Dark Poetry Prose Poetry May 30, 2003 Dark Poetic Prose

5-30-03 friday 10pm brick NJ

it's so close like your own reflection;
so far like a past you can't remember;
i can't keep pretending that
better than this will suddenly
decide to be my friend -
knowing that it never has.

i can lean back in my leather chair
and listen as the songs defend
all the emotions i could not,
i can lay back on my tattered confidence
and play with the pieces as if
i could ever put them back together again;

a diamond in the rough,
or a rough amongst diamonds,
is there a difference?
beauty without or beauty within -
the shallow discertations of
life and love leave me
little if anything to trust.

swallow deep,
keep swallowing the poison
until it becomes me;
clean veins are quickly
soiled in the realities
that time brings;

alone is all right,
alone is good if;
alone was perfect until
alone meant you weren't.

and i don't want you,
don't want to want you at all,
i never wanted any part of this,
but choice is for the living
and dead is what i've always been;

if you're far, i must be farther yet,
because i've never touched anything living
in all the years that i tried to live,
if you're gone, then i never was,
because i haven't loved anyone since,
but that was long ago and so far,
that was youth being bolder than
it could really be,
that was then and
this is now and nothing's really changed -

alone is still just as quiet as ever,
and i am still just that same
shadow of a lover that tomorrow
always defeats,
alone is still what pulls me back
when the truth shows its hand,
and all the bets i have made,
don't make me any richer,
all the people that i've wagered on,
still leave me in debt.