the contortionist, employed in horror movies, is getting old  allen, look, i can’t crawl out of the vent today didn’t want to say it, but something’s slipped from place and won’t come back. i could crawl regular, that’d just be pain pain’s nothing. still. for now. but if you wanted someone  hands and knees, head down, you’d just’ve hired a man.  you wanted monster, wanted the glued jumble of limbs  i used to scuttle in like it was nothing. but not today i know, schedule, i know, i called the doctor, twelve ringing into nothing i’ll get him later. first thing tomorrow. i’ll be back on it. come on-- how long have we been friends? i know, we got the basement let’s shoot the, you know, the scene with the leading lady  where i whisper unheard horrors in her ear. just a splayed hand  a minute of popped jaw. hope she doesn’t jump this time  i saw her earlier, reading ligotti in the shade, fresh from makeup nursing her sprained wrist, doctor’s note torn up in her pocket.  clenched jaw. i told her, take some ibuprofen, we’re all going to die anyway. she flinched and smiled  like she thought she was going to die right now. she’s nervous, sweet in the way of the nameless, eager to please the named she won’t mind the change. say, allen-- i go on shows, now and again, and i just sit there these days have to save up my body. so i get invited less but for now--i’m rambling on. i walk off, sometimes  people see me leaving, and they get angry, people with kids with old movie t-shirts, with girlfriends, with normal things.  they say, you used to roll up into a ball, you used to  turn your head around like the damned, do the exorcist-walk off  you used to pack yourself in a cabinet and disappear.  i tell them, i’m sorry, i know it’s like a building kit,  the toy that comes together perfect, that suffers reassemblng  snarling face and perfect claws, that does this again and again but worn, it loses a little shape, it won’t go back in its packaging. i’m sorry i can’t put myself away when you’re done, not anymore.  what’s this story about? just that-- i think i’ll whisper it in the leading lady’s ear.

i continually return to selfish poetry in pieces, seeking something, like the blind hungry mind of a moth hurling itself against a light. as if the words, when arranged in the proper order, will free me, will bust the seams of my slick human skin will let me become something that will not read the news or take the bus, or crave human connection in a way that leaves me clutching at the empty sleeves of coats, like the hands of lovely strangers. there are things I'm not allowed to say to myself, these days there is coffee on the windowsill in the morning, and two spoonfuls of sugar for a god i pray to like i'm talking to a neighbor. specifically, a neighbor that reminds me of the father I wish I'd had. I think to myself, your parents were cowards. I pull the curtains. I hear someone crying outside at night, in screaming desperate sobs I make change when I have it, for the people on the bus and I tell myself in a therapeutic way: you are a human being. seems useless, at the end of the day, but i keep doing it in the hopes that eventually something will bloom. my family's ancestors were, on the whole, colonists and devils the kind of monsters that I want nothing to do with evangelists and abusers, men and women alike, or broken birds that died while locked away. (I never knew of my cousin until she died.) the movies reflect the protagonist running home, feet bringing up dust of histories that everyone prefers, where a mother unbends with the relentless surety of a final sunset-soaked kiss scene. the teenager is never quite right, and is always re-enfolded as a line on the tree while I sleep in my snapped branches, and wake up wanting selfishly, to be a father. I think about the mess of me, my endless capacity for cruel and careless actions, and my half-made mind, and return to sleep, and don't stop wanting. the world is breaking at the seams. I tell myself, you are a human being. in a casual way, i'd like to stop existing. you are a human being. and what good have I made of it? my mother never even tried to call me. a human being. and the news isn't even five things every day, it's more. human. and I can't stop crying every now and then, violent and pathetic as the public shattering of a bottle on the sidewalk. human, being and the cards i deal can't help. I write, we're the children that they forgot to raise, and I mean I am.