Breakdowns And Attempts

Originally posted on 3/5/2014.

Stop
calling
what I do 
therapy.

Stop calling therapy
what exists to spite disorder,
what persists after breakdowns and
attempts.

Stop calling therapy
what I would do more of
if I were less 
a mess.

Stop calling therapy
what I call breathing.
Stop calling therapy what I call 
my self, spread on paper.

Stop calling triggers on guns
material.  Stop calling
triggers on others’ lips
material. 

Stop calling too-blunt knives
and weak pills and slender ropes
and bed restraints and hours
of paying to talk around agony

“the dark timber of my art.”

Stop calling.  
Stop insisting,
stop speaking
of therapy.  

Stop in fact your fantasy of why
and what and how;
for me this is no pressure valve
and verse is not surgery.

I’ve written
hundreds of thousands
of words
or more;

if it worked,
if it was
as you say,
I’d be fine.