It’s just easy for them
Isn’t it?
This couple on the train.
They walked on laughing together
Holding hands
And I felt that familiar something-
Not jealousy
Not envy
But...
Chagrin.
Astonishment.
Incredulity.
Incomprehension.
Looking at them feels like looking at one of those
Impossible pictures
Where the stairs keep going forever in a loop.
It’s just
Easy for them.

It doesn’t hurt anymore, that thought,
But thinking it feels so odd in my mind
When I can’t imagine loving someone without
Shame,
Without pain.
They fit.
These people,
They fit without having to carve anything out.
They fit without punishing each other.
They fit like puzzle pieces cut from the same board-
No worries, they just go together, and that
Is that.
They fit like
“Of course.”
Like breathing.
Neatly.
Simply.
Carelessly.

I can’t imagine what it’s like
I can’t comprehend it-
To fit
Somewhere
Much less to fit somewhere
With someone.
I am always trying to corset myself into this world,
Lungs burning,
Trying to remain small enough to squeeze by
Catching myself by the wrist to keep from reaching
For anything.
And if there seems to be a spot where I might be able to exist as I am

It is always

Occupied.

Like a shiny pinprick
That thought hurts-
Not like the others it is newly cut
And still ******.
The idea that maybe there is a home for me
And that maybe I was too late for it.

They’re laughing.
He says something clever,
Passes a hand along the small of her back
And she leans into it,
Smiling because she loves that he wants to touch her innocently.
They seem to exist behind glass.
Not for the first time I wonder
If I could just slip into that life
Like a drop into an ocean
I want it badly
I want it stupidly
And I examine all the parts of myself,
All the edges and cracks,
All the things I’ve worked so hard to protect and repair.
It is not a welcome sight-
I am not a home
I am like an old ruin
Full of murmurings and cold spots
Full of dusty sunlight.
I sigh,
Knowing the secret I keep so poorly-
That if I really had a choice to be otherwise
I would have already made it.

I couldn’t reach them if I ran for a thousand years,
They are too far away.
They walk off the train, arms linked
Talking about nothing
And I watch them go
Like a hallucination,
Like a mirage in the desert.

Her perfume smells like forgetfulness
And it lingers.

“The love betweenness^ a mother and her son”
when it’s healthy strong and ancient,
like this, is for me, and it seems,
for you as well, almost a supernatural force in certain ways.
I know many other women who understand this.
It’s been probably the best surprise of my life.” Medusa

sometime, a poem commission needs a quiet time rumination,
a seventh inning time out to birth a perfect game,
a mental stretch mark,
did your know your commentation was a commandation,
write me up, punch my ticket and jump back into murky waters,
where a hu-man boy child only gifted me a tertiary imagination, comprehensive incomprehension

this look upon differing and different, parenting parts of me,
with the bright den mother’s sun gazing eyes of a new motherland,
promotion to an incessant guardianship,
an ordered mathematical centrality,^
a forever buck private’s uniform shoulder stripe pointing to mom

maternal rhymes with eternal

for children go off and go on about their lives,
occasionally glancing backwards,
but a mother’s eyes are an all encompassing, an all white canvass painting that the artist continue-ously slyly forward refreshes,
forever white repainted with each perpetual glancing thought added

this mother woke, sensing her make-male creation
is a gender separate separation,
a mystery needing learning, genes requiring a crisper adult education, a breast refilling is a sharing, eye to eye,  
****** to mouth, transferring a transformation,
between a new meaningful, an analogy of understanding that
swims in both directions, across a uniting natural division that unites,  better called an open boundary

daughters are different but the insanity~same,
a poem for another day

a supernatural surprise that occurs daily,
that you rightly appel it, as ancient  is correctly unsurprising
for the knowledge is in every cell recorded, time immemorial

apologies;
my insufficient words
can’t explain this
dotted line division,
only that, I too am a student driver mother,
my son, a teacher,  a natural scholar,
the understanding we shared is instantaneous and confusing,
as we go back and forth together,
travellers tween the dotted line spaces,
absorbing his milky ways,
informations that were not obviously ****** in me, or if they were,
awaited this suckling’s coronation and education, invitation


our differences are not a true division,
but a new manner of best embracing

which is why with good humor, our private joking, is that he
is my very own  nap-ster master,^^ we are an ordered centrality^

You're always saying how you want to understand me
But how can you when our conversations remain one sided-
My speech is broken by a silence that should be filled with your own
Yet I continue to speak to myself, never pausing to hear the sounds of silence
My words stringing into sentences, rolling off my tongue with such poetic rhythm
They cannot possibly make no sense, because they make perfect sense to me
I must be speaking in a foreign language- yes, that must be it
But surely in misunderstanding you would call a stop to my ranting
Instead I am met with a blank expression followed by suspicious looks

i don't understand
Yes,  you do.

2 cups of insecurity
4 ounces of comparison
1 cup of dinner not eaten.
5 cups of a mind in shackles
6 tablespoons of incomprehension
2 ounces of oblivious peers
3 cups of dinner not eaten.
3 teaspoons of phantom numbers
2 cups of anxiety
4 cups of mirrors smashed to bits
1 pint of self-hatred
4 cups of dinner not eaten.
1 tablespoon of depression
6 ounces of anger
2 pints of hopelessness
3 cups of self-inflicted scars
4 teaspoons of ribs in the mirror
5 cups of fainting on the stairs
1 gallon of dinner not eaten.
6 cups of grieving families
4 tablespoons of words unspoken
3 teaspoons of tears unshed.
2 cups of dusty belongings
4 gallons of friends never made
3 teaspoons of kisses never stolen
a lifetime of words left unsaid.

Melt insecurity and comparison and mix thoroughly with dinner not eaten. Mix a mind in shackles, incomprehension, and oblivious peers and add three more cups of dinner not eaten. Crush phantom numbers and anxiety and sprinkle over batter. Take each piece of mirrors smashed to bits and poke them carefully through self-hatred. Mix with four more cups of dinner not eaten. Melt depression, anger, and hopelessness and spread them thoroughly throughout the batter. Meticulously place self-inflicted scars visibly on top of the mixture. Cover with ribs in the mirror and fainting on the stairs. Mix with one gallon of dinner not eaten. Haphazardly toss in grieving families, words unspoken, and tears unshed. Mix with dusty belongings, friends never made, and kisses never stolen. Gather a lifetime of words left unsaid in a separate container. Take it outside and bury it. Do not mark the grave site.

When I was in primary school
An old friend told me that I was gay
I didn't understand it
'I'm not gay', I denied to the last that it was true
Even though I knew it

But every time I thought of that sentence and took that with me

A few years later I had a relationship with a guy
Only there was something missing
I didn't know what it was
But during that relationship, I had feelings for a woman
I denied to the last that I was in love with her
Even though I knew it

That made me hesitate
Who am I?

Then meeting one girl was all I needed to comfirm
That I'm bi
I was so in love with her
Because of her I told my parents and all my friends
I was never so beyond all doubt

But then she became more and more doubtful
Even though she is hurting me now
I don't want to lose her and her incredible love
One of the worst feelings in life I think

Please, someone
Wake me up from this big nightmare
Because I don't understand love anymore

the passage through time is quite uneasy
imbedded in concrete; consciousness dreamy
faces skewing, anemic monsters
intricate patterns, enhances, obscures
repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition,
incomprehension, incomprehension
i can't continue, can't vacate
i'm only human, my souls to take
i discovered what it means to be
when you can truly see
the epiphany of heavenly monstrosity
visions of a black hole theory
i've seen all of time in one moment
the future, the past, times of atonement
lucid and frightful
enlightening and grateful
heartbeat steadies
i think i'm ready
to explore the world from a different standpoint
and fully know this is not an endpoint
it's forever changing
and we're made for adapting
our primal nature's to live
i will never be held captive

I look up at the chaos around me
and see.
I see people saying their last prayers,
Waiting for their fateful endings,
I hear the church bell toll in its last call,
I feel the suffocating heat from the burning buildings,
I smell the smoke from the ignited city,
I taste the desperation in the air and the bitterness of regrets.

But in the middle of this tumult,
One thing stands out;
One person.

A little boy stands there in a tan attire,
dark gray ash contrasting his almost-white hair
and tears stains on his ivory cheeks.
A grim expression marking his features,
He shakes as if freezing
and although the heat has almost become unbearable,
he stands in the middle of the flames
barefoot yet unharmed.
A scythe lays at his feet,
and a pale horse stands by his side,
making his small body look even smaller.

As if feeling my stare,
he locks eyes with me.

And as the world burns down,
the reflection of the cataclysm in his brown eyes
and the look of innocent incomprehension he wears
is the single most heartbreaking thing in the moment.

Suddenly, I do not care about the screams and cry of the despondent goners.
I do not feel the harsh scorch of the burnt remains under my bare feet.
I do not mind the tears welling up in my eyes due to the fumes.
They are but a distant reminder of the atrocity surrounding me.
I can only focus on the strange guilt reflected in his warm eyes.

From those same eyes, a tear rolls down his cheeks
And as it reaches his dimpled chin,
he raises a little hand to wipe it away
And then waves at me.
I do not wave back,
too stunned to move or react,
But I could tell he did not expect me to anyways.

With one last look,
he picks up the scythe with an unusual easiness
and turns to walk towards the flames,
the horse close behind him.
And soon, they are one with the flames.

majestic adjectives
of contrary harmonies,
adverbs in adversity
that modify our satisfactions,
gut punch our eyes,
scramble the taste buds,
now inoperable,
incapacitated to distinguish
what is disturbed -
what is sweet -
what is impossible.
my days ending is
nearer to my god than thee,
the crumblings of
what I’ve got left

stale panko crumbs,
here come they in
1000 radium-tipped
projectiles of
serious humorous
self-destruction,
gifted to you!
my few
itinerant followers
peddlers brave enough
to offer shelter,
to follow me
into the deeps of
radioactive incomprehension,
of no particular disorders
a thousand times

bless you
richly, eachly,
name announced, pronounced,
we are all proper nouns.

I don't understand how someone so strong
Could think they are so weak
When they deal with way more bull
Than anyone should ever deal with.

I don't understand how someone that handsome
Could think they are that much of an abomination
When they have hated themselves way more
Than anyone should be hated, particularly him.

I don't understand how someone so amazing
Ended up so strong
So self-loathing
So anxious
So depressed
So misplaced
So disadvantaged.

pride
falling from a
suspension
bridge

easy
death leap
sparks
a final
thrill ride

splashing
down with
conclusive
thudness

an epic
detritus
skimming
along the
heave of long
regretfull
rivers

buoyantly
bobbing
atop eddies
of hubris
cresting
aimlessly into
nothingness

one way ticket
expiration dates
are strictly
enforced on
leapers

but the final
gulps of
briney pride
swallowed
by loved ones
chokes them
in welling
floods of
unresolved
incomprehension

forcing the
bereaved
to forever swim
in a churning
flotsam during
unexpired
lifetimes

Cab Calloway: Jumpin Jive

Paterson
10/24/13
jbm

Cruel Blackness




I want to do the unpopular possibly the scary I want to face the darkness but keep from getting
Lost that is the trick a guide lost is worthless my heart is heavy and it bears the condition of

Despair but not a cheap act or idea that would suit a magic show but to dispel darkness bring
Light out of nothing let it gradually form its unquestionable life sustaining power in the secret

Place prisons that are uncanny and profound easy to enter inextricable impossible to escape
Defeat fate's death chilling breath feeds on your soul until the outer man is no more here is where

Doubt is size less who can measure or plumb its depth the shroud tolls with silent bells if there
Be walls who can tell most would give into panic the sure music of pleasure to the heart of

Darkness within the darkest robe phobia’s all manner of emotional chains are stored quietly as a
Many legged spider they approach the tolling of somber is known it works masterful deigns

That reach thoughts that turn only with ease in a demon’s mind the feign is unreal but as the
Heart is desperately wicked who shall Know it enslaves it own without number you need the

One and only component that knows no fear its price and availability and its origin a mystery it
Is not in League with and on Terms with The tremulous waster that shakes and breaks

Foundations that seemingly have no beginning or end that runs crookedly to the unknown and
Its name is Disaster but it has a master it lives in void fueled world of incomprehension but a

Child can harness its attributes innocent’s forms It out of the nothingness we need it grows
Precipitously formable you start by denouncing your own mind the end of self and you have few

Weighted steps to the door there is no terror as terrifying as dependence on an outcome that you
Have no control over to come and blunder past warning signs that are insoluble is to annihilate

Such a foolish intruder thus the darkness in the first place when your heart is filled with darkness
How do you suppose to find light or life you have chosen death and not even God can wrest it

From your hand only by coming as an Innocent child believing and by having faith all darkness
Vanishes light is contrastive giving congruence to worlds of different languages that without

Faith all is meaningless there is no Intellectual connection possible and the dead remain dead
Because only the spirit can know spiritual things love stands in the offing forever out of reach of

Those who will not put self to death that only lives for earthy while the spirit heavenly the dead
Will be removed to darkness without remedy the living spirit will flash across infinity and will

Truly be the only ones that can pass through that terrifying door and instantly be at home in
Heaven

You heard all the things I never said in the empty silence between us.
It's funny, when I say nothing at all I'm telling you everything.
But when everything is nothing and nothing means everything,
the words you don't hear can't exactly feel empty anymore.
And it's not empty space surrounded between us,
there are ghosts of the past flying by
whispering chills down our spines.
Our weak, foolish spines....

We are a throng of bones and blood that we tried putting together
yet standing here in front of you I find I am only falling apart.
The dissonance of our energies is weakening us,
as are the futile attempts at mending something
that was always broken.
And what broke gave us scars that burned
brighter than what we once had.
Like the air between us, we are hesitant to move.
Moving past and moving forward is as hard
as two pedals on a bike going in opposite directions;
we are broken but stuck chasing after one another in circles.
We can get so close but never touch.

I feel the swollen heartbreak from these missing puzzle pieces to our masterpiece
We merely have pain and incomprehension of what we know but can't say
To console the absence of space that will nevermore be complete.
Wavelengths slow, saddened by our disconnection.
Fighting no longer, all that is left to say does not need to be spoken
And so we stand here in silence.

I can’t help somebody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, that editing a newspaper is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demonstration while building tower blocks is social violence, or that unpalatable statement is provocation while disrupting the speaker is the exercise of free speech... Words don’t deserve that kind of malarkey. They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more, and Brodie (a character in the play, a would be writer) knocks their corners off. I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.

The complete disarrangement of all my senses, myself my I

Is threatened with the bitter sound of uncertain rumour

That possesses an urgency of unwillingness

An incomprehension of thought

The improvised mediocrity of relished indignity

Asinine questions, absurd and ludicrous probing

Accusations and primitive propensities

The deformities of exaggerated obscenities

That blame and brand myself my I as mad

They have stolen liars tongues

And Jesus said, "He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am and I shall be he"

Gnostic Gospel of Thomas vs. 108


1
They sang and
they danced in
praise of the
Savior

And I left the church

I walked quickly
and I was at the
water's edge.
A man waist deep
offered to baptize
me in the name
of the Lord...

And I did not stop

Further on, a sorrowful
Mother asked if perhaps
I knew of her son
Jesus…

But I pretended not to hear.

In the forest
the twelve
approached me
with a message
of good news...

But I paid them no mind.

2
And when I came
to a clearing I met
a young man whom
I had always known.

His beard was unkempt
and blood was dripping
from wounds in his hands
and feet.

A crown of thorns sat
upon his head, and blood
trickled down his cheek.

'Do you know me?' he asked.

'Of course I know you!' I shouted.
'I left you behind at the church!
At the river, one of your followers
sought to baptize me and along the
road a Mother spoke your name.

In the forest, your apostles
confronted me with your
message.
Did I not take my leave
of them all?
I thought I was rid of you,
yet here you stand

Tell me! Why do you haunt me?
Why can I not leave you behind?'

3
He grabbed my shoulders
and I felt the pain in all
of my body and in all
of my being
and he asked me again:

'Do you know who I am?'

'You are the Christ!' I cried
'And I have heard your
story from every church and
holy man in the kingdom.
But I want nothing to do
with you!

I want only to leave you
behind and live my life

At this he looked into
my eyes and as his
penetrating stare drew
my senses to his being,
his face began to change.

He was one of the
singing parishioners at
the church.
Then another,
and another until the
likeness of each one
was in him.

Then he was the
man in the river
and the Mother,
and every one
of the twelve
and I stared
in disbelief

He began to take
on the appearance
of everyone I had
ever known and
even those I would
never meet.

His face was changing rapidly:
African, Asian, Spaniard, European,

From every race and every creed
he became everyone who ever was
and everyone who ever will be…

A few I recognized.

Mohamed, Caesar, the Buddha,
Pontius Pilate, Krishna, Herod,
Moses, Pharaoh.

Faster and faster he changed until
I was dizzy with incomprehension.
Then, as quickly as it had begun,
the celestial parade ceased.

He was Jesus again, standing before me.
His hands and feet caked in blood.
The crown of thorns still resting atop
his head.

4
'I do not understand,' I said.

And he smiled.

And again he looked into my eyes.

'You can never leave me behind.'

And as he spoke he began to change again,

And I found myself standing before another image.

One I surely knew well.

There…

In the clearing of a forest
that existed beyond the boundaries
of space and time,

I looked into my own eyes...

And understood.

I can clearly remember
the moment I realized my daddy wasn’t perfect.
We were in the kitchen,
and it was dark outside.
He said of course gay people should be allowed
to see their loved ones in the hospital and such,
but he wasn’t sure they should be allowed to get married.
It was disorienting in ways I can’t begin to describe.
You just expect things, think there are
things in life that are certain,
and then your dad isn’t sure gay people should be allowed to get married.
There is not a measurement
to explain how much my dad loves me,
It is without bounds.
I know that.
Of that, I am still certain.
But I’ll always have that memory of incomprehension,
when he separated people into an “us”
and a “them”
and I think maybe I was supposed to be in the them column.
We haven’t really talked about it since,
because if he still feels the same,
I’m not sure I can handle knowing that.
To this day,
that’s the only part of him that I’d change.

Somewhere in between right and wrong
decisions fall into rain
dissipating delusion
into starry nights of understanding
bringing meaning to abstraction
drawing love from attraction
eradicating hybrid thought
from incomprehension.

Only through what is not meant
to be understood can a man
hold his emotions
like pressure points drawn on dolls
rising like the bubble
that almost made it to air
but burst on the surface
of silence.

bathtub overflowing, the kitchen sink a-running,
water water everywhere, everybody, getting a wordy
Saturday po-em, ahem, so only, lonely, love poetry,
high pitches, whimpering, like a three year old chillun,
why not me babe? why not me babe?

words uttered somewhere, everywhere, hourly,
maybe even screamed, sung, shouted outed,
with total justification, incredulous incomprehension,
my ticket unpunched, this fate, an indeterminate sentence,
if only I had a penny for every utterance, be a multi-billionaire
and still dissatisfied

the isolation au courant makes it a thousand times worse,
sometimes, I hold my own hand, remembering what is touch,
just not to forget, like a lazy eye, a missing limb needy for
scratching, a sensating, sustaining pleasure that sorely
disappoints, for the brilliance of it, is in its eclectic electric,
and a solitary spark fizzles, swallowed up, into disappointing reveries

my eyes wet themselves when I see letters airbone, floating, reforming,
why not me babe?
if mine eyes cannot catch another’s, no across-the-room thermometer saturating stare of farenheightened heat, what good this vision?
left with a single despicable desperate cri du to my conurbation,
why not me babe?

my banana bread aroma flies out the open window to meet
and be greeted across the street, with applause and affection,
but our nostrils cannot taste, our lips forbidden, in this hell,
why not me babe?

the quietude so great, I hear the rhythmic breathing of one who
could be my chosen, my one and only, my love poem, exhaling too,
why not me babe?

but the see-through curtain prohibits strangers exchanging ****** fluids, glances of possibility, and enraged, unengaged, smash all my mirrors, cause they don’t answer my question,
why not me babe?
it’s a reverberated echoing, a slap across my face, married to my cryout, a singular sensation of exasperated silence

pick up my brass decorative magnifying glass, with twisted ivory handle, examine my hands, my lips, my nose, my credit scores, my personal spaces, my declining weight and bank balance, each excuse, belief,
the white spots decorating my sticking out tongue, thinking there’s another sense I’m forgetting, but all I recall is,
why not me babe? why not me babe?

and that is why only love poetry did not get a love poem today...

Dear Louise,

At 2:30 AM after
two hours of sleep
I feel I am looking
through a keyhole
and reality
is sneaking up
from behind
to give me
a much needed
kick in the *****.
Somehow, I have fallen
into a hole so deep
I can't climb out.
The arena of death
destroys the illusion
of safety and
at some point
the naked heart
cannot recover.
Everything seems
after the fact.
Everything is
after the fact.
You can't change
anything after
a split second ago.
I feel a curious desire
to do the right thing,
but there are not
enough right things
to go around.
Is life accessible?
Is life inaccessible?
I have the curious urge
to puke out forty years
of my life's garbage.
Maybe I'll change my name
to Antonio or Ivan,
move to Hiroshima or Dachau
and see the world
through the binocular
but astigmatic
eyes of a tiger.
If you asked me
to describe someone
I really know,
I'd be very hard put.
As a kid I wanted
to be a writer.
I wasn't sure
what that meant;
early ideals can **** you
but you probably
deserve it.
I know I am wrapped
so tight that if
I spring a leak
I'll sink in a day.
Could there be a way
to fence my life in
and keep the world out?
I am consumed
by fatuous sincerity.
I'd write down
all the options
int this case
but I loathe
the **** fascism of lists.
My hormones seem
to be deliquescing
into a viscous pâté
of late life protoplasm.
They belong on a shelf,
not in your pants.
I guess if no one else
will make use of me,
I'll have to make use
of myself.
This is a difficult task.
My life has been
a long preparation
for something that
probably won't occur.
For too long I have
defied almost everything.
A strong man would simply
drink himself to death,
but I'm not that strong.
Many of my sins of omission
are beginning to bother me.
Perhaps the only real use
for today is today.
Maybe I need to get
back to the basics:
eating, ******* and dying.
How to maintain
my equilibrium in the face
of incomprehension?
Waking up is a kind of homage.
Or could it be that
I don't need to change?
I'm just this.
Anyway, it's 2:30 AM
on a long night
in a strange life.
I'd better go.
Dawn may creep up
and release the
stench of coffins.
Louise, if you get this note
and understand it
please let me know
because I don't.

Sincerely,

Mikey

A man - Caked in thick, matte black bodypaint
Reeking of desolation, clinging to his skin like perfume would to a harlot
Staring awkwardly through walls, through time and space
Hoping to catch the gaze of any who hope to find themselves around the back garden on a folded beach chair.

Weightless in form, floating out from out where
Cones, rods and a pupillary light reflex as the absence of stimulation is introduced
Shifting - As if guided on rails, pulling out onto a stoop
There are no stars in the night-time sky tonight...
The trees, pylons and blackness overhead seem to bend and contort across the sky
- Covering up the hot countryside air and denying my imagination may it wander.

A feeling, polarised by dread and a curiosity
- A curiosity, to peer over the edge
Yet all I know is that whatever I do, I don't want to look over that edge
Suddenly, a traction pulls at every bad idea I ever had
Forcing me to lose trust in any control once possessed.

Tethered to the eventuality of curing this culmination
- Tilting into infinity
Smashed against comfort and lost in cymatic fibration,
Thoughts of before turn to liquid gold, cherished in an off-key harmony no longer sung.
The ground reveals itself, sporting a familiar sick green blush.

I see that man.

He paints with a ******* to my chest
Ingesting a week and a halfs worth of weeks - Burning to my delight
A volcanic pastiche of horror and abandon
- Peering into the whites of his eyes, I see nothing
Among the darkened streaked skin of his naked body
His features remained impartial, withdrawing his humanity from pretense
This performance is one that destroys my grip on actuality.

As if seeing God himself, I wretch uncontrollably at the conception of circadian fog
Filling up the lungs of our own incomprehension to repeat existence in ignorance (Eternal)
Shuddering from every sub-atomic particle to bone in the human body - 206 tremors of glass etched neurosis
The unknown, the unspoken and unborn come slithering down to remind all of its putridity.

An almost impossibly sonorous scream of agonising despair
- Echoes reluctantly through the ribbons of eventide,
Passing through every particle like ink to paper, creating a gaussian of impetus.
Making it's way into my ears - rattling me backwards, as if being shot from a cannon
I cannot turn, I cannot move, I cannot think, I cannot be.

In an instant I'm gone...

Shooting up from dormancy - Just as quick as I was gone, I was suspended back into the urgency of normality
Anxiety rushing, almost racing through me - I take a lifetime to regain my breath
And settle into composure, wondering if I'd understand.
Propping myself on one arm, my mind wanders yet my clothes and covers cling like glue - As if heavier from a nervous sweat
Looking into the featureless dark of this room I feel frightened
- The whole house sags to one side, becoming sinister, malevolent.

An ambience joins me, I am no longer alone
I am being watched and I am scared like I can't tell you...
Everything becomes sinister, even my own thoughts hate me,
Yet I begin to plague my ego with a question of identity - Internally and externally
Who was that man?
What had I saw?
I don't feel safe anymore, something feels like it could happen
Something perverse,
Reality is no better an anchor,
Setting ship in an ocean of ambiguity - Occupied by a school of Samsara.

One day I'll find myself walking out of a house onto a stoop
And I'll ask myself the question - "What is over the edge of this wall?"
When the opportunity presents itself, (Silver lined)
Maybe then I'll know the answer.

I was at a bar,
Against my will,
I don’t drink…
Alcohol.

The people laughing,
Hollering, Wallowing,
And swallowing the
Brew to a counterfeit
Reality…
A reality of invincibility,
A reality of incomprehension,
A reality of  abstract visions,
A reality of indiscipline,
A reality of the minds,
A reality of blurriness,
A reality of sheer…
UTTER Stupidity.

They stutter and stumble,
They rock and ****,
They slam and slam
More brewed bogus
Reality.

They call it an escape,
But while in that faux-reality
They forget;
There is no reality
More genuine,
More intricate,
More perplexing,
More marvelous,
More sobering,
Than one within sobriety,
Made from all
Natural ingredients.

preface.  
majestic adjectives of contrary harmonies,
adverbs in adversity that modify our satisfactions,
gut punch our eyes, scramble the taste buds,
now inoperable, incapacitated to distinguish
what is disturbed - what is sweet - what is impossible.
my days ending is nearer to my god than thee,
the crumblings of what I’ve got left,
stale panko crumbs,
here come they in 1000 radium-tipped projectiles of
serious humorous self-destruction,
gifted to you few itinerant followers
brave enough to follow me into the deeps of
radioactive incomprehension,
in no particular disorders
a thousand times

I'll only be enough for you if
I'm enough for me;
Are you the only one who
I have a higher standard for
than myself.
(That wasn't really a question).

Take it as only the most obvious
sign of my utmost respect for you
That I reserve all of my talking to you
for writing, because it's the only
way I trust myself to
relay to you clearly--

my unedited and fallible voice and moments of being
human are not good enough for your ears and
eyes.

I must fine-tune our
casual interactions to
imperfect perfection.
And I must find your love for me

in there, somewhere.
And every time come up
empty-handed from
my gold-mining of your
unadulterated body language and
voice language and textual,
exasperated responses.

I break so easily, and again find
why I respect you and
it's because you make me believe
that you don't love me,
and that makes me love you so
unhealthily and I know

that you see through me,
just like I see through me
and it stings like a pain that tastes of
blood in my mouth because
it reminds me I'm only human,
and scratches bleed.

--And get infected if you don't
take care and you
have infected me to the point that
I'm suffocating in my own blood poison(ing)
of self-doubt and desire and
the pitiful knowledge that I may just
get over you if only
you
loved me.

Let me clarify.

Loved me the way
I would have you love
me; affectionately.
my friend, my -------

the comforting statement of "I like
who you are" I
enjoy your personality and
I take your opinion seriously because
you, like me, (and you like me)
are human.

But you love me in what
way you would have--
conditionally,
with rules that change
(only you know them anyway).

And I'm realizing with
bittersweet dawning
and incomprehension:
it's not  that I want to
be you,
but that I already am you,
except,

you're happy.

And I want the secret of
how to be you (me) and
be happy, I always
thought it was a
contradictory state until I met me (you) and saw
the version of myself that
could be at peace,
feel laughter bubble from under my
cheek bones,
and know joy as an intimate
companion.

But being you only reminds
me of that truth that I am
close but can never reach
the level of you-ness I desire.

And in my far-reaching imagination
I wonder at what
will be said about your
influence on me when
I turn out to succeed despite
my self-proclaimed shortcomings
         because deep down I know I'm good
         because of the differences between us
and my sorrow writes my movement for me

and will it ever be studied and observed
my obsession drove me to success
and drove me crazy concurrently (?)

and that craziness drove me further, still.

Her leaving heat wakes my shattered mind,
And torn tendrils of ***-stained dreams
Slip and slide away, noodling into;
Incomprehension, anger, hurt,
Coffee steam stays the pain,
Relief and hope mix in an
Exhuming brew.

“You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into this.”
Well, you have not, and somebody’s got to.
There will come a day when social obligations will no longer be enough to hold me here.
There will be a day when my love runs out.
That will be an interesting day, but until then, I’m running out of “desperate cries for attention” to make up for your incomprehension.
You can only misunderstand me so many times.
Patience is a finite resource, and it is just one of the ways that I’m running low.

Here's something:
A car can only run on empty for so long.
*What happens when the road levels out?

<Warning: This is brutal, I apologise if i upset.>

There is a scream beginning to resound in the caverns of my mind
Echoing around, bouncing forth and scratching at the walls
There is no sound to this unearthly yell, no form or function precise
It gives it's life to all i have seen, existence in calamitous expression
It cannot be ignored or pushed back into the depths
To writhe and tremble with the other demons thirsting for a chance
It exists as much as i can be, as real as anything here
Within i see many things, for the scream, the scream is me.
My mind is breathless as i am crushed by the lives i am responsible for
The empty accusing eyes stare sightlessly as they pin me to the floor
My scream is soundless here, however theirs is not
The empty lungs sound continuously, a cacophony of regret
This is not my scream, not my sound but theirs, for my grief
For they made their choice, as did i, it was me that walked away
It is for those that could not choose, had no choice, no freedom to exist
The children that paid the toll for the choices adults made
I've seen their tiny bodies bleeding out into the dust
Eyes in desperate incomprehension look at me hope i will make things right
And i cannot do anything but sigh in self disgust.
I didn't take those little lives i was supposed to protect
But it was i that had to watch them die, filled with remorse and regret
To yell within my echoing mind, why not me my life for theirs
And there is no power watching to make a deal with my despair.
That is where the scream began, all those years ago and far away
For every experience similar it has grown and developed teeth
And now it warps around my mind, suffocating thought
Because children are dying is an acceptable phrase and i rage because it's so
Rage again for i am powerless to change such a fate, mine and theirs
So i roar back in fury at the scream resounding through mind
For it's my face screaming back at me in eternal, cacophonous agony.

†           †           †    

When the ****** lost souls are voided
into the abyss of hell
I hope to have avoided
that last death-knell.

The blood of Christ assures me
that such can be admitted.
I pray it sanctifies me –
desires permitted.

They preach of joy unending
of sheer expanding praise,
but the unseen evidence lingers:
my carnal ways:

I flash on astral hotties
(the flames that life denied)
among celestial bodies
beyond the great divide.

I muse on raptured virgins;
Christ’s parables made flesh
and my unspoken longings
unveiled and fresh.

I long to know profoundly
the promised stellar faces –
or sleep so deep,  so soundly
no dreams leave traces.

My hopes for that dimension
alloyed with base designs
grow vague. Incomprehension
misreads the signs.