The skin on the knuckles on my right hand

is very soft and calm

and the color is of a gentle pastel tone

a flesh-type color 

for the average male

and I guess there’s nothing too weird about that

But sometimes when I’m angry

and I’m splitting at the seams

and I’m going red and feeling faint

it’s times like these I want to change—

the colors of my knuckles to a darker reddish-brown

or maybe purple, with drops falling

between each ridge

and landing on top of each other

in a small pile that glistens and stiffens

And I’ve sat in the dark of a room painted black

with a knife in my hands

and there was no sunlight that day, I don’t think.

But the feeling is different between the small

white lines in zig-zag style sprayed over my arms

and the motion of movement captured

and displayed throughout a wall or a tray

or anything that shatters

But I’m not harming myself, I think

when the blue pieces of a stack of trays

bounce around the floor

or rush backward to enter my hands

leaving small red cuts like I’ve been foolish

with paper or just tired

And I’m trying to change myself, I don’t think

I’m taking a small piece of the world and bending

it to my will

allowing the thrill of a moment of silence to enter my head

and sit

like a dead aim centered on a target 65 yards away

And all this I can’t change,

my job, my friends, even myself, sometimes

when I let the wheels spin

with no traction

and when I think there’s no way out

I let my knuckles change the world

and for one moment—

there is peace.

relaxation  

I’m standing by the dumpster,

a big green dumpster with words scrawled onto it with spray paint

and pens and it’s slightly raining and wet

I’m hunched over, beneath the big black open lid of the dumpster

stretched over and above the back wall of the dumpster’s area

and the rain still drips onto my head

I’m holding a cigarette and watching the smoke

spill out and over my fingers with tufts of gray

and white mixed with red

I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t a cure

and I want this shaking and coughing

and relaxing to end

and I take the cigarette butt

and hold it between shaking hands

but I can’t quite make it meet water

because it’s hard to say

goodbye to a friend

But when paper meets filter and the smoke kisses air

and disappears forever,

I hurry and wash my hands

and smell the smoke and the ash

collected on my clothes and person

and I realize I keep saying

”It will come—

(relaxation)

”It will come—

over and over again

and maybe it’s this mantra of sorts

and not the smoke sitting in my lungs

like fog’s shadow

and I think

“It will come—

(Relaxation)

”It will come.”