Dark Poetry Prose Poetry February 27, 2003 Dark Poetic Prose

2-27-03 thurdsay brick NJ 9:40pm

it's a cigarette that no one's smoking. just burning away for no reason. it's cancer filling the spaces between this life and the next. it's fumes infiltrating the gaps between what we wish and what we can keep.

if i should want to die does that mean i'm wrong? does it mean that i'm selfish or just realistic? tabulating all the years that have been against the odds of what's to come. who can blame me? if i should want to die and you really love me shoudl you not agree? should you not understand how myself isn't something that's i've ever wanted to be.

it's not as simple as the surface portrays. it's not as obvious as the rhymes i can claim. below the dimmed lamplight. underneath the softest songs. there have always been words unsaid. things i can't even admit to myself. things i wish were different. but all the wishes i have made never made a difference. all the tears i've swept up never softened the reality that encases me. all the pages i've tendered never have been enough to buy back the person i used to be. to find again the happiness i once took for granted. it's gone now, permanently.

i can look to you and pretend that somewhere in that space we keep there's a blank pages upon which we can compose whatever we wish. but the ink is long dried up. and the parchment long since degraded. i can imagine lots of beautiful things. especially in you. it's so damn easy to. because you are. you are so very beautiful in your fear and your distance. too clever to get too close to me. but smart enough to keep me at a safe distance. and i know it. i let it be. because i've got nothing better to do. and besides, i so enjoy standing in the dawn watching your sun rise against my grey skies. when i can. when imagination still permits.

i've always wanted to say it in just a few words. brief and sudden. with all the power of a novel, but much more precicely. i've always tried to capture it. that grave in my heart that you haunt. and the eulogy which belongs to it. but it's still just a thorn on the roses that you left. it's still just an indent in the dirt where we've buried it. i always meant to be better than i have been. but it's still just a page lacking ink. i know it doesn't matter all that much to you. i know it's all just business until. that all it's always been. even the touch, just a transaction between the flesh. no refunds. no exchanges. i konw i say more than you ever thought could exist inside what we've been. but it's real to me. it's not just business. it's everything. that's what it is. someday i believe you'll see that. but i've no doubt it won't really matter by then. i've no doubt we almost could've, but we never can.