The Emotional Slut is An Artistic Addict

They say addiction runs in the family

Aunt Ellie was an alcoholic

Bathed her organs in liquor until they drowned

years too early to see Grandma

obsess over feeding us more servings than even Jewish guilt could digest

She offers every layer of her refrigerator

Desperate to cook up a way to be needed

When necessity escapes my mother

And I venture to adulthood

She regurgitates the same speech

Binging on old grudges

And vomiting up rants

like a bulimic of rhetoric

But I am no different

My life is a series of alls and nothings

I could never get enough of a boy or business

I get hung up on hang ups

Retell the same stories

I’m a running example of someone who can’t exercise constraint

Too loud

Too quick

I’ve been never been anything but polarizing

Addicted to the chaos that is me

These poems are just a fix

Each creation is an escalation
Because I can’t settle

With the last thing I’ve penned being the most potent

I’ve heard of cocaine addicts

peddling all their belongings for a new dose

Well I’ve been selling my life story for a new hit

The only difference between us

Is that I write lines rather than snort them

I’ve scraped up memories that don’t belong on paper

Pawned stolen moments for some rhymes

Never apologizing for degrading people into characters

Hoping to be acquitted in the silence

Dousing my liver in intoxicating letters

taking shots of words strong enough to erase yesterday

But I can’t backspace history like its in a word document

Drenching my voice in sterling metaphors never made my tongue silver

So I write things in someone else’s voice

Some big shot who thinks she’s hot

Because she can rhyme some slime

Chime in with a symphony

I slammed together a girl who wanted your respect not your sympathy

They weren’t poems

They collections of words that sound pretty

Language that fits but doesn’t fit me

But when I write and say it

Plan and play it

I borrow the tongue of a character I created

And my empty voice box is sated

Because no one will think it’s void when dressed in wrapping paper

Strangers exclaim I have a gift

But my family of addiction experts

can detect the scent of me fucking myself over

Drowning my personality in persona

Even if the aftertaste is talent

The last time I gave away heirloom of whispers

Finding validation through publication

Mama grabbed my pen and tattooed whore across my wrist

And it made sense
I’ve been walking around naked

Plunging zippers and seams with prose

Hoping if I decide to make myself this way

when the world touches I’m not being probed

You can’t hurt me if I make the first cut

And Mama’s right when she tells me I’m an emotional slut

Undressing to deposit more snaps in my vault of self esteem

But what gives you the right to intervene

Just because you sing another tune of obsession

When I rhyme I’m not honest

I am safe

No one recognizes a cry for salvation expressed in art

All the artists I know

Are broken pieces shattering on the floor

But it’s acceptable because after a certain point it looks like shimmer

Something innovative or creative

A beautiful abstraction

Because we love when we can relate to things

When the cracks match the ruptures in our hearts

But I’m tired of being enabled

By a world that lets me drunkenly drive my life

Because they like the designs of the skid-marks I leave behind

But where’s the rehab or remission

For an obscure addiction

Like poetic submission

Derision for my love of revision

Incision that can refrain the wordsmith in my brain

That explains my progress and pain

On a public platform

Maybe you can reform

Someone addicted to drugs or sex

But what do you prescribe to an obsessed scribe

Who only feels alive

When the life is recorded in text?