Jay Sizemore

Self-Loathing

 

It’s not my heart.
Not something so simple,
not just muscle and tissue,
blood and rhythm
fluctuating to the beat
of unheard music in her skin,
not something so easy
to remove with a knife
and pack in coffee grounds
so the dogs won’t find it.

It’s something else;
a different animal
with diamond flesh
that shines like the first
glimmer of sunlight
in a newborn’s eyes,
feels like the finest
pinprick of beauty
on a virgin retina
filtered through eyelashes
into the chest pangs
that discern the truth
from a lie.

It’s the wooly mammoth
struggling to survive
in a room full of spears.

I’ve made it bleed,
painted the walls
into Rorschach inkblots
smeared with a blind man’s hands,
red, red, red,
as the insides of god,
each one resembling
a different aspect of her face.

This wall is her lips,
this wall her eyes,
her nose,
her chin,
disarranged
like a drunk Picasso
designing a Rubik’s cube
from the inside out.

I’m tearing this building down
so I can find a place to sleep,
and hide from the earthquakes
in my head,
where my dreams
float in the crimson sea
from which the tides
leave red stones
I’ve fashioned into my bed.

 

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Jay Sizemore has never lived by the sea. He writes poems to separate his voice from the blurred wings of the moth, fading into the silence of the night. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in: the anthology Prompted, cur.ren.cy, Red River Review, and Toad the Journal. He lives in Nashville, TN, with his wife Elizabeth. They have three cats.