Dark Poetry Prose Poetry July 9, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

7-09-04 8:40am friday

chamferred edges on all your memories give the illusion of softness, when there's really more corners than before. bevel your heart as if all the dirt and rain then can easily run off. hold onto nothing. nothing holds onto you.

turn over the clock. so all hours are inverted. inside out as your heart. nervous as a naked throat.

give me back to myself. unmitigated and defiant loner. shadow on the edge of the sun. neither giving light nor taking from.

07-09-04 9:51pm friday

it's tonight again. it almost always is. my head buzzing like a fly. myself trying to swat it.

green rivers. liquid bridges. watching the night swim through the currents. and reaching out with a closed fist. pretending to offer relief as i shove it down again.

tiny white caplet friends. dance in the cup as i reach for their easy trance. shall i read the words. offer my own. or just tuck them away like old boxes which once contained presents, but now have nothing to look forward to except the garbage.

let me treat the weeks as one long string. tying tiny knots at precise locations to indicate the difference between. between night and day. to prove to myself that something actually changes.

how old am i that years don't matter. not the count. just how. not the amount. just the weight. but this scale must be broken because it reads so much less. this heart must be bulemic because it regurgitates everything it's fed.

i know not what to trust. can only gauge by the evidence. who's guilty. who's innocent. i couldn't say. all i know for certain is i've no proof. and maybe i shouldn't need it, but i do.

07-09-04 friday 10:35pm

there has to be some end. always. it needn't be far off. time skips rope like a schoolgirl. such a vast playground. exuberance and rhythm flaunt their pallid virtues. even still, even the heartiest will tire. even the best nursery rhymes have evil hidden between the lines.

there must be some reason besides for all this deconstructing. and the various wrecking balls deployed. it could never be as simple as there's nothing left to love. or even if there is, i wish that there wasn't.

8pm becomes 9. then 10. those are the hours when myself is someone i can live with.

and before them i wait. look forward to nothing except. those tempting ways that i forget.

i've written it in my head a thousand times, but nowhere else. that this is all i have left to look forward to. that next night's escape from myself.

to seek saving is a ridiculous concept. i only seek the day when i'll not need any of this. when death will at last submit its petition and this stubborn life will finally sign it.

cull the branches. pluck the fruit from. isn't that what love is. what friends want. as steadily their baskets fill and my branches go naked.

plant the seed. spill your grief upon it. as if a single word ever held anything stronger than a wish. as if you actually ever could have wanted so much as i did.

but that's all long ago now. close to this heart, but far. so far from truth. that's just how i'm given to feel it. never really how things are. that's just me. not any of you.

one final time feed on my love as it aches to be known. one last verse and then forever that passage is closed.

whatever you meant for it. whatever you intended doesn't matter now. since i know just what i have and just what i am without.