Dark Poetry Prose Poetry August 12, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

9:44pm 08-12-04

cat's claw dreams scratching at your skin. deep red trenches in what is. stiff rivers paying tribute to oceans no one has discovered yet.

it vanished as expected as the fake smoke from a magician's exit. it left me wondering. knowing it was an act. but still questioning when, if ever they'd be back.

i'd drive. like all the rest. on those conveyor belt roads in our motored boxes. vehicle after vehicle with drivers on auto-pilot. in an endless parade of going nowhere so slow.

go there. go here. and then return. mindlessly following the tail of the one ahead. living as if we are dead in the margins of dog eared pages.

08-12-04 thursday 10:21pm

tug the cord. raise the blinds. let the sunlight flood into this dungeon. and behold, the spectacle of knowing. knowing when it's the last thing you ever needed.

oh and those pills they lay in your belly like floating corpses. just killing time until rigormortis. nothing happens except you wish that you didn't. nothing changes. nothing is different. except the way that you lay down. instead of willingly, now you are pulled into it.

left to dream fitfully on the bloody tear that has cried your wrist. when you first imagined how it might happen. that's just how you pictured it.

but life made other plans. and so many people altered this course. only, they're all gone now. and all i feel is how. how i used to then. how i always have, but was distracted. wrinkled pages make the words difficult to read, but they don't change the message. and i remember it. i don't need to see.

we'll each live and die. and inbetween is anyone's guess. pray to the hours to be kind. and otherwise hope for the best.

grab the cat's claw as it scrapes against. the clock cuts deep and all other gauges are offset. see the rivers as they are opened in your skin. your flesh coming open like a zipper. death shimmying in.