Dark Poetry Prose Poetry July 15, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

7:49am 7-15-04 thursday

how are you. how am i. little questions with great big eyes. how is anyone. anything. small questions pretending they are big.

there's hello and there's goodbye. and then there's a whole lot of useless junk inbetween.

how is it. how can it be. one moment multiplies and i am alone again.

how are you. how am i. a little question we take for granted until it takes us by surprise.

gone for the most part. and hardly meaningful anymore. how are you. how am i. little questions with great big answers.

lonely people stuck with their lonely lives.

07-15-04 thursday 9:41pm

this is everything i've ever known and yet i recognize none of it. this is home. always has been. and yet this bed doesn't feel right. these walls seem diifferent.

for all my weaknesses still i persist. like some tree that's lost all its leaves, but still it's roots hold fast. against the snow and the wind. its life tethered to the ground because of seeds someone else once planted.

if i could die. just speak that wish and immediately have it granted. if i could don't you think i already would have.

i'd wish that before i'd ask for anything else. because love and friends and dreams they always leave us. but once death decides to, it's forever. no doubt. no mistrust. just forever. like all those fairy tales used to try to convince us of.

in my streams of thought there are many faces. i can see them, but they are fuzzy. i try to focus the lens, but they are too distant from where i stand. and still much too close to where my eye does land.

the shutter of the heart closes and opens so fast. there's hardly time to change your subject. the aperture of emotion is never wide enough to accomodate all the scenes we long to keep.

the flash bulb bursts open and impregnates the moment with a memory. and we wait. we wait for the images to develop. never knowing for certain, but constantly hoping that they'll be enough.

or if they are not, that at least they can sustain us until something is.

even if it never is to be. we must take the picture. we have to look. forward and back. cause even if i'm no longer alive. no one can ever know that.

even if the film's been exposed. i still need something to look at. something to put into these frames that life erects. soemthing i can tell them i want when there's really nothing left.

this is everything. all i am. all anyone can hope to be. naked branches waiting on their leaves. lost in memories of winter. so tired. so awake. and yet so afraid to fall asleep.