Turn off the light,
Force my eyes to adjust  
So for a brief point in time
I don’t have to deal with the world.

The roués of an instance
Pressing and compressing
Ideas once held so dearly,
So close to the chest,
Fundamental morals that are nurtured and grown to define who I am, to determine what defines me,
to know what best explains who, what, when, where and why I become ‘I’;


...Has warped.

We are all required
To develop an acquired
Taste of territoriality
Over who we are, and what we have
Or,
Who we have and why we are.

“She is mine. From the second I laid eyes on her I knew.”- The Landlord

That determinism,
That ‘I am who I am, and the only thing that changes is time’
Is flawed.
Time does not change!
Who we are changes!

Change only comes from within.
The unfathomable amount of people I can and will be,
Stems from me and myself alone.
However poignant this is,
The matter arises that,
No question how much responsibility I have for why I am, who I am, and who I need to be;
These people will never meet.

We are told to dream,
That we can be whoever we want to be,
Though we never want to be who we are.
The closer we get to the carrot,
The more we realise
It is dangling from the pole taped to our heads.

Never live for the dream
Just be existent in the present,
For the vision does not exist.
And never will.
It just changes.



*And I am sick of dreaming… But I lack sleep.

…Oh god, what have I done?

Here.
Attempting to write something
To match your eyes.

Something that will make you see things
The way I see things.

Noticing.
Every mark.
Torn by  fences climbed
To get away from those who didn't take your hand
And fly.
They left intricate laddered rips in your jeans,
Though you try to hide the fact that you know,
That I know that is the case.

We play childish games of denial
Because all romance is to be transported to a time when we were innocent.

Back to a place where ‘I love you’ is what your parents said
When all the screaming, laughter
And the innocence of loud noises stop
And is replaced by silence.

‘I love you’ made that warm feeling
Growing and radiating out
Eventually finding the tips of your fingers and ends of your toes
And bursting out,
Moving through to the next person you touch.


Contrary to popular practice,
‘I love you’ is not just three words to be said
When you are trying to break the awkward silences
Left between two people who have simply gotten used to each other.


I love red licorice.
It gives me a warm feeling of sugary goodness.
Though artificial,
In the times when the weight of the world is the weight of your sheets
That lay a top of your body
Which you tell yourself over and over and over
It is not good enough for that person
Who gives you the inner warmth
That a campfire gives your shins;
I find that artificial red licorice warmth is good enough.
And sometimes good enough is the best we can get.

Here.
In the hope that the words that must be said
Stream from ink to page.
I hope my hand moves so fast over the page
That smoke starts flowing and my words mean something...



But no words come.
No letters.
No ink scratches the page.





*I just want you to see the way I do.

I don’t love you.
But if I did,
I would spend countless hours writing poems for you.

I don’t love you.
But if I did,
I would perform seppuku so not only I could remove the pain of you being with another man,
but I could show you all of the scars in me that you left behind.

I don’t love you.
But if I did,
I would construct convoluted, conniving catastrophes in which every man that hurts you gets the plague.
I would spend hours on your facebook hoping for a hint that you still care,
And not care that the amount of time spent thinking about the idea I have of you could be used to possibly pursue another,
Though all I want is to be wrapped in beautiful white cloth with you,
Swinging slowly in the warming sunlight and talking about nothing but everything is felt instead of heard and the intentions of what is said become blindingly more important than what is heard.

I don’t love you.
But if I did,
I would hold it deep inside, though the sight of your car outside his house at three in the morning and the news of your new job and new tattoos drive pins covered in ‘I love you’ into the pit of my stomach, promptly followed by bowling ball to knock them down.

I don’t love you…

…*but if I did, I would pretend that I don’t.