Dark Poetry Prose Poetry June 16, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

10:59am 6-16-04 wednesday

all my questions i wrap in pretty rhyming dresses. they too are solitairy like i am. no answers court them. incomplete. they are not to be mated. they exist only to be tasted.

all my mornings just like this one that hunch under the weight of the nights before them. while dreams slowly make their way from the back of my brain to the front. and caffine makes a valiant effort to put waves into this stiffened blood.

all my images that splash themselves upon the screen. shakey lines and dreams' hollow skeletons. draped in the colorful shrouds of my grief.

all my nights that i can remember now. long river rides over waters black. floating in icy canoes made of liquid and glass.

all these things. locked, but open doors. all these things. nothing more.

1pm 6-16-04 wednesday

anymore - three syllables of breath that contain within them so much potential and also so much regret.

anymore - thoughts gathering like dust. heads shaking. scattering them.

anymore - so it suggests. sun shining in my heart, but darkness in my head.

6-16-04 wednesday 7:37pm

i spent almost the whole day reading. quietly. pausing once to tighten the hot water supply line fitting. and later for a piece of cake. with thick mounds of bright white buttercream in dense layers and fluffy pillows of exaggerated sweet.

just reading steathily stole almost the entire day. it took me away from myself that i am right now and allowed me to be once more that person whom you did used to so adore.

the memories i sometimes think i hate occasionally they have a way of reminding me just why i risked so much hurt to make them.

it's what i'm left with. when loneliness stands atop its soap box and tries to convince me that it's omniscient. i have those memories. those poetics that i made from them. to read. quietly. to never forget.

06-16-04 wednesday 8:10pm

as every hour passes still it doesn't seem too late. five becomes six. seven turns to eight. every day they repeat their metamorphosis. each one steadily cocooning into the next.

they keep counting higher. nine to ten. ten to eleven. and after midnight they start over. how can it be so early when it still hasn't been too late yet.

no birds in my hand. but a whole flock in the bush. i counted my eggs and jinxed it. none of them hatched. not a single chick.

i like how our conversations give me something new to write about. an alternate perspective. you anchor me whether or not you know it.

i used to like writing about our other exploits. those were good times. often i still miss them.

cuts happen so quick. and healing is such a long long process. or at least for me it is.

i wonder how you heal. slow or rapid. if you even need to at all. or were they merely surface scratches.

8:46pm 06-16-04 wednesday

i am. i am. that's the song she heard in her heartbeat. one ms. sylvia plath. i am. i am. that's what she wrote that i remember best. that weak little song of her heart trying to live against the indominable force of all that sadness.

there were seconds ago magic metaphors. all flooding my head. but now they're all gone. since i just kept on playing freecell instead.

there are moments when the soul escapes the confines of my brain. and rapid fire poems explode in a panic. but they come so quick and leave even faster yet.

there are times when all seems so obvious you wonder how you were ever confused by it. when life slips into the skin of memory and they touch you again.

a gentle sigh of flesh on flesh. so subtle and fleeting that you scarcely recognize it. is it real. was it ever. right now that couldn't matter less.

for now, i'm all right again, even if i know it won't last. for now, even if tomorrow weeps, i can love what's passed. and maybe evern feel i want it back, but not so much that it detracts from this temporary moment of relief.

for now, all that weight is suspended above my head by unseen forces. for right now, air is heavier than i am. even if tomorrow it should all come crashing down again.

06-16-04 wednesday 9:17pm

it moves like ripples down my throat. foamy oceans with their easy excuses. their dead end solutions.

i'm just water now. liquified again. cold as i thought i was, i still melted. hot as i wanted to be, vapor still did condense.

like water people can change form depending on the temperature. solids. liquids. gases. but no matter what changes us, we always do come back to that natural state again.

i do write now as if time is growing impatient. i do feel the hunter's hot breath on my neck as it pants hungry and worn out, but still faster than i've ever been.

i'm no longer afforded that simple pleasure of missing you. or anyone else. all those love letters lay yellowed with edges frayed inside the battered shoe boxes that hearts keep in dark closets.

no more do i own that comfort of having missed what never was mine to begin with. i can only sit and listen as decomposition slowly eases it back into the nothing which.

i was all right. i really was that. until the poetry pulled out its red cape and began taunting the bull to charge at.

i'll be all right. i will again. i'll just never be sure why. i can leave the struggle behind momentarily. but it never leaves me.

i can want to die most every night. and still somehow hope to live. like a firefly with its phosphorescent yellow abdomen. native to the darkenss. and yet such a contradiction of that which it's born to live in.

9:52pm wednesday 6-16-04

slumbering aches do snore as they sleep. in farces of nightmares that are both wonderful and dreaded. levitating on your solitude like a magician's sly secret. not real magic, only illusion and how we perceive it. vision that promises, but itself is misled.

cool, dark hues of sleep like a sonnet. to actually lay down. to rest. not this body, but this head. to find nothing in it except.

i guess i know you've tried your best. and you know that i have too. that my shortcomings tend to emphasize what heights were shorter than i first saw them as.

i hate to see you thinking that you've done any damage that i couldn't have just as easily done with someone else. i just chose you because i knew when the demolition was done, you'd still be standing. that after all that destruction, you'd still be able to uncover from the rumble someting to love.

i hate to think that you think you've not lived up to. when expectations never were. just moments. that's what they were. just what happiness i could grab in the time alloted. like those boardwalk games with the claw hands. you put your quarters in and hope to collect a prize. i knew the wager. i knew just what. i never wanted tomorrow. was too busy reveling in the moment.

i hate to think that you are sad. that you are lonesome. i wish i could fix it all. but i know that i can't.

i hate to think that i've made it worse, when all i ever wanted was to make it better. i hate to think that you don't know that it doesn't matter what it's become. it only matters what is was.

06-16-04 wednesday 10:05pm

like waking up to a dream. instead of letting go of. how good life could be then if it always happeend like that.

in truth i just move a lot of words around like chess peices. different configurations on that same old board. black and white squares all looking for the grey. all vying for checkmate. not ever really knowing why they want to win. having never tasted victory. not really sure if it's really what anticipation has made of it.

i could love you just like this. all smothered in the layers of. cake rising. oven heating sugar and flour into something sweeter. you said that makes it stale, but not at the right temperature. with proper heat it grows larger still. moist and sweet aa you'd always wished.

it's hard not to want again. even if it can be done. not without a marked effot. not without it being missed.

i've nothing to claim. in truth, i'd rather it be that way. your choices are yours to keep. and i know i can't offer anything better.

and so it slips silently inside this loose skin. pretending that's where it's always lived.

it might be true. who knows. i'm letting go. or at least i'm trying to. but it happens slow. its footsteps hard.

i know you're not that kind of friend. the one that love takes to its wing and shows it how to fly again.

i know this but, hearts do waiver as they come to accept. i heal slow. i wish i could heal faster, but this is who i am. this is the friend you've claimed. this is the love i have. bright as it burns. it does fade. strong as it wishes to be. it's at its weakest yet.

birds in flight never knowing how their wings do carry them. fires crackling agaisnt the threat of so much rain..

i couldn't choose, so you did. i believe your choice was the right one, but logic and love stand so far apart. i believe you made the right choice. that there never was any question. but that doesn't make it any easier to watch it depart.

i know you chose the right path, and i'm glad that you did. i know there were no mistakes. only chances. as life does flll these empty skins. we take. we take so readily. and hope. hope against all odds that someone will give.

10:30pm 6-16-03 wednesday

maybe it's hard just knowing where you've been. looking back. watching it pushing you out. because there are always better dreams to wish.

maybe it never shoud've mattered, but it did. that there were so many roads to choose, but only just one that chose you.

that's what it loves and hates when it's asked about. that illusion of the possible that it never offered, but still felt so real somehow.

i guess i just linger longer than anyone ought to. it's not that i thought it could be other than. just that i wanted it to keep trying to.

06-16-04 wednesday 10:44pm

as all else falters i think now of you reading this. what castles i've built that wait for your waves to tear apart. not crime. only just eager hearts.

what it could mean seems so very pale now. i never wanted to take from. only wanted to give. just to exchange a few hours of happiness that otherwise may have never been.

never wanted to take from. only to add to. and i miss so much that feeling of being a part of you.

be it wrong or right i don't understand that. as time interrogates and love pleads the fifth.

i guess you're much better now. much better than i am. i could suspect. as you speak of intermittent pain, but i would never be so presumptuous.

i just wish i did know why you ache. so that i could conceive a plan to allay it. it's not yesterday i cry for. it's all those chances that came too late.