I realized something.
Tenderness gets you nowhere in the face of apathy.
Apathy is ruling us.
It is ruling me in my heart and in its grotesque reflections.
I cower at it and forget myself and whimper and say all the wrong things.
Hateful things, as my heart is on fire.
There is an anger in me, a blood red rage and then there is calm, cool, unaffected apathy.
It does not rear its head like the bull of my anger, but sinks like a stone.
Makes cool my bones.
I would rather spit fire, I’d rather let it wreck my lungs.
I wish I could scream it out or fight it out or **** it out or maybe just forget it exists.
But it remains frozen ice throughout me that weighs me to the ground.
The magnet that pulls me down down down.
Maybe this is the doomed, inevitable thing I’m feeling, the fear that my apathy will never melt away.
That I’ll never see the brighter days.
The stars in me keep choosing the wrong things and i’m lost in a galaxy of apathy.
Tenderness would melt me.

A case for apathy-- maybe I would get some sleep.

I am kind of this perpetually tired
Sack of flour
I’ve been staring at the walls for hours
All I am full of is nothing
And it sounds pretty dramatic
But when i’m fulfilled, there’s no room for sadness
There’s no madness
I feel fine (if fine is the absence of anything)
I feel tired
All the time
I’m never sure what to make of times like these
Am I crashing from the caffeine?
This lack of feeling turns me into darkness
I couldn’t face another human being right now
I’d be exhausted
Apathy is the thing i’m avoiding everyday and every night
Since I learned how to write
Apathy is a man’s plight
Apathy is where they go at night
When you leave me here
I can’t articulate
What I want you to hear
Just know on some days I would **** to care
I’d love to feel
I want us all to be there
A red hot drum beat
A bleeding snare
I’ll touch you where you’ll feel it
Here are our tears -- which one of us means it?
I hadn’t cried in months but
You still haven’t opened me up as much
As I desperately want
I’m signing off
My resignation might make you soft

Apathy is ruling me
Yours and mine just intertwined
Apathy won’t let me
Wrap my hands around your spine
Or see my reflection in your eyes.

Is death an ancient ache
Like this one
The dull rattle in the murderous cavern
Lined with resin and dust and tar and pure guts
A reminder of the last cigar
Of our bruised and battered makeup

Is death the embrace of silence
This stillness that permeates
My rotten cavities
That trickles through arteries
Bleeds
And leaves behind internal wreckage
The likes of which you’ve never seen

Or is it sweet
Like the moan your lips release
When you take my body
And shake and make me scream
My legs weep
That cry of peace

Is it that big white hand
That envelops me
Somewhere to finally get good sleep

It might be so
It lives in me
It sees
Far beyond my periphery
Far out of reach

Death was not made for me alone
I don’t claim to know death
But I know

Death begins on a gray day
When the blue eye glazes over
Blazes into a crack in the concrete
Where a million dead filaments
Form static
A haze
That is when it is time to escape

When tenderness becomes the great facade
And one fails to recognize their own face
Death and the Fates
Assume their human form
And you put on your own black robe
In pure day, in a field of golden hay

Death and dullness
Expose your cowardice
Until decay reigns.

the cold white street light
shines like a false moon
through your mangled blinds
my body aches as i curl on the bed
you are lying next to me
we are not together anymore
but
you pull me into you
at first with just your breath
slowing with sincerity
your body careful to touch me with nothing but
a right foot
which just rests against my own
or perhaps it is my shin
all I feel is red hot thunder
pulsing through my skin . . .

when you touch me.
your kiss a magnetic field
where of course i’m the magnet
clinging on still by some force of will
while you lay
easy steel
in for the ****
as it certainly couldn’t be for the thrill
your violence is a gentle one though
you wear a false moon in your eyes
that signs an ‘i love you’ only i can read
that i swim in
that spills over and bleeds
making it all the worse
that i’m still here.

Eternal nothing would be a gift
Sweeter than death
Why do I spend this time fearing it,
My futile, foolish being.
It could be a welcomed feeling
I’d let it in
With its empty repose
And hollow bones,
And brush its cheek
tenderly
Let it enter me--
Bear it.

The river I ride will guide me down
To the hell
Where my heart owns real estate
Stakes in the barren ground
And I will be accompanied by
My great companion
The messenger and deliverer
The cog in the great machine
Of free will

The one that continually leads me to destruction
Who spreads all the lies and the half-truths
Who withholds no honesty in his brutal judgments
And provides no delusions when his subjects face harshness
Who has no face but sports his tricky mirror with

Its effacement
The dead stars reflect
The river
Sticks
catch on my hospital gown
As I climb out
To inspect
My new neighbors who live in it
They are sorry for a lot of things too.
They bear the truth:

Nothingness would be easier
Than knowing what hate can do.

Memory is a sick lie
A joke
We choke on
Collectively

Memory is rose gold
Damp with mold
Stretched thin and wide

It fills me with hope
That the evil eye
Will not abide by human law

and let truth preside
Over memory
Its invertebrate spine

Clenches
Withholds
The pain growing mold

The rage that burned
Holes
In your favorite sweater

The silence that follows
Time not spent
Alone

Tastes like sour
black coffee
Left out

Old times
Are not the happy ones
They are all sprinkled

With a misery
That precedes
Your lie of a life.

You are not the one I hate.
In fact,
I loved that blue eye--
I saw it in my sleep
I see it before me.

Your hands were not the ones I wished to escape.
They were long,
Strong,
Kind sometimes.
You gripped me tight from the inside.

Your teeth were not the ones gnashing,
Tearing to shreds
My tear soaked pillow marked by
The mascara stained cheeks,
The bloodied sheets
Underneath--

No.

It wasn’t your scent
From the top of your head
That passed through my dulled senses
On a dull afternoon,
The last time I’d see you
Fully awake
for a while.

The blue eye poured out
The finest sugar,
The glittering white sand
To warm me
Keep me fat and glad--

Warmth that promised something far beyond
The realms of possibility--
The needs of my calamity.

The blue eye dulled too
eventually.

What never dulled was the brown one staring back.

You were never built for a woman like this
You never looked for a woman like this either
She appeared quite beautifully
She rose from piles of great ash
Marked your body with a thick ****
And began her botched surgery
The goal:
Immortality.
Something built to last.

She stands over your ruptured body.
Blood soaks her bare hands
Pours over her naked form onto her
Bare feet on the cool concrete.
It cracks beneath her cosmic pain,
Her hellish plan.

She insists above your gutted form:
‘Blood is what tethers us
Blood is the red hot beginning
The staggering end
Life’s dark elixir that replenishes itself
It will make us whole again.’

If she drinks enough blood
She will feel enough love
If she lets in enough hell
Rolls around in it,
Coats herself in it well
It will solidify and stay,
The red clay,
And remain and remain.

It is endurance
And its skill.
It's hard not to **** you herself,
In her vision of permanence,
But rest assured,
tenderness will.

So she digs with pliers
And tweezers and tools
Until you come to,
and scream
‘Curse you
For coming too close to the open flame,

For trying to mend pain with more pain,
For taking apart a body meant to be loved wholly
On its own time, in its own way,’

For trying it again with her next soul mate.