frost

this winter seems suitable for saying
all those words that never
came out before:
i'm sorry,
i love you, i'm sorry for loving you
really fucking sorry.
yes
winter devolving into a soggy mess,
as we all hide in our layers

who can even see us
underneath it all.
who
can really tell what we hide
underneath.

gaps

in the spaces we conscientiously place between us
unspoken longing lingers still.

i
do not believe in hope, so
say nothing.
you've heard it before.

what i do is disengage
a little more every time i see you
i wrench my body away
in degrees.

soon i'll be separately self-contained,
restrained
from acting as if
my desires
in any way
coincide with reality.

to ash, to bone

i walked you home, you
asked me in. i
said, "i'd rather be set on fire,"
your face fell

but this is why: it's memories
that rage in my head
and
stepping foot into your warehouse
of them
would be akin
to setting plates of food
in front of my starving girl, saying,
touch, savor, smell
envelop, hold it
in your arms, snuggle close
but do not give in.
DO NOT want.
do not taste,
open your lips, do not
inhale and let your mouth water
do not want do not do not
do not cry
do not desire what
you cannot have

do not
pretend as if
none of this matters
to you.

i would rather be burned alive.

election

the fireworks, explosions
in the rain,
flashes of light
as the neighbors run by screaming
honking their car horns,
it's late
election night
i listen
and look forward
to picking up the paper
tomorrow morning,
finally see it
in ink,
irrevocable.
change,
blowing in
on the wind.

if there were a saint for shitty timing, i'd pray to her

when you said it at first
i thought you were lying,
i mean
what a way to admit,
years after the fact
you'd wanted most
what you would not do -
ask me to be more yours,
than simple fucking

and i, unknowing
the frail hold you had on fraying nerves,
a snake lying in wait
for the next sudden movement,
which i got all wrong,
so i got bit

which is fair,
i suppose -
after all
i knew i was handling something
skittish,
and wild

spilling

i dyed today -
myself, i mean
spilling ink all over my knuckles,
which now as if i've engaged
in gloveless boxing
and it won't wash off,
but settles into the lines
of my wrist so i can
see the tiny creases
we normally don't notice
all over our skin

i look like a law
office suicide
pants&sweater set
off-set by my
blood-like spatter pattern
that clashes with the decor,
and my shirt
should've used black,
i suppose
better to look
a fool with an inkpot
than someone who might
bleed on your files

liquid parts of life

the shock and suddenness of
unexpected bleeding
as your lower lip blossoms and
all you can taste is iron, dull
and lifeless
or the smell of it, as you crouch
behind your desk and hope
a handkerchief is enough
blood caking inside your nose
or the vividly visceral watching
a razor part the skin and peel,
in layers, the truth from
whyever you are doing it, even
while knowing how
maladaptive and unnecessary
and useless the action is
and knowing you do it because,
not in spite of these things -
always a conscious choice,
for you - the need
to show something,
and knowing
exactly how
to do so

if we still love

eventually,
i answered
my own questions,
as i often,
accidentally do:

yes, no; maybe
[indifferent, i believe you are
but i am livid with it]

yes, the relationship remained
and no, it devolved
into tears, fears, and
other excrement
and maybe in a few years
this won't seem so urgent, or desolate
indifference may one day remain
for more than mere moments

in the meantime i bide time
dulling myself whichever way works well enough
and i hope
that in enough time
the answer will be yes
and i won't be using
your name
in the same sentence as
the phrase,
"stupid fucking man"

fall

instead of hiding inside
the sickness that lives in my head,
i bide my time
biting my lips.
they eventually crack
and bleed
and it's painful when i smile, so
i rarely do
especially when thinking of you -
i just chew harder
when wanting your face,
so
now you evoke for me
the iron taste of blood,
a clenched jaw,
a nosebleed
i can't stop

police get called

sirens swirling through the still dark street,
who knows
where or what or whether
the cop just felt like running
a red light
or whether the red is blood
reflected in the blue and white
night light
on the pavement

the time has come to say these things

ad infinitum
until the brain stops responding
when you drift back to the subject
and i hear
what you're saying, but
i just can't care
anymore
about what you have to say.
talking like, what if
i have kids &how will my
fucked-up mental case
of a mind handle
that scenario?

all the while saying, i
don't quite fit into your picture

but you're the one who started bringing
up potential offspring

and maybe it's lodged
in your mind, because
however briefly,
i did carry for you
unintentionally,
unknowingly, until
it was at an end

and i suppose i'm not
the only one still wondering
what would
that have been like,
you and me

i mean, really

dryness in winter

i wonder
how long it will take
to stop bleeding,
how many
handkerchiefs i'll dirty
and leave stained for you,
whether any
of the marks we make
will fade.
how many days
holding my hand over my face
so when blood runs down my nose
no one will ask
if they see,
i wonder
what are the lengths to which
you will go
to run from me

tracks

the wrong end of town,
i don't mean bad
just opposite
side of the city,
where it is all too apparent
i do not belong
from the strange glances i accrue
walking in my winter coat of wool
my office shoes stark
against the shifting gravel
of a supermarket lot
with a worn sign,
three letters on the face
and the stamp
of poverty
on all the faces

cavity

i imagine it is something like
what a heart patient must feel -
ribs cracked apart, sewn shut
around a chamber
necessarily larger
to fit the hands that molded it.

a chest must gape far
to remove
all of what you left in me.

so i walk through the room with
the peculiar feeling of a weight
removed,
the space beneath the
breastbone hollowed. scooped out,
sanitized and clean
for its occupant.

there is little that remains.

now i hold my chest high to hide
the fragile nature of its incurved bones
the ribs that fractured beneath
your hands, on the coldest night
of winter. the ache
of a cavity in a tooth.

i bite down harder in hopes
the pain might dissolve
into the sudden rush of fire.

something out of nothing

i wonder
how anything
can be made from loneliness,
from nothing at all,
how something can spring
from a lack
of something precious.
and when i drive
all thoughts from my mind
in some pathetic attempt to pretend
i don't ache
for another so hard my teeth clench
involuntarily in the night when
what little sleep i get
fails to throw
my body into any port of solace,
no
nothing springs from the tension sprung
tight-wound in my aching spine
there's no such thing as something
made from an entity
that only subtracts.
in the morning when
i wake, head pounding, memories
mere blurs
and i stare into that mirror,
loneliness is not a component part,
there are no parts
with holes that need the filling
but some things can contain
emptiness, yes
and when i stare into my eyes,
that is the only thing
i see looking back.

automated autopilot

if i never stop
i will not have to process anything
but what must proceed through
in orderly fashion -
the march of days melding
into a steady delirious deluge
of information
i let pour through,
although it will not
touch me.
i live life
in a haze of things i take
to forget you
and i wonder
how much of this year
will be left to slumber
in the dungeons of my mind,
while i try to get a few
pieces back
from the ravages of time.
but don't try too hard,
lest every piece
i tried to bury
might resurrect somehow,
and claw its way
to the surface
like a wild thing i'd
go out of my way to smother,
if only
i could get close enough
to put
the pillow to your face

stairwell

voices muffled behind closed doors
i can hear the cadence but not
the conversation
from my perch on the unused steps
between
the ninth and tenth floor
the elevators
give me my solitude.
i need it
i do

trying to erase everything in my head
and wondering how far running
is far enough
this city's not large enough for me
to get lost in.

i can feel insanity creeping in, silent
as a cat
don’t know whether to fight it or
welcome madness back in
like a long-lost lover and enfold it
in my arms.
there is comfort, after all,
in the familiar.

returning

all the way home i took the curves blind,
hand sure on the wheel,
body clenched
around the hard knot of my stomach.

staring at the waning moon as if somehow
it might shift things.
all the way home
i imagined the touch of your hands on
my body,
arching against the seatbelt,
along in a sightless night.

you asked me to
tell you what i was thinking,
i had
no idea where to start so i just shut up,
which means,
i want you to
hold me so hard you bruise my skin,
make me feel my own body,
touch me
let me know you are here.

antiphon

i repeated the words,
a sickening mantra to myself:
not need, not need
do not feel
hoping to bear down
and force my longing for you
into the same box
as all the other former lovers
i never really left behind, just
scrubbed their stains from me

i'd mouth it silently to myself,
not need, not need
banging my head against the wall
behind my bed,
hoping to somehow sleep
wishing you would hear and come up the stairs
to me

i couldn't even feel the pain.
not need, not need
i'd plead not to
but i do.

and i'm not finding it a weakness, but
a strength, standing
and facing you
when i could have ensured
i'd never hear your name again,
run
until i'd convinced myself
you never meant a thing

but i find strength is not,
ultimately,
self-reliance. it's
the willingness to face yourself,
and everything you attempt not to see
when you confront your mirror.

negotiation

i'm watching the sun shriek up
over the horizon,
mulling over
your inability to claim me the way
so many others tried

i refused all but you
so now you
refuse me.

you talk, about restlessness and
the feeling you're still looking for something -

something you won't find
until you understand
what you search for
can only be found within you,
and the rest of us
have nothing to do with it.

you call us contentment, when i ask
if you are happy
where you used to call it love

and i'm screaming this,
sickened
as i watch this devolution

your problem is in front of your face:
it's not that you're not done
looking around for
a better bargain
but that you do not give
even value
for what you possess:
you don't
count your losses when figuring
on next, or "better"

and you know i love you, but
i'll say it straight:
by the time you figure out
you might just want me,
after all your posturing,
i may have become disgusted by the fact
that you call this merely contentment
and do not take what i freely give

you shelve the offer, tell me
you don't know how
to let someone closer in
as long as you're still shopping, you never will.

i'm starting to feel
like the bruised banana you leave
on the counter and won't eat,
but watch it slowly darken
through the week.

you dissect the idea of happiness, and whether
i belong inside
and i'm tired of this weight[wait]
sick of persuading my shell-shocked self
to try

this morning's cold
i'm shivering two hours
of sleep from my eyes,
waiting my shift through to
come home to you, and not know
what to say

so instead i'll go drink beer and shoot
bleary photographs
and on that film
i want to show
the bruised look
of my eyes,
an honest portrait of what toll
i take from you

i won't come home to the cold sympathy
in your eyes.

if you will not claim me,
i will reclaim myself
and fucking piece myself
back into my patchwork life
scraps into a quilt
until the holes are again
made whole