ryan c. taylor// calcium deficiency

Where men have fought and died for ownership I have spilled milky  
white discharge and denied any relation.
They swoon and croon and cry and write and share secrets and make  
mixtapes and call in sick.
I step in, I get nauseous, I step out.
I am a student, an observer, never meant to stay in certain situations  
for extended periods of time.
Pungent 30 second lust making in Southwest America has me questioning  
my relationship with my Mother.

ryan c. taylor// wet wombs

this week was spent celebrating young mothers in heat.
restless and fierce.
anvil eyes groping wet men.
receiving living advice from ne'erdowells at coffee shops
teahouses.
surfing the strips.
begging for a starring role in a snuff film.
contemplating irrational decisions with community college
drop outs and bicurious trustfund musicians.
contemplating me.
yearning for 5 minutes of regret.
disregarding the 3rd party.
young mother, swallow me.
with loose skin.
let your womb accept this offering.
head first.
young mother, resent this.
seek therapy.
work me out.
this week was spent celebrating you.
young mother.
you.
who calls in sick to your new life.
whispering obscenities at your seed.
you.
lactating and ill.
moist in all the wrong places.
you.
adolescent and careful.
harmful.
shameful.
retreat to the art wards, young mother.
drink your fill and elevate your soul with acetone speed.
pontificate.
fake the fuck.
forge the feeling.
romanticize misery.

ryan c. taylor// foreign skin

the grand, mournful entrance.

expelled from a coughing womb

into the cold, tight, latex grip of a foreign being.

the saltwater flooding the parish hospital floor

is coming from the face of the carrier.

it all began with a break up.

a forceful push from you.

the virgin mother now a martyr of what

will later become spiritual warfare.

the rest of her life spent clawing at faces

of those who come between her and son.

 

a lifetime will be spent fearing the orphan father.

 

the virgin mothers pilgrimage begins in sulphur.

in wooded green and tanker white highways.

in cocaine fueled sewing circles with son laughing and fat.

pushing, crushing, painful thoughts of where

orphan father lay at night.

 

searching for needle and thread to reconnect.

 

the seeking continues in southeast barrios.

hungry and sick, painstaking and frantic.

lovefilled and withdrawn, undiagnosed and selfless.

the virgin mother weeps, the son explores cracked foundations.

the son searches for orphan father.

 

longing to return to the womb.

 

the son rambles in empty trailer park lots.

eyelids purple and bruised, brothers praising.

closer to orphan father, to machismo wisdom.

farther from the virgin mothers saltwater streams.

farther from love, the son fills the void.

 

jihad in the mental.

 

the journey leads to television sex and bad food.

catholic guilt pouring out of the sons urethra.

the virgin mother begins a 6 month sabbatical

in a psychiatric hospital.

son wanders on, searching for a womans validation.

 

the push from commitment and whats underneath.

 

the son finds an opium swarm.

heart and mind engulfed in warm waves for a decade.

pushing down the fear, the sadness, the pain

that bred social awkwardness and righteous anger.

farther from the orphan father, the son feels the wound.

the retreat inward.

son numbs with water, bleach, vinegar, and lemon juice..

stumbles past the flags, the gang signs, the steel capped

boots, the charges and spikes, the bald heads, the propaganda,

the hooded activists, the train hoppers, the screw heads.

past the poets, the art students, the junkies, the recovering junkies,

the drunks, the dry drunks, the horny hipsters, the cowboy punk rockers,

the trust fund mercenaries, the indie rock aficionados, the hustlers,

the mother whores, the daughter whores.

to break,

to fear,

to search,

to long,

to wage war,

to push,

to retreat,

in foreign skin.

ryan c. taylor// secrets(revised)

My piss has not always been poison, neither has my blood. A cleaner version of myself last existed when I was 14. As long as I can remember I've had an infatuation with holes(God sized) and the art of filling them. Up until the age of 15 I used food, masturbation, violence, girls, gutter weed and malt liquor to fill these holes. These shoddy patch work jobs failed me miserably. I found my solution, my cement, at 15, in opiates; hydrocodone, lorcets, lortabs, fentanyl, morphine, codeine, oxycontin, oxycodone, and eventually heroin.  My first embrace with the nod was when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. After surgery I was prescribed to hydrocodone tablets, and for 3 days I did nothing but sleep, read, dream, and be free. I fell in love for the first time in my life. I found perfection, balance, warmth, passion, and unrestrained love. I started hustling in school afterwards and became a big fan of   the greens and blues.

After high school, the pharmacy game became a huge part of my life, keeping it a secret from most people close to me, besides the few friends that were knee deep in it as well. Prescription pain killers started becoming increasingly more difficult and more expensive to get, up to $5 a pill on the streets with my habit reaching 10 at a time just to feel somewhat comfortable.  Right around this time I had a new neighbor move in upstairs from me in the midtown apartment building I was living in at the time, a character nick named Slave. My new neighbor was a professional middleman dealing in heroin trade, and suggested a cheaper, more powerful alternative to pills. Slave was a born salesman, and sold me on the fact that I could buy a 20 bag and stay high for hours. Being low on cash I was willing and ready, the only problem was Slave had ran out of clean syringes. A pharmacy run was our next step and since the area pharmacists already knew Slave's schemes and refused to sell to him,it was up to me to get the rigs. Shaking from withdrawals, I memorized the script and walked into the pharmacy and nervous explained to the pharmacy tech that my Grandfather was diabetic and visiting from out of town when he realized he had no more syringes and had forgotten to bring his diabetic card. Successful transaction, onto the ritual.

Now all we had to do was cook and poke. Slave handed me a piece of cotton and a spoon, with detailed directions from him I stuck my muddy quarter gram on the dry spoon, added 1 drop of water from a sweaty Busch tall boy, mixed the heroin and water while heating it up with a lighter, and dropped the small piece of cotton in the thick brown mixture. With trembling hands  I plunged the syringe into the piece of cotton, pulled back, and sucked up the medicine. I was too much of a wimp to shoot myself up, plus it was extremely difficult at the time to find a vein on me, so Slave grabbed my wrist, placed it under the oven light, and dug the syringe into a pulsating vein on the top of my hand. Slight pinch, pull out, blood, wipe off, brown, lick off. Ritual almost complete.

Stumbling back from the stove a warmth quickly rushed from my scalp to my toes. The world slowed down for a few minutes and I tried to regain balance as every problem poisoning my mind seeped out of my skin and into thin air. As I'm coming to the realization that I finally found what everyone's been searching for, my stomach roars and I make a quick run to the lowered porcelain altar to pray. Orange juice from yesterday's sickness violently erupted from mouth and nostril in one holy burst. Using the bathtub as leverage I slowly crawled to my feet from the prayer position only to be pushed back down by a nod amplified from the vomit. The quilt had quickly been replaced by my Grandmother hugging a comfortably hot electric blanket around me. The puking intensified the high in such a way that I spent the rest of my nods sticking my finger down my throat working and begging for a liquid outburst with the same focus and desperation a bulimic nun has on pageant day. 

What's most important to know about getting on the horse is the release I get from me. I feel a God consciousness envelop me with every poke, I become confident, capable, comfortable. The thoughts and feelings I had been working so hard to quiet and push down were finally expelled from me, if only for a short period of time. For the first few hours every thing's manageable and non threatening. I can look in the mirror, no more feelings of unworthiness, despair, loneliness, uselessness, anger, depression or self pity. I'm relieved of criticizing thoughts of never being good enough for anyone, of being too lumpy and scarred, of failing my Mother and dissapointing my Father. Relieved of thinking death the only logical solution, the only way to please those who I have known (those I have harmed). It's never cold on the nod.

I soon found out that these thoughts and feelings come back tenfold as soon as I hop off the horse. It quickly became a stressful full time job keeping the dreaded four horsemen( terror, bewilderment, frustration, despair) at bay at all times. With the spirit of a hustler and a fierce determination to never feel again, this daily struggle for reprieve continued for many years. I found myself in a midtown treatment facility February 17th 2010, hurting, hopeless, and willing to surrender. This is catholic guilt, please don't tell my Mom.

ryan c. taylor// i think i have the flu

     This mattress is unbridled euphoria. At least that's what I think Sealy was going for when designing this flowery , royal blue spring-up-the-spine death trap. Truly destined to be the fallback for pall mall whores and "woe is me" dope fiends from the edges and centers of flat Earth. I'm unfortunately not soaking in this mattresses glaring ambiance, for the moment my out is reflecting my in. I think I have the flu; bones are aching, sweat pours from the hot and the cold, unable to eat, able to violently erupt from both holes every 5 minutes,this is the flu alright. Nevermind the fact I've been 2 days without, that my disease might very well be in full force, and every time I close my eyes I have a wet dream of rigging up and nodding out. I decide I'm unworthy of the pleasurable pain this valley of coils offers and turn over, landing on the hard wood floor, cheek down, ass up.

  Moving is not an option, so I take a moment to mentally record my current surroundings. Drops of dried discharge border my mattress along the floor and wall, the smell of sick in the air from an open trash bag in the kitchen filled with shit stained towels. The hardwood floor covered in sticky substance and empty bottles of orange juice and wino firewater. My dog Hank is fighting the swarm of flies with remnants of a pill bottle hanging out of his mouth. I caught him earlier devouring the rest of my sleeping pills I was hoping to use to dream away this ill, I hope he's ok, doesn't seem to be slowing him down at the moment. Some of the flies are beginning to congregate a top of one of the many areas sticky sick on the floor, I wish them the best in all their endeavors. 

 I have show flyers on my walls from places played and situations I was in, some records, cds, old movies and books on the floor, things I like, interests held and genres covered that I use to identify me and hide behind. Months prior my one bedroom was filled with things to hide behind, all were pawned in order to support the daily attempt to hide from. If I could move to face the sun, I would have attempted to pawn these  too, I don't think this is the flu. Opiates kill pain, no opiates invite pain, and since it's been 2 days with out, this could possibly be pain welcome. Upstairs has been without for 2 days, he's up and moving, so I suspect he's got some brown stashed for moments like these, he's also got a window in the back, cracked open at all times. If I could only walk, rather than crawl, a nightmove would be in order, I'm unfortunately paralyzed for the moment and will have to wait for home delivery. Until the situation upstairs changes, I'll continue to lay, cheek down, ass up, waiting for fruitition