you're a sloppy stitch
the kind that amateurs create
so they can tell someone they sew.
but you're on that old pair of
grass stained blues
I know- I should have donated years ago

should have given you away
the moment you didn't fit

but I refused to believe
I couldn't manipulate myself
to once again absorb the contours
of what you feel like on my skin.

so you're pushed back, Back
in the back of that rustic oak dresser
and I forget- (well I never remember)
until, once a year, I decide to
clean out everything and trim my fat-

donate all that useless **** I hoard but never use,
and there you are...categorically.
I just can't- could never do it.

You're the material possession that makes me realize
I am just a consumer.

I wasn't always so easily discouraged.
I used to bristle with enthusiasm.
I glowed with it.
It didn't matter if the task was simple, or tedious, or daunting, or boring.
As though on rails, I slammed into each and every task with terrific force.

But I got older.
Things that used to come easily grew slippery.
What I used to do without thinking twice, I found myself over-thinking.
I threw the brake. I ground to a halt.
Finally, I became idle. A left-over husk of a kernel that's already been popped.
I drowned myself with doubts. Hypothetical situations that might never happen.
I lived in fear of what might go wrong.

So I began to watch everything go wrong, as though I was helpless.
I was no less able. I was no less compassionate.
But I had grown wary. Of what?
What was it that, out of nowhere, caused me to slow down?

I guess I looked down and realized that if I fell, I would not be getting back up.

When you're young, you have no worries, because nothing is relying on your success.
So you mess up a math problem. You'll get it eventually.
So you botch things with that cute girl who sits across from you. You're young, you'll get it.
Re-assurance, faithfully, unwaveringly. A safety line should I fall.
But I never really fell, did I? So why am I laying down like I have?

Get up.

Get up.

I worry about everything. I worry that I will fail.

I dread what comes, what I can't avoid. But time, and time, again, it comes, and I miraculously don't die when it hits, because I've been bracing for a train-wreck impact, a force that will really, truly, finally, definitely lay me flat for good.

I close my eyes, and brace. But the crash never comes. The silence that was continued to be.

I turn behind me, but there's no train there.

I'm starting to realize, with relief, (with horror), that maybe all I needed to do was step off the track.

I look down, and realize, with a first-creeping then-howling laughter that I was never on the track to begin with.

I look off where the track is. There's no train there, either. Maybe there never was.

Maybe there never will be.

the touch,
taken for granted
time passes

unknowingly forgotten...

...unknowingly deprived.

then, out of nowhere,
it happens
and it all comes rushing back.

my pupils dilate
released from an eternity
of what I thought was
finality.

god--

...you feel so good.

I’m shaking in my boots
(oh my god, what a lame *** saying)
Anyway the ones with weathered leather
That some old maid died for
Once upon a ******* time.

I'm thinking, hoping, saving, grasping
More or less I guess-
Actually yes: my hypothesis
The “if…then…because” statement
Of my life
That defines my ID
(thank you very much Dr. Freud)

In all my life I have learned that
concealer only hides a blemish
How I wish I could cover my selfishness-
(your loneliness)

I never knew, I guess I just never knew.
Your eyes might have hinted, but I didn't bother to look.
Would I have cared? the world may never know...
I was already permanently turned off to the idea of you.

Ironic  (god I hate the irony)
The paradox, I thought I owed to you-
**I took so much more than I ever gave.

Feeling pretty unfulfilled
here’s a cheers to spending that
twenty-second year
over worked and under paid.
Unhappiness disguised as routine
mingling about with bursts of extremes
that I mistake for real living.
The grog, the sweat, the drowning struggle
to conform to that American bill paying drone.

I think in black and white
but I always create in color.
There’s a pounding at the door of reality,
unrelenting, it has claws poisoned with truth.
-- my idealism again,
begging, pleading, swearing up-and-down
that I have to get out--
that there is never a “right time”--
that to change--I have to
and its not a decision this grind can consume.


I sprint through the hallways of my self
hello, again World.
It was all that I needed.
I breathe.


*(I hope this happens a thousand times again)

From the day I was born you were never there for me
You never tucked me in at night
Or said you loved me as i slept in the glistening moonlight
I'll never know a mothers love
Like all the other boys do
I'll always think of you as my downfall
Led me through the path of darkness
But from this point on im changing direction
For a new destination
I don't want to be like you
I want to be better than that
I'll never forgive you for the scars you left upon my bare skin
This is not how it's supposed to end
You've been lost to the darkness
But ive been found by light
Oh where have you gone, mommy?

     "Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
in the dark.
It's after dinner playtime.
We're outside,
hidden by trees and shrubbery.
He calls it hide-and-seek,
but only my little sister seeks us
as we hide
and she can't find us,
as grandfather picks me up
and rubs his hands between my legs.
I only feel a vague stirring
at the edge of my consciousness.
I don't know what it is,
but I like it.
It gives me pleasure
that I can't identify.
It's not like eating candy,
but it's just as bad,
because I had to lie to grandmother
when she asked,
"What do you do out there?"
"Where?" I answered.
Then I said, "Oh, play hide-and-seek."
She looked hard at me,
then she said, "That was the last time.
I'm stopping that game."
So it ended and I forgot.
Ten years passed, thirtyfive,
when I began to reconstruct the past.
When I asked myself
why I was attracted to men who disgusted me
I traveled back through time
to the dark and heavy breathing part of my life
I thought was gone,
but it had only sunk from view
into the quicksand of my mind.
It was pulling me down
and there I found grandfather waiting,
his hand outstretched to lift me up,
naked and wet
where he rubbed me.
"I'll do anything for you," he whispered,
"but let you go."
And I cried, "Yes," then "No."
"I don't understand how you can do this to me.
I'm only ten years old,"
and he said, "That's old enough to know."

My heart, it stops, I know nothing, I am blinded.
It is empty, dark, cold, all around me,
Your hand reaches inside and rips out all that is left.
I cry out your name, no response.
No one is there to hear my call,
I am alone in my pain.
Water begins to devour everything, it creeps up my body, I drown in my loneliness.
These fears are endless,
Questions consume my soul,
Until everything stops.
My blood runs cold like everything else, the pain is gone.