my pianos a deaf mute
doesn't care when I smash the keys
I tell it anyways, listen here, you miracle, you conversation piece, I'm going to play you without plugging you in because 1) who makes electronic pianos and 2) I can hear the sounds in my head, just like old times old times old times
I map out a Beatles song I hate because I really just want you to hold my hand
I never take my foot off the soft pedal because it should always be gentle and I should always be gentle to you and God knows you're the only one listening so listen here and listen close
i know im not really alone because we are attached by the red string of fate or friendship or car crash and I know this because you're the only one I can say these things to without getting myself committed
if you want me I'll be in the bar buying you drinks you'll never be thirsty enough to let touch your tongue and what is all of this shaking for
who first felt this feeling and said **** I'm in love or **** I Might be dying because my chest kind of feels like the monkey bars after rain we all fall off of because we're too ******* stubborn to wait a while
what is it about instant gratification that has everyone around me filling up their gas tanks because "it's not gonna get this low again for a long time" and how I wish I could say the same for myself or
how I wish I could say the same for you
I don't know if this poem is a piano or if this poem is you or if this poem is drunk and wanting to call someone who will pick up or listen or want to
But
I once said to someone "I think I really need to talk about this" and I shouldn't have been surprised when I was handed a hotline but maybe you have always been answering the phone "tell me where it hurts, and then tell me again"

There are always people
who will want to pretend nothing ever happened
who will want to pretend that they didn't drive nails through your wrists
and that they don't see you bleeding dry through the gaping holes
There are always people
that say they want you to go far
and they tell you that if you dig deep enough, you'll dig a hole to China
but stand above ground, throwing dirt back in like a burial service
And there are people like myself,
who forget what they're writing about half way in
who have gaping holes in their wrists that were never from a cross
and bottomless holes in the pit of their stomach
that never led to China.

We are young, they say,
like the new stars forming,
like the ocean sounds adorning
sleep to the city dweller,
with his leathered face
but handsome pay.

He's exchanging the sirens
for a more rhythmic pace,
taking off his coat
and professional face,
to press you to the wall,
forgetting the Keats and the Byrons
that came before.

We are young, I'm sure,
despite having to crawl,
despite disappearing into
the city sprawl,
and returning half a person,
only memory intact,
and a stream of shutting doors.

You're giving up too soon.
Too soon a disciple of established fact,
too soon beguiled by
your own stage-lit act;
a smile worn, rather than felt,
a dress bought for him,
but never touched,

and for all of the hands
you may have dealt,
not a single one
has kept you young.

The street-side artist drew your body with
charcoal and claimed the best form of life came
after the forest fire, over a more
fertile land, when the ash-cloud will come to
unsettle your vision from what is laid out
before you. He shaded your ******* in with
his thumb over the blackened lines of hope
that you would come to envisage yourself
in the way each passer-by came to do.
Once you paid up and walked the promenade,
you came to the lighthouse in the distance
as a ship turned to change its course for you.

In the depths of the bloodied waters
stones were dissolving -
via an echo the wind was telling me,
the rain brought back to my hearing
rhythms of an ancestor song
with one ear stalking the other
I was beginning already to be divided

monologizing - dialogizing
let us go to sleep maybe the reality
we lost will come to us in a dream

the coldness which came from a misunderstanding
had a touch of nobility
then out of pride came scorn
then hate, then we came
to inhabit the same body
like two convicts in one cell
who are fighting underhand
but suddenly stop when they hear
the warden's step

I am myself scarred on the inside
and have no right to pronounce harmony
between you
but take out the ashes while there is time
give the spirit shape

Ioanid Romanescu, from *Time's Expansion

They didn't notice me until I went crazy.
Until the lights went out and they heard me
moving around the house, my head to the wall
to force out blood, or sleep. They feed me tea
by the pint. Two sugars and milk to keep me awake.
I need to play the patient. It makes me their son again.

Food arrives on a tray with 20mg of distraction.
I can smoke outdoors in the cemetery walk
while father sleeps with the larvae and embryonic
Earth. My brother has turned eighteen
and I have become the canary to his coal mine.
He can live in the spaces that I have died.

There is always movement on the stairs.
Contestants cheer miserably beneath me
like a slave-ship bet of the first to their
death. The ocean rolls. The world keeps turning.
She is wearing sunglasses and painting toenails
into colours I had made her forget.

Mother, take me to the straitjacket cellar.
I will lie still and let the moths drink from
my eyelashes. There are books and women
meant for better eyes. There are trees for a
different childhood. There is nothing left
but to learn a silence. To become a whisper

hidden in the dirt.

if god can sacrifice himself for his people's sake,
then i can sacrifice my somewhat well being to help the man that started this all.
for what feels like eternity now, the unbreakable grip i have had on his god ****** heart
had gotten tighter and tighter
to the point where it has become
something so opposite of a stress ball,
more like a therapy for the ill minded.
there are permanent indents of my own ****** clenched fists in his chest
from the many times i have screamed and cried begging to ask, "is this what you wanted?"
his voice only lingers with echoes of my misery but he still laughs at every single word that escapes my mouth.
i hope you read this and if you do,
look at the bruises on your chest and tell me, straight to my tear-dried, sober face that they do not burn after reading each word of this time wasting piece of trash.
consider this a eulogy for your mind and eyes.
i yield all my time to your blank stares, and stuttering breaths.


- m.n.