Dark Poetry Prose Poetry June 6, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

06-06-04 sunday 1pm

people don't just leave. someting first leaves them. like snow melts and the things you made of it disappear. you can hold on. you can be standing right there. but it's not a choice. it's the changing weather of the heart.

there are things you can hold onto. and those that hold you. sometimes it's a choice. but more often it isn't. it's just the directions lives take on their different courses. they may cross often at many intersections. and still their destinations could be so very far apart.

life is made up of many elements. wind, rain and fire among them.

you can feel the wind. you can resist it. but you can't touch its skin.

you feel the rain. be soaked in it. you can put it in your pocket, but it'll seep out. slowly you'll lose it.

you can feel the fire. be warmed by it. but it must warm itself. all you can do is use it.

6-06-04 sunday 8:33pm

it's not the cutting that hurts so much as the healing. that's what he said before even realizing how profound.

then i listened awhile longer. and spoke. we sat in the kitchen making witty observations and throwing sarcastic pitchforks at eachother. as if we really knew each other. that we hadn't til now. a sister. a brother. seven years difference dissolving into a few bottles of beer.

i asked the question already knowing the answer. the hurt it would contain. had i been wrong and he'd been there when i'd asked i probably would've been very disappointed. that i didn't really know him at all.

i said can you keep me company tonight because alone right now feels frightening. he said nothing for a while and then that he had previous plans. i didn't ask what they were. didn't want to know.

then i realized lonely doesn't come from being alone. it's rooted in a need to know there's someone you can call on if needed. i had to prove to myself that was something he could never be.

8:49pm 6-06-04 sunday

gathering the hours in empty bottles. collecting. recycling happiness that long since became garbage. got to clean up that landfill in my head.

i'm not out of words yet, but i'm all out of good reasons to record them. my thoughts flop like water straved fishes. panting. smothering in oxygen.

i imagine you know that we've changed. and still are changing. who we had been to eachother like icicles dripping from soffits. then suddenly without warning tiny cracks grow so large and it breaks off. hits the ground so sharp. and what once was solid splits apart.

it wasn't my plan. don't know if it was yours. i don't think it was a design so much as it was just progression.

why, how and when remind me now of all that's been. all the people and my reactions to them that put life into this skin. because like it or not it's the touch that makes it real. you can talk and talk and talk, but voices lack. you can write and write some more, but interpretations fall short.

it's the touch that makes it memorable. the touch that sparks the dynamite of love. it's the touch that you take with you when it's all over and you're not ready yet for it to end.

it's not how much it was, but how little it's become. it's not the cut, it's the healing that hurts so much.

9:32pm 6-06-04 sunday

maybe, just maybe, those words linger unseen. in long, echoy corridors where rows of identical doors all remained closed waiting on missing keys.

lost in the clouds of why i can't see the how's sun shining. you might speak the language, but you still don't know what it means.

if i reach out to you like rose agape. bud turned to blossom while you were off smelling sweeter things.

maybe i would've been better off withering in your shadow. but instead i sought a new source of light just as life dictates. and now tomorrow has left its packages for us. since we didn't answer when it was knocking. send them back. send them back to yesterday.

maybe, i guess, you can sit there wishing you could stop it, but still be powerless. that's it's something like the weather. in that, we can only dress to accomodate it. can't change it, no matter how much we want to.

only when we were children did we still believe in real friends. before lovers were anything that we had experienced. before acceptance made its marks and loss stained these hearts.

only before it happens can you ever think that it can last. and then life ensues so ready to know. unaware of how blessed is ignorance.

maybe, just maybe, life has no plans. just steps it took toward it knew not what. instincts that lured hungry lives in the hunt. never realizing til after the fact, how quickly it does turn from lust to love. how raw the meat. how putrid its carcass. how to ever extract life from that.

6-06-04 sunday 10:19pm

provided that the stitches hold there's no need to worry if this wound will close.

despite the fact that wounds were foretold we went ahead just the same.

better, so much better still to suffer for a cause than to suffer in vain.

i can't want. never could. can't ask. never would. it's not that i don't wish. just that i know well. how much lives require. and how little they can make do with.

just wonder do you feel me anymore. that shadow in your sleep that makes you lust for things you can never be.

just wonder why we did. knowing how much hurt it would bring. it's almost as if pain was the seduction. that more than anything that is what was wanted.

to learn again. to covet this solitude. to watch it fly like a dove out of the cages hope invents.

to stare as it beats its wings against those bars. to know that it can be captured, but if so, cannot fly very far.

to write so much night after night. wondering when it might subside. and at the same time dreading it.

to not need, but to desire. to not have, but to be begging. slave to those feelings inside. never a victim. but always a question.

that it happened. that you let it. even asked that it would. that you devoured it with a hunger greater than you'd ever experienced. and still you wanted more. still you longed to be fed. and moreso to be tasted.

06-06-04 sunday 10:46pm

ask me now who i am. as the stitches we've sewn are coming apart. how time does stalk like a tiger. hiding in the tall grass as it hunts us unaware. how yellow its eyes. how noble its heart.

ask me now who i am after the fact. rain trapped in gutters. ashes unspread.

tell me now who you are. if you can. now that flesh has betrayed us and we've only words left to clutch.

are you who i thought you were. are you still that man. the one who managed to remain so innocent all the while that we were so guilty of.

it might not be over, but it has definitely forgotten. we were that's true. but no more still. burnt away like cigarettes. you filled my body in the smoke. now the cancer's all that's left.

we laid beside. we laid within. we may have shared a bed, but we never shared a path.

your love i think was one of desperation. a caged bird that still remembers freedom. clipped wings that still think they can fly.

your love i think, never menat to lie, but it did. like weathermen who predict, but then are mistaken. the braometer falls and everything's different.

your friendship i think isn't that rare. not unlike the others you ease your guilt with it. but i'm all right since i never really believed in any of it.

06-06-04 sunday 11:04pm

you're gone now. i know you are. just like the rest of them. and i stand now in the center of this dark. soaking up their shallow praise. wondering if that is all i'm left with.

contemplating how this is life. how tight its veins constrict. how long the list of rules it has. grasping at that icy neck. and sucking it down. sucking it all down for lack of a better objective.

maybe it's just an excuse. an escape of the most desperate sort. or maybe it's how much i know. how well i know there's no use waiting for.

it's probably just too much of one thing coupled with too little of another. songs that you remember, but can't sing repeating over and over.

it doesn't really matter if you remember or if you forget me. i don't care what happens after. what do you feel now. how much does it matter.

i don't really care where we end up after. i just wonder where you want to be. if you were the author what would be the next chapter.

i know that it's not so simple as. i know it better than i'd like to. i don't doubt what it meant at the time. i just question where it means to go.

haven't you ever asked yourself why. haven't you ever wondered about. like poetry that tires to rhyme, but can't. everything that seemed to matter suddenly doesn't. like a heartbeat you're compelled to listen to. everything that once was music is now just noise in your head.

there's no letting go. no teaching love not to. there's only the distance that invades. hope's broken arches to walk upon. as the journey insists. how we are changed. how hard it is. how we feel so different, and yet so much the same.

all that's left is this feeling of emptiness. that someone has robbed this grave. a loss greater than any death.

like looking in the mirror and seeing yourself, but hoping that you wouldn't.

i can let it go now. since i'm no more wanted. i can feel the rejection like a scream you were too kind to admit.

i never wanted you here if you you'd rather be elsewhere. i never needed you so much that it wasn't still obvious that i was never really wanted.

i never wanted what i couldn't have. not really. just always wanted to give them what they already had.