in transit - appears in Existere
January 2018
it's not something you talk loudly about on the bus
the first smell of panic
as the bus is more condensed than i'm prepared for,
more human than i need
please:
just empty seats, grey metal, rain under the wheels
the events to come
are chained to my neck
i’m the bird that eventually drowns
strangled by plastic waste
but it's not something you talk loudly about on the bus
i know this beginning;
the first punch from the relentless bully
whose fist buries into my stomach
and is now my inertia
i need distraction;
i listen to the woman wearing shorts
with a faded day-of-the-dead tattoo,
telling someone she only kissed that bitch once
she looks comfortable lying;
she smirks at me like a used needle on the street
but this isn’t something you speak loudly about on this bus
eyes that stare at me
my shrinking face
then quickly retreat
and i wonder if it’s still raining
and then ...
i see the red inside my eyelids …
my hands reach for the muddy floor …
i tear skin from my knees
i am in everyone’s uncomfortable peripheral vision,
just like the man in the back talking to god and preaching.
no one can look at us
at our small tragedies
on this bus
i want to reach out
to touch a leg, just to feel a pulse
i want to hold a knife in my palm,
open a bloodless vein, just for the distraction
i can scream but why
no one notices
my eyes aren’t violent:
this isn't something you can talk about on the bus
i shudder trying focus:
still waiting for an end;
the bus feels like a stampede
a panicked buffalo herd;
falling over a cliff:
with each lurch forward
i wish for a lobotomy
the crowded air squeezes itself
i can't breath in or out,
everybody stares away from me
i know how they think:
i’ve written these stories;
as narrator,
as protagonist,
as antagonist:
i’ve already come to their inevitable conclusion
i’ m drunk, psychotic, stoned, dangerous
i’m where i shouldn't be
no one reacts, no one blinks,
i know how nothing feels
i’m trying to map an escape route
guided by fluorescent lights
from the bus ceiling
that burn the back of my neck,
but this isn’t something you talk loudly about on a bus;
at 5:20 wednesday afternoon
down on the steaming bus floor,
i break my knees in a bloody prayer
hoping for a fire or a phoenix to save me
people, lights, phones swarm me
there is no escape route
my stop, i hear the bell
the careless announcement
‘granville and davie’ is a promised land
i wait as the aisle clears
i move like a mole off the bus
into rain and headlights
now i sit on the sidewalk
unnoticed except for the police officer
who glances at me
and walks away
the subject - (appears in Spadina Literary Review)
January 2018
doctors are performing
a living autopsy on my brain;
they need insight,
they want to restore me somehow,
reboot me to original factory settings
i have become the subject:
the person contained in
three thick folders
of notes and observations,
prescriptions and medications
that’s what i am;
i am an experiment:
testing theories foreign to me
all around are the white coats
the doctors, the experts, the specialists;
each prodding me with their own questions
trying to de-code my answers,
they keep trying, writing more notes
i don’t want to care anymore what they think,
but i do:
they think what i know or feel isn’t quite real,
i’m not comfortable with their position
they talk soothingly about psychosis
in the clinical kind and remote terms
doctors use to avoid emotion:
vacant voices from the outside
asking asking asking for answers
i don’t have
2019 Please Be Better
where have i been
out of my brain
on the 2018
on a train
of thought
suddenly derailed
when the world shifted
perceptions of reality
what i already
knew i didn't
anymore
it's times like these
learn to love again
learn to live once more
renew vows
to yourself
leave history unwritten
let the future fall
as it may
remember each second
breathe as your first

Terry. Who Writes Things.
Fractured Writing, Fractured Times
