Dark Poetry Prose Poetry August 23, 2003 Dark Poetic Prose

8-23-03 9:53pm brick NJ saturday

to write. to live and die another night. to hug the ghosts the past has sent. move through them. the coldness and the passion they possess.

to give. knowing that's what you want, but wishing that you didn't. to need. need to be selfish. just once forget them. think of myself. just once grab the moment and not care what happens afterward.

longer dreams than they should've been. much too vivid. and conversations friends should never have. like talking to your conscience as if it could ever understand what you did.

all the ways there are to love. so many choices. you said it so many times. but if words were enough i'd still be with you like i was. you said it so much. i could barely stand to listen. you don't know just how much i wanted to take those words and shake them. somehow make them get up and live again. you said it. that's something but, words are not enough. how much i wish that they could be. how much i wanted to catch those words on their way to me and make them be what they claim. go back in time and save us.

it seems saturdays are for finding the ways that alone designs to teach life that whatever it is without can be sacrificed. that as much on other nights it feels like you need it, it can be done without. because every saturday night comes and takes you. crawls inside and rapes you. and sunday morning you're still alive.

the great loves and the forbidden ones. the ways that night takes your thoughts and belittles them. those songs that mimic and those that threaten. it's just people. and friends. sex and contact struggling against the strong current of relapse. it's just avoidance in the guise of. emotions that go so deep you can't even know them. sorrow that cries so quietly you don't even know it is. not until it's too late. and it's already gone.

it always gives another choice after you've already decided. it always arrives just when you think you no longer need it. always leaves just when you finally know why it shouldn't.

8-23-03 saturday 10:26pm brick NJ

especially for you i say this. remembering how. and when. again and again you telling me. like suddenly it mattered more than it ever did. especially for you now that life has changed on us and we still can. go back to each other regardless.

love me then. love me now. love me when there's no good reason. in you i know i can trust to do this. and so me to do for you you can always trust.

why you didn't fall like i did i'll never know. why your love feels so strong but behaves so weakly. i can't answer. only you can perhaps someday explain to me.

especially for you now that i've gone and hurt you again. you're nice enough to lie to me. pretend that i didn't. just know it was never my intent.

especially now that friends are what we are. and love changes colors before our hearts. like leaves in autumn about to drop. i wish they wouldn't fall. i just want to sit in the high branches with you and forget all the time that we lost.

especially now that other loves stain my heart. i think of you now more than ever. all the feelings that we never. all the i love you's that couldn't be bothered.

especially now that new circumstances remind me just how much you are. and all the i love you's that you threw at me then. was it pity. was it fear. or was it genuine.

especially now that you've listened and still will. since i've made everything worse than. you say you do. so go on and love me again. really love me this time. not just promises. i need your presense. i need you here with me again. wanting to be as much, as often as you are wanted.

8-23-03 saturday 11:20pm brick NJ

now and then the songs change. back to when. now and then i lose myself in. alone as i am, some people make it possible to forget. alone as anyone is, there are people who make you feel as if you've never been.

and what to do now since. endings always seem to come before beginnings. love seems to breathe only when it knows it can never live.

it's just me. just situations much too obvious.

virgins on your doorstep. or once were, but. little girls trying to be all grown up. so many ways not to be young. so many places that make you old again.

building lives out of dead wood and damaged foundations. calling friends when they shouldn't have to listen. they will. they'll find a place to put. words you never knew were there. feelings you never expected could occur. now it's been and done. now you're left lingering on what never really was yours, but always felt like it was. now you're thinking that it happened though it coulldn't. wondering how it was if it never meant. asking how a heart can be so foolish as to want what isn't. as to seek what it shouldn't.

now and then the silence attempts to persuade. talking to yourself in all those strange ways that you do. pushing the minutes like pieces on a chessboard. sacrificing pawns to save the game. withering in your lonesome moments like a lover without a name.

it's too much, but then it's never quite enough. chase the lies as if their source has a truth you can trust. feel the start as you embrace the finish. draw the picture in your heart. jagged pencil sketches of the feelings you've collected throughout the course of trying to avoid. it didn't quite work out as such. it never so happened that you could resist love in any form. no matter how useless or how wrong. it still insisted on happening. it still had to take you for everything you could ever feel. much as you resisted it still took every whisper and made it scream.

all of them. every person. few and far between. and yet. too much. too deep. hanging there like paused songs. blinking. begging to move again. turn off the amplifier. don't listen. love isn't what you can ever have. just what they ask of it. just what you can.