I always think I'm prepared
but,
every time I bump into you,
my heart turns to a thunder clap in my chest and,
the world spins
a little.
Just before I left you told me,
you liked my hat.
I wanted to tell you,
I liked your everything
but,
you would know,
I never did corny very well.
So I just said thank you,
lit a cigarette with shaking hands
and walked.

I tear flesh from myself and toss it into the flames;
Not to watch it burn but in hopes I can make the hole in my heart a tangible part of my being..
I won't need a warning label if people can peek in and see for themselves there's nothing left of a real man.
Like Pinocchio I strive to feel a thump in my chest but a wooden core doesn't pump.
I'm dancing attached to strings like a Halloween skeleton in a bad movie.
All grin and nothing to back it up.
It's useless to think someone might share their heart with mine and bring me to life.
I'll fill the hole in my chest with clear apoxy and dance empty with that skeletal grin stretched comically over a hard face holding nothing.
Eventually I'll feed the fire with my bones and turn to dust,
as old toys do.
There's nothing like a paper man for tinder.

The only French I speak,
I learned
from the
uncrossable space
in bed

You.

Me.

I learned it
when we started
to just say bye
in the mornings

When we stopped
hugging after
work,

When I was too busy
playing games,
watching Netflix,
on my phone,

and you had already cleaned
the kitchen, put away the laundry,

You wanted something
you won't take now
because I wasn't too busy and I don't even play that game anymore, and I can't remember the shows but I'm sure they are still on Netflix,
and phones will always be a distraction from people to put everything down and take off the masks
we make so we can breathe
every day and connect as people. In those moments, I started missing you and you were already missing me. I just really wish I could stop going Supernova but there's a slowly swirling marble rock ball that's slowly making its way from sitting in fire of the pits of my stomach,

rolling up my chest, bouncing off ribs, escaping to the small of my back, rolling up my spine, spinning
counter clockwise
in figure eights
across my shoulder blades until it sits over my heart and sinks to my
Stomach
Again.

Now I've lost form and more and I really just need to get my

**** together and restart.

Look at what you've done
to my poetry.

BG-4/10/17

Time flies when you're having fun?
*******, time flies when you're down and done.
Time flies when you're dying inside.
When you're picking up the pieces and crying in need,
time leaves.
There's no time, to settle or ease.
There's no time, because time never sleeps.
There's no time, so don't beg and don't plead.
Time will leave you for dead.
Time left, and it doesn't care about the time that you spent.
You're going through the motions and you're barely alive but,
time flies when you're dying inside.

You died two years ago,
when she left.
Yea you're still walking but you're just a corpse with a heartbeat and you know it.
You're trapped.
She never bothered to release the restraints she placed on you so you stay shackled by misery in a room guarded by lonliness.
You sit as your heart tears at itself while your brain stands watching in callous disinterest.
Sure,
you breathe,
but each inhale leaves only the feeling of drowning without the sweet escape of death.
You beg the reaper to take you, he says he wants to see how this all plays out.
He's never seen a man eat his own heart.
Everyone else insists you must keep going but,
they don't know what you know.
They don't know you died
two years ago,
when she left.