PARALLEL LINES DO NOT MEET.

-

-

Happiness...is not...a mathematical formula
that one can apply to supply an answer.

Rather...it is the sum of who you are
multiplied by who you are willing to be.

Happiness...like Mathematics
is something I was never ever any good at

& always made me weep
with equal parts

Desperation
Exasperation

&
Frustration.

Or, D.E.F.
for short.

For example:

If it took a man a lifetime
to dig himself into a hole

how long would it take
for half the man he used to be

to dig himself out again?

Questions – such as this
only caused me grief...

In Mathematics(like Latin)            
which I could also never know

I would cheat & repeat
words full of sound & no sense.

E.g.

The cares of the hippopotamus
are equal to some of the cares
that the other two hippopotami confide.

Happiness...like Mathematics
was all Greek to me.

I don’t know...that’s all I know.

But I do know that...
Happiness happens

every now...& then...

the only trick
is to be aware that it’s there & that...

Parallel Lines do meet...

...at Infinity

Q.E.D.

.

Empty,
this heart is desolate
a barren wasteland
of what ifs and waiting
for words no longer needed,
no longer wanted,
no longer heard
poetic failures
from a poetic failure,
crawling, pleading,
fading fast

Sun bleached and brittle,
in an instant
all is gone,
lost to the shifting sands,
deserted, abandoned,
cast aside as bones
begging for flesh,
for blood, for breaths,
chewed and spit
by the scavengers,
taking what is not theirs,
feasting on the loser,
laughing at his tears

Such a sight,
he bought it, all of it,
the promises, the lies
disguised as dreams,
shiny lures, bait…taken
at this dry lake bed,
blistering shores,
blinded by her vision,
walking away,
sorry

Still hearing the echoes. . .
he’s got a gold mine,
a poetic gold mine,
you’ve got dust,
beige, drab dust,
minute particles,
filling your pockets,
weighing down steps,
lower into the sand,
waving goodbye

To a love
that turned out to be a mirage,
as the oasis crumbles
(the oasis crumbles)
beneath black wings,
beaded eyes
still circling overhead,
calling his name
orbiting his life,
hungry for his death,
licking parched lips
caked and crackling
stealing everything
held in his heart,
picked clean,
empty

He tells himself that one day
he’ll be with the woman that he loves
but he will have to fix himself first.
He leaves her shaking on the bathroom floor
because he can’t stop his own hands from trembling
and he doesn’t think he’s capable
of picking up all of her broken pieces
when he is still slicing open his fingertips
trying to clean up his own mess.
His story isn’t one you would tell your children
because it isn’t one that ends happily.
Years later her long hair still appears in his dreams
and he can’t bring himself to listen to his favorite music anymore
because he swears he can hear her laughter in every tune.
He buries himself in other girls
whose eyes don’t shine nearly as brightly as hers used to
and he drinks whiskey every night
in the hopes of forgetting her name,
but he is afraid he will end up forgetting his own first.