Dark Poetry Prose Poetry August 2, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

10:38am 8-02-04 monday

what it is. what it tends to be. jagged leaves on graceful branches. that cut the sunlight and cheat the wind.

life might contain infinite reasons to poeticize. but not mine. i can no longer go within. now my compulsion forces me to look outside.

motors bark and growl and purr in streets thick with engines' heat. bumper to bumper and window to window they assemble as the yellow and white keep them in line. and the green and red tell them when they can.

towards sand. towards saltwater. towards prefab meals. they drive in their air conditioned boxes on wheels. they think they're going places, but all i see is a lot of idling and even more repetition.

all i see are cellphones with heads attached to them. and repetition. so much repetition.

8-02-04 monday 9:02pm

i make the outlines. black. that sway from thick to thin. i bite my nails. to remember what it feels like to be bitten. i make the outlines. pale hollows beg for filling in. i just don't know what colors. if i have any color left to give.

i bite my nails. chew away little pieces. i bite down and remember how it feels to be bitten.

i draw the lines. shifting strokes of dark transitions. thick and thin. dark and light. wide crevices hold my unconscious in them.

but where the colors go. what rivers of the rainbow should leak into the ocean. perhaps i have no colors left in me. perhaps they have all faded.

i taste it still in the back of my throat. like some fleck of spices you just can't swallow. i taste it still like a scent so piquant it lasts long after what gave it off is gone.

jigsaw thoughts in a hundred thousand pieces. i assembled the edges, but there's so much middle left. i don't think i'll ever find the image.

skinny lines and fat ones meld together in a sweeping dance of the pen. pages tattooed with unfinished pictures. just outlines. i can't color them in.

08-02-04 10pm monday

i wait for daylight to turn to night. for the sun to forget its rise and fall again. into the grave darkness has kept. deep ditches swallow up anything too hard to live with. or if not them, then something stronger yet.

i listen. to the silence as it slithers. its forked tongue seeking tremors in my skin. it's frightneing how easily we become what we once thought so different from us. shadows paint empty canvases. and suddenly you see the portrait you never knew was yours.

sunset in my head. sunrise in my heart. contrition.

i can't tell what's dawning. be it light or darkness. and would it even matter. would there be a difference.

either way, i'd just laugh and say this isn't what i expected. and neither is what i wanted.

so many possibilities. so few everything else's.

all i know is that i was born. that i didn't die then. as i'd wished. that i was saved. and i've been trying to save myself again ever since.

10:52pm monday 8-02-04 monday

partitions in. divide your pain into sections. glassy, yet opaque squares of i never meant.

but urge supersedes intention. sometimes. sometimes it happens. breathing explodes into living and you find youreself there in the middle of. wondering how. until suddenly you're expelled from.

offer me no branches. no autumns when it's still winter that asks. offer me no bandages when it's stitches that i need.

i've always loved the pain. but not beacuase i chose it. only because i had no choice. i've always loved the pain, but only because there were no other choices.

strike your future like a sword. watch yesterday fall against it. you know how hard. i know you know it. more than once. and i wsih it wasn't so. but i think that you're better off for it.

count the minutes as they descend in tiny increments. in small clouds that the sky does lend. see the rain. how it saturates. give life back. and know that. it has to rain. it has to rain a lot if anything is to grow again.