Dark Poetry Prose Poetry April 18, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

8am 4-18-04 sunday

i couldn't take a picture with a camera, so i took a picture with my art. for only the second time in my life i was able to capture the euphoria of love and the heart's genuine desire to only find pleasure in the happiness of another.

04-18-04 sunday 8:45pm

my heart sped up in my chest. running so sharp i could hear it outside my head. but i hadn't done anything except gone downstairs to get a cold drink. and given up hope on finishing the book in one day with my eyes beginning to ache as they did.

rereading the bell jar felt like both a spiritual journey and still the same a cliched parody of actual depressives and poets. but as her metaphors poured her grief into my head i didn't care anymore if it was cliche. i was so aborbed with this kindred spirit.

i stood and stared blankly down at my mother laying on the tan leather couch. fluffy old white cat glued to her hips. arms folded cross my chest. green icy bottle tucked neatly under them. while she spoke about tv shows and the real people on them. in the 21st century tv went from fiction to contrived reality. and it was both fascinating and depressing. cold cucumbers of people sliced into metaphoric salads of semi-life spalshed the screen on all hundred some channels we received. it was almost as if the concept of the show being real had made all the participants in it less real somehow. not like actors in plotted programs. but clones coming off an assembly line in a long and winding procession of detached deliberance.

i seldom watch tv. but i often read it. muted so that the music has free reign. the little captions scroll in black panels over the images. and it becomes more alive. i read the words and hear the different peoples' voices speaking them in my head. all to the rhythm of my chosen soundtrack.

all the while i sit wondering why these otherwise unknown people choose to flaunt themselves to the nation. perhaps the world. how they do it so seamlessly. if they even infact are real people.

little messages filter in through my barbed wire broodings. the tug of a smile when you were about to cry. the ripple of orgasm just before you were set to give up on the climax. people. real ones. not on tv. perched over keyboards like birds roosting. pecking at keys for a nourishment they can never bring.

and even there infront of me. large as life. bright orange head. brighter orange smile. moving so fast in his stillness he's merely a blur. and my heart divided. sliced right down the center by a love both selfish and selfless. bleeding all over the nurturing hug he imposed. and then pausing to listen. hearing his heartbeat. the life i can't stand to gaze upon too long, singing like a quiet song in my ears. filling me with a sense of connection that i wish i'd never known. since it is either imagined or else doomed to be broken.

then release like flying over the handle bars. watching the ground pull you into its hard and tearing grip. if i had just one wish i think i'd wish to remain in that embrace forever. just listening to his heart whispering its soft music.

04-18-03 sunday 9:16pm

lofty as the tallest oak tree. almost touching the sun. fat green leaves pointed and petulant. shadowing the grass below it. mocking the very earth from which it springs.

shadows are not dark. they are the opposite of light. its soulmate. its reason for being. each just as neccessary to the other as they are.

i could just flush it all away. in sweet moist waves of submission and withdrawal. like some drunken thunderstorm that turns sand to mud and erases the entire landscape.

i could listen like a hollowed out melon. all the meat inside scooped out and served in delicate orbs at life's endless luncheon. a cantaloupe shell sheered clean and empty. with pretty spiked edges. waiting on a new filling. but even if it should be filled again the contents would be foreign. so wrong. it would feel whole again briefly. then soon it would realize that what was now inside did not belong.

distant as that first spark of a song before you have the chance to raise the volume. the stifled sigh of a guitar. the muted breath of a piano. they try to touch me. they surge my blood. stutter my heart. but they're too far away. the expanse too great. so i lay back and close my eyes and pretend i can see the music like its an entity. it forms shadows behind my lids. dancing balls of black and red quake and writhe in changing rhythms. jump and recoil in frantic seizures as the acceleration builds and breezes.

it is stagnant air. recylced nights fill my lungs with those same tired diatribes. it is glassy and cold. like the bottles i unfold. oceans of knowness with a forgetful undertow.

04-18-04 sunday 9:47pm

i had wanted to write. i did write, but i had wanted to write to you. because when i write directly to you it feels read.

didn't want to be all long and existential, but what else is there to be when writing such as this.

i envy your easy relationship with life. not envy in a hateful way. just admire it i guess.

on the one hand i see it as all so futile. no better than animals obeying their survival instinct. on the other, i know there is much more to human life than simple survival. i think. but maybe not. at times that seems all people strive for. to live another day. and i wonder why. why 98 year old feebs hang onto every last breath. why they didn't unburden their families years ago.

how selfish life is. how it wants nothing more than to keep existing. when ultimately it must die anyway. how they dream of heavens, but don't really believe in them any better than i do or else they'd welcome death.

just fear. that's all. i am afraid as well. of the pain. of not succeeding. of institutions with their stark white walls csnsuming me. and bank accounts running dry supporting it. and endless years sitting typing just like this. to people i can never really know. taking flat polaroids of my person and believing they have depth. people who can never truly know me languishing in my jarring poetics.

always a twig or a branch reveals their path toward my center. and like a deer i scurry for cover in the deepest forests of my unconscious. presuming them hunters. presuming their guns are loaded. since better to be wrong and not full of their bullets than be torn open like that.

i had wanted to be someone different by now. only i am different and i like it even less. only i have changed so much. but none for the better.

i walked for so long and so far that i thought my toes would burst open like overfilled balloons. only instead of spewing just helium their blood would fill my shoes. i walked through neighborhoods of fraternal twin houses. so smiliar, only slightly different. and counted the basketball hoops standing tall and aloof perpendicular to their very suburban two car garages. and i saw men in their yards cleanimg, grooming and tending. like fleshy lawnmowers being phantomly steered. and minvans and svu's decorated every driveway. as if no happy life could be complete otherwise.

i walked and listened to the music that one little aa battery could not muster the strength to make loud enough as urgent vehicles transported their cargo over the parkway to so many destinations i could only imagine. and wondered at where they could be going. and in such a grave hurry. while the climbing sun made my jacket heavy and my pants feel much too long.

i traipsed through the carcass of life like a scapel in an autopsy. it might've been alive once, but now looked so dead in my eyes. it moved only in reflex. it gazed back as only unblinking eyes can. and i thought as dead as i felt walking those crowded empty streets, how much more alive than they i actually am.

that if i should die during that stroll struck by some much too hurried driver. that i'd have no regrets. no want for a heaven that doesn't exist. how i'd only welcome death like an old friend i hadn't seen in years, but had always missed.