A lit stage, with diffuse light,
An expectant audience,
Occasional murmers receding
Into restless silence.
All are present and
Accounted for; they hold
Their tickets in their hands
Like sacraments,
Reassuring, validating, official.
They fidget, watch the time,
Avert their eyes from their
Companions.
Finally, their anxiety mounts, their
Silence splinters into a cluster of
Whisperings; why are they not
Entertained?
The appointed time has come and
Passed, the show, the
Show must go on!
From nearby places and distant times,
They've all come for one
Purpose; to watch the
Monologue. Yes, the very
One that others like them
Heard; and how now can they
Be left out?
But look, a man walks on stage,
He is apologetic, he wrings his
Hands, he takes the
Microphone and informs them:
Someone shot the
Actor.

I used to think a
Poem was something
Out of reach, unattainable,
Difficult to create; I now
Believe it is a
Drawing out, a
Melding together, a
Composition reflecting what already
Exists, that needs only expression in
Words.

You sit in the corner,
Holding the lamp,
As we circle around the furniture solemnly
Ingesting our medicated alcohol,
Living our life in the intervals,
Stepping out at the end of the party,
One by one,
Out of our minds,
Into the fire.

This animal will be the death of me,
It leads me by the point to
The cavernous places, the lulls.
The greatest cowardice is in not caring.

This day, taken in and of itself,
Was a great day!
Maybe yester-day wasn't so great
For my yester-self, but that's ok;
It was a different person.
I got my day and it worked out well,
I end tonight, and hope the
Person who is my tomorrow-self
Has a good day too, and like me,
Doesn't worry about the
Other days of
Other people.

What is this I see?
A name is necessary ...
Without it I'm lost.

The preset grooves along which I now move
Both fascinate and terrify me.
I wish madly to change course,
But I cannot stop wondering
Where I might end up.
Thus dazed, I roll on.

Plod, plod, plod,
He came home and hung up his cloak,
The days of crime-fighting are over.

Tick, tick, tick,
Which corner should he climb into now?
His day of reckoning draws nearer.

Bam! bam! bam!
The kryptonite is doing its work,
He knows it's now all over.

Fingers through your hair,
Digging furrows in your scalp,
With sharp nails,
Pressing down,
Scarring.
You asked for it.

Two roads diverged in my psychosis.
I took the one well-travelled,
And it has made all the difference.

After the deluge, the waste; or rather,
The wastes, the
Mountains of *******, of
Detritus,
Bits and Pieces of the
Disassembled past,
Presented now in
Disordered heaps that
I tread upon carefully, ever
Watchful of sinkholes.
The horizon shows
No end yet, merely
Silent noise.

Cart and horse, in front of the marble columns,
Waiting for the next load
Of rubble.
Looking at the half-deconstructed forms
That now lie strewn about,
Some still showing their sublime features,
Others reduced to dull gray facets,
It's hard to say what once was.
A cathedral (some say), that outlived
It's function,
Depopulated.
It lies
Idle now,
In a less than
Idol state,
The grass growing over.

Ah! What brilliant light! What color! My dear,
You must give me one of those bright
Rocks, it will do well for cutting; It
Chops so well when hit repeatedly, I
Don't miss my knife anymore.

Oh quit
Your whining, you whiner, you
Poser, you think you suffer alone ?
Why, look around you, don't you
See there is suffering in the world, you
Suffering fool!
Don't you think if you wanted
To be happy, that you'd
Do it already,
Why should you get anything more
Than anyone else? Isn't
Everyone the same? Aren't all unhappy ?
You wouldn't be happily unequal so
You're unhappily equal to all,
This is what you wished for
Most clearly. If now you find
Your aims at cross-
Purposes, am I to blame? I who
Merely make all your wishes
In their glorious entirety
Come true?

Positively charming, is what she said.
Which cake can I get you?
My dog died yesterday, said the boy behind her.
Turn down the music!
Which party are we going to tonight?
I need to call my mom.
Help me, I'm lost!
I'm going to cut myself tonight.
Do you hear me?
Are you listening?
Give me the toy car!
No, you can't have it, not now.
Can we do it later?
Forget it.
Look behind you,
They're out
To get you.

Let me climb
The tree, beyond
Where it pierced
Through the clouds.

Don't pull me back to
Sleep, I have no wish to
Revisit the same place, too
Scary it is for me now, too
Hard it is to see now, to
Feel again, to
Know again,
What it was like.

I frantically work myself
Into wakefulness.

Let go the pliers
Which squeeze and bind your body.
Look! You are free now.

A short glimpse of a disembodied smile,
A run through tall grass,
A sheltering under dripping trees,
A long series of furtive glances,
A rising, a tripping, a tumbling,
Quick snatches of non-solitary
Wandering; these are the
Fading contents of my
Mind today morning.

Drive a stake through it;
Cold blood freezes in its veins,
Smile through the mirror.

My shadow by day
Shows me the way.
Can your shadow hold mine's hand ?

It looks at me, I cannot hide from it.
The rains wipe away my footprints
But they cannot hide it.
That only the moon can do, by its absence.

I know that it is
My slave, to move as I move.
But I have forgotten this.
Perhaps on some occasion, by accident,
It seemed for a moment
To grow or shrink on its own,
To move,
To make me move.

I have since forgotten, and now
Trail it where it seems to go,
Stopping when I cannot clearly see it.

A different shadow,
Moved by someone,
Comes into view.
I can look up.

My shadow by day
Shows me the way.
Can your shadow hold mine's hand ?

I climbed aboard a train that took me
Further and faster
Than others on horseback.
Yet now I'm desperate:
The map is all wrong,
These stations I pass are those
I wanted most to avoid.
I want to change direction,
But see only miles and miles
Of straight track ahead.
Will there be another junction,
A crossing of tracks,
A way to reroute,
To change course?
Or is the only option
Derailment?

Skin, green, blue, brown,
Colors of you, of sky, and ground,
Blurring and mixing as we ran around,
Chasing each other in the golden dawn.

Absent then, in my happy state, were
All the thoughts and fears that now abound,
As I lapped the air as a happy dog might,
Having my life's treasure found.

Running, running, wind and grass,
Then we tumbled and rolled around,
Before we settled our quick heartbeats,
And drew each other into the ground.

I panicked, I cannot say why,
And left you lying under the sky,
Searching evermore for the same fields,
Skin, green, blue and brown.

Sometimes a single denial of truth,
A single compromise with your feelings,
Can come to define you, or constrain you,
Until you reach the point where
Your life feels like a lie.

I cannot say
What I want or
What I like;
Fake things intrude
And obscure;
As far back as I can remember
I have always faked my feelings.
I am a fake person.
At some point the fake self
And the real one did fight,
And the former won,
And not content with victory,
Did seek to root out the other.
Yea, I have done ******,
And live on with the terrible
Knowledge of that horrible act;
I am a fake person.

**** it, don’t let it live.
Tie a wire to it and electrocute it.

Send it crashing down a cliff,
Shoot it, dissolve it, decapitate it.

I looked in the mirror and saw my heart,
If you come across it on the street just ****** it.

I see them on the corners,
The goers and the comers,
The lifters and the beaters,
The high-flying skaters,
The low-life drifters.
I see the time tick by
As they move in slow motion
The air growing thick
With my anticipation.
I cry, "the hour is here!",
The clock chimes on,
The day comes and goes,
But oh, they linger on.

As we drift away, pulled
Apart by the centrifuge,
I wonder why the rope that was meant
To hold is together,
No longer does.
But I know why.
It stretched and twisted
And then, lacking care and
Attention, slowly
Frayed, until the rope was but
A few tenuous threads.
Seeing this we knew not to
Reverse what had happened.
We could have built a new rope,
There was still time;
But we chose to watch mutely
As each thread snapped in turn
And withered away.

I crawl from
The flaming wreck,
Over the burning sand.
I reach out for water, but
Gather only rocks.
The water has moved away,
Just a little bit further.
Always a little hit further.
I crawl until my hands and face bleed.
When I give up,
Lie on my back,
Stare into the sun,
A pitcher of the sweetest water!
All this while I had not asked.

Hey you! Yes, you! It's me and I want
My life back. Look it's been
Ten years and I made a mistake then and
I see it now.

I don't want this life I have, please
Please can't you take this life
From me and sell me another one?

You gotta do right by me, you can't
Just cheat me like this, you think
I'm gonna put up with this ?

I can't go on with this one, look I'm
Making the best of it and all but c'mon !
You must agree this can't go on!

I want out, mister, and you better listen to me.
I've been good to you and followed your ways
And now I expect you to
Return the favor. Is this too much to ask ?
Can't I get a second chance ?

You can't hide from me behind your holiness,
You can't turn away from me now!
You better listen to me, 'cause if you don't make this right
I'm tearing this whole place down right now!

Almost had it,
I was clean again.
Got a prayer, got a mantra, got sober again.

But that was yesterday,
I ******* up once more today.
I broke up, broke down, gave in today.

I don't wanna believe it, i thought I had it.
I was feeling good, wrote a diary entry for it.

Can't give up, I've ruled that out.
It's really very tempting though, to take that route.
Got to pull myself together, and just try, try again.
Can't let everyone down, that's just insane.

But what about how I feel? I'm not happy here!
And really this is the thought that defeats me here

And brings me down and weakens me,
Destroys my immunity,
Till I just can't see
Right from wrong,
What's here and what's gone,
Till I just can't care anymore,
Like ... Who am I doing this for?

I don't want to hear;
I don't want to look upon;
I don't want to feel.

I am scared of my heart
Beating so hard
That the blood bursts
Through my veins
What would happen then
How embarassing
For everyone to see me
Covered in blood
It would never do

Sometimes, she said,
I see too much.
It jams up the circuits
Of my mind, and
Reduces me to
Paralysis.
If I could but structure these
Constant
Hallucinations
Into a more
Coherent vision, I might
Manifest it
By will alone.

A grid, a blank canvas, a blank man.
There, out on the grey moor, under a darkening sky,
Welcoming the fog, and the
Growing disquiet that howls in the distance,
Circling.

Tell me what you see, said the old man,
But it was white, all white, and
What could I possible make out in the storm ?
Yet he insisted, standing behind the rock to my side,
Glowering at me with his steady eyes.
And I in turn glowered, at the
Vast white nothingness,
Which seemed a single mass;
Something there was that seemed to flow
Within it, under it.
Yes, the nothingness did move, and so
On I stared.

It's ok, don't fret it, I ain't greedy,
I'm lonely and I gotta be that way and I know it,
But all I'm asking for, really, is a single moment,
A single moment of complete happy-ness, that I
Can stretch like jelly to wrap everything inside.
But my warning still stands, and you better heed it,
I know what's due to me and I know that you know it
Too, so don't ***** me over because I'm not gonna
Go out with a whimper if you try to *****
Me out of the bargain that we made a long time ago,
And you know and I know you do,
That a lot has happened and I've held up my half,
So you better hold up yours too ...

At the center lies not the
World tree, holding up
Everything,
But instead a vacuum, into which
Rush the broken pieces of things,
Torn apart by the
Centripetal force
Of a chronic
Absence.

I'm tired of being dragged,
My flesh is worn to the bone;
But my hand is stuck.

Pouring through a prism,
Into a fresh soul.

Bubbling up,
A moving mist.

The first sights, and
The first sounds.

They shuffled on down
The long winding road between the mountains,
Each following the other,
Their faces stony and grim.
"Don't go!", I shouted at them,
"Don't you see that it
Doesn't have to be this way?"
I ran around them,
Waved my hands and tried
To get them to stop.
But they marched on,
Slowly, forlornly, on
Into the falling night.

It rushes away from me, I to it
Around me grey mush, dark space
But there, a smooth plane stretching out both ways,
The White Wall

In the dimness I see others around
Me, going about their ways, but
Do they not see or do they
Not care at all?

I move vigorously, but stay in place
As does everyone else, but
Is this enough? Am I not
Supposed to fall?

To fall towards it (or away from it),
I make painful progress. I cannot judge
By parallax whether I draw nearer or
Not, to the Wall.

But I must. I know I must,
Make it here sooner or later,
For when I am silent I do most
Clearly hear its call.

Don't hold me in!
The sun is coming out!
Let me see it one last time!

There is another way!
I know it!
There has to be!

A way without pain,
Without  hurt,
With boundless happiness.

But I know it, don't I,
This way.

It has always been the simple way,
But not the easy one.

Is it too late for me now?
I have been down all other roads,
But sit locked up now.

Can you free me one more time?
Can I have one more chance?
Can the right way be my way?