The mind is quiet

Inner voice velcro’d to each side of the throat

Coated with kush smoke and misplaced anger

like sherwin Willams over the bedroom wall you had to re-plaster from a meeting of fist and stucco

One we’ve had many times but promised ourselves we wouldn’t attend because

Who needs AA or depression anonymous to feel the support system we pretend actually cares

Lego like lies built to make the soul we cocoon inside feel better

A little more balanced along the scale of humanity

Until a choice six degrees separated from heart and mind

Tips chain and metal toward the precipice we deserve

Disguised under what we think karma means or is

some fleeting moment of cyclical happenstance that fills the vat of vengeance

Located right below the amygdala and the place petty lives

Corroding our mental floor as it spills with each shift in consciousness

Until emptied out of mouth and fountain pen filled with lavender

Filtered like cold press with time and pressure

Chin strapped and mounted upon the crown

we all wear and tend to hide at night

Titled every so slightly so you know you and I are not the same

No one is, yet the scripts say one size fits all

trice times a day with food and water

and be sure not to operate heavy machinery

The kind the mind wields without reading the manual

Tools that scrape membrane from bed

into the lion’s den outside the four brick walls and windows with no curtains

Laid bare since I have nothing to hide but my pain and the cuts on my arm you can’t see

I use neosporin only after the scar forms

Souvenirs skin and flesh are made for but hate all the same

Like cold spoons of cod liver oil before bed to lessen the stress of life on this black body

Heart ready for the day we buy more body armor and less vice laden paper bags that adds 10 cents to the total

But until that moment rolls around the roulette wheel waiting to make someone lucky

This is how I color my life

until I’m out of pastel and sharp objects