I place the pacifier not -in- your hand
But near it.

You surely will find it there
Right there
In the dark
When you are searching for comfort.

I nudge it a little closer,
Thinking of little girls whose parents don’t protect them
And wishing I could climb over these rails
Into this little crib
And hold you hold you hold you.

I bid the pacifier take over,
Sleep tugging me away from you with its persistent hand.
A curse, really, to abandon my post.

How many hours do we lose to sleep?
I would give them all up
To stretch this time out and out and out.
You, dreaming your mysterious dreams
And me, right there when you awaken.

My words don’t have arms big enough to hold these great and growing feelings.
They stay in my insides
Crowding out
Grinding down the subtleties
That reside near the edges in the used to be,
that cushiony soft berm.

It was comfortable in here once

The Room for Interpretation,

now lost,
now over-full,
balloon-bright and tumbling one voice and many into and out of supremacy.

These great and growing feelings
and my insufficient words
that fall from me one-by-one into place,
the thudding truth in basic blue.

This place is a wasteland
Wasted potential
Food
Opportunity
Wasted at the bar, looking at your hands
“how could you do this to me?”
What happened to beauty?
And who will be the bad guys in the movie?

If a fascist takes a **** on the floor, will it land in 1984?
We’re at war
We’re at war
If you’re not rich you’re poor

We’re not the ones keeping score.

The Body rejects it
And The Brain reflects it

My blood is thin today
It steams in the chilly humid air as it
Streams like water from a small cut on my toe.
Its red is shocking,
like paint on the black tar back patio.

"Sleep is for the weak"
They say.

And while sleeping is, I admit, my weakness
Today is still yesterday and my blood is streaming like water from this little painful cut.

And in my gut I know that it's not sleep nor pain that makes a person weak

But the ability to admit to both

again

and again

and again

Without the ability to know when it's time to admit defeat.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
in Me and I.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the eye to eye.

(I try to see
the eye to eye)

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the desperate sigh.

I spend it all
I spend my time
on basking wounds
in deserts dry.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the Me and I.

The statements made
the inner spy
I escape
the spinner's eye.

I like myself
And by the by
I make myself
the glowing I.

I hate it all.
I hate the cry.

I hate the Me.
I hate the I.

I like myself
I like the spy
I accept
The spinner's eye.

There's a brand new world
A new universe that doesn't include me. I try.

I try.

And it's not their fault.


There's a brand new soul.
A new universe the doesn't include you. I try.

I try.

And it's not your fault.

Cocooned.

Oh, the softness
presses itself into your very pores
releasing its spores.

Buffooned.

Now your mind
dissolves like sand
when cushioned apathy makes life bland.

The drunk at the bar found Aristotle at the bottom of his bottle.

But there's an important phone call coming from his shoe so he quits the pop stand, shoe in hand, and runs outside to take the call but it's only God saying nevermind, I can tell you're busy and it wasn't important anyway.

A pack of wild dogs are following me home so I invite them in and give them gin but they snarl and quarrel till I've had enough and I huff and puff till they take the hint and go down to the corner store, and I lock the door because loose dogs on ***** is the best way to lose your rent.

It's all peace and quiet at 6am, the rain is falling with malintent but the world is sleeping and I am keeping these hours from leaking out into the homes of the children next door where they slumber without worry so I hurry to maintain their dreams of fairies and flying while my kind is dying in the glowing dawning of the day.

But Aristotle sleeps alone in his bottle at the bottom of the bin, and the dogs have their gin and the kids dream within their great happy innocence as I spin another sunrise from the maw of the sky and then die until tomorrow when I'll do it again.