Dark Poetry Prose Poetry March 5, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

12:38pm 3-05-04 friday brick NJ

you're just a voice now,
i can't remember your face;
you're just another finished notebook
to be put away.

you're just a voice now,
like the music that i listen;
distant strangers that
speak like friends did.

you're just a voice now,
i can't remember your face;
no space left to write anything
more upon that page.

3-05-04 friday 5:29pm brick NJ

old pages turn to the rhythm of my grief. a memory exhumed. something i'd forgotten i'd done. let you do.

a lonely drive. a loud radio. an overactive cellphone. eager new acquaintances. and not so eager familiar friends.

a ride around town that became a journey. baggy jeans. beer and hotel suites.

an overzealous heart that stripped me of my dignity. an obsessive love that pleaded with you to take advantage of me.

an hour. maybe two. a man drunk on wine. a girl drunk on you.

i was twenty five, but i still wasn't old enough. just didn't know enough about life. now i'm twenty nine and i realize i know even less than i did then.

an hour. maybe two. blood left to dry on white sheets in a deserted hotel room.

03-05-04 friday 7:42pm brick NJ

it's the tears i don't cry that worry me. when i'm so consumed by the feeling that i can't feel anything.

it's the people that care that frighten me the most. i can't speak the words, so i write. but it's not enough.

i'm afraid to not be alone. afraid to love it that much again and then have to let it go.

i'm afraid to speak. to say things you probably already know. like why as much as i want you here i can't tell you so.

i remembered something tonight. accidentally in pursuit of something else. and it wasn't that i had forgotten, but suddenly the memory changed colors. from bright funny red to dark navy blue.

something i used to look back upon fondly turned into my enemy. i realized what i'd done to myself. how low i'd sunk. and i was so ashamed it made me nauseaous.

and it caused me to write as many things will. and as i was composing it felt like there was something else behind it still that i wasn't remembering. and still don't. it was just a sick feeling in my stomach. a shaking arm. a quiver in my chest. and how the words kept repeating in my head. it was an urge to shower and rid myself of the stench. i couldn't remember what i'd remembered, only that somewhere in my mind it exists.

i'm still shaking. i don't know why i am. just that there's a memory of a memory that that other memory triggered. and that i don't think i want to know it.

8:06pm 3-05-04 friday brick NJ

hollow spasms in my head. regurgitating the past in shivers and twitches. memory's bile singes my throat. and i can't speak. the feelings form a blockage so that no words can get passed my lips. i keep myself isolated even when you're there to listen.

plastic keyboards can't quiet this ache. it tries to reproduce the shadows within, but i am not up to the task.

11pm friday 03-05-04 brick NJ

cuz i didn't lose. just never left the starting gate. cuz i didn't choose. let it choose me. cuz what if i never really loved. just wanted so much to be. to be more than nothing.

cuz i answered and it took a lot to do. every little word scraping against the marrow of what i thought we were. what i wanted it to mean to you.

if i went crazy. i didn't go so crazy that i ever put you in jepoardy. if i went crazy it was always just the self-contained kind. i just hated myself. not you. i just realized i was ugly. but i never thought that you weren't beautiful.

cuz i'm a loser. a person the world would be better without. you can't understand it's true. cuz i interrupt lives. cuz i grieve and don't even know why. and then you feel sorry for me and i hate that. worse than feeling anytthing is feeling that you pity me.

it doesn't let me leave it. that corner of the heart where days morph into regret. if i had been able to say that yes i want you. would you want me too. i know we're suppposed to be just friends, but i still want more than that. i know i'm supposed to just be your friend. that's why i can't say yes to you when i really want. that's exactly why much as i want to welcome you i'm paralyzed by the prospect.

you didn't break me. you're the only thing that ever made me feel complete. but then you had to leave. i don't resent it, but i can't say that i don't wish.

you didn't give me this disease. you're the only thing that ever alleviated the symptoms.

and it's hard now to live without. hard to contemplate being that close to you and not touching that flesh. hard to reconcile my means with your ends.

i know that mouse in the maze is what i am. yesterday tried to teach me but i wouldn't listen. i heard everything you said, but it hurt too much to accept.

that's not what i want to be. don't pity me. it's the last thing that i'd want. you laugh when i say what i need is love. and i know why you scoff. because you already have it. and you don't want to believe that i still lack.

becasuse in your mind you think i should have known it long before this. and you don't want to think about the fact that i haven't. cuz love is for everyone. everyone needs it. everyone wants it. all living things have it. so it must be hard to deal with someone who hasn't.

cuz you ought to go home while you still have the chance. while the children haven't been put to bed. while there's still a reason to go back again.

cuz i have all these reasons to be miserable. to hate myself. and you beg me to tell you them, but i don't want to. cuz i'd rather not burden you.

because i always love those who are just beyond reach. it's better that way than having to admit that they just didn't want me.

it's better that way. it really is. blame it on circumstance and make yourself the victim.

becuz i know that you tried. you really did. you spent way too much time trying to be my friend, never knowing i needed so much more that this.

i was only happy when. you couldn't know that, but now you do.

i only felt alive at that moment. i never said but i always thought about how much i'd give to feel that way again. go home to your family. i don't care. just love me now. just love me as i am.