Drea Kato - Three Poems

Stages Of Suicide

Tonight I'd like to tear myself apart,
cut one huge slice, reach in there
and take all of it out. It's all dead and dirty,
all useless and poisonous anyway.

All I want is to have you
in my grasp again. Hold your hand
through one more drunk drive, one more
oh no at a red light. Just one more

abduction or sexual assault
in the belly of the night.
One more pile of tears & clothes,
one more person telling you
that you are worthless.

When I was a little girl I had vivid
dreams of you dying and I would
wake up crying but I never told
anyone about them. I wonder if

my Native American subconscious
realized at a young age that you
were already in early stages of suicide.
Forgive me, if I never call your name again;

I have only spoken in my dreams to the dead,
atop mountains of TVs, and while watching
nightmares unfold in grocery stores,
like giant pieces of origami. Forgive me

for falling into this lightless day.
I hope this revolution won't die in me,
because I am crawling back slowly,
empty day by empty day.



Without Love

Sometimes it is good to witness yourself
coming apart. Seeing your own skin
broken open, like flowers. Seeing your lifeblood
leak.

I want to pour hot gasoline down your throat
and tar and feather you with my pink boa. I want to
make love on a mountain, and to a goat, myself.
Today I played with spoonfuls of molly at the
dollhouse.

I want you to hold my hands behind my back,
touch my hair lightly. You pumped pink blood
into my blue heart, I love you but there's no point
in saying it.

If your heart were a papaya, I'd eat it.

Sometimes it is good to destroy your own art,
and then light it on fire. Seeing colorful flames.
Smelling like smoke. Sailing.

My red plaid skirt is covered in snot. My room
is a semen stain that glows under the black-light.
I get cut leaning against the walls. I can see
my legs now, which means I can see the glass in them
too.

I like the shiniest and sunniest things in life.
You know I have never tried counting the stars or eating the
organs of horses. I think the only thing
straight lines are good for
is making razor blades.

I wish I had your stomach ache full of cigarettes,
menthol gum & black flowers. In my room, there
are baskets of stars I picked waiting for you. Today,
I wanted to give you all your favorite things,
but lost them.

Yesterday I wanted to tell you
that while I swim I will touch my tummy
and hate it, and wish I were something else.
I don't want to tell you I smoke pot in bathroom stalls,
and try to hang myself in them too. I don't want you
to be afraid of my thoughts, my blankets
or my pillows.

There is no one who will wear truth like a bib,
who will let it run down their lips, brown and wet.
When I realize there is no more love and it gets cold again,
I will run away
somewhere warmer, somewhere smaller. I hope the military
doesn't leave you bloody baby.

What happened to you in the sun? Rainbows jumped into your smile,
there, at dusk in the woods. I would rather watch you bright, on
your toes for someone else. My body immediately rejects you,
howling for somebody else.

All I want to do is reflect, like mirror. I want to lay
broken in pieces too. I get bored with nouns easily. I
don't like games, and I don't know how I feel

without love.



Toxemia

My heart needs to be bled
and yours needs to be bleached.
Our hands need something dead in them
like tongues or books full of flat flowers.
Our prayers together create blood in the walls.
In the drips I see you in the bathtub vomiting
pages of dictionaries, shutting me out.
I see a plastic set of veins coming out of my legs
and every day your voice splits me open like an axe.
And for these veins in my hands I would trade you
today & yesterday; I would trade you the Iraq War
all the Senators & the dead meat on your plate.

Every time someone buys me a birthday present,
I realize they don't know me at all
and it is a brightly-wrapped reminder
of failure of heart & bone, of eyes half closed,
the bibliophile's metronome.

It is strange that we make things
and then we break things
and then we fix our broken things and feel joy.
It is strange that we drink milk meant for calves
and we invent Tuesdays & Thursdays & nuclear war.
It is strange that you eat candy out of the trash
and somehow convince yourself that you are okay.

Climbing on top of me is a dark blur and a smile
appears in one of its gaping endless holes.

Inanition is heaven. Money becomes a foreign object
much like forceps or hair clips or pieces of metal stuck
inside different parts of you for different reasons.
It becomes some thing you have that is not particularly pretty
that you can use to acquire prettier things. It becomes you.
It becomes your smile and whatever kisses befall your lips.

I regret not being there to tuck you in tonight,
not being able to kiss your hands that have fixed
so many things. Just give me one more weekend
to poison my blood. One more day to inhale anything
black. One more minute to say goodbye goodbye
goodbye to your sweet face. Let me become a dog
and die by chocolate. Your hardness is left in me,

dries up like a riverbed, cracks, and is forgotten.
The love you left in my mouth has metastasized and I swallow
every gift you gave me so I can call you to complain
of a stomach ache. It is too easy to turn corn
or rice into some kind of drug, one you can mass produce,

& make billions. May begins again as if it hasn't left you
so many times before and green Xs multiply like army ants.
The contents of our cabinets become those of my gut,
and I come away knowing what they say is true: there is always
tomorrow. And every unicorn bleeds black. Every president
has his or her handicap. All the buildings in the world
will eventually fall down. And it is better to burn than to disappear.



Drea Kato has lived a nomadic life throughout the United States and writes about her experiences. Views with an emphasis on the ultraviolet spectrum.