Dark Poetry Prose Poetry February 22, 2005 Dark Poetic Prose

02-22-05 9:09pm tuesday

turn my head. counterclockwise. in the direction of when. some ubiquitious memory of happiness that speckles my past. some legend or myth as it would. ghost of a ghost.

i cross my legs. release them from the floor. high up on the plateau of the chair. tucked away into my abdomen like every other extremity my life has never found little neccessity for.

only just to move me from place to place when i'd rather have just stayed where i was. only just to pedal me far from home leaving me stranded. depedent upon those weary limbs to propel me all that way back home again.

dog paddle through those dense pages. the big words of a life lived even bigger yet. joy and sorrow trading blows in the back of his heart as his mind referees them.

all that motion. and movement. restless soul wandering and all the same wishing to be content staying home. but what's home except where we feel most at ease. what's home other than that pandora's box inside ourselves where hope still keeps.

02-22-05 9:35pm tuesday

some people kill themselves quickly. in an instant they go from alive to dead. like a lightning bolt strikes fast and bright and vanishes just as rapid. they're they brave ones.

some people try to stave it off. ply their souls with the pseudo affections of alcohol and drugs. their chosen saviors slowly killing them.

is it sefl-destruction or a hapless form of self-preservation. their own path to forgiveness. reconciliation. with themsleves. with the lives that always seen as more a burden more than a gift.

it's funny how the things we use to help us live often strip that away from us. like peeling paint. so painfully slow the layers fall away until only the naked walls are left. soft, porous walls of a life where every color penetrated so deep, but none ever seemed quite right. always a shade off. drying too dark. too light. whatever. somehow wrong no matter what.

the drinker's bottle so reflective of the stages of his life. begun so full, them emptying. and emptier yet. first one empty. and then steadily the empty soldiers gather. overtaking. and eventually, surrender. loss. acceptance.

02-22-05 9:45pm tuesday

i didn't look in the mirror. but i saw myself even still. willow of a tree. weeping limbs dangling its blossoms over the ground like heads in nooses. the ground just barely apart from it. the wind all that it responds to.

i didn't mean to, but i became. the kind of person that knows themselves so well that everyone else, they can only be strangers.

i wanted to be an artist. ever since. there were times i came close, but i ended up just a person instead.

when i was young, i'd look forward to being older. learning to give love and to recieve it. but now i just veer to the right, slow down and wait for it to pass. there's so much highway it has to cover. on so little gas.

i didn't ever really look at them then. would sneak glances when i was sure their heads were turned in the other direction. eye to cheek. tognue to lips. close enough to taste it, but not be swallowed up in it.

02-22-05 tuesday 10:35pm

if i could sleep forever, you just know i would. slip into that cradle sublime and let it rock my like a helpless child.

that's all i really am. if you must know. the sun relfects in grassy eyes, but there's so much shade. they never really grow. the bottles catch what's left of those moments. and store them away in the glassy graves they coach.

so much left yet to swallow. so much time evaporating into. parsing your life in stages. awake. drunk. alone.

goodbye. hello. hello.

the tide lowers on that satiny farce of an ocean. and you lay back. lay down. float.

let the current take me where it chooses. let the current of my addictions decide how much farther i will drift.

i don't want to get back home. as if such a place ever did exist.

i just want to drift as far as i can away from land. lose myself in that deepest of grips.