"doppleganger" poems
My Doppelganger holds secret negotiations with my Avatar.
Slicing up the available territory by flipping a coin. Apparently,
I can see a me for myself if I happen to be in Somalia next Monday.
But that’s the Avator talking. Doppelganger is betting on Seattle.
I am eavesdropping, sitting around in my underwear. They
think I am unaware because I can’t see them, but they are
impossible without me.
Goethe, Shelley and John Donne are in the next apartment
huddled over some broken poems each had written on
the mirrors. No mistakes were made. No reflections.
They get to see themselves out of the corner of one eye,
for up to nine seconds which is like a lifetime to remember.
Yet the acrid smell of Neitzsche emanates from dark corners.
Sturm und Drang be ****** Neitzsche is convinced
no one has ever looked like him, but he does suggest
a parallel universe.
Abe Lincoln, a latecomer and unlikely participant, picks up a few pointers.
He knows full well that what he saw was not a reflection. And he rode that train
all the way from Pittsburg. All those windows...
And, yes, KA, the spirit double, the Egyptian Goddess, goes in **** as the
Greek Princess and shows up as Helen to tease Paris of Troy.
How can you not believe that? For Goddess sake, she helped end the Trojan War.
I have a lot of time on my hands. I don’t get out much.
Ava and Dopp came by just to let me know I’m still around.
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 4:57 PM UTC
he craves online hook-ups.
But this isn't me
nor am I that intrepid
a torrent trampoline
on wireless ether engines
cyber silver surfin'
zone on / in .nets & .coms
searching fiber-optics for sight
browsing rooms of M4M / in-fantasized delights
an itch to fix
to sit transfixed
as if
subliminally attached
umbilically
digitally digitized digi-man
to a electronic felatio soundtrack
yet all the while detached
lurking duplicitly
reading pretend profiles explicitly
for *** sexified mind
dreaming up new fetishes
with misspelled texts
tandem testimonials as if written
by a Compaq-machine-head
Microsoftened lust
currents electric now as we turn into dust
with iBooks & faraway Dells on our laps
scrolling lists for Adams
status' with "anything goes"
remonstrating our vicious cycle
alive & blank with un/trust
gone viral...
this isn't me.
where is the warmth
of feelings, emotions,
malleable and infallible / love??
I am not as talented
as he
to be in two places at once,
but he
has the many faces
and genius of multiple personalities
Cybil
facets
of sabotage with Mommy Dearest grace.
Beautiful strangers his acquired
taste...
he says it was not him
(doing ****
my rage has only one trait.
two eyes (once wide asleep in the lies)
and velvet-rope-burned
wrists
my feet learn to fly
my heart un-breaks
my wings reanimate...
he has too many faces
doppleganger hatred
none to care for or embrace
When did I go blind,
and leave my many strengths?
Where do I now
again
begin??
(The rubble or the sin?)
Every night adieu
Every day anew
once again...
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 6:43 PM UTC
The mosquitoes supped histamine limpets into our puckered flesh
dew gilted grass entombed our feet in dappled domes
refracting the overhead fireworks
smears of whirling color
accented by smoke mote ghosts
I forgot to wear my contacts
my near-sightedness
makes you giggle nervously -
a hard full body ****** of a laugh
it arches your spine
pulling our hand-holding into an expansion
only the lining betwixt finger inlets
galvanized our pulse
well, that and your voltaic laugh
its flourishing timbre
resonant
reverberant pyrotechnic
thickly glazing aural canal
lascivious tomes penned themselves
densely
upon neural plane
dendrites imprinting chemical insignia
moment captured in impressionistic blurs
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 8:35 PM UTC
I missed you today.
With a suddenness, a bereft slap across my skin.
When that familiar hair ahead of me on the sidewalk
turned.
And it wasn't you.
I missed you in the hollow of the moment of the stranger who wasn't you.
And with resounding howl
Like a grieving mother
I missed you.
I remember in the sheets we'd tangle,
I smelled them. I smelled summer air and my perfume
I smelled your soap and your musk in that minute second on the street.
I stopped and I breathed in deep. Inhale, Inhale.
Before you turned and it was not you.
Like a sailor's wife on the shore
I watched as the stranger who wasn't you turned back down the street
Growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
And a thousand piercing stinging blinding pins of light forced themselves.
They stabbed at me and took my breath.
Took your scent and the bed we lay.
On the street, on the street
as you walked away, the stranger.
Paralyzing me with your nearness only to be someone so very much not you.
I missed you and i stood in the street and gravity gave up its pull to laugh at my foolishness
and my eyes filled with tears to celebrate their perfect deception.
and my bones forgot how to hold on for dear life
and I slid to the ground
to the ground
because
I saw you today on the street. The stranger that wasn't you.
I have learned the art of hiccuping you inside.
Memory, hiccup. There you are now tucked away inside.
Kisses on the soft hairs at the nape. Hiccup that away too.
And all of the hiccups came out in a swallow of your name...
A hundred swallows, truth.
They flew wickedly around my head gleeful in my faux pas.
And ten hungry vultures came to take the remains of my hope.
Pick away greedily at my anticipation.
Satiated on the last of my blind faith and now they are too fat to fly.
And I am too weak to run.
Because I saw you on the street today,
The stranger that wasn't you. My beloved. My adored.
Such a peculiar street.
I will not pass this way again.
sahn
04/09/2014
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 10:37 PM UTC
As summer air swaddles me from
ear to waist, the most benign of all sounds sets off a biological riot in me &nights; like these
take my breath away enough to stir up in me the awarenessthat
I
am not
what they want.
Neither Satan nor Substandard
could beg more than what I've been aching to portray.
Both less than and less than
hold their finely tuned scopes and too-broad knowledge to every detail I present.
Neither more eager to please than the other, I blend
devil's advocacy with indifference, but I still can't make either pair of eyes
lips or
fingertips
meet mine.
Oh & Satan,dearest when you take my hand I melt,
I'm desperate to stitch it toyours. But you've no use
for the doppleganger I'd become
to coax approval from the masses.
With that, I crane my neck to see the tower that you are, Substandard. Pleading indecency
and
scoffing at regret, I could almost
mistake your saccharine tone
of voice for the alluring Song of Satan.
I gather up my sins into a bundle and leave them by your side while I plead with fate to condemn my
soul,
elicit a wisp of affection from you,
something for me to hold onto
until winter returns.
What sort of discomfort can coerce a girl to pray for madness just to win inadequacy over?
May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 at 10:48 PM UTC
defined as "existing or being everywhere at the same time; constantly encountered."
__________________________________________________
he craves online hook-ups.
...but this isn't me
or that intrepid,
torrent trampoline
on wireless ether engines
zone on in .nets & .coms
searching fiber-optics for sight
browsing rooms of M4M to fantasize delights
to itch to fix
to sit transfixed as if
subliminally attached
umbilically
digitally to a electronic felatio
soundtrack
yet all the while detached
lurking
reading pretend profiles explicit
with *** sexified,
dreaming up new fetishes
with misspelled texts
tandem testimonials as if written
by a Compaq-machine-head
or Microsoftened lust
as now we are turning to dust
with iBooks & faraway Dells on our laps
scrolling lists and Adams with "anything goes"
remonstrating our vicious
cycle - blank with un/trust
this isn't me...
where is the warmth
of feelings, emotions,
love??
I am not that talented
to be in two places at once,
but he has the faces
and genius of multiple personalities
facets
of sabotage with grace.
he says it isn't him.
my anger has only one trait. two eyes.
velvet
rope-burned
limbs...
and he has too many faces
doppleganger hatreds
where does one
begin??
(The rubble or the sin?)
____________________________________________
DOPpLEGANGER (2016)--[Rewrite]
he craves online hook-ups.
But this isn't me
nor am I that intrepid
a torrent trampoline
on wireless ether engines
cyber silver surfin'
zone on / in .nets & .coms
searching fiber-optics for sight
browsing rooms of M4M / in-fantasized delights
an itch to fix
to sit transfixed
as if
subliminally attached
umbilically
digitally digitized digi-man
to a electronic felatio soundtrack
yet all the while detached
lurking duplicitly
reading pretend profiles explicitly
for *** sexified mind
dreaming up new fetishes
with misspelled texts
tandem testimonials as if written
by a Compaq-machine-head
Microsoftened lust
currents electric now as we turn into dust
with iBooks & faraway Dells on our laps
scrolling lists for Adams
status' with "anything goes"
remonstrating our vicious cycle
alive & blank with un/trust
gone viral...
this isn't me.
where is the warmth
of feelings, emotions,
malleable and infallible / love??
I am not as talented
as he
to be in two places at once,
but he
has the many faces
and genius of multiple personalities
Cybil
facets
of sabotage with Mommy Dearest grace.
Beautiful strangers his acquired
taste...
he says it was not him
(doing ****
my rage has only one trait.
two eyes (once wide asleep in the lies)
and velvet-rope-burned
wrists
my feet learn to fly
my heart un-breaks
my wings reanimate...
he has too many faces
doppleganger hatred
none to care for or embrace
When did I go blind,
and leave my many strengths?
Where do I now
again
begin??
(The rubble or the sin?)
Every night adieu
Every day anew
once again...
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 12:01 PM UTC
It isn't me,
he just looks like me.
And even though he looks like me,
He doesn't act like me.
His mind isn't a meadow like mine.
His is a dry, dark and dead forest.
His eyes aren't brown like mine are.
The iris is big and the eyes are dark beige.
His hands are clenched and his teeth are grinding.
His mouth is snarling
His eyes, hollow and blank eyes, stare out from my skull.
It isn't me, it's just my doppleganger
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 3:35 PM UTC
Doppleganger, please let me go
release your grip on my poor soul
mother's calling you back home
please let me go.
We're living out a laymans dream
painting a paupers scheme
playing on the poor mans team
please let me go.
Terrible tyrants
taking asylum
inside my mind when
I am not home
Please please let me go.
I grow so tired
of feeeding this fire
if times werent so dire
then sleep I would desire.
Please lease let me go.
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 2:07 AM UTC
Somewhere
my
doppleganger
sits eating
chinese take out
for one
watching reruns of Friends
alone
except for
the cat on her lap
and the four more
scattered about her flat.
She sits
thinking
wishing
life was different
How do I know this
because
that would be me
IF
you had found her first
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 2:49 AM UTC
“Go to the doctor, sit in a dim room, take a pill,
Take a test,
Map your progress on a chart-
Get better.”
“What did Dr. Doctor say?”
“How much longer will it take?”
“When will you
Get better?”
Write in a journal,
Make sure that you record
Every day
Until you
get better.
Because we care about you,
We love you,
And we just want you to
“Get better”.
But what is better?
What if I’m the best?
What if this is as
Better
As it gets?
I don’t want to spend this life
In waiting rooms
Waking up to alarms
“Take 2 @ 7 am”,
Why do I have to live this way?
No one told me this before,
When I made up my face with a smile,
And cowered in the closet,
While my doppleganger danced and performed,
And if that’s what you call better,
Hiding
Or residing
In a haze of medication,
Doped up,
Sobered down,
Nothing to hang onto,
I don’t need to lock the doors three times,
Because I don’t care if they’re locked at all.
Is this it?
Is this
Better,
Is this what they’ve been asking for?
Tell me,
Friends,
Loved ones,
Professionals,
Is that what I must do to
Get better?
Hide?
Live in an underwater world,
Where everything is slow,
And the music is muted,
And you can’t feel down,
Because you can’t feel anything at all?
Is that how I can do it?
Is that how I can
Get better?
Oct 30, 2017
Oct 30, 2017 at 11:02 PM UTC
She said I had a double
Staying in room 242
I saw him at the Manchester Hilton
And he looked just like you
He wore the same casual clothing
And carried the same silly smile
I had to pinch myself she said
As it unnerved me for a little while
You must go and find him
See the truth for yourself
Nobody can look so alike
A doppelgänger is bad for your health
So I waited outside the entrance
Nervous wasn't the word
Was it just wild exaggeration
Or did he really look like I'd heard
And sure enough I spotted him
Yes it couldn't be denied
But don't ever meet your doppelgänger
As I had a heart attack and died
Jun 10, 2016
Jun 10, 2016 at 11:04 AM UTC
is it cause and effect
when you pause and reflect
through a bus window driven at night
same view in reverse
or a new universe
with a face looking back that's not right
someone faking a smile
maybe ******* down bile
with a profile of rake thin grey cheeks
once enhanced with laugh lines
circumstance redefined
in a matter of just a few weeks
lights aglow on high streets
put on show the crows feet
that don't go with a face that's within
and etched in like stretch marks
they're a sketch of the darks
from a smile that's been spread far too thin
and defined by it's anger
this malign doppelganger
has no warmth in its eye, only cold
where the dread's run amok
and has sped up the clock
left a handsome face premature old
and it leers out of space
with a queer kind of face
that might once have been eager to please
looking weathered and strained
from endeavours that maimed
through the life it spent down on it's knees
in the glare of the ights
it stares back for a fight
and the raindrops leave pock mark and scars
like a comic **********
or a cosmic inversion
or perhaps that’s the person you are?
Dec 28, 2022
Dec 28, 2022 at 10:36 AM UTC