Stop arbitrarily replacing commas with semicolons.  Stop it.

Thanks everybody!

After much evaluation,
I do not think
this place to be the trouble
or to warrant change.
I am the trouble, and I am
indelible from it.

Guilt inundates the mind
as a byproduct:
nausea and exhaustion are an
ungodly synthesis
indicative of something--
something...

And if I were given a dollar
at each instance,
I could buy a carton
of cigarettes.

At first, I thought that
funny.

Now I think I should not think
at all.

My mouse curls up to sleep within me
nestling into soft cedar a cold and tiny nose.
A struggle transpires predictably there
between two old forces: rain torrents
against my walls; deeper she burrows,
harder she squirms.  Away from the nonsense
of loving or unloving--away from
the question.  Now it has been years,
and I can no longer say where she is.
I think she has long forgotten
the way back.

A fiery one accosts me today, as most days.
I feel she has been following me for much of my life.
She is my teacher.  She draws the reigns of my body,
showing me how to surrender, that I might gain control.
But control I do not find.  Rather, my indignation grows
from so oft' being reprimanded.  But she reminds me
that I truly have never possessed any choice.
She reminds me to slide off peacefully, like water,
with grace, with dignity--of which I'm certain
I've none left.  I have been taken when I did not want to give;
I have tried to give and found that none would take.
Now I'm certain the dregs of my purity have eaten through my stomach
just as acid.  My flower withers without care.  It is like
some vile disease.  I waited too long, and now nobody wants it--
this thing that I forever saved.  Neither does anyone want a child.
They only wish that I'd shut up.  (She reminds me.  I already know.)
And so I fall asleep--or fall apart--or fall into my grave.

It was nice--
to touch you
and to have you,
whom I could touch
whenever I wanted.

It was nice--
not sleeping
alone (or very well);
it satisfied, I think,
for a time.

The odors of an open landfill rise up from my gaping mouth.
If fifty miles out, you smell it, stinking as it will,
one hundred lie that you must drive before, beyond the fetid
tickle of a foul doubt, your nausea will settle and will die
in shrinking throes. And then another one, and still
another comes and goes.  I sense the every stinking swath of bile
and swarming offering tossed into me from such passers-by--
but I feel nothing satisfy (ironically or otherwise)
the open landfill of my gut.  A hole no less am I when stuffed.

Today I watched my cigarette
as it shook between my fingers
as I drew one harsh inhale straight
from the the thing, and could not tell
whether it was for the force
of my breath or that my fingers
were trembling, and I laughed.

Sometimes I think that the wind
might tip me over, swift, with ease,
as my face vibrates, as I melt,
as my hollow space grows and complains.
When I look upon myself,
it is too comical in all;
I tremble as I laugh.