I can’t accept that my heart must turn to stone
just so that I don’t have to fade to dust and bone.
What good is life if you must go it alone?
Everyone should hear a voice versus a dial tone.

I don’t want to put a price on my head or on my soul,
and I don’t want to pay the price when I’ve already paid the toll.
Maybe I should take a lesson or two from a certain mole,
and find myself a nice warm and cozy hole.

Instead I resign and lay down on cold concrete
hoping it might absorb some of the sun’s heat,
like during days in the summer when it burns your feet,
they say you could hear an egg sizzle and it could cook your meat.

You may think I resemble a crumpled up bill,
discarded and thrown away at someone else’s will,
or maybe just another ant upon the hill
that’s awaiting to be squashed, just awaiting the ****.

Still I’m risking it all for just one more day,
even though the colours drain and then they fade to grey.
What you give you should not take away.
the rules keep on changing but not the way we play.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Em?”
I’m shaking my head and cheeks turn red.
Holding back tears but coughing up phlegm,
just consider me one of the walking dead.

And in all of that; myself I will find
and I’ll find myself becoming blind.
With clenched fists and teeth that grind,
living in the constraints of a mortal mind.

I’m getting greys
at an alarming rate,
I already pulled at my hair.
“It’s normal” he says
I swear just to debate,
cause he doesn’t seem to care.

And I’m bleeding through
my scar tissued skin,
the layers only grew
still I find a way in.

I’m getting greys
at an alarming rate,
I’ll be down to the last strand.
Check or fold the plays,
the cards aren’t that great
I’ll be down the my last hand.

And I’m bleeding through
my thick nice sweater.
It’s a shame as it’s new
and we’re reaching the cold weather.
It will stain the soft fabric
I may just grab the bleach,
but I always made it a habit
to always keep it just out of reach.

I’m getting greys
at an alarming rate
pretty soon I’ll be bald.
On hot coals she stays,
though she shifts her weight
and watches her soles scald.

And I’m bleeding through
my clogged and blocked pores,
and the remaining few
are becoming septic sores.
I’ll shed another layer
of a non-protective bubble,
and my hair will continue to get greyer,
I think I’m now in some trouble.

“Why do you always do that?”, she asked

“What?”, I replied

“That thing you always do! Even when I say don’t!”

“Am I doing it now?”, I asked

“No…but when you do…don’t!”

“So, when I do it, you want me not to?”

“Yes!“, she exclaimed

“So for me to stop doing it…I’d need to do it…right?”, I asked.

it seems to me
that breathing deeply
and counting to ten
just gives them
another opportunity
to irritate me
even more

Funny how the pendulum moves,
Set swaying by a finger,
Swinging  back and forth
As gravity wages war against momentum,
In a war it always wins,

In relationships too the pendulum rocks
Back and forth
But not for the wronged
For they push it to where
They want it

Because history and the present
Are writ not by the victor
But the wronged against,
And in that the pendulum hangs
At 45 degrees

I envy the equine fly twitch,
the contraction of muscle, the shudder
triggered by the fly’s tickle -
the irritation dispelled in a moment.
I envy that gift to dismiss the torment,
as I sit through another pointless argument.