Dark Poetry Prose Poetry February 16, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

2-16-04 monday 11:30am brick NJ

i wake up in the morning to find that last night left some thoughts on my screen. but more than thoughts, more a self-eulogy. i wake up to read it. to read myself like a stranger would. because in the darkness. in nights alone like that i am a different person than the daylight allows.

can't shed those tears when someone may see. can't admit to my despair when there are no shadows to disguise me.

i wake up in the morning to sometimes find that the night before has taken a photograph of who i am when myself is all that i have. and as the words steadily form notions in my wakeful mind, it occurs to me that everything i present to the world is hardly more than a lie.

02-16-04 monday 8:23pm brick NJ

there's a void in my chest. so potent i can physically feel it.

there's no need for words when the ceiling engages your stare and you've nothing left to think except for the same repetitious lamentations of loneliness and isolation.

i try to catch the beat of my heart just as it's deciding to repeat again or not. i listen with my mind for the reason that it chooses to go on. but it offers no such insights.

the foot soldiers of despair are lurking in the jungles of my solitude. i've no army left to fight them. they are all dead. i've buried all my warriors and long since finished mourning them.

there's a void in my chest. metaphoric, but so absolute i can actually feel it there. like a ghost learning to become tangible. it's slowly taking a real form. slowly engaging its grip.

there's no need for words when hope has left you, but i'm so accustomed to their company. therein lies a different kind of need. there's no purpose in recording these feelings when you don't ever see them changing, but we've been married so long, neither of us can fathom leaving.

i sit sometimes very quiet. staring at the back of my eyelids and try to decipher each heartbeat's cryptic language. to find why they do. why they ceaselessly chase each other in vain. to understand what in me makes them keep going so that perhaps i could use it other ways.