How exhausting it must be to be the enigma.
To mean everything and nothing at once
to everyone and no one in particular:
To let them down just to pick them up;
to make everyone go nuts.

Please don't be pretty,
please don't be pretty,
please don't be pretty,
please don't be pretty* . . .

Hi, it's so nice to meet you.

*Ah ****.

Keep it safe
in familiar territory.
Nothing non sequitur.
Nothing out of place.
Don't go sailing off into outer space.
Stick to topics that relate.
(Ignore how everything is connected to everything else -
not everyone thinks that way.)

Nothing out of left field.
You've got to save some face.
There's a reputation (somewhere, somehow) to maintain.
Be polite, pleasant, and plain.
Leave the madness in your brain.
Hide your heart;
keep it tucked away,
and above all else,
don't go digging up those corpses from their grave.

"Wonderful weather we're having.
Isn't it a lovely day?"

There's so much more to life.
That can't be all there is to say . . .

I think of your poems when I'm in a crowd.
I memorize your lines and recite them out loud
into a sea of unsuspecting faces,
so that they fall in love with words, like I did yours;
strung together by the wisdom of your golden graces.

I want to bask in the glory of sharing your story,
and celebrate tonight in honor of you.
If I make your poetry a part of my life,
can I become a part of yours too?

I will tell you of their laughter and smiles.
How they wept, danced, rejoiced -
how the whole crowd went wild.

I want you to hear of their praises because I think you're divine.
I'll spend the rest of my days writing odes of thanks.
Forever indebted to you and your kind
for letting your words become mine.

To pull away and fall apart,
like a cardboard box on a kite string.
In a meadow full of wild daisies,
with a truckload of duck feathers tucked inside a couple of chicken-wire cages;
leaking.

To lie awake while dreaming of escaping.
To sweat out every fear.
Crawling through the little door in the painting just to fall asleep again.

Relegate your thoughts
into the vault.
The mind isn't ready
to deal in absolute.

Banish into oblivion,
untimely discrepancies and faults.
When infractions are unclear
for you to refute.

Consign the arrogance,
into the darkest dark.
Let them fester,
never to see light of day.

Cradle the fear,
nurse it till ripe, engorged and stark.
For everything now lies...
Indefinite and in the grey.

Break it.