twenty five syllables,
make up this poem.
i  checked them, for
poetic correctness.
just, to be sure.

599

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.

An unrequited love that still offers a seemingly patronizing hand of rapport
Is just another way to say "friend zone"
But you'll be dancing in the end zone
After you finally pay your student loan with money from the job you needed a degree to get which called for the loan in the first place

The salt has spilled off the Lazy Susan
Throw it over your right shoulder

Is this my alter ego?
Or do I have a split personality
Maybe this is my light skinned doppelganger
I've got to get these bats out of the belfry
I've got claustrophobic, roided-out butterflies in the pit of my stomach

Busted paper thin lips
A blood sport
Stop it from clotting
Vaccinate me

This vacuum is a rare find
The national demographic is going through culture shock
Assume a surname
Put on the gargantuan pennant
Go to the pulpit and beg for penance

Gridlock
The paleophone is cracked
Study the topography
And pay the bus fare

The squatters who are on borrowed time
Take a swig from the half empty bottle
After searching their whole lives for an even break
But are forced to cut ties and make a clean cut from society

All the lent hands and ears
Are lodged between ungratefulness and exclusive pity parties
Sweet nothings and forget-me-nots
Do a clean sweep

It's imperative to have a method to your madness
A portrayal of eccentric narcissist
Painting self-portraits
While on some kind of wonder drug
Longing for some moral support

Double-dealing
Double crossing
A hypocritical traitor
Who has the right away

I will watch your blood coagulate around the bullet holes
As your body goes into Rigor mortis
I will commit this picture to memory
I would have bet dollars to doughnuts that it wasn't you
But who wudda thunk it?

It's all just an impromptu turn on a dime
That encumbers you with cabin fever
When you're on display in a human zoo
Where unproductive bull sessions are a dime a dozen

Thank you, I needed that.
Because now, more than ever,
I burn
With the horsepower
Of a hundred suns,
Aching to prove you wrong.

For I am the dwarf star
That will reborn itself
Into a red giant.

And though the coldness of your words
And the void of your superficial gaze
Rip my heart apart like entropy,
I will not atrophy.

No,
I will eat
And work
And push
And grow
And burn
Bright, blinding light.

And I will gather your gaseous glances and metallic spite
And like a solar system forming from cosmic dirt,
From chaos,
I will stand.

Through the searing pain,
Through the soul-******* cold,
Through the craters you leave on my skin,
I will stand.

Even if it takes me a thousand,
A million, a billion years,
I will stand.

Little by little, inch by inch,
I will stand.

As certain as the stars,
I will stand.
I will stand.

Now,
I stand.