losing

the utter rage
that once had me fisting walls
so hard my
metacarpals cracked
is so frozen now
i can't
even find it

carousel

i think in order
to settle your spinning mind
i should close my lips over your mouth
so we cannot speak

drawn to complication

i don't know if you realize
how much i appreciate
your hanging around until two
although you tried to leave
by midnight -
i relish the seconds
i am not alone
in this house's walls,
sitting bolt-upright in my bed
with every creak, which is strange
as i raised myself in
the noisiest old house i know,
so i ought to be immune
to the sounds of timber resettling
on its foundations.
i want you to know
i'm not quite so immune
to you as i let on,
but don't quite know how
to bring it up
so i just smile into your eyes
when you are here
and hope you can hear
what my brain is screaming -
how long before you will recognize
the desire in your eyes, or mine?
i am so drawn
to complication - to the thrum
and beat of a racing heart,
the patter of skittish hands
that i wish you would use
to cover my trembling ones,
and hold them
until i can stand
to let go

in praise of mouthy women

i did try, briefly
to quieten myself
for you,
give you a touch of stability
on my constantly shifting ground.
"your" chapter
is the end of the piece,
no matter how i look at it -
that kind of fierce desire died
in the small piece of sunlight
i gave it
hoping it might grow,
in your looming shade.
so now i brush
the dried twigs with my fingertips
and palm the leaves and crumple
them into powder.
the wanting
retracted
until all i need
is my breath steaming in the air
on the streets,
good shoes for rambling
because my mind will not sleep,
enough alcohol
to make me smile - my needs
have simplified,
back to the days before you
when all i wanted was a pack
of cloves and enough coffee
to drown my slumber in,
since i don't like
the way it snatches,
a razor hidden in my wallet
for comfort rather than need,
for bleeding is a conscious act
of mutilation now,
not an excuse for escape,
but a little self-hatred
peering through the walls of the room
i lock it into,
music on my headphones
so i can rock myself
to apathetic staring
when i am the only one
in the room

inefficacy

i wish i knew how to say what
it is i'm feeling,
but
words only make it so far
before tumbling like dominoes,
leaving fallen soldiers in their wake.

i'm beginning to mistrust words
as they twist and reveal themselves:
not what i meant to say.
not what
you think it means.

i don't
even know what i feel anymore,
except an obsessive need to release everything,
and no way i know how.

i want it physical. i want more
than shifty words on a page,
i
want to be able to touch my rage
and mold it
into a display
i want tangible things
i want
to explode silently i want you
to see.
i want you to fucking
see that i cannot write this for you.

it's not hard at work

the copier's pulse is steady
whirrr, ka-chunk. whirrr, ka-chunk.
the sound of plastic colliding,
rhythmic.
numbing. i could be
thinking about anything now
but i am
as brainless as my copying assignment
my stare is intent:
watch pages
flutter through their assembly line.
no, i won't think.
i will not
remind myself of you.
i take
my job's monotony and apply it:
in the morning i count the stones
as i walk, studying texture.
i focus
on minutinae, sink into the
relief of routine until i forget
to remember
why my brain
is shutting off.

depression distills you

all i want
is to be done with today,
to crawl home and
hide underneath the covers,
for there is nothing else worth doing
except masturbating my own
neuroses
and seeing if they'll
decide to stick around, this time
after the doing is over
and when drinking's the only thing
that lulls me to sleep anymore,
i know i might as well stop
sleeping, because at least
that's not toxic to my liver
only my mind
which i'm trying
to leave behind,
like an unwanted animal,
so it acts accordingly -
keeps staring with its
adorable eyes,
showing me the potential
good times
but it never follows through,
and only the truth will remain,
in the end -
the type
that pisses on the rug & then
cringes in
the corner, expecting a blow

observance

i wanted you to watch
my every move,
take it in hungrily,
as you do
and try to play it
off, as if your
concern somehow lies
within the saccharine
sentiments you spew;
am i okay, what in
my world is new

why do you care, and
what business is it
of yours,
the shape of my heart
and its unsteady beating,
the details of which
you relinquished
the rights to

i watch it snow
in my inner sanctuary
blanketing what is raw
with a sense of solitude,
and solace
in the masking
of what lies beneath
with something that obscures
my details
from your view.

verses

sometimes i think maybe poets
are the least useful of all
wordsmiths, although
a friend likens us
to gods
maybe, if gods have
the ability to scrutinize
the things they create, and see
the changes -
we do have a way of eviscerating
the matter.
but all my skill's as
useless as anything else
i've ever found,
for, lacking an
audience, we mean nothing

so i stabilize myself
against the wall
and try to remember
why i matter, why
what i say
makes any difference at all
and i wish
i could know it did.
what we all
wouldn't give,
to have that kind of certainty
that what we do
has impact

leaving

i just want to be done,
and i don't even
care how,
or what that means
running is the wrong word, or idea
but i feel a sense of urgency,
a need for motion in
whichever direction will get me
the furthest distance away, the fastest.
of course, there is nothing left
to hold, which is easier,
when cutting ties
to reappear somewhere
completely untouched,
and alone.
the type of pose that
is maintainable
when no one knows your name.
and i am
willing to go
waiting on one hinging factor
as to whether
leaving is worth
the hassle, or
if it is the only thing left
of worth.
my hands twitch
with ideas i do not finish,
half-broken thoughts
of a life elsewhere
and nobody i know
to watch my devolution.

sinking, but not in

i will never forget
the look on your face
as you told me this -
such severe pain -

"i want to love someone else
the way you love me..."

and i?
i couldn't feel
a fucking thing

wondering what becomes

i push
pulling process from
the parts of myself
i'm loathe to hold a
mirror to,
for everyone's interested
in something that bleeds
out fresh
there's no end to the curiosity
about the sorrow we accrue like bric-a-brac
glass ornaments on a shelf,
where they slowly splinter and crack
with the temperature fluctuation.
the ink i'm leaking i'll
slowly etch into my skin
over the years,
documenting frantically
before it all fades
with time
& i'm push pulling from
others, now
pleading poems from people
just as damaged as i am,
wondering what becomes
of our creations when unleashed,
what we discover
and exploit in others
and our own fragile heads
how are we somehow more qualified
& inclined to mine our minds
for chunks that sparkle?
i can't define
but i know what lens we view
through - the 50 - 200 zoom,
getting close in view
while holding ourselves removed,
lest we get
too mired in life
to continue on alone

thickness

spiraling slowly down
blood
is thicker than water, and helixes
more quickly than
you'd imagine
dissemination is rarely what
you think it to be.
and after years
i finally have enough hair again
to cover my face
when i lean forward
long hair is good for hiding,
which is why i never quite
felt myself without it
the choppy locks i used to sculpt
in the mirror,
bemused at my
smaller, shrinking body,
the lack of hair to twist
between my fingers

it was a mohawk, once
and once was enough
as i stared at someone who
wasn't me in the mirror

now i just avoid
my gaze
and the face that's
so much thinner
as if the lack of smiling stained
permanently
into a loosely-clothed frame
that constantly surprises

flee

if i run fast enough,
you won't be able to catch up
and i'm ready, now
to go
i'm expecting you will stay
behind.

what hold must release, for you
to forget me,
and i,
you?

distance will do,
a lack of proximity
can temper most things
to a dull roar.

running to the next hole
i'll find to
crouch in,
waiting for the bombing
to lessen overhead
waiting
to gather enough distance,
and speed

so when i see you
in my trail of dust,
i'll have enough warning
to step off the path
i've beaten
into the pavement.

length

i'll never
be that tall, but
i'm working on it
squaring my shoulders against the wind
wishing for the strength to
straighten further,
steel my spine
against the strangers who stare,
the rest
who walk by as if i'm
invisible.
i stiffen silently
trying to steal some serenity
from those who slouch into their seats
as if there was nothing
to this world.
i am sick
of circling up, scrunching knees
to my chest and bending
towards my book as if i could make
the leap elsewhere
by mere proximity

so i practice my pose,
shoulders pressed back
against the cold, the backs
of bus seats,
straining
against my stressed muscles
to stand straighter
act a little taller

this isn't all about you

i hope you realize that,
when you're waking
there's more than the surface
buried within.
there are sure signs of surfacing.
asking me, terrified about
life and where it leads,
wanting an answer
i won't [be able to] give you.
you let fear
run rampant in you -
yet all your reasons fade
when we are two together,
the tether releases you,
that binds.
you are of my kind - too
wary of the good things
lest they fade, which
they will
if you persist in
turning away
trying to replace
something that still
snatches as you, something
that has a hold
which will not release.

just remember this

i'm sorry i awoke you at three
to hear me sobbing, i
don't do it generally -
i needed someone to hold on to.
it's been years since a person
like you has been near.
or was,
as you're having a blast
running away

picture a forest of trees,
i
in a clearing watching
as branches tear at your clothing
and impede your leaving
i, standing motionless
as if stillness
could camoflague me

picture blackberry brambles
on the paths you're
wading through, because
clear and easy trails
are the most terrifying -
no telling where
they lead.

the mask

though it's not
my general style
i'm applying it all this time -
not because of you,
but to protect myself
from you.
it's like finding a mask
the eyeliner used like
the Egyptians did - black ovals
to protect against
enchantment
mascara, color to cover
my pallor

it's the small bits of armor
we wear which
affect us the most.
and this does feel like a battle
for the upper hand,
no matter how unintentional
the warfare is.

i wish we could both stand
on the same side of the line,
each holding the other up
until we stand straight, alone.
but you will not accept the support
you push me aside
and blow in the breeze,
wobble, fall, stand,
wash, rinse, repeat.

i even lie to myself

once i promised myself
i'd never feel this way again
i shut off all the proper circuits.
i shored my back
against the cul-de-sac
but stepped away
in an act of blind faith,
towards you.
with newly open eyes
i survey
this scorched earth
i stand upon.

what we reap

there is a part of me, and it is
not so small
that think you richly deserve
what you have reaped.
it is no consolation, this
pathetic end,
two hurting lovers incapable
of soothing the pain.

this morning i dreamed
of your family, and
i do not wonder why
you turn away;
i am more curious
as to why
you'd ever think she
wouldn't run away
from you.
why didn't you see this end waiting
for you to fall
just hard enough?
my fate, i knew
ahead of time.
these things, this
is what breaks a life.
leaving over and over, running
until you find someone
who will flee
from you.
turn your habits into hot,
blistering ironies
that burn your heart.

THIS is what you've done
to all those you have left behind.