There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows….. I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul

I know, I alone
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law
Nor melody nor thought.

Only I, only I
And none of this can I say
Because feeling is like the sky -
Seen, nothing in it to see.

There are ships sailing to many ports,
but not a single one goes to where life is not painful;
nor is there a port of call where it is possible to forget.

To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming — like worms when a rock is lifted — under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.

You ask her,
"Why did you date such *******?!"
She simply says, "I don't know."
But wait-

Maybe it's because she had a father
Who didn't teach her
How a man should treat a woman til it was
Too late;
Til she was grown and already mistreated
By every man she'd ever known.

Maybe it was because she saw
Only flaws when she looked into the mirror,
And believed them when they said,
"You're cute, but that woman over there is hot."
She learned to hate herself.
She was worthless- dirt under the feet
Of the men who walked all over her.
Never good enough.

Or maybe it's because eventually
She started to believe that
This is how relationships work.
The manipulation, the emotional abuse...
Maybe she just deserved it.
She wasn't meeting their standards,
She wasn't giving them what they wanted,
And god forbid if she asked for too much love.

She tells herself that it's her fault
That they left her.
She should've been better,
More attractive,
Less emotional and
Let them do what or whom ever they pleased.
She concludes that she isn't
Meant for love or happiness or relationships.
That life will go on and she will be
Alone.

You ask her why she dates *******.
She shakes her head and looks down,
Saying, "I don't know."
But the truth is she knows exactly why,
But tries to hide it with a smile anyway.
Because she knows
That's not the answer you were looking for.

I put makeup on my little sister.
I laugh as she squints her eyes too much and
mascara goes everywhere. Thin black streaks run along
her eyelid and below it; she goes to rub and
I have to hold her hands from creating a bigger mess.

The sky turns black and we run inside for cover.
She starts to worry as the rain erupts from the clouds
and cringes when she hears the thunder.
I tell her there's nothing to worry about,
and took her hand to lead her out on the porch.
Lightning cracked down so close,
and I scared her even more.

I laid her down in bed; past bedtime.
She was tired and I
didn't think she'd remember but
she asked me to sing her the song I made up
when she was just a baby.
I swept the hair across her forehead as I began the tune.
She grabbed my hand and drifted off to sleep.

She doesn't need me like she used to,
but I'll always be there, just in case.

I think I am gonna think
before writing the next line,
Nah!
just gonna let it flow
write the next thing that
comes to my head,
stream of unconsciousness
I guess,
or a dam busted

find higher ground
you all,
the **** is gonna flow
again!

If I’d known you were coming,
I would have straightened up the place,
Stashed the empty wine bottles,
Trashed the roaches,
Baked a cake,
Gotten rid of the girl.