PLAGUED

Slap in the face and one more door to slam.

End of the rave, end of the day, start of new noise and rage.

Sound and fury, one kick to the solar-plexus, and

"Vengeance is mine saith the Lord".

I sit on my hands.

I sit on my hands. 

I SIT ON MY HANDS AND I BITE MY TONGUE.

A plague on all our houses and we are the enemy,

the battle-lines being drawn. 

Slight me not, and force no hand.

I want no quarrel with you.

But do you bite your thumb at me, sir?

Children bearing the sins of their fathers

with drooping shoulders and shitty posture.

Down on me..Down on me...

Down on Desolation Row.

We row-row our little boats

upstream, uphill, both ways

and struggle struggle struggle.

Go on and fight til all the piss and vinegar

have worn you thin and sick.

I will pretend to ignore the call of war.

I sit on my hands.

I sit on my hands and I bite my tongue...

And I pray for our grace.

TRIGGER FINGER

Stupid little fingers

don't go tapping out your morse code heart

to the one on enemy lines.

Didn't you get the memo?

Brain says we don't feel that way anymore

and She's got Heart under lock and key 

for insubordination in the ranks

Now confined to solitary...

Stupid little fingers

wanna give it up quick like lightning

like virgins in backseats

taking back promises they crossed over hoping for

Stupid little fingers

picking at the scabby plastic suture threads of

open triple bypass surgery

patchwork blood letting

Stupid little fingers

tippy tap dancing 

on the keyboard of regret

you don't hit send til I tell you to

Stupid little fingers

think they run this joint

but I'll cut them off

if they don't stop straying.

Dreams of My Father;

The past few nights I've been dreaming of my father.
The first night we lived in a world of trains-
a maze of tracks winding around the city.
He worked in a factory where they massed produced women who looked like me. 

I couldn't get him to pay attention to me.
He was too busy talking on his cell to even notice me.
He looked right through me.
He walked right past me.
And I ran after him, wanting to tell him something important. 
I chased after him, following the twist of the electrified third rail. 
Trying to get him to turn around. To look at me.
And finally, steps from the platform, he did turn and I was trailing in his wake,
and I yelled something-
Something important,
and he looked at me from across the distance and said nothing.
Then he turned and kept on walking 
and I woke up.


In the second dream he looked the same,
tall and dark in a woolly trench coat,
but there was no factory of women, there was no city of trains.
I kept getting text messages from him written in gibberish. 
Letters that should have made words 
but instead just scrambled themselves into nonsense.

And last night he was there again,
though most of it I've forgotten now.
Except the end.
I was sad, sitting on a curb with my feet in the gutter.
He was behind me when put his hand on my shoulder 
and asked me in a tone I've never heard him use, 
"Lulu, do you have peace in your heart?"
The tears of my dream self to my dream father when I told him, "No.."  
were so real that I woke up with the taste of salt on my lips.


Maybe he gave me advice I couldn't remember upon waking. 
Maybe the advice is there in the question. 
I wish he did care, the way he did in my dream.
I wish he would come around and tell me, 
"Lulu, you are beautiful and you should be happy and you should be loved. You deserve the world."
and I wish it didn't bother me that he won't..