Foul vowel.

It’s a vise

around my throat, hot and cold,

a burning without any of the heat.

Constricting,

I think its travelling down

my chest and into my lungs

around my ribs and straight down

into my belly, rolling its greasy fingers

along my insides

feeling for the weakest spot,

and infecting the rest.

So cold it hurts,

but we already know its not really cold.

It’s not really anything,

for no prescription or bought remedy, nor sought

or traded medicine,

could touch what decides to afflict me.

Because how can you cure the letters

of a name? How can you stop

vowels sinking into your blood

winding their way up to your brain,

and clutching relentlessly?

Flawed, cracked.

Cracks and flaws are ugly things,

but often ignored is the fact

that lines make up the most beautiful pictures of all.

They are the everlasting footprints of movement

that, when examined with enough detail,

are exquisite maps

tracing the best and worst of the things that sit inside our souls.

We use maps to carefully select where we are going,

and often forget

that maps are also amazing at showing us exactly

where we have been,

and how that,

and not some map book,

is what really tells us where we’re going.

Two rocks and a hard place

What to do,

when you’re in a room
and words can’t march on out

like they usually do
because

you’re stuck between

two rocks and a hard place;

Everyone’s staring you

dead in the eye

because you know them and

they know you.

So, do what do you say

when you don’t know whose

line to cross first,

or at all

and all the nitty, gritty details

in between?

It's like talking with a

tongue covered in glue,

words all pasty and thick,

as fast as molasses, too.

I’m cornered and I’m quick,

hasty in speech.

I don’t want to look,

I don’t want to believe,

and if I try hard enough,

it's all in the corner of my eye.