Sometimes
I feel like I should floss my teeth
but I give up, give in
what's the point?
You may have your pearly whites
decades beyond when I have mine
but we lose all our things in the end
so in the end you're just a bigger number
aren't you?

At night
I want to start my engine and drive
as I walk by my empty
parking spot.
Walking may be my cure for the blues
but pebbles enter from the holes in my shoes
so while I walk on for dollar coffee
I repeat the words you taught me
when I felt claim to lecture you
and line up your mistakes:

You're just a bigger number aren't you?

I see you when I least want to see you on the internet
pervading almost every single ticking ******* second
I see your face and I can't help but wonder why it looks like
to the world at large those four years that passed are
vanished like ghostly plumes of dust into the morning light
and in the end it's just like we'd never met at all
but I swear wherever I am I'll be gazing at your fall
nine days long from your penthouse to the ground
but for now

You're just a bigger number aren't you?

Lead with your bottom teeth
when you come to get me
If I see the fangs above baring
Baring down from above me
I'll push away

A month ago it was simple
Shopping trips in arm and arm
Bites to eat at the boardwalk, baby
Inviting each other inside at the end of the night during our 'hard-to-parts'
Maybe I should have left you
Maybe I should have left you
I know I should never have invited you in

Now my energy is draining from me
Being pulled by you (and here you told me to trust you)
All of my blood and my aura's bleeding
Being bled by you

And here you told me to trust you
when even your breathing has been untrue

Lead with your bottom teeth
when you come to get me
If I see the fangs above baring
Baring down from above me
I'll push away

Waiting like always sitting with hands in lap and head bowed
Just knowing I'll hear news that you messed up
Not knowing, like ever, the words to change or chastise or
Save
Not knowing why I want to
Not knowing why I need you
Protected
Not knowing why I need to
Not knowing why I want you
Directed
Nursing your head wounds with the TV on while you tell me
We are watching the news that you messed up
We are cuddled and sitting how the god and the child
Would

She doesn't remember what I remember of the years she means to me.
She will fix the pieces eventually so why don't I give her just one small piece?
So I take Miriam to the cemetery.
The cemetery at sunrise.
Looking over a rail yard.
Revealing old gravestones.
Nondescript in the lay lanes.

She doesn't remember why she doesn't visit the grave of her mother.
She will fix the image much sooner than later so why don't I give her some relief?
So I tell Miriam in the old green graveyard.
The graveyard filled with carbon.
Speaking of another girl.
Revealing I knew her
As another distant frame.

You are married with the orange scene in gleaming while I
Look,

Not knowing why I want to
Not knowing why I need you
Protected
Not knowing why I need to
Not knowing why I want you
Directed

Here
The best digests just as well as refuse swallowed.
There
Is nothing to be offered and nothing they or I can do
Conversation saver,
The liquor looks tempting
But the bottle sits empty
So
I sit instead, and fill my head with thoughts of you

Isn't it funny what romantics say?
Like You're the only thing that makes me happy

In place, I say
*Off the cuff I can think of ten more things

Crashing outside the bedroom door
at the end of the hall
Scratching like nails on your front door
awakens you in sweat

Mormons, Witnesses, maybe Catholics

In silence the lump in your throat grows
Chokes your pulse stone cold in your arm as you throw your gaze at the window

Oh. . .
The moon's out.

Crashing into your living room
with the sound of moisture
Mashing pulp feet to your bedroom
to the speed of your heart

Beat increasing to keep from screaming
Meaning well with your gun as you reach for it, gasping, swallowing spit

Oh. . .
Two eyes flash.
Two more.
Two more.
Two more.
More and more.

Give
me any face in shade
emerging but the
flesh rot, putrid
stare of the
ones who
followed
death
and
in death return to night.

Tonight.

Why waste your time talking, are you insane?
You're pushing real buttons when you could play.
Offer me a gun,
Offer me a blade,
Offer me an answer
Cemented firmly in old ways
Or I will crush you in insults with the language you would use to say,
"Expand"

Only one solution to such a simple problem.
Get what is rightly yours or just defeat or justly save.
Offer me the newest
best displayed gun
with the best gimmick
and I'll offer you several days
but once I hear the pleas with common language and you choose to say,
"Expand"

I have no choice but to crush you into the dirt from whence you came!
So say it. Say what you will. I need to use this answer I obtain.

There are those whose ideas work to change the normative horror
but they're working beyond the confines and outside exposure
necessary to ever, ever, realistically begin the revolution leading
to the evolution necessary for our medium to truly newly thrive
and sure it will survive, you're right about that, but I myself
would like to see a future where when given ultimate control
of a problematic situation, I'm not standing on a platform
made of mechanics that come from a singular origin and only
give me a killswitch, saying, "In which way would you like
to end more lives", and though it's a nice enough reprieve
don't get me wrong, I'd rather have an expansive platform
to stand on where I might be given a multitude of options
that may possibly end in my choosing not to become a
soldier.

Get back.
Rescue.
Retrieve.
Destroy.
Revenge.

Are we lost to the tropes which provide the most money for instant growth
that knowingly keep us from ever, ever truly growing and expanding?
Will this be forever the list we're left to roam?