You hold them all at arms length
and hug yourself into yourself
and you stand there, so remote,
so angry that everyone backs up
behind the yellow line.
And you sew yourself up
and put yourself in the freezer
and you don’t miss it,
don’t want it,
until there’s wailing in your ribcage
and you’re sitting, looking
at your own reflection
and it suddenly hits you
how pathetic it is.
So then it starts to scare you
and you feel it, tossing
restlessly inside you
and you want it to go back to sleep.
But what are you going to do,
because it’s frightening, really,
isn’t it and you’re not going to do anything.
You know it and you know it,
and you’re going to end up so alone,
and you know it and you know
you’ve done it.
So then you think you’re in the brown space,
slipping between the folds of the real and
hasn’t anyone ever told you there’s only
so much air to breathe in the liminal?
But you know it and you know
you’re going to be so alone
and maybe you deserve it
because you made it
and you know it.
So it scares you and you
don’t do anything about it,
because what’s life anyway,
but a game of trying not to
cry into books at train stations.

Gasp...
It was a sucker punch.
One that leaves you winded and frozen.
And you struggle to get out of this malfunction...
Trying to find that foothold that would take you to the next breath.

Quickening of the heartbeat...
Almost instantaneous.
Thumps so loud and hard you could hear them in your ears.

Disbelief...
You never saw it coming.
You weren't ready.
You replay it again and again.
Like a bad movie stuck on repeat.

Denial...
It never happened.
Yeah...
Nothing happened.

I surf through a crowd,
click, click, click,
am I slick?
Am I sick?

The faces cascade, each one like a molecule
in a waterfall of desire and liars and fire.
Do we sit here to burn or to yearn.
Do we ever learn or feel concern.
It seems I will never tire to conspire
against my own soul on this wire.

I'm wired.
The screen crackles a strange glow.
The bits and bytes tell me there's hope.
Ones and zeroes like so much knotted rope.
I hang on her every word,
oh, my shame is ethereal.
I want to stop seeing her,
but my hunger is serial.

She whisper's, "But wait...
...
...
...
... there's more..."
and I die to be born her prisoner.

In lust we trust,
the internet anthem,
the trumpet of the millennia
our senses abandoned.
The cascading fire, behind the screen,
the ache inside: my mind? my spleen?
I must be rotten,
how could I not be,
their alluring words and forms,
imprison me.

Can I break free? Qui-qui? Hehe!
It's a total lie, there is no greener grass.
So I hunger for more of the poison that made me;
I seek to drown myself, like a manly baby,
"Gimme more! A little more!"
They stand in shock,
then retreat to their bottles,
ignoring the ticking clock.
Back to her and her and her,
the ones who will never love me,
who've ensnared me to drain me,
me and me and me.

There are different kinds of blindness,
many we will never be ****** enough to see
but when the blinds are open,
can we really change what we see?
Do we come awake to a ruin,
a festering, aching, screaming lump of chaos
that we are but fingers to... this abomination.

I surf the crowd
and when she comes again,
I'll just change the channel,
and a new face materializes,
her beauty renders me thirsty
I smile my sleekest smile,
I recite the uncanny words,
"Mirror mirror on the wall."