Dark Poetry Prose Poetry September 19, 2003 Dark Poetic Prose

9-19-03 friday 8:18pm brick NJ

it's dark and it's life breathing down your neck. so much alive and just as much dead. it's all the droplets of thoughts than rain down upon flooding basements in the heart. survival when the instinct hasn't kicked in. or maybe it's just gone. like everything you've ever needed.

mildewed chambers in yourself where the days you've lived sit rotting in their cardboard boxes. it's just that all the labels are wrong. i can't find what i need because nothing is where it belongs. it's just that the shelves have fallen off the walls and left everything on the ground to be victimized by the waters.

sometimes i write just because there are so many thoughts voices just can't wear. sometimes i brood just because there's little else i want to do. or can. and besides, you can only work so long before your mind refuses. you can only listen to the same song so many times until your ears turn it off.

when i try to write about this. you and me and all that we've perched on the edge of this cliff. when i try to write about it all i can do is look down. hypnotized by the depths. so in love with the falling aspect. i look down and i can't look away from it. i look down and it looks as if the falling never ends.

too young. not anymore so much. too old. not yet they insist. trapped in the middle of paragraphs without a transitory sentence. caught between poetry and prose without a rhyme that makes sense. too young is gone. and too old won't allow. all there has ever been is now. and then just shadows. tomorrow not real. all there has ever been is dark. dark life breathing down my neck. always just short of that perfect fatal grip. always just a little less than expected. too much to feel. too sudden to give a shit. and then just wishing you didn't. and then just falling again. always. it never ends.

9-19-03 friday 9pm brick NJ

if the screen stares back empty as i am. if the last sip begs for more. get up. try to move yourself toward something different. but it turns out that it was the same with just a new can't. try to walk. or crawl. or just sleep would do fine. but this chair keeps me still. these walls stand tall. casting their darkness across all the paths that go toward the door. anything that leads out of this place. anything that isn't this much me. anyone. anything. just like the taste of love's first kiss. the stench of its first sweat. as it worries. as it frets. as it runs in circles chasing itself until exhaustion gives rest. victim and villain joined by mutual flesh. life and death woven of a single fabric. clutch your blanket and try to sleep. indulge your habits and try to forget this isn't over yet.

for the first time. lessons learned. hearing myself thinking. feeling. the rhythms in my head debating whether they should keep beating or just cease. leave the world behind again.

for everything you wanted you gave twice as much. for every love you harbored you saw that many more pages wonder why. as if life is to be lived. or loved. or anything of the sort. as if happiness is a popsicle you can purchase from the good humor man when you've saved all your nickels.

i don't have answers. and scarcely words left. i pick up the phone to hear again why i wish i hadn't. i don't have the chords anymore. or the phrases that once bled. i only have this moment in time. this unanmeable sadness. this inalienable right to wish that i hadn't been. these pages and all contained within. nothing more. so much less. these hours caught between the commas. this cigarette burning as these thoughts persist. one more to go and then i'm gone. one more last fall to make it all apparent.

move on like you can. tell yourself that you have. type the lies. waltz with the depression. as if anything in life could ever cross those bridges. you get to the middle and they sink down into the depths again. suspension lost in isolation. braided thoughts tempting beauty, btu not quite yet. move on. say the words as if speaking them is some sort of contract you've made with yourself. sign your feelings away to the gods of repression. goodbye then.