I can sense the vanguard of your breath
colliding along the rarely prepared front lines
parading across the nape of my neck.

Hovering above the black moon tattoo I got
when my eyes were filled with factory smoke
from times a grandfather only knows
and my mind had been chaotically mute for centuries.

Lovers in the young West
stalked by dust bowl witnesses
and men who have their own idea
of the Law.

Scatter ourselves upon the prairies
dandelion perfume among the wind
and pray our mothers never know.

you couldn't satisfy me
not even if you had fifteen hands

because I'm not so sad
that the only happiness I have
is wrapped around the likes of others.

I stared far too long into Nietzsche's abyss
and well,
it never stared back-so I spit in it
because apathy doesn't discriminate
(because emptiness is competitive).

& I don't know if I am more black
or more white
in this basic grey american t.v. stand life.

I am not in the business of being you
or him or her or they
we doesn't even really interest me.

you hated me within the first 20 minutes
like a shallow predator
experiencing virginal danger
you have the limbic system of a prey
obvious to anyone in touch with their senses.

you were threatened-
you cracked a joke and among
the robotic laughter and among
the generic thoughts
I stood back, blank-faced
a novel piece of art you haven't the ability
to muster up the courage to understand.

aloud, I said it wasn't funny
which I'm sure your emptiness already betrayed
in a booming, and terrifying fashion
(I'm an intellectual sadist-
I get off watching you squirm)
you know enough, that you have no basis
that the status quo is the stale stream you do nothing but soak in.

you're superficiality is so pervasive
that your thoughts are unfilled, plastic
discarded long ago by anyone with stamina
(you're a carbon-copy of a Xeroxed person)
looking the same as the others of your degenerate breed
with much less vibrancy than the original
and far less worth.

your boundaries have been in place for so long
passed down by
generations
of
generations
of
generations
great-great-granddaddy's barbed wire is the only thing protecting your prejudice.

you're not funny- you're scared
ashamed and lonesome.

ashamed of the person you wish you could be
but don't have the strength-or the guts
to morph into
lonesome because even yourself is someone you don't feel close to
you are so basically human.

I have no pity.
**for you are no Muse.

you're a sloppy stitch
the kind that amateurs create
so they can tell someone they sew.
but you're on that old pair of
grass stained blues
I know- I should have donated years ago

should have given you away
the moment you didn't fit

but I refused to believe
I couldn't manipulate myself
to once again absorb the contours
of what you feel like on my skin.

so you're pushed back, Back
in the back of that rustic oak dresser
and I forget- (well I never remember)
until, once a year, I decide to
clean out everything and trim my fat-

donate all that useless **** I hoard but never use,
and there you are...categorically.
I just can't- could never do it.

You're the material possession that makes me realize
I am just a consumer.

the touch,
taken for granted
time passes

unknowingly forgotten...

...unknowingly deprived.

then, out of nowhere,
it happens
and it all comes rushing back.

my pupils dilate
released from an eternity
of what I thought was
finality.

god--

...you feel so good.

I’m shaking in my boots
(oh my god, what a lame *** saying)
Anyway the ones with weathered leather
That some old maid died for
Once upon a ******* time.

I'm thinking, hoping, saving, grasping
More or less I guess-
Actually yes: my hypothesis
The “if…then…because” statement
Of my life
That defines my ID
(thank you very much Dr. Freud)

In all my life I have learned that
concealer only hides a blemish
How I wish I could cover my selfishness-
(your loneliness)

I never knew, I guess I just never knew.
Your eyes might have hinted, but I didn't bother to look.
Would I have cared? the world may never know...
I was already permanently turned off to the idea of you.

Ironic  (god I hate the irony)
The paradox, I thought I owed to you-
**I took so much more than I ever gave.