He was a marionette whose strings were rods ascending. It was not
what you would think. He jerked in such a charming way, his limbs were paper
cutouts, colored for your pleasure – for your pleasure – until…
He made those colors, turned you into an expressionist painting, your face
a rainbow. If you were a cartoon it might be fun to look at, but the palette
of hues he created from the canvass of your face makes the world
cringe. We want to weep. We want to avert our gaze and purse our lips.
It’s true that none of us knows what to say. Do you want us to tell you
how remarkably like a cadaver you look when we bravely bother to see?
Do you want us to pretend that you are perfect, and he is perfect
for you? He is that charming little devil you welcomed
into the deep. And having found his home he will not willingly leave.
It is your lips that must form the words, “I am not the receptacle for your pain. I am not
your savior. Save yourself.. I deserve
more than this magnetic devil who settles in fleeting remorse like bile
at the bottom of my insecurity and need.
Too late, he weeps. Too much time passes between the landing
of his fists and his embryonic posture of contrition. I know you.
You will embrace him, and tongues will click and brows will knit themselves
into expressions of superiority. And I?
I will be there when you look in the mirror and ask yourself
the questions we all wrestle with, champions, losers, alike.
© Tina Zabielski 2011-2019
theminstrelscitadel 
Cooks County
Cooks County Jail is a warehouse. They inventory degrees
of madness, of loneliness and abandonment. Here they shelter
people who think they are Jesus, women who pull out their hair
men whose only crime is having concrete for a bed. Ronald Reagan
that B movie actor who moved on up to the Big Chair sold human beings
down the river. Down the river to Chicago, down the Hudson to Bellevue
down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to St. Louis to New Orleans. Sold ’em
to the highest bidder: Budget Cuts. Thirty percent of funds slashed
for the humans we don’t want to see, and their problems that fit awkwardly
into a straight jacket. Thirty years later and the money’s still gone. And in Cook County
Jail? Thirty percent of the population thinks they’re being hunted,
and they are. Hunted by our fears and misunderstandings. Stalked
by our inability to see Other as our Self. Demeaned by austerity measures
and propaganda and soulless government policies. The homeless
mentally ill remain forever nameless. Shadows on a moonless night. Bodies
stiff under corrugated sheets tucked under the monstrous slabs of an underpass.
Home, every human needs one. Cooks County knows.
© Tina Zabielski 2011-2019