exhaustion

She keeps me
Locked in this dungeon
Bound by cold, ancient walls
Damming despair
At the whim of her happiness.
I am the one with the problem
As defined by her imagination
And what an image that is
When it can’t see past the end of her nose
to peer at the hope
and beauty
that is the actual definition
of me.

One such definition
Inked by another
At the expense of no one
At the expense of the damned’s fun
Maybe
But not even
Because even those
Locked in dungeons
Have feelings
I have learned.

I belong in the court
With the finest of things
Which are shared
In equal amounts
To those who know truly
What it means to be living
The days and weeks
Years and decades
That pass by the innocent
That time is what I am fighting for
I want my time returned to me
But I would not want this
Had it not been for you
And your foolishness
That which forms the most complicated unsolvable mathematical equations
And the most inarticulate conundrums known to any language
This foolishness molds the urn spun on the potters wheel of Einstein
None of it assists with the functionality of the heart.
And I feel it safe to say that the angles of your perception
Are unequal to any linear thought.

But I won’t bore my guests
With the details of my heart
Because their stories
Are worthy of my ears
And you
You, in all your infinite wisdom,
You alone, as you like it,
Couldn’t find my ear
With two flashlights
And a compass
And a map labeled with every square inch of my anatomy.

AM baptism

My pained hands
From the frigidity in the air
Are warmed by the thought of you
Waiting for me
Somewhere off in the distance of time.
So many words
Yet to be fathomed and crafted into a series of sequenced stories
Only for your ears.
And you began the story
Yesterday eve
As we sat in the place that warms every inch of my
Heart.
And yet this night,
I recall
Those countless nights
When the expression of my emotive experience
Was trodden by your tied tongue
And I wander within wantonness.

The leaves have fallen.
They were carried down the stream
By which we sat
Many months ago
And where we will sit many months from now.
The stream carries them down that mountain
In water so cold
it makes the minutes on a clock stand still
and the pebbles beneath the surface
are frozen in a moment
just like you and me.

why i like trees

This morning
My car reeked of you
And she
She doesn’t give a fuck
About me
Or you.

I wish I could mail her a broom
With a note attached that read,
“fly your way to hell.”

And this evening
This evening
This dark, frosty, clear-skied evening,
I was
One hundred and seventy-five percent of a mile
From your front door.
Through my rage,
I was wishing.
Wishing those wheels to turn themselves
To you.
Instead,
I am sitting on the side of this dark lonely highway
Amid the signage for right and wrong,
Under the covers of fear and harshness,
raw and exposed on my own journey;
On my own way to my own version of hell.
Sitting her sniffing the stinch of frustration
And splatting my lap
With tears of pain and sorrow
misery and animosity.

I yelled at the Chinese take out lady
I became them
Them that I have escaped only just
And some could chock it up to hormones
But I know the difference
Unlike you.

You
You who never showed up at my door
Never wishing your wheels to whirl towards me
Never wanting from me
Never needing what I gave.

You ask why
Or how
With countless words.

And this one time
This one time in my whole life,
I will factually state.

Your Words Are Empty.

As they have always been
Even as they were hurled
Through the winds of my emotion.
But never
Never have you Ever
mustered even average quantities of courage
To gust an ounce of your own air
In the direction of me.

So I’ll perch here
With my pen and craft words
for me
breezing my own wind
burdening myself with the responsibility of defining truthfulness
And compassion
Fairness and honesty
And my words will never curve
From the equation of me.
They were and are and will always be
words overflowing
With the mode of life’s mean.
And I will nurture and passion those words
Into actualities
With not a whim
Of you.

two truths and a lie

I stood alone one evening
in the middle of a crowd
familiar to me
in a legible way
but not in any language I’ve ever written

to them and with them
they say I should belong

but I find that unlikely
as I look into your eyes and you paint
a picture of longing
love and lingering sentiment
that exists only on paper
along with that list
you reference at Lunch

I am a resume,
An outline,
A table of contents.
To a life you think you want,
But I know better.

It is everything I want
And Long to hear
while it provokes
everything I don’t want
and of which I Long to be rid.

I only desired your happiness
But I am finding that this wish
Is at the expense of my own
I want more moments
Or do I want my moments returned to me
I cannot confirm either
But they are both truths

6:50 pm some time ago

From a place that withers, whines and sits vacant,
With a silence that sings lyrical furlongs to my soul,
Belongs a woman.
with eyes that I once delivered lines about but
Now I can’t, due to silence
but not from me.

Once her silhouette fades into the dawn
That silence shrieks with such passion
My soul must cover its ears with so many pillows
That it cannot even get out of bed.
So it stays there
All morning
hoping
until a commencement of words pour out of its pen
onto pieces of paper whose destiny is to sit wedged neatly between pages of other words
poured onto pieces of paper from other souls whose ears have been covered for centuries and seconds; though I’m unsure of which is longer.
For in those fluid words rest a genuine thought or two who long to be heard and understood by those formerly informed eyes.
She knows not however

What dreams drift
And thoughts sift from such souls who write from beneath sheets
And from the one whose soul is buried beneath all those pillows for hours after the silhouette has been gutted from those rooms.
For her presence is so deeply yearned in her absence
By that soul in bed
It cries softly back to that absence
Even while it knows it will never be answered with such urgent authenticity as the words it has written, writes and will continue to ink onto countless pages until forever is reached.

Thread the needle of this idea

A few weeks ago, I met a heroine of mine. Her name is Melissa Ferrick. She got me through college. After emotionally hairy days, I would seek refuge in my sanctuary, the library. While typing away, attempting to force some kind of exceptionally profound intellectual wordage on a page, my heart would be far from the words. Where was my heart, you may ask? with Melissa Ferrick's lyrics.

Later, when times were really rough and my emotive soul sat bleeding in the deepest, darkest pits of despair, pondering self, universe and the like, another heroine sat there with me. She explained with her lyrics that it is okay to take the longest way home. To use my words and not the decibel of my voice or my intellect to explain myself. She is one of a handful that taught me poetry. And I get to meet her tomorrow, and I'm not sure I have words to say. Actually, I'm kind of hoping I don't find the words because as we all know, that didn't really work out to my advantage with Melissa. But that is a story for a different day.

Wish me luck!

My BFF Kate

Holy Shitballs! My BFF Kate is so talented. Look y'all.