::12:17:07::

::: Waterboard :::

Taken by surprise,
Eyes ensacked as soon as my wrists
Are plasticked behind,
Thrown headlong into knowing nothing
Except the fear of knowing nothing.

What could you possibly want to know of me?
And even so, what’s not to know already?

In fact, the only thing they want to know
Is how you look when bent beneath the closing stream,
Your tongue, your throat accomplice to your pain,
the whelming terror rising in your lungs
as darkness presses down upon you, sinking far
beneath the sands of pity, tides of urgent
remembrance:

It’s true! I plotted harm against my self!
I wanted to be a girl, wanted to do nothing,
Strove to make the trees that were cut down
Be cut down no more, if only in dreams.

I wanted pie and gravy, craved the head
Of a girl too young for me. I wanted
My mother’s cancer cured, a good five cent
Cigar, my brother’s family fed, a lamp
For my fair sister, sewing in the dark.

I give! Enough! They all were in on it,
The bearded guy at morning throwing bow line
From the Bainbridge ferry, six illegal
Workers at the Merchant’s Lunch down on Pike,
the crack house up on 23rd, they’re in it too,
I’ve seen them looking up into the winter sky
And wondering whether life is better than dying.

I’ve seen the students muttering on the quad,
And though they probably don’t know it, they
Partake of prohibited thinking. Stop!
No more! The winos! Yes! They’re in it too,
Their maundering trudge a reproach to despair.
The girl who pulls Espresso down on 2nd ,
It’s all in the pipeline, if you work it quickly
You can stop it here! Just stop it now, just
Stop it, stop it now!

And in that instant where I hang
striving up through curling surf, still
Anchored by the tentacle of hate,
My place of breath just beyond my reach,
So easy to drown, so easy to be slain,

I know I deserve the worst you have to deal,
My being the one who “terrorist heart"
Craves the hard discipline of taking flight,
With no thought of ever landing again.

Written by: ~ Dr. Sean