Violent Voice

Drought is absent-minded

and my native tongue is dry

or melted away like tar on asphalt.

Then the voice whispers.

Words seep from my fingertips

and drip down my broken cuticles.

Violent little thoughts

demand, “Hear me, or I will tear apart your insides.”

My insides are pink and formed like a coral reef.

Tiny bombs beneath

shatter the reef like Murano glass.

No bruising shows on my skin,

but a mushroom cloud of bottled thoughts forms within.

“Hear me, and I won’t hurt so bad,”

they tease me with cathartic release.

The pressure overwhelms me,

and thoughts erupt in words and art.

A grand metamorphosis of black and grey thoughts

bleed out in coral pink.

I write and blend and smudge  

until the internal violence is disguised

behind graphite lines and watercolors,

a desert masquerade.

I think about Jesus in the Judean Desert.

Serpentine tries to trick his mind,

but he got out by his faith

and maybe some paint.

Violent little thoughts hiss slurs on Sabbath

then depart deep into the desert.

Left with an internal battlefield to repair, again,

I mix watercolor in drought.

November 2023