free because they cling to me but I am starting to realize no one ever wants to know their future but me i lost my meditation play list in the dirty lake where people still swim in so now I am listening to Seal and it feels like wearing drugstore clothes because my house burned down in a fire lime green t-shirt with too big boxer shorts sporting a trout the dead swirl around me being sarcastic about my phone loss they didn't even have antibiotics they had to carry ice blocks to keep their food cold they dry fucked on hay while smelling horse shit my passwords float in the filthy lake like alphabet soup and I mourn how I used to not have to hold things that held things i used to just feel the smooth stones in my pockets found feathers were the only messages i needed life is shit now shallow and tin food is made without love we take to survive and there is no joy in that so i kiss sadness now because it is the only light it tastes of decaying flowers but still it is a sunset with a drowned phone everyone keeps apologizing for having a soul there isn't much to go on when being human is just feeling shame there is no humanity the man with a thousand faces
is keeping information from me he is holding the health of my child ransom just so he can con his new wife into thinking he is the king he dangles my beautiful daughter like a worm in crowds just to cause me pain to cover his never ending lies i see the future from his mistakes there is nothing about him that isn't a lie he is a male succubus he borrows others personalities harbors money that is not his own and he uses his own child puts her at risk dims her emotions until they fit his agenda today is the day that it ends his lies are ants crawling all over him when he sleeps his lies are bills that keep coming that he can't pay his lies will seep through every part of his life saturating his every thought until he tells the truth my enemy is alive and well and living in a house in new jersey just kidding he lives in some bum fuck town in vermont not far from a cemetery my daughter is under his roof now while the dead grow in his basement like weeds she lays asleep in bed thinking he can keep her safe this fool who isn't even funny enough to wear bells doesn't know the dead are crawling his walls watching his every move his joy is arsenic and aspirin and my pain is alive with the dead all their hopes buried in graveyard dirt i don't mind digging in the middle of the night my sadness calls to them and they come bringing gifts from the abyss i whisper to them that they matter and their stories fall like pennies at my feet i cry for them because they are me and I am them spirits i call to you to watch over my child one day she will hear your stories like i do keep my daughter from danger keep her from lies keep her from the end that is so close to here and i promise to hear your stories until I am gone dead friends descend upon me whisper to me the secrets of the universe and i will hold you in the night i will be you dark mother i will be your home the world is ending and all I can think about is climate change and viruses eating people up corpses in hospital hallways masks on faces kids in school pretending they can't feel their parents' fear our plastered smiles are just another horror movie we know the ending it isn't about the attic or the basement it is about leaving your house going to work going to school an alien is screaming at the tv don't send them to school you idiots don't eat at a restaurant with that touristy new jersey guy he sees the end we see the end but we keep watching the movie what the fuck is wrong with us? |
AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
June 2023
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