Dark Poetry Prose Poetry October 2, 2004 Dark Poetic Prose

8:27pm 10-02-04 saturday

sort it out like a dream. piece by piece the knots in the ribbons revealing.

the contents are. under the skin. tearing the wrapping. pulling off the lid.

muted lives like their tv's. read the story. no voice required.

sealed eyes. like envelopes with letters inside. something written never really meant to be sent. something written to an imaginary recipient.

it seems to take a lifetime just to teach yourself how to die. and even longer to learn how to live.

i remember so much. that sometimes i think it's not as long ago as the calendar insists. i remeber so many details. some of the feeling even. that sometimes i think it's just a story i made up. that i keep reading over in my head.

i threw away all the evidence, but i did not get acquitted. i got rid of every reminder, but i don't forget.

time isn't the judge. it's own our minds that turn on us. love isn't the victim. it's the assassin.

loss i can live with. forever is a faulty concept. loss people can live with. but not this constant emptiness. this menacing notion that this is really all there is.

9:19pm 10-02-04 saturday

it's just yesterday chewing on your ankles again. as pointless as it is it still pierces the skin.

you know. we all do. the difference between comfort and happiness. we know. we all do. everything they have in common and every detail that makes them different.

engines don't move us. it's our foot on the accelerator. money doesn't buy us. we make it.

it's just the wisdom of stupidity that i'm offering. the paradoxical triumph of failing. how the mind devises ways to fool us into thinking even though, we're still better off than we might've otherwise been.

it's just headlights on the highway. no streetlights. just blacktop and trees weaving their mazes. it's just distance keeping us instead of the other way. safety lies not in numbers, but in solitude. tomorrow exists in all of us long before we come to taste it as it rises up from deep inside our bodies like vomit does.

it's just a sidewalk. worn and bumpy. too many tree roots looking for somehwere to go. it's just feet churning over it. walking in circles cuz it feels like there's a bubble over everything. like you can only go so far in one direction. spinning like the second hand. always finishing and then beginning again.

it can't be the dark. cause it's too beautiful. it can't be time since it offers itself up for us to use. so it must be me. must be us. willing gears without a clutch.

i never knew it better than when it was acutally quiet enough to hear myself. early in the morning. while everyone else was still sleeping. no music. no tv. just the keyboard whispering to me.

i never knew it better than i did then. fresh baked dreams still warm in my head. and reality slowly digging its way in.

there's no one. no one except yourself. all the people that we meet. all the friends and lovers we can collect. they're just moments that time quickly forgets.

9:44pm 10-02-04 saturday

sometimes you just write cuz it's all that you have. it's the only someone who listens to all those things you can't say. sometimes you just breathe cuz it's an involuntary act. i've always wondered why life is like that. full of all these methods to keep us from dying. like the compulsion to breathe. that incessant heartbeat. and fear. all the fear and the pain that makes us hesitate.

there are so many ways to feel pain that aren't physical. so many nerve ends unaccounted for. so many wounds that never bleed. or at least not visibly.

that look in their eyes as they loom above you. moving and shoving inside. that look in thier eyes as they push through. it's like nothing else i've ever witnessed. the quintessential victory. that they've conquered not just your flesh, but your head as well.

looking at him then was like a mirror. the truest reflection. looking up then. opening my eyes to the act of. submitting. giving myself up.

seeing it all spill out of the hole he thought he'd plugged.

10-02-04 saturday 9:54pm

so much time to waste. so much of myself to kill. pieces to collect. breakdowns to subdue.

like cancer it invades. moves through. miultiplies and consumes.

so much time to swallow. so much of myself. so many memories accrued.

not old enough yet, but much older still. limp branches. bark removed.

naked and enchanted like a child's view. i tell myself they're not gone. that they were never there. but it's not quite true.

it all happened.

everything happened. all those years. all those pages they asked.

it was real. it was.

i was born. and this is what i have become.

everything i remember really happened. though i'm not sure why it did.

it is this world. this life. this person.

it was something for me much too real. it was us.

10:27pm 10-02-04 saturday

capturing thoughts like fireflies. poke some holes in that jar and watch as they give off their light. capturing life like mice in traps. lay out that small piece of cheese and hear the crack as they die for a nibble at.

it's only the most of. the greater majority. your words. your decisions. thoughts dance like sheets drying in the wind. clean and white and wet with.

listening. ears perked. listening like coffee brewing. noisy and percolating as the liquid cascades through.

some people seem to know just what they ought to be. they follow the footprints others left for them. some people seem content with just being. the world is their map. time is all they have. or could ever want. just enough of it make some money and have some children. just enough to fall in love with themsleves before it all comes undone.

some people are good at looking like they know. have a reason. that everything they've done has led up this very moment that they're in.

but i don't know. arbitrary sex. premeditated misunderstandings. it's too easy to pick it apart now that it's dead.

but why the autopsy when you're so aware of the cause of death. no need to weigh the heart. it's light as a feather now, though it once was so heavy. there's nothing more to this flesh than being alive. and now that it isn't, could it really matter why.

11:06pm 10-02-04 saturday

we are just what we are. wings on an eagle as it soars. lost in the sky. lost in flight. searching for a ground that's just so very far.

we can. if we try. reborn again like seeds planted.

there's no end to love. it just goes dormant. there's no end to that feeling. just our ability to repress.

dreams masquerading as friends. then you wake up. all lost in that sense of having actually lived. it just all happened so quickly you didn't have the chance.

you tell yourself. you make promises. you talk to yourself like you're actually listening.

then you roll over to the silence. to the pillows scattered.

and die again.

life shatteres into a million tiny pieces. and you hunt. hunt for every one of them.

needing as you do to have an answer. but there's none there. just accept that it doesn't make sense. it never will.

people on the edge of their decisions. lost in the possibility. they quesstion you. ask if.

but afraid of their answer they forget.

all i wanted was a little chunk of happienss to call mine. but it always belongs to someone else. it always belongs to them.