My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Anxious, petrified, overwhelmed
think up a fully developed sea
Whilst I simultaneously think up
A false version; the only version
of you that I once knew
manipulation, deciet
these adjectives I had
called home
because I am consistently
sailing temporary ships
When I see you as you are now
the unkind, unedited version
no longer needing to be granted access
into my pants
When I hear about you from afar
from others who remain unaware
of the façade you hold up to impress
the same facade that had
had me at hello and
fooled at
"This isn't goodbye
I still love you"
I am still screaming these words
in my head
Annunciating each letter
hoping I will not forget
So eloquently they sounded
Upon your lips
Almost as if a warped lie
Could have manufactured the
Truth; no never mind
replace those placid ocean waves
with an earthquake
nine on the richter scale
followed with a tsunami
so call it what it may be
but my mind is
a body of water
that will not quite now
Thanks to you
I had been capable
of calming these endless multitudes
of oscillations into mere ripples
beneath the loaded buoyancy
of my body's weight
that is now
struggling to stay afloat in
this murky liquid
mixed up in my head
Thanks to you
I am drowning
seeking to detect clarity
in all this as if
I were sonar capable of
doing so
Surprisingly I am not sonar
I am miles from it in fact and
here recently
answers are not as willing
to appear on this system
I cannot yet navigate
to safer; emotionally stable waters
This would be a heavy contradiction
had you stuck around
to love me
But you had much rather
leave me stranded
Leading me to believe
I am everything
You do not love
waves crash against a shore
that is empty of love
you took it all
all I had
in the name of love
you are a thief
of the naïve and feeble
I happened to be both
and so the tide sighs
drawing away with disparaged hope
only to return to an unacquainted lover
that is long gone
but only
That lover was you
tempest are my souls movements
longing for what it cannot obtain
Because I cannot hold on to you
any longer than I already have
those waves will surely drown me
squeeze the remaining oxygen from my lungs
with their liquid fingers
if I am to remain wading these shallows
and ******* shallow are you
my friend.
Ultimately, I have learned
I cannot control
beneath the crevice of the rock
your actions
down below the current
your ignorance
the bottom of the river bed
your inability to love.
Because I am the crashing
of waves slamming upon
the rocks of circumstance
You cannot control
what you cannot
reach and I just
could not grasp you
These circumstances always end
with goodbyes
I remember you had said to me
goodbye; two syllables is all
it had taken to cement my feet
within a cinder block; sending me
tumbling overboard down
to dismembering depths
of lost optimism
just hoping you hadn't