Dark Poetry Prose Poetry February 18, 2005 Dark Poetic Prose

8:26pm friday 02-18-05

am i alive at all. belonging to anything other than this silence. sitting here. staring at the stop sign above my grave.

am i sick. life's little diseases spreading their epidemic under my skin.

am i well enough to live. or ever learn how to again.

belonging to something besides this silence. these empty pages.

possession. by or with. owning to your happiness. alive on the outside. dying within.

silence inside. all those external sounds and voices no more real than all the abstract marathons your eyes have ever run through the streets of your unconsciouness.

do i feel. touch with calloused fingertips. that rub the keyboard so long that they forget what touch is.

possessed by or with. yourself unto the vacuum your life accrues. all that gravity you use to hold yourself down has its consequence. turns in on itself and takes away everything it was meant to keep.

am i alive. belonging with or without. was i ever there. on the other side of that ocean. where the waves rise much higher, but the tide is gentle as it moves up the sand. and time keeps count by who you've been, not what you can't.

am i real. seen. touched. held. not passed through or by. but felt.

possession. with or by. bought, stolen or sold. some secrets happiness need not ever be told.

02-18-05 10:49pm friday

if this were a different world. if i were a different person. we'd have something to discuss then. but it isn't. we're the same. we're not changing. but everything around us is.

it shouldn't depend upon. it's a shame that it does. but we're only victims of our environment. the world shifts and we struggle to fit ourselves inside it.

anything. anything not to be lost again.

if tomorrow doesn't show us then. eventually it will. the future may wait. but it won't wait forever. all those things we always ask of it. we ought to ask of ourselves instead.

i never had that chance. but i don't wish that i did.

there's so much to feel in life. i can live without it.

or even if i can't. i will. far from choice the truth is suspended like an ardent flag. so sure of itself. so proud and dominant. just a symbol, but it does impress.

not then. not now. not meant to happen.

i lose myself in the memory of. that possibility so ripe. temptation lays out its feasts. seduces the hunger in. and all i want to do is taste the meat.