Constant beauty and contract signing,
Steps outside the door to flashing lights,
Cameras,
From center stage:

Her bedroom of anxiety.

Greeted by the sea of paparazzi,
They seem less genuine than a crowd of assassins,

Only reporting on things that will tear down a reputation,

Publicity that weighs on the soul.

Notoriety was never supposed to make it hard to breathe,
But the only soft air comes on the end of ****** needles
That one day will pass too much relief into your veins

And make a pop star that much more famous.

One night in December,
The streets were army gray
And hurrying strangers
Rushed home for the day.
Nimble legged salesmen
Sold flowers by the street
And rhythm was the rumble
Of voices cars and feet.

The young were dressed for parties
Some sang with radios
And over-friendly women
Assumed their favorite pose.
Trashcan colored beggars
Searched gutters with their hands
While uniforms saved sinners
With sermons songs and bands.

Patrolmen sang the pop songs
From slowly cruising vans
As nighttime changes faces
Pushers change their plans.
The movie marquee lightning
Put movement to the sound
As nameless children squabbled
For pennies they had found.

Uptown they're making movies
For Hollywood L.A.
They listen to the sirens
Downtown far away.
The Civic Center phantoms
Are easy to forget.
Folks simply close their eyes
And they haven’t seen them yet.
They haven’t seen them yet.

Echoes of long sirens
fade in hushed apartments;

familiar passersby
in the vastness of the night.

Now and only can we hear
the soft winter breathing.

©2017 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

Wrapped in electric Christmas sweaters,
Apple cider morning holding whiskey
Feeling nervous.

I watch average people out my window,
I see snow, unique and frozen.

But who cares that everything outside is dying?
Here inside it's a rave, we're all alive and close,

Sweating, comfortable.

It's the only thing tethering me to the Earth.

Staying awake is only fun when there's ecstasy involved,

Depressing news on smartphones,
Roofies and ice cubes.

So much excitement, so little time before death,
Might as well live in excess,
And then stop, suddenly.

Buzz, beep
Demanding glare of a flickering screen
Hands rifle through pockets and purses
Find validation in rigid thumbs
Hands forgot to join in prayer last night
But glide over a keyboard
I woke feeling zero
Turned to her blinking monitor eyes
I heard her smile
Nothing more than Morse code for
Error four-oh-four
I woke feeling one
Huxleyan white noise
Of pixels impregnated with the passions of the ignorant
Feel me
But do not touch me
For I am no different than those fools
Making love to the Device
Half-hearted
And I can’t help but wonder
Why I’m even attempting Poetry
In a world that cannot read its own digital tongue

Beginning with the swagger of my palm to the squeezing sensation in my ribcage
I realize that the modern woman is alone among everyone else
from the creative orthopedic doctor whose joints resemble that of an
air craft plane your father designed in 1953
to the zany business owner that counts their own steps and
watches the calorie intake of the television dribble
there’s a bit of resentment on her polished fingernails as
she watches feminist prose on stage of a bar with no name
and she drinks cordially, the same intake that a midnight taxi driver
takes to keep his sanity, just enough to recognize street signs
and forget people’s faces
she sits in her dining room table and admires the lump in her throat
never feeling at home with dinner guests so she invents
party games that freefall off her legs into the carpet
that used to belong to a woman with no legs and a smoker’s mouth
but she doesn’t know this because she got it for three dollars
from her neighbor who isn’t alive anymore
and the blood stains of the old woman’s breath have long
disappeared and it’s appealing, yes very appealing
the modern woman is alone among everyone else
that comes foremost, thus the shy boys become isolated women
and the cycle of who is who begins to spin but the laundry won’t stop
piling in a corner of a room
and as soon as it stops the clothes drip from gender to gender  
between the tiles of the convenience store, between the
local gas station where men sit in their pickup trucks staring
at the spit on the ground and wondering whose mouth
it regurgitated from
and the lights become more fluorescent, more menacing  
so the solitary companions start coming later and later
until the sun sets and the lights are off and the only way to
know if another heart is beating is by crawling on the floor
hoping to find a pulse instead of an unsteady table, or a broken
chair or window howling but one acclimates to such conditions
while the modern woman is most intellectual of all
there’s a primitiveness, a strange longing to look behind her
to continue with watchful eyes darting long glances at the past
and sighing with relief that this is now and the future looks down with
convincing not conniving glares but still she falls into the
pit of her own stomach and memorizes the world upside down
the words jostle about,  the approaches of curious hands
become welcoming and the universe that once was an oyster
melts into a pearl with a sharp edge, a tooth made
out of pretty godforsaken, the speculated
creation of something eternally ****** will always be ******
but you don’t have to agree with it, there’s no reason to
shimmy into a container of shouts when you could
easily assimilate into a vat of unknowness, to
belong to something so you don’t have to be anything
yes indeed the modern woman stands alone in these dark ages
but the swagger has been reduced to a soft calamity, the
squeezing sensations in my rib cage have been swallowed to a
slow pull, grasp, released clench of a heart

I
do you think you can sleep?
when you see a girl, a little girl
being bombed in her own house
losing her toys
her beloved brother
wake me up
when the war ends
and the suffering go away
I was told, I am too sensitive
you make it too personal
I don't know how does it feel?
What does it look like exactly?
I plagiarize the thoughts, of people being silent
I listen to their thoughts
and heart,
flooded with heaviness
just like how it is mine, sometimes
or should I say most of the times
I'm sick of news
I am sick of the content media plays
again and again
of the pictures, showing young kids losing their lives
even if that little girl sleep
do you think she'll be able to sleep well?
Or will she dream?
our reflection is not shown in the mirror
like that little girl
I can’t dream
nor can i can sleep well
it is true, indeed


II
tell me, when the war ends
or tell me it has
I don't like prosing
but the grief asked me, to write more
even when I know
it makes no difference, as yet
it only makes me more sad
to see my emotions
floating just like a rhythm
it's been a while since I stopped writing
I stopped writing poems
I write in a language which people don't understand
all they say, 'i am too sensitive'
I need 'therapy', i should have come with 'an instruction pamphlet'
to deal with me
as they say, its not easy being with me
so there it is, they left, just like that
without any explanation, without any consolation
but I can't care more of this
since its difficult

III
truth is harder to tell
every year, there's more to lose
and more to let go.
yet, I write
I am compelled to
even though, nobody wants to hear you out
the anguish inside
crackling inside your bones
some days my heart beats very fast
and I can hear it
even then I stay helpless
at the mercy of the people losing so much of themselves
yet, nobody does anything
including myself
it’s a consolation reward
for being a human
in a world
where sympathy is ‘weakness’
this wasn’t me
this isn’t me, I grew up
more and more compassionate
feeling too much, thinking too much.
I cry as often, as most people
would even think of anything
of all the love, and the care
this static visions and imaginary world
hard to watch, the scars and wounds
with so much broken, wretched life’s
and the lies that establishments make
should I stop trusting people
yet I don’t
and I realize
I’m just so full of *******
since the body, I’m in
feels too much
even I’m not directly involved
I can bury my past and I have
to all the people
who didn’t want me to be in their life
as I quietly left

IV
It takes courage to tremble
and be weak
I left the therapy
and the needing thing
all I understand
how not be in a world of ‘how to be
breaking hearts or law
or the promises
they're all same, equally worse
we have to create our own destiny
its louder than war
or violence
and I know, I will
just like that
with each time I feel my heart sinking
I get motivation
to stand up for all the people who can’t
to be a voice of all the million people who can’t speak
even if I feel far away,
know, I am not gone
I am just tired of the feelings that I feel
and it’s the very thing
you will remember me of
this kindness and genuineness
it will be a symbol of my life
maybe, I will sleep well then
or so does that little girl
spreading love and hope
kind of life we led
and not intending to stay back here
where it just feels too much.

Cloven coffee-
today the butte was shrouded in fog,
and my body was woke
so that I wanted to beg for it.
But I won't.

I can't live without the torture,
can't survive without the taste of blood.

I will be a bride to the indelible stickiness,
a lover to that which blooms.

Hold me, hold me, hold me.
I am shaken.

I'm a heavy philosopher when I'm drugged up, I sing The General Specific in bed with the Elf Queen.

How many thousands of times did we make awkward eye contact,
And then receded out of our shells
To both ponder our crises with Sufjan Stevens sad verses falling out from the ceiling.

I've fallen directly in love with life in the nighttime.
///
I'm sure that there was some cloud of fog when I slumped out from your room.
There was a physical haze I was trapped under
Trying to feed you harmony, melody and restore your confidence.

Reading your signals, it says your words don't match the hurting in your eyes,
And that scares me.

In reading the Russian legend of the Snow Maiden,
Doesn't she have to melt in the summer?

It's the delicate balance of nature that ruins any hope I conjure,
But with the temperature dropping below freezing
I'd just as well preserve my happiness
Until I can't control its thawing out
And imminent disintegration.

That, of all things, can wait.