PINPOINT

 
I've pinned the exact onset date of
Terrorexia Nervosa:
May 23 2014

Sick buzzing,
Exposed honeycomb
A tremor 3.7 on the Richter

My manhood fermented honey; my feminine side
In peril as usual

Lunch at Gecko's
Sat with inner Florida chill
Condensed dysphoria creeping
After the young waitstaff; redshirts and
Easy insincerity
I couldn't eat enough to bury
The butterflies; a container for my leftover dread

The hive was quiet for weeks
But June 21
A summer tremor knocked
The devil rang the doorbell
This is no metaphor, no code
Caught the house smoking it's own grass

Have you ever sweated in reverse?
Filled your personal science vessel until you
Were a self-made typhoon
And you could see each airplane crash
Days before take-off. Clairvoyant insurgent

Seeing everything naked
In every war zone, at every airport
The naked truth of strangers, the Xrays
Of baggage

Jul15 the buzzards circle with currents, cold but no virus
Jul17 your subconscious takes the runway by storm; aeroplane cocoon
         ripped open too soon
Jul20 pillow-splitting nightmare
Jul26 butterfly eruption in a garden of stupid phones
Jul30 big inner sinkhole
         musculoskeletal isostasy plundered
         produced no tears but the well of blood
         called heart filled with sand instead

From that day— lots of cracks below the surface
                            (radiation of negative spaces)
                             lots of heavy carbon inhales

Aug2 The cat broke the elephant's back
          A spell had been cast & I had to break it
No symbolic gesture has ever scared me more
Until I found the frog
Dead and rubbery under the amp Aug3

I held onto the ledge
The tenuous ledge
The atrophied ledge until

Aug5 I lost
         Every digital component of my grip
Cracks of code plotting against me; widening closet walls
With witchcraft, and tears flowed like liquid bagpipe notes
Sobs became the backbeat on three
And sometimes seven
Then on eleven as the Richter broke
No longer able to speak
Its faulty gibberish

I traveled in time
At speeds the homosapien abhors
Into the core, and out to a universe laced with crumbs
Lighting my way back to the one and only
Home

All personal toxins disinterred
By the fracking motion of forced empathy
All ya'll's pain and suffering poured
Down my pried open gullet
Texture latex paint
Taste champagne

There was no stopping the cork >>>>the leak >>>>the quake>>>

There were moments
That would slow to weeks, nights that
Shook the cola-colored pressurized air
The tremors tossed me

I was a flea inside my home
A flight risk in my skin
My heart and its trampoline valves
Clanging like triangles
Loud and
Proud
Ten years of happiness
Wrung from a carillon tower
And bleeding from the bells

Murder Three, Summer 2016

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Crow Hollow Books

Crow Hollow 19

About the poem: PINPOINT was written during the long playing, extended nervous breakdown I had for most of 2014. It sat in a pile of writing I was too afraid to look at for awhile. Lately I've been sneaking my hand into that pile, finding the demons have shriveled considerably in the glorious chemtrails of time.

Vin J. Whitman

The artist's space.