Dark Poetry Prose Poetry July 19, 2003 Dark Poetic Prose

7-19-03 saturday 12:20 am Brick NJ

whispers in the corner foretold. years that wouldn't become all that i knew they could. nights never faltered in their progression. you left them wanting and then expected.

i'm only human.

i missed you. i wanted, but it happens. i watched a million moons rise and set before i ever even considered the option of not waiting. you chose it. i didn't. but i had to live with it. you chose it. i didn't.

remember that.

you were the one thing in my life that didn't make sense. the one verse i could never finish. like the waning light of sunset. so strong and yet weakening so fast.

you were the one place i could go that was alive again. so alive that it made my veins forget the blood they had. made life something more than. that was until i found out it wasn''t real. wasn't anything at all i had thought of it. and disappointment can't expalin. heartbreak doesn't begin to. like no way to breathe. no air to take. suffocating on emptiness. lost beliiefs digging deep into tender flesh. i'll never get it back. it will walk beside me like a shadow. almost like a friend. that moment when you told me i wasn't. never would be. no guilt. no blame. just that profund sense of never having really been. just floating in this space like a night without a day. wait for the sunrise, but it doesn't. wait for the reason, but it doesn't exist.

7-19-03 7:45pm saturday brick NJ

in my life there have been none of those moments. the kind that you always remember. and even years after they fill you with a sense of having lived. a happiness that you can call upon whenever you need it.

there have been no defining moment. nothing to tell me that this being here now breathing is somehow different from not. in any way at all different being buried in the earth decomposing.

in a sense that' what it seems i've been doing all this while. shrinking bit by agonizing bit until eventually there will be nothing left.

it makes me wonder how do people live. how do they measure their lives. by spouses. jobs. children. i want none of those things. i've tired to want them. thinking they might actually be the answer. but i can't want them. the only thing i've ever wanted is not to live.

i thought i wanted you for a while. i'm wrong. there was one moment like that i described before. one day i was standing in the bathroom, maybe to go brush my teeth. and i had toop stop. it suddenly dawned on me. i'd seen you the day before. it hit me like the roof has broken open. being with you made me glad to be alive. but that was a long time ago and i later came to learn that feeling was based on false information. cuz then i was in love with you and i was still under the delusion that you were in love with me. take that away and that feeling of wanting to live was nothing more than a lie i didn't know i was telling at the time.

7-19-03 saturday 8:17pm brick NJ

time spent alone less lonely somehow than when people try to be there. to know me. reach inside and find that soft tissue. manipulate it. feel me as if i'm alive. not a corpse. not dying.

time spent all alone less lonely than. it's a touch i had to put away. save it in my pocket for later. though it should be never. it's that lull pleading for the approach. the silence that transforms conversation to kiss. you hold it in, but it's still there pounding on that soft tissue again. you put it to bed, but it still dreams inside your head.

have you ever sat back and tried to find just one moment in your life that was perfect, but you couldn't. something to distinguish all the days and nights that have smothered your life in dying.

there's nothing i can find. not one split second that didn't harbor something less than. there's no place in my mind to go that isn't darker than that last shadow. light creeps in full of betrayal. everything that almost is. worse yet.

if i'm alone. much moreso than i ever suspected til now. if i pretend not to be for a while. let them entertain me. let them think they've fooled me. i know. i do. but there's nothing else. and a new sadness is still better somehow.

if you tell me that i'm different. no insight there. if it happens and then is regretted i always expected.

not yet. perhaps never. or so i tell myself when conscience submits its tired petitions. why. why when either way i'll lose. why not. why not. when either way i'll never win.

there are cold moments even on the hottest days. times when you think the movie is over, but it keeps right on playing. there are chances you don't take, but they take you still the same. lovers you have that you'll never touch. it doesn't mean they weren't. it just isn't always that obvious.

7-19-03 saturday 8:39pm brick NJ

in the darkness faces are different. cleaner. words easier. less active. i lied. i wanted to then. but i was just too open. too much like a sandcastle in the shadow of a wave. too much myself to want to remember it that way.

in memory there are places life constructs to keep them restrained. not to forget. just not to remember more than you must. like the wind in your face when all your energy is gone and there's still miles yet before you can stop. not downhill. just going up at this slowest of pace. barely turning the wheel, can't not. the wind in your face and nowhere near home yet. legs giving way, but no one to take you there. never has been. alone on the road again. so familiar. so obivious that. so much like home, maybe it is. so familiar, but you'd rather it wasn't.

reflections i find transparent. tender like a wound without a scab. and even when. all my life picking at. begging to bleed again as if that will somehow give life to this slow death.

i don't know when to stop. don't know where to start again. surely not here or there. or anywhere that i've been. take the darkness for just what it is. a cushion against what i am and what i want. what i can and all that i can't. dig too deep and you're bound to hit rock. ask too many questions and you're bound to get an answer you'd rather have not.

7-19-03 saturday 10:16 pm brick NJ

in lost i find myself again. languishing in the stem cell evanescence. muddled thoughts define better than sober times. what i am. what i've opted to be. break at the sharp corners of life as not to go over the edge. descents give speed, but blurry visions of the landscape i am passing.

in escape i am inprisoned. upturned eyes cannot befriend the sights that they are captured by. empty bottles reflect that which nothing else can. words live like a self outside it, but they can't move. they are only echos of a scream i always hear inside my head.

if i called you. if i sent messages never really meant. fevered by the taste of kisses unkempt. tortured by the places i go and can't exit. wondering if i should have ever entered. if i said. if i faltered against the jaggered terrain of too many nights just like this one. finally find a moment to be different, but i know that it's tainted with forbidden territories. stinking drunk with friends who want more than.

look for epiphanies when. seek your self when fate cuts you open. filleted and fleshy like a fish baited. wait for the cleaver. wait patiently as if. as if you always wanted. chopping block lives they'll never understand, though they'll try. or at least pretend. make the effort if you can. but if it's too much, then it's better left to other lies. the kind that can make you forget you ever wanted. the kind that breed like rabbits. so profuse in their quest to hide what they really are. so dominant like pages unexpected suddenly coming to life. even knowing it's wrong, i still don't know how it isn't right.