Rage - a poem

 

I have stained my canvas with red paint 

and now I have to work around it. My mother 

says that hatred is like a parasite, that it clings 

to you like death itself. There is a tapeworm 

comfortably in my stomach, and I felt it laugh 

when someone told me that I don’t strike them 

as an angry person. Maybe I’m not. Maybe 

all my anger is love. 

Maybe all my anger is loss. Maybe I wish for you 

to look over me, to see the two dimensions

that I am, to pick at my organs. Take that one. 

My liver, my heart. Untie my intestines like knots. 

Hold death in your hands and pose. Smile. 

Kiss your friends and kiss the wrong people and 

then laugh about it over drinks because we’re alive

and maybe that rage is worth having. 

Maybe rage is alive. Rage is sober. Rage is drunk. 

Rage has gotten high for the tenth day in a row 

and cried. Rage kisses me on the mouth in Hank's Bar.

I catch someone staring out of the corner of my eye. 

It is not God, she doesn’t exist on that day. 

I have her in my phone somewhere. I set a reminder

to call. I think I would be angry if I were her. 

I think I am angry.

I think that anger is love. I hear a girl shout for 

someone to care, not anyone in particular, 

not anything particularly at all. Untie the knot of your intestines. 

Drink red paint and let it settle. Rage is alive.

Rage is dead, it is calling God on the phone and she 

doesn’t answer, she says she’s staying out. I spill 

red paint on my canvas and now I don’t know 

if i can work around it anymore.