Dark Poetry Prose Poetry August 3, 2005 Dark Poetic Prose

08-03-05 wednesday 10pm

just the beast on your doorstep. pawing at the bell. you can hear it, but you don't answer because if it would only look it'd see the door's always been open.

the leak in your smile. hissing as it steadily loses inflation. the sullen in your gaze as your speed is decelerated by. your effort to keep moving hindered. falsified by your inability to repair what is broken.

what once was just speculation now is truth. like every nightmare you've ever had. eventually they all come true. what you fear real now because you've made it so.

so many ways to kill yourself quickly and still you opt to make the dying slow.

counting grins on the tips of your fingers. they seem to hang there like melting shadows. the blink of your eyes omnipotent to give or take whatever you still love from you. darkness and sight running an endless marathon while you wait at some imaginary finish line.

it's just the beast on your porch. yourself. your claws unretracted. tugging on the latch. sniffing for the key. shitting on the welcome mat.

so easy to turn the phrase to grey. not black. even worse.

so many ways to feel the love. but all you can feel is the hurt.

08-03-05 11pm wednesday

opening the gift. gentling tugging on the ribbon until the knot releases.

tearing through the paper. the fancy outside which keeps you apart from what lies within.

just like how people are. all wrapped up in decorations. wanting to look beautiful. but always hoping you'll throw away that packaging and covet what lies beneath it. whatever they have to give. not to be looked upon. only just felt. like rain to a desert. like salt to an ocean. not to be seen. just needed.

valuing the experience is what vexes most. that pain should have a purpose other than to hurt us. that it is not evil. but just another way of teaching ungrateful hearts.

i always end where they begin. collar around a stray dog's neck.

you can choke it until it acquiesces. but you've only created a slave. not a companion. nor a friend.

all the quiet that sequesters who i once was. it seems too pale now in comparison to who i've become.

the glass may have cracked in places. but i don't know that it's ever been broken. for all the stones they threw. each landed exactly where they should've.

not outside. nor in. somewhere between the point of contact and the realization that it would never happen.