whimper

I am rotating words through the wheel of my mouth, like keys, like
      knives. My excitable pagan therapist gave me this wheel.
      (and permission to torture people with pretend hammers)
      It’s a mood wheel. She said be precise.
Specific instruments of articulation splay out before me. Looks like
      hair on a dropped skull. I’m already being obtuse. It’s oven mitts.
      It’s dishonesty. I’ll explain later.
I pick up the precise words ringing its edges with a finger and thumb
      and regret using the finger. Where’s my tongs? I hate these
      words. I hate being isolated. I hate being outraged. I hate
      being revulsed. I just want to be sad or mad.
Linguistic precision of emotion, pour moi, is diametrically opposed
      to genuine embrace and integration. Talking about is
      talking around. Intellectualization, figurative language,
      obliqueness, contextualization… they’re all oven mitts.

Let me allow myself one stanza of precision:

I’m tired always and sore always and sick always. My body is
      always almost infirm. There is nothing wrong with it
except everything. It’s a bear trap at all times. Every compliment
      paid it by others is wrong. A kind woman once said
      I have great skin
right to my face and my face continued flaking off like
      it heard nothing. Like it wanted nothing
      to do with me. I said she had killer lipstick
which she did,
it was a blood mahogany
and I dug my fingers into my knees in an attempt not to hate every
      painted pair of lips on Earth, as I thought about how much
I want to wear lipstick and how much
I do not want to wear lipstick. I’m only delicate
when someone wants to break me. I’m only pretty
when someone wants to fuck me. I’m only fit
when I’m not bleeding out in a crowded bed.
speaking plainly i hate my body and i want to hate it and i do not want to
      love it, i just want it to stop betraying me.
      it doesn't even piss or shit correctly.
But here's the major betrayal: the something hidden that tells adults
      it's okay to fuck me or work me like a dog or throw me
      onto a bed or across a room or into another state. Convinces kids
      to hammer shoulders and fists and doors into me.
I want to take part. I want to hit and cut and overwork
      and fuck myself and get something out of it.
I'm still avoiding the truth:
there is a vagina inside my body that demands attention when i am sick
      or horny or nauseated or when i get startled or shaken or
      touched or jolted, which is often. there is no material proof
but it goes right on existing anyway and there is nothing
      to be done about it. it doesn't care about me
do you know what sex feels like with this thing?
      backwards, impossible. Eating rice
      through a straw. Pissing in every room.
Flip your pen upside-down
      and try to write with it. Sew your shoes closed.
it makes me crazier than i've ever been, utterly alien, completely
      fictional, freakish, fraudulent, monstrous
and if i gotta feel monstrous i might as well lean into that because i
      really do want to confuse and
horrify people and cause them problems and injury and death.
      and i want to want that
      i want to feel comfortable wanting that
      given i already do that
instead i possess the singular ability to feel uncomfortable
      anywhere
      anytime
      around anyone
It's this damned body. It's always telling people
what's going on. What's really going on. Just look at the body
ignore the images and words it generates – those are fake
      and just look at those breasts – those are real
and holy shit do they suck. Tenth percentile breasts. I'm sorry,
      girls, you feel sickly. They weep. The hair's real too
real fictional. I'm dying from hair loss. I want to scalp everyone
      with half-decent hair. I want you all to feel
the naked humiliation of a shaved head. Not momentary.
Permanent.
At least a decade.
C'mon, please.
Let me rejoin our game in progress. The bear has awakened
      from rain delay and resumes devouring itself.
I carved the Buddha in my sleep. I carved the Buddha
's eyes out of my pork skewer ulnas and crushed them between femurs without further enjambment.
I do not hate the pacifist's approach but my heart rejects it
my gut tells me our strength is in mutual contradiction
that I can off a guy and you can not off a guy and only in doing so
      together can we arrive at an identical and happy terminus
Consider the disposability of men as opposed to that of women.
      Both categories stack up
like burnt corpses. like burning corpses. Like barbecue. I starve
myself as meditation on who we work and beat to death
and who we work and beat and fuck to death.
That's all these buckets of gender and race and ability and age
      and nationality and religious leaning amount to:
A detailed layering ruleset defining how and when you can work or
      beat or fuck someone. Social permission of social denigration.
      Rules that enable one type to exploit another
      for labor or sex or fun or other whys.
Sometimes the rules resolve to assure
      mutual destruction. Imagine me fucking someone
sounds impossible huh but it really did happen swear to god
a woman who wanted me for unknown reasons and i wanted her
      to stick her sturdy fingers inside my pussy until i spat out my gum
until i pissed like a six-million-dollar racehorse
until she discovered a new religion actually not that far in there
      right along the front
a woman who wanted me to instead fuck her with my gnarled root
i begged her for weeks to stop asking me to do that
i didn't like it and was afraid of it
the last time i used it on a woman i spent a very long time thinking
      i had possibly sired my cousin
a very very long time
might still be elapsing who knows
i didn't want to sire another cousin inside of this unrelated woman
i wanted to kiss her
with the secret lips they sealed away inside me behind a device
      when they took one look at the possible me and said
      if we allow this cunt some fresh air she's gonna stick
      about thirty-two billion ladyfingers up there
and who has the time for that
i certainly don't think i deserve anyone's time or fingers
when have i ever acted like i did
if you talk to me for one minute you will find
      i am serially incapable of thinking i deserve anything
      or asserting myself in any way at all
apart from being kicked apart by
      a sweatshop cobbler's funky footwork
so after weeks of badgering i gave in
      without even bothering to be impressed that
      i had managed to articulate and assert
      a boundary for twenty-two whole days
and this is where the cervine of mutual destruction lowers
      its teeth to the grass.
all we did is get naked and injure one another for eight minutes
in my head i was scrolling twitter the whole time
      thinking about horse_ebooks
      it's true, everything happens so much
asking every thirty seconds is this okay does it feel good
hearing yeah and yeah from a woman who isn't being honest
has maybe never whispered an honest yeah in her whole life
in that moment we really were fucking
      made for one another, two idiots tied up
      like dogs done fucking, like hogs done eating
but let's get back to the dishonest yeah, yeahs
every word i know is some form of dishonest yeah, yeah
My speech is an unbeaten streak of dishonest yeah, yeah to Earth
I dishonestly yeah, yeah to each of us existing
I get real scared when I write a line like that
      because I think a god is sitting on a couch somewhere
      and I just gave it permission to unplug the TV
and I don't think that's fair to children and other pack mules,
      children and other bait dogs,
      children and other show calves
i'm avoiding the topic again
      finish your plate before getting seconds, hun
so when i finished i pulled out of her like a smoking casserole
we passed the next twenty minutes dissociating
      on opposite walls of the room
i went from scrolling twitter mentally to scrolling twitter actually
she went from too much physically to too much mentally
when we broke up she told my friends i raped her
weird way for her to say "thanks for providing the sex i demanded of you,
      you pliant little object, you aberrant withering fuckdoll,"
really what she meant was "this hurts" which is a tragic phrase
      in how necessary it is and how reticent we are with it
i spent months filming myself impaling myself
      before i managed to say "this hurts"
i meant it when i said this body no longer shits right
i masturbated with my own unspeakable material at the suggestion
      of a boyfriend's love and never could say "this hurts"
maybe that's why they locked my pussy away inside me
because they knew i'd be so fundamentally unable to tell anyone no
      every relationship would develop into a UTI or simple sepsis
go and think for a little while about something you once did to yourself
      that you would never do to anyone else ever
provide video evidence of it like i did
and fail to receive the boyfriend's love anyway.
So let me loop back around to our detailed layering ruleset.
I love sports. Love love love sports. Love love love love love
      sports. Jon Bois channeled reality when he declared
the point of humans is play.
He meant it so much he created a world where none of us could die
      and no one could interfere and the satellites we created to
      look upon a dead external space instead realized where all
      the fun was at and turned themselves inward to
      look upon us and our celestial bodies,
bodies flung across the field via tornado
bodies splashing against one another
      for several hundred years in a riverbed
bodies spotting a child while diving in new york
      experiencing distress in a solved world
bodies lurking in caves in cities clocking in eight-hour shifts
      of a truly rudimentary basketball
for Jon so loved the world (of football)
      that he created an eternal paradise (of football)
      without any consequences (of football)
      where the footballs and their humans could frolic and
      cavort without inculcating brain trauma and joint damage
      in a million children yearly
and i don't begrudge him this, i too love football
      almost as much as i love humans
or at least i find them almost equally fascinating
yeah, yeah
I think it's a sin to teach children about Hell
      or the possibility of getting signed to
      supposedly lucrative contracts we offer to
      undrafted third-string linemen
I think it's a sin to teach boys they should fundamentally
      orient themselves around annihilating one another
I think it's a sin to teach a football that lacks Junior Seau
I hope my grandfather goes to Hell for denying it
and my grandmother goes to Hell for denying everything else
      such as all the girls my grandfather molested
maybe that's why they locked my pussy away inside me
because if life gave that man
      unfettered access to this girl's cunt for four years
i'd make Valerie Solanas sound like Mother Teresa
i'd mutilate every man and i do mean every man who irritates me,
      which is every man and i do mean every man
as it is i already think about it i just don't usually do it
i'm surprised my grandfather didn't just expose my inner nature with a knife
we were the only two people on earth who knew it existed
instead he sent me to go pulverize myself across Texas
maybe he thought my body would swallow it up
      like a vanishing twin
i'm surprised i didn't just expose my inner nature with a knife
I think it's a sin the Chargers moved to LA
at least the Padres are still around
and forgive me,
father
for seeing you in every snarky greying smart man i know
every jovial book-and-beer-drunk smart man i know
in the David Harveys and Jeremy Corbyns of the world
in their lesser-known but hardly inferior comrades
I wouldn't fuck Hans Küng or Stephen King though
i respect their oeuvre from afar but they look too much
      like my first boyfriend
forgive me, father
i'm not raising my voice above a whimper
as retirement hammers you against the walls of an emptying apartment
suggests you paint windows in clear liquors
pops rivets out of your brain until
      you can no longer make sense of the world
not in the living way we fail to do it
but in the dying way we fail to do it
forgive me, father
i'm still feeling like i'm six or twelve at my age
not just around men that remind me of you
      but around pretty much everyone
it's humiliating
it's well and truly humiliating
most days it's more humiliating than videotape
i feel sick thinking about it and my elbow hurts
when you shredded me like a bastard's birth certificate
and us, all of us,
threw us like confetti to Spokane and
      Rancho Cordova and
      Honolulu and
      Kilkenny
just because mom threatened to kill my big sister
      and probably would have, all for your crime of
      asserting a simple boundary and raising sails without her
mom loved boats and the tragedy of that is
      you might need to run away from her at any moment
she could make quadriplegia walk out of the room
she could make feet grow shoes
she could drink and drive until she couldn't
she could shout down a radio
she could make any face smile or frown when she felt like it
maybe that's why they locked my pussy away inside me
they said god damn if we make a copy of this woman
      they'll just team up and cut off every dick on earth
      and they'll get away with it
if we take them to court they'll just say the world has enough
      dicks stuck in it
      and they'll be right, seriously, count 'em all
the dicks we stick in the ground to swallow up and ejaculate
      gasses and asphaltenes
the dicks we stick in little houses so the rain can't wash
      blood off their groovy rolling feet
the dicks we stick in children's arms so they can grow up
      healthy ungrateful and denying it works
the dicks we stick in our pockets to flash ourselves with
      in classrooms and driver's seats and conversations
      with people who are also looking at their dicks
the dicks we stick in all types of people for the simple crime of
      committing a crime in a spinning prison where a detailed
      layering ruleset recites us our right to remain fucked
the dicks we stick in dusty, chattering mouths
      already clotted with fat and sticky with corn syrup
am i doing Freud right yet? is this okay does it feel good
I'd whisper him a dishonest yeah, yeah
if you know what i'm saying
gimme a little dishonest yeah, yeah
i yell i didn't say to stop counting as i cock and aim a dick at your head
      (editor's note: a gun is actually a vagina
      not a penis
      don't ask how i know)
the dicks making a series of rational economic decisions
      like a suicide checklist
the dicks inducing illness not merely as leisure trail but so
      jousting partners can slap tollbooths across the sidewalk
the dicks why are there so many of these
      i thought i was exaggerating
i'm tired of counting dicks let's get back to my father
i'm three, reading souvenir as a souvenir
      you correct my pronunciation and blame it on the French
i'm seven, looking up at Riker while you smoke meth with
      your nice girlfriend in the hotel bathroom six feet away
i'm eleven and the living room is a cramped nothing
      except an argument and a glass pipe
i'm pissed off at you for not believing me when i told you
      about space jam i don't give a shit about your relationship
      with the nineties that's not my problem
forgive me, father
i'm still contextualizing other people's lives again
i'm trying to stop i really am this time i swear
but did you know i have a pet theory that my grandfather only
      became a pedophile because he had to service Eli Whitney
      before he turned twelve
that doesn't explain all the adult women he did god-knows-what to
      but don't worry i'm working on that too, it was probably just
      leftover misogyny from the navy
      (he was a master chief, you know)
now that i conjured up a why the what feels so much better, smile
when i have a why for every what it's going to make all of us feel
      so much better, smile
when i read the last name on earth's death's receptionist's sign-in
      sheet we can even reach the catharsis of finger-pointing
      (like a gun. that is to say, like a vagina), smile
i'll get right to it it'll only be a moment
      there's a lot of fingers poking around
as you remove digit thirty-two billion and one from me go
      and point it at the target of your choosing
no give it back actually
give it here
gimme
give me
give me now
give it back please
please
please give it back
please i'm sorry
please i didn't mean any of it
please none of this is real i'm just empty right now
i'm just so empty right now look at it
everyone else ran out on me
plunged their thumbs into someone else's pie
can't imagine why
can't imagine what they got that i don't
selective hearing and horse blinders?
warm hands and a watertight heart?
please
please didn't i do good don't i deserve a thorough indexing
please even just one knuckle please
please i hate you give it back i can't breathe
you don't get it it's like a pneumothorax in my crotch
it's soul incontinence into living room carpet give it back i'm going to bleed out
it'll be in public next time if you don't give it back please immediately
i'll splatter myself across every Walmart parking lot and dive bar grinning until you comply, smile
i'll void my chest again and it will smell even worse
please i'm being honest it's all true
this hurts
please
ahh...
thanks. sorry for being such a greedy little monster
yeah, yeah
thank you and don't you dare take it away again don't you DARE
i'll get my hammers and hate you for real this time
mmm, you know,
      i think maybe you've fingered the problem