Every day I tell myself fewer lies.

I pluck them from my mind, test them against my heart

where some magnetize, while others bleed.

“It isn’t me,” I whisper, “this thought, this memory, this idea.”

“No, no no, not me!”

Yet each one is. I bear witness.

I cannot smell or taste. My teeth are broken in my mouth.

The lies separate from Truth & they are vicious.

My shoulders drop; only the knowing matters.

I scrape out my heart to put it in my pocket,

I see nothing.

I look away.

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Another minute & he would have had me –

I lied until the truth choked out of me

So my tongue burned with swallowed fire.

I need to live as a dragon, for they cannot prevaricate.

The points of my forked tongue will flash lightning as my skull rings with Change.

Then, more quietly, with reality.

The artist’s eye, the writer’s pen, scrape to the core:

cutting out the cancers of bulk & dismay,

Leaving raw valleys where blood runs down.

I leave doors open for secrets whispered in dark rooms.

My dreams take charge, then take flight.

I’ve escaped before but then I returned

as tho what I’ve left behind will ever be found.

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