Negatives In the Family Photos
there is an unpredictable anger
etched like a still-frame nightmare
where my childhood plays out
frame by frame like a view master
this ever present slideshow
waits for me next to the abandoned pillow
which I have claimed like a forgotten city
and between us, it's the only thing we trust
and this anger leaves sub-dermal stains
the type of tattoo that goes straight
through the bone, eats the marrow
and goes right for the soul
this cast iron imagery haunts me
and belongs only to my memory
void of motion or anything auditory
buffering and refusing to play out
but I know if I could just hit play
that I'd finally see or hear the
magic words that trigger this sense
of panic that takes over me
in those unpredictable moments of anger
that appear out of nowhere
like estranged family coming back
to make a shredded nest in me
coloring my world in polar ideology
where everyone is a hungry lion
with a taste for Christianity
and my own metaphors make me question God
but it's not your God I question
not the one that sits in the box seats
eating hot dogs and drinking beer
making bets with the Devil on any given Sunday
it's the God that lives inside me
and keeps pushing this body like a shield
into the line of fire and begging me
to save that little girl from the next scene
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