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Panic strikes me
as I realize that
I'm alone

Alone for the first time--
and I don't know
what to do with myself

All these people
Insistent beeping, buzzing,
rolling, shutting

My collective mind
Unraveling
Before my eyes as I have
No one to talk to
to
Connect
with

Floundering
thumbing through
my contacts
to find someone

Anyone

To make me feel wanted,
to feel that my company,
even if through a phone,
is wanted, that I am
desirable

As I fold in on myelf
the Layers turning inward,
eating themselves--

The waitress leans down and asks:

Is everything okay?

I respond, muttering:

mmhm.

It's killing me from the outside in
you know...

But I don't say that

As the layers fold,
the only thing that remains
is a scared little girl
just as frightened as she was
the day she opened her eyes
underwater
and looked around
and realized how eerily
vast and deep the water was...

It still scares her.
It scares me.
And I realize
that the one thing
I can't stand more than
Anything
more than death itself:
is being alone.

Why?

Because when I am
alone with my thoughts
That vastness
that deep ocean of nothingness
bathed in a burning, purified chlorine
Haunts me

Because I cannot fill it,
not even with the deepest of thoughts,
the most vivid sentiments
Cannot satisfy the depths
of the reflective blue against
a slate of unfeeling cement
Written: December 17, 2009

Author's Note: I wrote this in a Christmas card that was given to me recently. I was at Wendy's after I went to the movies with a friend. The christmas card was all I had to write in, so I used it. The girl cleaning up must have seen my face ******* up in concentration as I wrote feverishly, and was concerned for me. I find it ironic that she talked to me considering the subject of my poem, but I thought I would share the circumstances with you regardless.
I try one cheek to the pillow, then try the other cheek,
Nothing,
I try my front, then I try my back,
Nothing.
For the time being I have forgotten how to sleep,
Trapped in my head the fearless fright,
Of what’s been kept out of sight,
Waiting for the sunshine’s rays so bright,
In these dark hours of yet another sleepless night,
Waiting for the morning light,
In a pool of my warm sweat and burning tears,
Awaiting the confrontation with my fears,
Thinking of my life these past years,
I wait for the morning.
These are things, for which I feel sad,
But these are things, that do not make me mad,
For this choice is done, and is truly not bad,
I know I should feel glad,
And someday, I know I shall,
But for now I am waiting,
For the morning, that is not this morning.
30 seconds.
The translucent window of dreams gets blown open by the quivering baseline, that echo’s throughout this Technicolor city. The distant horizon of reality, depression and cracked council estate morals are long forgotten. The piercing taste of alcohol stings the back of my neck but melts my stomach and helps free the tormented thoughts that plague an overworked mind. Smoke another joint, dance another dance; my feet emulate feelings that cannot be described. ***** sits heavy in my mind, delaying my reactions and isolating my judgment. An old friend who takes the **** dances pasts with a former lover that once kept my heart safely locked up beside hers. Even though the blood of that love dried months ago, the scars are still visible beneath my skin and they scream across my truthful eyes. I decide to let myself drop further into the ever deepening baseline of the city; I feel my eyes plummet into the empty space of my head. The beat of my heart has been removed and replaced by the pulsing nerve of the city. The blinding lights dazzle my imagination and urge me to forget the grey concrete that surrounds this city, the music pumps and drives life’s blood around my clogged veins and the vibrations shake my fragile frame.

I pull another slightly crushed cigarette to my cracked lips, and let the cold night begin the battle against the warm tobacco that flows into my once pure lungs. Poisonous substances help me feel the sweet taste of life, of love, of music. Realism is forgotten about, the boundaries of life are melting in the bottom of a pit somewhere, let them dissolve and never return. Sober problems twist their ankles and fall into the **** soaked gutter, whilst I let myself drown in a moment of sweet nothing. There is no time to be thinking about girls or love, there is no time for idle conversation under the glare of the moon. For a brief moment I watch packs of men move like wolfs circling on the innocence of girls, buy them another drink, crush them another pill. I stumble back into this disillusioned factory that was once a foundation of an honest wage and the reliable structure of a family dinner. Now it is falling to pieces, unable to cope with this tormenting beat that is shaking through my body.  This place is like a time warp, hours feel like minutes yet seconds feel like days.

The first step is admitting defeat; the second is allowing the ******* to begin. I allow the liquor to not only caress but baptize my tongue. I am a puppet to the baseline, a slave being held by strings that are attached to the stars. These stars rise higher than any city skyline can imagine they refuse to be beaten by man; they stay a part of our superstition, a character in our dreams.  In the corners of intoxication the weak fall, unable to cope with the choice of freedom. They recline into a murky puddle of sweat and fear. Their eyes vibrate subconsciously and their legs twitch to the ever changing beat. For me there is no murky puddle, I am lost at sea rolling between the waves, letting the current take me where it pleases. The breeze caresses my consciousness and tickles my sedation.

Without hesitation my feet start moving again, finding a groove that my mind didn’t even know existed, I feel myself slip into a new unknown level, finally even the strings attached to the stars snap from the tension. My mind is free; it is no longer a hundred mile-an-hour switchboard that is overrun by lights and flashes. Frozen fireworks that were once subdued by the oppression of reality, become lukewarm and vibrate on the verge of ecstasy, I feel them take off into the night, one after another, throwing images into the dark sky. Like 1940 they blitz the city and people run for cover shouting screaming for their loved ones.  Yet the nightly residence of this factory remain unworried and free. We are the last of the human race not to flee into our suburbia homes, so listen to this erratic baseline and forget about the yellow hooded figures that patrol the streets, let the night lurch you into a sudden paradox where nobody belongs yet everybody searches for. This is true euphoria.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
It ****** me first, and now ***** thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
  Yet this enjoys before it woo,
  And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
  And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
  Though use make you apt to **** me,
  Let not to that, self-****** added be,
  And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast  thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it ****** from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself, nor me the weaker now;
  ’Tis true, then learn how false fears be:
  Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
  Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

— The End —