Dark Poetry Prose Poetry June 21, 2003 Dark Poetic Prose

6-21-03 8:56pm saturday brick NJ

time defiles those most intimate of thoughts. rapes the heart as it tromps bold and furious.

nothing isn't really nothing. nothing is something. empty and echoing all that the world throws into it. like a canyon in the desert. they gawk. they drop their spit. they shout their words and listen as their own pain is repeated back at them.

i am a vessel. for both pain and pleasure. i am a probe that flaots in the vast space between the things they try to be and the things they can't forget. collecting data. collecting so called friends. betting only on the notion that in the end we'll all be dead. that in the end everyone is equal again.

i am the friend they need, but only when. i am the friend no one sees. the one they always know is there, that they never truly befriend.

i bring no pain, only swallow it. i plant no flags, only wonder at them as they wave.

wonder why the wind cares enough to show them off or if it's just coincidence. wonder why this is what i am. just how i became this.

i write in color. i write in grey. i listen both loud and quiet depending on what's been said. i write in colors deep and vibrant. i listen in greys much too submissive. i am color, but they don't see it. i am grey because writing isn't living. i am dead. always have been. they talk to a corpse and never know it. or don't notice. they talk to a ghost and never know. they see right through me and couldn't care less.

it's so much easier to know than to believe. sundrenched people wallowing in their carefully negotiated realities.

dismal days kiss charmless nights. abstract concepts of fulfillment offer little satisfaction against the backdrop of lonely lives.

how long do you think i should wait? how long until it's definite that truths were bent. that friends really weren't. how many songs should play in the interim until the pause becomes stop. until the curtain close acknowledges it won't be coming up again.

i could call. i could ask, but that's just not who i am. i could confront. i could question your motives. but why bother when they've already become apparent.

life and love often conflict. like opposites attracted they are stubborn and passionate. life and love seem destined to love yet never have happiness. or so it is with some. or at least this is what i've witnessed.

if writing is what i'm given to do how can it be that writing now seems less than it ever had before. that people. that intimacy is something more than. a million times i've made love to these pages. married to them as i am. but now my heart is breaking because they leave me with less than i can stand. because they just don't react. and people. some people that you encounter unearth something more. try to bury again as you do. push the dirt back, but hole remains. some lives seem to be meant to bleed upon the pages. to beat against the words and then only wonder at what else there is. some lives it seems are hardly lives at best. all that time. all those wounds. just another rhyme to caress. and there is no one else. there are no other friends. there is no more love than these stark pages can afford to lend.

6-21-03 saturday 10:24pm brick NJ

what is getting married? what is having children?

ways to fill empty lives. ways to live after you're dead?

i constantly ask why. ask people who do. people who don't.

i'll never know. never understand - supposed happiness and all it's various trappings.

selfish is a broad term. it describes all of us. ourselves being who we can relate to best.

whatever love we claim. whatever bonds we build. there is no link greater. self. the name says it all.

what is life? what is living? who among us has lived?

those that have loved? those that have borne children?

anyone can reproduce. animals do it. and so do humans. humans being animals themselves in the strictest sense. living to breed. breeding to live. passing themselves from one generation to the next as if that somehow gives purpose.

if we truly are greater. better than the flesh we consume then there must be a greater purpose. computers. technology are all ours to claim. a cow did not invent the internet. a lion never made a phone call. but then they never waged war either. they never killed just to feel the power in it.

i question only because the answers are not so obvious. i question only because i know that questions are all we have. answers are not our purpose. answers are lies we convince ourselves are true. i question because what else is there to do when the world is full of so much. so much hate and love. so many people living through their children. so many living dreams that dream would never invent.

i question because their happiness is still something i cannot understand. it seems a sham. a twist of light that turns darkness against itself. as if all those lonely empty places are miraculously both engaged and fulfilled. married. children. so simple. so easy. foolish as i think they are i wish that i could be as they are. so content with reproudction. so fulfiled by what anyone can do. stupid as they appear to me i wish i could be as they are. happy just to breed. oh what a nice life that might be.