room for rage

let it out.

.

start with the plates:

break them.

watch them shatter on graffiti-covered concrete. scream.

scream until you've shredded your voice, your lungs, your throat to

splinters.

.

close your fists.

hit the walls, swipe shelves clean

of valuables, watch them slide and break into meaningless rubble.

be the plague, be the sickness,

be the tick in the head of the dog that is this life

that is so unfair, so unjust.

bite, squeeze, clamp your teeth down, gnash them,

tear cloth, let it fall in tattered ribbons to the floor.

.

stamp and crush beneath your steel-toed boots the hopes,

the memories that once enticed and now mock you

that cut you small, made you feel helpless, dropped

this burning ember in your throat and chest and made

it impossible to sleep, impossible to eat, to

b r e a t h e .

.

scalding tears might threaten to fall. let them.

.

eject every rule about holding back that’s been carved into you.

tease the graphite from your wounded flesh and let it fall

in shards like bullet casings. break the legs

of the chair over your head; scream the things you feared would

leave you alone and wanting, would drive every soft kind heart

miles from your needy claws. burn paper, spirals

of smoke venting up like charcoal signals,

welcome the wailing of the alarms, the ringing of the bells,

the long mournful honks of the fire engines that won't get there

in time.

.

take the golf club to the window of the old car,

imagine it is your mother, your father, your brother,

your cousin, boss, eventually they all blend into

your own bald eyes in the mirror, for the original sin of betrayals

is your lips twisting as they recite to you the oldest lies

in the book, the ones you told yourself.

.

let it out. if you don't, it's all you'll ever feel.

.

become the wolf at the slaughter; howl like the animal you were

born, naked and writhing. let it out until your chest is nothing

but an empty cage, until you collapse like a blanket unspooling

onto the ground.

.

when you come to, take your time in sorting through the wreckage.

for in the end, anger is just a hiding place

for a bunch of other things:

glimmering chips of sadness tinged with red like regret.

the smooth, broken pottery of betrayal,

of lust and love and the singed pages and broken spine of hurt.

anger, like a deceptive package, contains so much that is not it-

like black is a blending of all the colors, so anger is a blending

of all emotions.

.

take only what you need.

the rest, leave behind in tatters on the ground.

take off your mask, your protective gloves, and walk

out into the sun. feel the breeze sing

through the empty chamber of your chest like a thread,

a wire, guiding you all the way home.