The lighting plays a big part in my head
Street lamps and the inside of a car
It is dark and cold

Awkward with the build up
And with the words that were said
Out of convenience
From a different place than mine
All make believe and what is not there

But what is was
A damp morning appointment
To get out of the way
Cold hands and embraces
Coming from two different places

Ah silly boy
It is already a half lie
And I can make it whole

I wake up now
Writing poetry in my head
Sleep glazed lines that disappear before it matters
Before they are caught
And the sun is not yet up still

I will not answer for this
So leave me be but

I am getting of track again
Keeping my thoughts behind me
And guts in knots

Waiting
Predestined for difficulty
In the warm corner of a coffee shop
Writing ****

You will believe what I tell you, Simply
I cannot see a way out of this unscathed
So please tell me
Are you ready for it?

I guard my heart with iron covered sarcasms
And the make believe
A **** won't help these matters
But what do I care?
I am here now, only for the ride

I have died for years and years
I've had my fill
It's the empty house out West that I want now
Where the expectations are only half realized
And maybe met

while I say:
This is my home now
In the spaces between right and wrong
Here and gone

So this is my life now

I swear, it must have happened while I was asleep

I wake

And you are in the desk drawer, divided between us three

Because I do not know where she should go

I haven't made it there yet

Putting my creator in the ground

Mixed with the bugs and so many worms

My ash love

My Mother of bone

Can you tell me then what it means

When the ones who gave me life are dead

And all of the proverbial ships have sailed

I am left crafting an uncalled for exit

In my dream
My teeth fell out
And in my dream
I didn't want to marry you
Because there was no love
I held hands with a man who might be dead
And it's what I wanted

I can do this
I can work and disappear
Carving myself down
With each pounding step
A repentance of sorts

Becoming still within myself
Becoming hard and duplicitous
A reflection in a shiny knife
Because it's what I wanted

There is no punctuation in the language we speak
It is not important enough for that
All of it a run on sentence
All of it enough to destroy me
It's what I have wanted

You and I can be the modern day Ted and Sylvia

Self-destruction for two, please

Yes, I have it easy... but  do not mistake it with happiness

I am constantly trying to make it harder

To make it fall apart

Predestined for difficulty

You said folk like us are self-involved

There is nothing I can do now but wait

In the warm corner of a coffee shop

Writing ****

I rise only for the night
We are in this together
Dark and lonely sisters
Or kindred spirits you might say

I roam her
Black
Like tar in the atmosphere

The stars are hers also
But we are not connected
They are so high above
Stuck in her immovable , eternal blanket

Only to glare down nightly
And laugh at our suffering
Our lives
And our inescapable death

But I have nothing to do with them, anyhow

I remember the soft lights
And the quiet
Combining for the making of a dim room
With the rearrangement of furniture
To make space for a bed

It was cold
Always so unnaturally cold
And the odor
Specific to a place
The closed up smell of an air conditioned house in summer
All stale and faintly medicinal

Babies- we were led in to perform a task that was bigger than us
Please say your piece to a life that is going away
Okay
A slice of time carved out
And then carved straight back into me

Hypnotized in a little girl trance
By the minutes ticking down
And you
You were sunken down in the hospital sheets- white
A ghost already
Gone already

My emergence
Both a beginning and an end
Down, down the dark hallway
I lied
Riding the coattails of my sister
Sliding in
Praying for invisibility
Wondering what is was I was lacking

But it was too late

Now the room is a morgue
And I had one more turn to take
As I bent over you holding back my hair
With both hands
To kiss your forehead
Cold now as the room

Sleep is the only reprieve
When life is stuck on repeat

But even then I see the dead
They carry on as if nothing has happened
They aren't dead

Back in the past
Back in the downstairs Den up North
All stale and brown

I cannot keep people in their proper places
They become jumbled in my heart
Everything and nothing happen so quickly to me

Where is the schizophrenic in the woods?
And the boy out in the corn fields?
I cannot flatter myself anymore with your existence
When mine is fighting for its own

Baseline
Low lying
Like a lizard on a rock
Gathering all of your energy from what is around you
Nothing inside
Acting on impulse
With a brain millions of years old

That is how old you are

Who came first?
Me or You

You stop progress
Throw up your hands
And shut my mouth
Hiding in your gut cave

Eraser of thoughts
And I with a blank slate face
Flaring up
Tightening at the smallest of advances
Protection above all
Safety is paramount...

A field of daisies
Is where you began
And ended in a drawn out suicide

It took you
One night at a time

Drop by drop
Out of the ocean that
was you

Is that house in the woods still there?
And is that where all of the ghosts have gone?
To wait for me in the cracks in the floor
In the closets
And under the beds

But wait!
I had forgotten
You never got that far
Before life decided it didn't belong to you
And took it back
Into the void

"Come inside, everything you love is here with us now"
That is what it screamed
Day after day
And when the night came too
Only then louder when it became dark

I can't blame you for your homecoming
To the party that was waiting
On the kitchen floor...