Blue Manhattan
I.
What is this my hand can do? It’s something like
electric. Charge. Flicker.
Fry.
Put your tongue to me and tell me I taste like battery.
Ray Evans did not have me in mind.
Whatever will be, will be; but,
it will be,
this time,
up to me.
I can move the molecules in your body, so fast that you skip
a shiver,
and before realizing
it’s not cold,
I’ll turn you inside out. People will wonder where your skin
has gone.
To be afraid is truth.
It’s more fun this way. That’s truth. Can I learn any different?
Anyone—
something different
from blown up chunks of bone and tissue and fat? My finger
is a death-note and I’m conducting
a symphony.
II.
I recognize my life now. Some people only understand the past
but I have
backwards and
ahead.
My mind’s eye is my own spoiler and I’m positive there is no
protagonist,
all of what I see is certain.
Gods are not wrong.
I am certain that I have loved and found both, shade and sun.
I couldn’t tie my shoes until I was 10. When I was 5, I got Gabriella
to fake my test.
I remember her black hair.
III.
The government and I agreed that fighting terrorists
is an infinite battle
unless I close them up
between my fingers
and open them
up to everywhere.
And then I knew. I knew that the way we ran our schools and arranged tax brackets
was wrong.
I said,
Please, listen to me.
They didn’t.
So, I closed my hand again.
IV.
If gods can feel, I assume they feel like shit pretty regularly.
If you know what happens next
you try to be the sanguine.
If I smile too much, the power is gone.
How would you like your god to be? Is it enough if he tries?
Or do you need
results?
I woke up in the morning to Philip Glass and ate no food because
I’m never
hungry.
I’m only an epic now, except shorter.
Flat.
Call on me when things go
stale.
V.
Things I used to take for granted:
• Not eviscerating a good section of town when I throw a tantrum
• Aging
• The importance of being, at least a little, ignorant
• Driving
• Skin
• Headaches
• The way people seemed to look through me
VI.
My mother once told me
Always keep that good heart of yours.
I once made a girl a big red heart, out of construction paper and cardboard
and little macaroni
pieces all around.
Once a girl told me that I was her best friend, and that she would love me
until I
died.
VII.
I’m not dead yet. I am blue
singularity.
As much as I look, white-eyed, fatigued—I feel not present—
and ultimately unable
to bond.
I’m formulaic on a superhuman level.
But, you will presume
to understand.
He’s dangerous. Because I’m
nuclear.
He’s criminal.
VIII.
My brain blinks like gaudy Christmas lights that never
get
blown.
I used to look into your fragmented blue eyes every morning,
I called them snowflakes—
I’d whisper
I love you
and before releasing the snow, your lips would slowly create plot marks
at the tips of a crescent, pointing
upward
until your eyes opened.
IX.
I realize I’m impervious. But, I still come in
with
the dirt.
You say that you’re miserable yet you don’t mind me asking
to make
things better.
Is it because you know I can’t help? Or, because you know
how I want to.
I once knew a boy who was normal and he was happy.
Until,
one day
the world pulled him out a son. Then the world
grew fangs.
X.
All the good kids on the block are the ones who
die
early.
Let me drive you to therapy.
I’ll bring radiation to you. Blue radiation. It’ll warm you up,
cook you.
My eyes will become vapid, and then you’ll look at me and say
You’re staring off a lot more than usual.
Don’t
cry
on me.
And I’ll say: I won’t my sister, I won’t—but, if I was powerful for a moment
I would trade brain
stems
with you.
Only two more hours to go.
XI.
The last gift I bought a girl was a locket with no
pictures,
decorated on top with filigree and a trinity, like the one
tattooed
to her hip. I used to think about getting ink done, not because
I had a statement to make or an image
worth remembering—
I wanted one more
connection.
Now, I draw on images of time passing
on
my
head.
You’re more of a man than anyone I’ve ever known.
In between the white glow of pupil and the paper thin peach
of my eye lid, I have that
tattooed.
XII.
My father once told me
Son, we are here for you always and we are proud.
Once I emptied a bottle of Jack—
blacked out
woke up
crawled to the couch
crying
because I realized that the world spins. And I looked out my window
at a city covered in snow. Only at night it didn’t look white
it was blue
and it wasn’t a blanket—
it was a tarp.
I went away after that and the world was the same.
First published in Anti Heroin Chic, 2017