I would never want to write your narrative
Even if you should pay me no mind
I sit here, tortured
At the very thought that you’re not mine

I would do anything for love
To feel whole once more
But my darling
I wonder if you’ll ever open the door

You tell me I’m pretty
I laugh with ease —
But my mind, it falters
Will I ever find peace?

Delicate wisp of a flower
How hard it is not to pluck you
And call you mine
I gaze upon you like a lovestruck fool
Every inch, a consummate canvas
Adorned with adoring ink,
Tied together with bright blue eyes
I watch like an incapacitated panther
Wanting to launch myself into you but
Something stopped me deep inside
I could never mar something so fragile
So beautiful and wholesome
So ethereal it makes me want to die

Morning caresses my lips
With a squalid kiss -- the taste of last
Night’s stale liquor, a greeting most
Usual and unwelcome all the same.
Sated beyond means, I still am
Stricken by thirst, dry lips parting in
Consternation, heavy hands
Fumble aimlessly for old reliable, that
****** bottle of advil that may as well
Have its name etched in my dresser drawer
The morning after may be ripe with regret,
Hazy recollections draped in uncertainties --
But at least one thing remains surefire and
Constant --

Thump -- clank
My head, the door, my achy feet
Taking their first apprehensive steps
Into their habitual walk of shame
The mirror salutes me with the
Visage of a woman worn, tired and wildly aged --
There’s no way we’re the same person
Or are we?

I retraced the hieroglyphs with frenetic precision
running my fingers along each
ridge and valley with
unbridled vigor, desperate to be heard for
words had abandoned me.
soft, glowing red --
the essence of life
playing god
in my hands.
The story, unfinished --
i hope it never ends.

Meticulously maintaining
Impossibly feigned nonchalance,
Toying the cigarette ever so slightly
In her fingers -- careful so not
To appear as too calculated

The pariahs parade the dancefloor,
Shades of ignominy culminating in a
Prismatic rainbow, heightened by
The stale odor of ***** and body heat

Still, she stays in her perch like a silent sphynx
Waiting -- watching --
Aimlessly, but with direction, such
Carefree flamboyance below her,
A stoop to which she’d never deign

And so she watches, resigned
To fate, as much a fixture in the joint
As the gilded barstools --
The closest she can come to confronting
The fact that she is no different
Than any of the rest

uppers and downers
feed the human machine
popping tiny missiles to
launch at rocket spreed

i pretend through night
that the pink flower spring
is for us, wild woman