Dark Poetry Prose Poetry February 28, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

02-28-04 saturday 9am brick NJ

a voice breaks in and acts as the receptacle for all my anger. this voice is strong and loud and antagonizes, but just enough to draw me out and then it's quiet. am i cured. no. and neither him. but the symptoms are abated for a little while.

then i question him. why do you listen. especially since you could be talking. knowing before i've even finished the sentence that any answer he would submit will be deflected by stubborness.

and so the night laid down beside me and bared its belly like a drunken puppy. and for the first time, it was i who was dominant.

02-28-04 5:11pm saturday brick NJ

i look back every now and then. look back upon the sunlight to see if it still shines when no one is there. it just pats me on the shoulder and tells me to nevermind.

stomping through conversations like goliaths without a david. teach me what alive is other than this anger. this sadness. if only you could, but you don't know either.

fashion blankets out of barbs. pillows from sighs. and then we lie down in the bed we've created, but do not sleep. just lay awake waiting.

i look back every so often. look back to check if you might be there. but all i find is the sunlight telling me to forget.

02-28-04 8:24pm brick NJ saturday

will they change me. of course they will. every little thing does. this poison in my blood doesn't come from the usual suspects. it's indigenous.

to sit and suppose how life has beaten me when it hardly even tried. stuttering helplessly with one stubborn thought caught in my throat. not wanting to breathe. but still not wanting to choke.

change will often wear the clothes of despair. black trenchcoat harbingers of hell only knows. men in black phases cause me to forget who i am. all about myself that i ought to know.

like years ago that try to teach me from within the confines of their notebook pages. discoveries of anger and hatred that i'd long since tucked away.

the ashtray testifies to my innocence. that guilty is something far outside the scope of human emotion.

will they change me. they already have. will it matter. i don't see how it can.

to sit and pretend that i have some command of my insides. that filling an empty screen can somehow justify. pacing relentlessly in a circle of self-hatred. like being born every time that i breathe. i'm filthy and waiting to scream. like a fetus in the birth canal. it's a long dark path to a life beyond now.

02-28-04 saturday 8:57pm brick NJ

can't say that i'm broken. nor that i'm whole. can draw pictures of the sadness. just find it hard to color them in.

every minute asks so much. cold palettes of clock ticks that put me further into their debt. because i owe them. they deserve more than i can offer. because every minute begs me to let it live and like a cold dictator i just sentence them to death.

to know that i'm alive. to really know it. should i bleed myself to prove it. would that? to know that i'm alive. how to know that again.

when the nights were soft like beds umade. and they fed hungry hearts until they were fat and bloated. when days were long and it was good that way. all stuffed up with memories of the last time and anticipation of the next.

can't say that i don't feel the loss. nor that i haven't gained. still tend look back and long for that which isn't to be again.

every memory begs the question. why'd i make them suffer so much. long black and white movies relive the events that turned complacency to passion.

to remember what life was and be certain that i touched it. temptation is eager to please, but not so eager to admit its faults.

to know that i'm alive. if i can. when every day urgently needed to be. just to experience what would happen next. when every night desperately longed to occur. just to feel. just to feel us once more. to breathe, not with lungs, but through flesh. to feel every atom expanding until the universe only had room for us.

02-28-04 9:03pm

write what you know they said and then left me to figure out the rest. be who you are they preached and then left me to speculate on what that could mean.

write for a while and then see what you're left with. but you must remember to live while you still can. don't neglect it.

write as you do all obsessed with. and when all your obsessions have abandoned you, what will you write then?

write like someone is reading. or else forget them. write between beers or else write accompanied by them.

when all my days have caught up to the nights that chase them. when all these nights have opened up their borders to those tattered immigrants. will they be accepted. or will they be blamed for all the problems that happned before that could've possibly caused them.

write what you know they said and then left me to determine the end. caught in a sunstroke epiphany i fell down and woke up to find the season had changed. outside, but not within. summer had lost. we were defeated.

02-28-04 saturday 9:13pm brick NJ

in trying and failing. there's a whole universe that exists between. in all my hours kept quiet there's still a few places i haven't been. in all that listening and talking there's a world of could bes.

i try too hard. don't try enough.

in the last few bottles of the evening there's a place that's seldom reached. as i make my notes on how the hours are shrinking they design their own. as i attach my life to these sublime beverages they adhere themselves to other portions of my existence.

it's not that i'm weak. i know this now. and it's not that love isn't real. just that it's often wrong about. it's not that i need this. just that it's easier to take it.

it's not about how tomorrow lied to us. it's just that i believed her. it's that she meant every bit of it, but she didn't know she was mistaken.

it's not that i'm broken. just something slightly different. i can walk, but not without a limp. i can lie down in it, but this bed is still barren.