January 18, 2016 admin

all in the family p.02

Cerebella

all in the family p.02
by Cerebella

i would like to alert you of a crime you continuously
commit, one

i seem unable to commit, not
that i hold interest in doing so. it is, in fact,

the only crime around. and this is it: you

standardize me. i am the weak link, the mistake you
can count on to be a mistake- the mistake

is a thing whose actions are overshadowed
by its state of being a mistake-

the pauper, the starving soul, that poor thing, this
reservoir that can take anything and make it

something bigger than what it turned out to be
to begin with, the tortured mind, the thing god punished.

and, of course,

i practically demand responsibility. this being said,

i will always be here for you to plank on, be it

for the transference of stress, or just to
look at me like i’m insane when i’m stressed from

my stress and the stress of everyone else weighing
on my shoulders,

you can count on me. you can even count on me

as the family emergency- stuff
in a hospital, being treated for nightmares

in a hospital, peeing itself in its sleep in
secrecy in a hospital, speaking openly and honestly

about stuff in a hospital when it counts, something
you don’t know what to do about;

a very obvious sorrow. woe
is the shitheaddy mistake who approached
the plummeting of their state with acceptance,

maturely admitting they’re in danger, they
need extra help. you know how brave that was of me?

fuck you for making a show of it to yourself
whether you’re so proud of me or not. i’m not

something more when i’m out of your field of vision.
this object is constant. i’m the same person, the one thing

that keeps your fucking attention other than
the television.

me? i do not stop thinking about my complicated
mental state- i mean, the abstract of it. but i do not

look at it as a mental illness, or “something being wrong”, or
any unappealing name you want to put on it

to cut me off from my truth, considering

we’re all fucking born skating across a foundation of
amorality in fact so fuck that and fuck you,

fuck you,
fuck you,
i want to burn myself right now.

to take my mind off of it, i scowl as i type
so somebody out there can perhaps hear me.
i’m doing this on the arm of your ugly couch-

you know, the one that i clean? like how i do
everything else?
but never
do i clean anything good enough? it’s true,

i don’t seem to have any potential

to match up to standards
despite my being standardized.

in this respect, indeed, i am hopeless, a lost
cause.

good.

i’d rather sit here and cut my arms open and rip my
arteries out until it’s my heart we’re

staring at here
and then burn it and shit the rest of whatever
remains of my body out

than to ever match up to the standards anyone holds,
these standards, this false universality of
standards,

such is my greatest fear.

i’m the poster child for relativity.
i want to burn myself, but i am proud of this one value.
i want to burn myself, i wonder, maybe because
i want to let my family know the extent to which

being identified as what feels like a very limiting role

and feeling kind of used for it- feeling very much so
unlike “myself”, whatever the self is supposed
to feel like. it’s clear to me

i cannot swallow this role. i cannot swallow
the scapegoatisms of it. i cannot

swallow the tracing back of everyone’s behaviors to mine. i cannot

stomach this fucking conflict. is it vomit? must be vomit.
i want my organs to stop working so i can stop digesting.
i have stopped eating before probably in order-

in hindsight- to express this.

listen to me, and i’m being dead serious you do this.

stop making me out to be a mentally ill
machine, is what i mean by all this. there’s a whole

person to me outside of this mentally-ill thing
it feels like is being done to me. you don’t

know anything about me, except
that i’m the type you have to walk on eggshells around

and that god loves me no
matter what. i hate to tell others what to do, but, for

peter’s sake, stop avoiding your problems just because
i too have problems, ones i deal with
head on. cut the crap with

mentally ill alliances and support for mentally ill
people out there and excellent resources
for the mentally ill and telling me to consider

places where the mentally ill are supposed to go.
i’m not going to any seminars

for the mentally ill to go attend in order
to be inspired because otherwise we’re all just
mentally ill and uninspired somehow. i’m not interested

in looking into my future
and the floodgates opening: “oh god no, in

the future, i will be shriveled down to the role
and the role alone.” another thing: i do not
in the least

want to
ever
look at people and think that if i was them,
i would’ve killed myself a long time ago.

i think that because i see all the turns i’m being pressured
to take in them, in a totality. it’s disgusting.

don’t ever tell me to keep an open-mind
about ghetto shit-hole places

built for the mentally ill- these scarlet letters, i swear-

to spend their days being bored at
until they’re drained entirely of insurance money.

the stuff you imagine i experience
probably scares you. it scares the hell

out of the relatives of people who wind up
in those places. it sure scares the hell out of me

almost as much as it motivates me. hey,

say this instead: “the stuff
i imagine you experience scares me. and since
we’re related, and it happens to you, it could happen to me. hell,

at least a dash of it is happening to me.”

i sure know the stuff you experience
scares the hell out of me. i never want to be boring.

i do not see myself in the future investing

or monopolizing on this set role for me
or the fact that my personality
happens to clash with the culture it is set in,

the culture it resents. you know, money money money
and nothing else.

i have invaluable assets, assholes.

i make beautiful paintings.

i write wonderful things.

i am nice.

i am smarter than you or anyone else in the family
will ever be.

this is what i want to say, probably, when i cut myself
even though i hide it.

the only reason i hide it is because i feel shame.
the only reason i know anything about shame

is because i was taught i need to be ashamed
in our beloved dumbassed culture.

i am so much fucking better than a weapon of illness, than
a sad fucking sap. if i am a weapon, i believed, than i am

a weapon out to defend itself. i am a weapon that got

exhausted of doing such
and needed to go to a hospital for such

but it seems it didn’t have everything to do with me.
i am a lightning bolt. i am a distinguished human being.

if the health, if the patterns, if the seriously obvious
unresolved problems of the entire family continue

to depend on me somehow- if this continues, i will die
without even meaning to. it’s too much weight

for one person to stand under
and be expected to stay in place under forever and ever.

it is a world of ghosts that never crossed to the other side
on top of my shoulders and my head and fat and aching back,

heavier than all of mankind in one room
calling things as they see them.