It’s the death of who I was, who I might have been, who I could have been. Your eyes will never see me again. It is the loss of everything that might have been, but blown to bits from drink. I’m wilting, my garden is more dead now. You looked and looked away. You saw and left. It’s okay. Not everyone buys.

And I’m left talking to myself again.

Today is a death, I remember two weeks ago as I listened to poetry, it was a birth, a start, there was an addition that propelled me and fueled my search and discovery. I finally had someone to share my knowledge with, my discoveries, my growth. Now death has covered that breath, like a ****** in a night and my home feels like a crime scene. The thrill of the attraction that filled all the moments until I saw you is dead now, killed by my own hunger for you. You were a quick meal I devoured or a prey that escaped my death clutch. I had my teeth in you, drinking, vampiric like, not really wanting you to suffer my fate, to live 1000 returning lifetimes, only you survived, got away, back to your own, to meet your people again, and I am left alone, standing alone, hoping again this aloneness comes to life again somehow with electricity and the mystery of discovering a whole person. But it won’t, never again with the same flavor, sound, hum, storyline. That song is sung

Like mustard gas,
suffocating.

Better keep me contained,
Don't get me on your hands.

My home is a death chamber,
a spider's web.

Like the naked man running out of
Jeffery Dahmer's apartment.

Like the poison apple
offered to Snow White.

Better leave that money on the ground,
you don't know where it's been.

Fall away
               s
                                        i          ,
          ­              then    a         r                               &


s                           p                         a                          c                             e


and

l   s   .

My grandmother was a beautiful woman
like a movie star beautiful,
even Jewish, beautiful.

My grandfather loved her
beyond measure. She held his
eyes for so long, he could never
look away.

Chosen as an act of owning,
keeping, knowing what he wanted.
Never regretting or changing his choice.

Staying, playing house, for years
despite the tragedy, the bad day,
the undiscovered dreams you threw away,
the changes in opportunities, changes in mind, out growth.

Two children, barely grown, till death.

Maybe I'll buy a home, a cave of a home, and paint the walls, make my mark, cave art, and save the home, so someone will know, that I was here.

petty worries.

that's all I can think of when I imagine the sheer piercing inconceivable survival happening today. People waking up wondering if this will in fact be their last day. Couples dying for wanting to breath in a certain way, of their own choosing.

what do I have to complain about?