Hooked

I’m sorry, but there’s no other way.  Prepare yourself, my friend, for this, 
this will not be pretty.

You will run through a field of hooks 
that will snatch and then tear at your flesh.
You will have to make that tough decision – 
stop in order to keep your precious coat of skin or 
keep running until chunks of chest, arms and legs are 
flung from your running corpse, 
leaving only bone. 

The hooks will play violin on 
your skeleton like finger-nails 
scraping on blackboards.
The sound will cause cowards to 
plead with you to halt, but 
please, please keep running 
because I swear – a warrior stripped 
down to honest marrow is so much 
more respectable than these beautiful slaves –
take a look at them through God’s pupils and 
you will see ugly.

Tell me, 
what do you see when you look at me in this moment?
Because I tell you, my friend, I have ran 
through fields of hooks to reach this page – 
spent countless nights in front of a computer screen
squinting past the fog of tears as the wasps of 
my memories stung me with depression,
arm wrestling with words and life-sentencing 
my fingers to arthritis.  I wake up looking like an
alcoholic these days and I gave up drinking more than a year ago.
I guess you can say I’m drunk to the thought of reaching my destiny,
hooked to the rhythm of a heart that has purpose. 

My wife left me on September 22nd, 2008, 5:08 p.m.
The text message read, 
“I left.  Your car is at the airport.  Third floor.  Row G.”

For every single day we were married I 
would wake up early to write her a poem on a napkin – 
gently fold and tuck it underneath 
the plate of breakfast I prepared her. 

That text message was the first thing she ever wrote for me.

For fourteen days, I lay in our bed hugging 
her wedding dress, praying I could cast spells with 
my tears and wake up with her in it – 
hooked like a trout, shaking because I 
suffered from the worst sort of addiction:
loving somebody who didn’t give a fuck about me.
Hooked, my rib cages ripped wide open,
waiting for my heart to follow the blood-trail from 
her hand back into my chest.

And on that fifteenth day, when he finally did, he 
told me she wasn’t coming home, 
picked up my laptop and told me to 
begin to write this poem…

Pressing those keys on the keyboard was 
like shoving my finger-tips into 
H.I.V. infected needles. I wrote this 
poem like a college student trying to 
urinate with Chlamydia - slow and painful.
Like ripping out your heart from your 
chest because you know it has wings, 
attaching it to your veins that you use as 
the string, flying it like a kite as you 
run through that field of hooks so 
that when you reach that other side it 
can gently land in your palms so 
that you can put it back in its’ 
place like an ornament on a Christmas tree.

You see, my friend,
you have to be willing to become 206 bones and 
a heart, leaving a blood-trail in order to get to 
anywhere worth getting to,
but I promise you, when you get to 
this place where I am right now,
God will tattoo your bones with
the words “I love you” in every single 
language that has ever been known to man. 
Just follow my trail.  And when you get here,
let us celebrate by “spitting” so hard
our teeth break to show those who smile 
fake with perfect teeth but feel 
miserable inside what a real smile looks like – 
Broken,
crooked,
and so fucking beautiful.