I Remember

Who's there?
Who's there?

And I remember
Flashes of laughter
And lunatics
Lost in the asylum
Seductive propaganda
Scrolling across my mind
Like guerilla cinema.

Belts and wooden spoons
Flies in the afterbirth
Like shadows across my brain
And crawling on linoleum kitchens
Streaming death and corporate concienceness into my brain
And cracked porclein sinks stuffed with
Dirty dishes.

The early morning anxiety of gradeschool
Dark stockings to hide the bruises.
Secret friends and festive holidays
And everyone in their sunday best
Pretending to like each other.

For generations and generations of
Sad mistakes.
Stealing away in the dead of night to
Escape the stiff jawed henchmen in the hungry trucks
Of an angry slumlord miles and miles away.

Impatient and understanding
Waking on the side of the road
Hissing radiator hoses cracked like
Burned skin.
Days so hot a nuclear holocaust would've felt like siberian blizzard.

And I remember
The first time I felt it alive inside me
Turning the deadweight
Moving within the folds of its winged embrace
Opening and sliding those black feathers
Inches at a time.
Those feet
Pushing and digging into the membrane
Deep enough to cause pregnancy
And I remember it going numb
And listening to it hum
And I feel it move in its mysteries
Exploring me
And I remember this
And I know
I never had a chance.
There's never any escaping it.