.

Standing alone in a room filled with sadness
Photograph smiles in a frame on the shelf
Ashtrays are filled with a death wish still breathing
Lighting another in spite of myself

A hand full of pills and a glass of Jack Daniels
And old black and white, I think Lauren Bacall
Through heavy eyes, I am still thinking of you
Only the floor there to meet as I fall

When on the door comes a knock unexpected
Shattering plans that I must put on hold
Closing one eye as I look through the peep hole
A shadowy figure is there in the cold

Twisting the lock and then turning the handle
Chilled is the blast that runs into my face
There I find death with his sickle untarnished
Needless to say my sad heart starts to race

“What are you doing, you can’t be that stupid
It’s not your time for this world to depart
Just for some girl who has left you here crying
Wanting to die for a **** broken heart”

I stopped and I thought and I heard this thing speaking
Then shoved my finger inside of its chest
“I’ll do as I please you know not what you’re saying
It’s time to go and I think it is best”

“God what a loser, oh wait, I meant Satan
Fine, suit yourself, we’ve a place you can lie
Swallow those pills but I’ll take that Jack Daniels
I will get thirsty while watching you die”

I thought of her and what I would be leaving
How much it hurt she had found someone new
Then of my heart that was shattered in pieces
The sound of her voice when she shouted, “we’re through”

That she is happy with somebody else
How every scar of my life has now bled
Why would I want to give her satisfaction
Knowing she’d smile if she heard I was dead

Then like a bolt or a light bulb exploding
Came a decision as clear as a bell
I’ll stick around in this room filled with sadness
It’s definitely worse than that place he calls hell

.

Left alone, the abyss of failure
closes in,
for days it seems like weeks,
though months are now reduced to counted minutes

Coffin’d stances form the stoic barricade
which surrounds my hope
in picket lines of untrained defectors

I claw at its lid,
thrashing mightily to my sides
as collections of miseries
flood this chamber of my coerced sleep

“I am here!” I shout,
hearing my words
echo in distance dance halls
two stepping on my memory,
spitting above where I lie

Here - a relevant term
as columns of disbelief carve themselves
from my mind.

Forgotten, left for dead,
erased from the blackboard
by the firm swishing hand of fate…
reduced to dust (I don’t feel like dust)

Blisters climb my arms in search of answers,
none can be found here,
where ever the hell here is… yet, I am here

My brain circles the skyline in desperation,
the gutters below cry, trash strewn as if it were me
sleeping off my drunk
in that Frigidaire box

“I am me!” I cry to the empty corridors of someone else’s life
One I’d rather be
Or one who would rather not?

…….

Someday my file may lie open,
atop a desk,
a partitioned sanctuary of hidden ethics,
beneath the crumpled Cheeto’s bag,
now layered with stale orange crumbs

maybe someone will see

maybe someone will wonder

or maybe still forgotten

.

He sat across the table behind a crystal ball,
wearing a weird hat that looked like the roof
of the Taj Mahal, dark rhinestone encrusted glasses
and a colorful suit straight off of the
Sgt. Pepper album cover
The patchouli incense was a nice touch but
not necessary, at least for me

“What do you see in my future?” I asked
He thought for a moment
then hummed some strange melody,
(I think it was a Taylor Swift song)
before saying, “I can not see your future,
I can only see what will happen ahead.
Your future is behind you now,
it is out of my hands.”

“I don’t understand?” I questioned
thinking to myself I have definitely
been ripped off this time, twenty bucks
down the drain
“How could you let her go?” he queried
staring intently into the glass orb
“She was your future, your everything.
She made you what you were,
brought out the best in you
and you let her go, you gave up your future.”

That hurt…it hit me hard as I felt
tears well up in my eyes at the thought of her,
of us and then my sadness became anger
as I shouted at him, “What gives you the right
to say these things to me?”
With that he removed his hat and glasses
and I felt a wave of anxiety grip me.
“Because I am you,” he said staring at me now
and not that ****** ball

A lump the size of Everest grew in my throat,
it was me, he was me
as I nervously asked, “Is there any hope for happiness
in what will happen ahead then?”
Staring at myself I waited for the answer
which I already knew…then we spoke in unison,
“No, there is not.”