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Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
There is a mirror image
but does it still
look like you?
Do you stand before
the altar of your bathroom
sink and whisper,
"нет,
but not yet"
There isn't time
to pause
to think
to wonder.
Is there a ghost in this machine?
Is there a need
to put a notion
behind the gears
of our universal,
cosmic meme?
And were we to drown,
weighed down by
hanging lines and
albatroses,
the thousand stupid ways
that we try to prove
our opinion matters,
*******! Hear me!
Look my way!
We fade to nothing,
ashes in pots
on mantle places,
dry bones in wet dirt.
We are all good people,
bound for modest graves.
Undone by ambition.
"Да,
that is always the way"
We are small men,
good in our minutes a day.
We are Tolstoy in passing,
In a Gethsemane way.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Kept in small places.
Inhale: Breathing in rain.
Leave this place to the winners
the sinners
the last people standing
when the rest fall.
Remember: That crystallizing moment,
at the eye of a raging storm
when everything made sense
at long last.
Turn away, retreat if there is time.
So little time.
(Receding hairline)
We have so much to do,
so much left to say
and so much to make up for.
So very much.
Atone: Do not repent.
Make up for the things
you have done.
Wrought.
Smells like sidewalks,
after a storm.
The very storm we
run from and we
run to.
Exhale: Visible breath
like winter.
Frozen rainbows,
light trapped by the cold.
And we wait for all of
this to thaw.
Spring...
Summer...
Fall,
and those left standing.
Here in these lives,
these apartments
and homes.
These spaces
and people
where we are kept.
These small places.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Picture a room
without a view.
A world where we do
what we ought to do.
She paused, because
******* this was hard to explain.
We don't live there,
in that soulless place,
where no one sees
the hands in front of them.
Where no one cares
because it'll be fine in the end.

He moved his arm,
sore from the arm rest.
Irony?
He thought.
Perhaps it is,
but no.
It is not.
She spoke volumes
about very little,
on shaky ground
where she could not stand.
He listened,
she accused time and again,
but didn't hear.
Her conversation
didn't actually include him.
It was her's to steer.

There was a lightness
in the air.
When she got
around to her point,
the one she couldn't bare,
her weight shifted from
foot to foot,
floor to floor.
Like falling,
screaming out
and then
no more.

He stood before her,
an examined man.
She looked on her works,
as one does when
their works are short
and callow,
with a series of small crimes
and personality quirks.
She had said of him
that he was bright,
but no great sight
to look upon.
He had called her shallow,
trite
and not quiet right.
Both were, as we all are,
very young
and very
wrong.
Both were only a harmony,
not a verse,
in each other's
song.

What they didn't know,
couldn't really,
was there was such
a thing
as too much
said.
Words, as lovely as
they are
and can
be,
Do little more than
buffer the blow
or render it
dead
when the point is blunt.
Say enough,
which can be very little,
and watch as they
do not look,
yet somehow
see.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Locked away
in tiny clenching fists
are the stories.
The ones we always meant to tell.
Without these parts,
you know the pieces,
we cannot seem to build
the plot and your story...
I mean, look how it falls apart.

Could there be a moment
(take your time, think)
when all of this *******
falls away and only
you and I and the truth
of you and now
and me and then
remains.
Like coffee grounds.

How many cigarettes
does a day take?
I mean, what really gets you?
What sets you on fire?
My god,
how we need to be
on fire!
We need the light,
y'see,
because it is so ******* hard
to see in the dark
without it.

Color your language,
pepper it with purple prose
and profanity,
to tell the story that
sits like a stone
in your heart or your throat.
Because no one
(Seriously, believe me on this.)
can tell your story for you.
You have to take the pen,
look on your works,
and write it large
against the world.

Your story
(Beautiful as you are. Has to be.)
needs to be seen from the sky.
Open your mouth, love.
Tell.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
But aren't they all just words?
Little fingers, smeared with
whatever lunch may have been.
Beady eyes and the judgement
that comes from knowing nothing.
It was hallways.
It was all hallways.

Because there is a kind
of silence
in the moments between
wake and sleep.
A still over
the keep.
There is a kind of noise,
if you tilt your head
just right,
in the moment between
your words.
Like a hiss.

These are sticks,
those there? Stones.
Your words have weight.
Deny it
as much as you want.
That's all it is.
This is rubber, I'm told.
Under here, glue.
Nothing sticks,
nothing wounds.

You give them the power,
if you really think about it.
Sure.
Tell me another lie.
Whatever gets
you through the day, friend.
Lies, justifications
for monsters that look
like a little you.
They make you feel better,
perhaps.
But aren't they all just words?
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Eat your fill from
the fat of my land.
Shackle my bone
break my hand.
Leave this place to me,
when you go.
You weren't there,
but I don't know.

In a forest
we two meet.
Stars ad nauseum,
but no sleep.
And here and there
go our feet.
No words
compromise this greet.

Lose yourself
in the music of now.
Pull on the ribbons,
make me bow.
But don't forget me
when you leave.
Broken man,
his heart on his sleeve.

Could you catch
a wild thing?
Could you tug
it's heart string?
Could you keep
a wild queen or king?
On our fingers,
bound by this ring.

Goose bump flesh
will be our warning.
Keep my soul
trapped in this morning.
And find me waiting
as I always do,
hoping the next person
to come along is you.

Reach for me
when I'm not there.
Feel my fingers
in you hair.
Step by step,
side by side we ascend a stair.
All these things, and more,
I cannot bear.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Who couldn't see that coming?
Veiled venom
and a world that is succumbing.
For this you shatter my good time.
How does it matter?
So ******* asinine.
You tell me how hard it is to get by.
Myriad reasons, I'm sure,
with infinite failures to try.

So, we're a material culture?
What a novel concept you've exposed.
Can you imagine?
How numb we'd be
if you hadn't disclosed?

Sell me a different song.
I know all the spots
you think we went wrong
Sing me a new pitch.
You've got options
but can't tell which is which.


Yes, living is hard.
We all come out a little beaten,
a little charred.
This I know, and a long while, too.
But that is why we do
all our living while we're alive.
Takes too much energy, otherwise.
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