I
"We spoke of men
as often as of poems.
We tried to legislate away
the need for love –
that backseat ****
& death caressing you."
–Erica Jong

ah, this side of paradise!
there's no comfort in the wise,
no comfort at all. I roll it up how I was
taught to, half cancer half plant,
wait around for the next one.

ever feel like a ******? I'd asked her
once, waiting on a corner, fishing for a lighter.
no, but I feel like Sylvia Plath.
I had responded: can I be Anne Sexton?

it seemed right, that is, my severe rejection of emotions via denial, via wanting to tear out my hippocampus,

stomp on it, trying to forget every walk to every room and back, to every house and back.

she herself was severe, though, this friend, more sad in an intrinsical way, more dull and rotten than I, via bad chemistry, while I was just a
case of depressive charlatanism gone bad.
Right?

I searched for acceptance in every bed cover's crease and dollar bills I handed them to buy me smokes.
I searched for it, hands on me, and then before then I had searched for it while he asked what's wrong?
You need to tell me what's wrong!

I love you! You need to tell me! Are you ok?





You are funny if you think I responded.



I likened my staring state, I fixed it in my head as a piercing quixotically sad one, once.




My silence was a story in itself.

II*

"You loved a man who spoke
like greeting cards.
'He ***** me well
but I can’t talk to him.'"
– Erica Jong

It was ultimately guilty,
this time removed from pleasure.
The whole situation, blows to the face
and little slaps of course,
I felt the need to send myself into
a sort of temporary sleep so I forgot
but then would wake up again
because that would mean they won
and this is why I concussed myself once.

He tells me he cares and it's not
that I don't believe him but
it's that I don't believe myself.

I apologize for my being a burden and
he asks me why.
I suppose I am used to it

and if I could stare at him
it would be the same old stare.





"We shared that awful need
to talk in bed.
Love wasn’t love
if we could only speak
in tongues."*
– Erica Jong