Walking and saying
Things our wellbeing
The soul needing love possessions
Have absolutely no meaning

Playing and praying
Overstaying and Under-paying
Rising sun and Symphonic searching

" Is this the way it is?" Tis the season

But the tightness no business like
searching business
  She is combined and mixed like a song
fully lined both with keynotes somehow
we declined
The feeling that you cannot breathe
or  trust both of us
 we can  bearly **** it all in
My music playing just click my belt buckle
Will start to begin

The soul is not a crime or just a rhyme
I barely cannot breathe
I am in a chuckle, you see his
smile raising up his dimple

Ms. Thumbelina cobblestone
narrow-minded street your
in the tightrope symphonic beat

But its dark outside your ringlets
Waved him on got excitedly mesmerized
His Goblet of wine she curls up in
his body heat brilliantly dazzled
The sky to your dreams he is
reaching your
soft side skin
whats actually within
our souls

So  hooked into your ride not to slide
better grades and goals
The awesomeness symphonic hatter
Victorian divineness
Her paper cut out hearts as real
as they come
The Eastside Symphonic tip of his
Heavenly Bliss private Quarters
What becomes of the broken hearted
Heads or dimes not landing on her stone
Floor heart
The Duke of all trades of the hat he's smart

Cool running ******
Addictions to the mind so fanatic
What a good soul sometimes
He overexaggerates about
love and fate darkness drives him demonic
What are you kidding me
She doesn't rest her heart on his
soul for the burning desires of food
for thought
She keeps piling his poems like any sport
He's her everything she learns to be taught

Searching lips pricing
Red bloodshot eyes of crying onions
She is so fierce controlling
Musically like a Tiger roaring
He is like a design of graphics tattoo
The earring piecing the sweetest taboo

More soul searching
She's the snake purse
to his snake eyes fancy,
he took a ride
Upper-false teeth
The upper west side
have some prideThe dark side
became her thing
The wildflower not to stand to
bloom and bang like her band

Westside sounds came deep
his pride and joy like a parade
and wickedly dark his charade

It was  sneaking up on her backside
And the other side was just hiding
and smiling
She definitely saw the light lamp post how
the smells came stronger the darkness of desire
she was famished not to have vanished

Feeling like a *** roast love continued
She had a gift for her lover, not the
toast who would brag to boost
Two ****** British what
divine glasses at a cost
The symphonic soul
captured them like the
Dark-Knight of words
Symphonic sounds came
hearing names
soulful hummingbirds buzz-net

And there weren't any more
words there was silence
Eating shepherds pie table was set

Taking over another soul that's a lie
just like magic searching for a love
so long ago became tragic
You need more perseverance
Her true love gave her
an incredible sixth sense
of deliverance
The top seat at the concert
classical wicked taste of music
candescent erotically sonic

She had this certain quality
He was a symphonic love bounty
Her lips moved so fitting fantastically
The flower shops caught her eye
She couldn't sense what was real or a lie
The fast pace of the people all worked up.
What a soulful smell music sounds
she faintly known

To her ear wanted to hear only him shown

Besides the faintly illuminated
shapes evergreens were
heartily trimmed
She stood out bright as the ground
She was turning gray losing reality
not to be found or heard
So soulful her lips speak
she was walking with her head up
in the air fancy dancey
How those men could speak.
You could smell all the ethnic
flavors of foods
She felt the search for something
of a Saint, she was trying to
hard to be good
What a Haydn, his wife
was the mad hair driving

Miss Daisy soul of hers crazy curled
inside her book
She's the lady-like curler
How he played through her hair
Hunchback of Notre Dame who was to blame?
How his eyes wondered playing
and observing
But she was holding his stare

like a womanizer and his eyes flew
what a haunting moon
But Samatha the harp shady tree
He said, my fair lady,
He's stringing something together

What! creepypasta but sometimes her powers were weak
The symphonic love potent every other week

Some Gothic man symphonic music started
Playing Rossini Opera he could stand on his head.
She was pinned to his eyes
Pinterest such interest
she was all bloomed like a fly

By witches, flower came he passed her and he knew exactly who she was as is but wait not his?
The pleading the beg humbug far from her tunes of the ladybug

Razzamatazz all body of Jazz jitterbug
He winked she-devil
summoned him on
What a binding spell
She wiped the sweat off her face
She was beautiful with pale
porcelain skin
So alluring walking
with her parasol

I bleed letters, breathe words--
lived in utero with a pen.
Creative gypsies & outcasts
are brethren.
I will die
for their plaid sky brushstrokes
&/or verbal slip-bang poetry.
That's my religion.

Self-doubt is my sin.
I have a habit of overstaying my welcome,
another is coming on a little strong.

Communication is my mantra,
my philosophy is intelectual stimulation.  

Putting up with "****"
    is second nature.
Spit in my face.
         Call me names.
   Don't give me that promotion.
I'll survive--
       probably even laugh about it later...

But...
take advantage of me--
or those I hold close--
     if I even see a glint
     of the knife
            you're going to put in my back
I promise--
    I promise
the pain you will feel
        leaves a scar much worse
than whatever could happen to me.

I scribble on
With a half lobotomy;
A radar seeking Hell by looking up
And another dictionary
From another time and place;
An alternate timeline
Reaching right and left
As well as fore and aft;
The beard of a ******
And naïveté too;
Undiscovered depths of emotional manipulation
Unseeing, unthinking,
A new old structural familiarity
To abduct and probe
The time-honored, vacuum-sealed
Ineptitude of ideology
Whose meat is sweet
But suits the skeletons of standardized educational theories
Like a pair of jeans at age eleven that you expect to grow into;
In hope of justifying
Overuse of monetary resource
For the sake of bonus states of mind;
Scouring the depths of discarded everything
With hooks catching on to all the similarly forgotten names
Who live in fear of obscurity
Clinging, not unlike insects
To their sixteenth minute of fame;
Finding in myself no way but out
To understand that which lives inside;
With disregard for any thread which weaves past me and takes no hold,
And loathing for the ones that do but unravel before the eyes;
Lightheaded, ending any sense of continuity
When, prostrate in the comfort of another tapestry
I stand abruptly, let my dreams be drained from me through tendrils
Like the passing of a temporal existence;
Drinking in the dust and glue of crowded bookshops
In fear of losing inspiration
To the insatiable jaws of my consumerist natural state;
Rummaging in a bargain bin
In search of someone to tell me, “Stop!"
With heads in clouds and bodies in ice trays,
Stealing lines of logic and lyric,
Throwing down and hacking into
Elemental bits which fit into my own vernacular
Sacrificing beauty for originality and vice versa;
Choosing idols idly with the tides
Of knowledge and of art
Rising and falling without fail
Never apparent and never blurred by motion;
Searching for a style like an odd-numbered jean size;
Finding greater inspiration in waves of unopened mysteries;
Following examples laid by unsuccessful fictions;
Learning ethics only from the prologues of ****** novels,
Unsuspecting victims snuffed in interesting and lurid ways;
Letting technological distraction detract from the projections of psychological complexity
Which I, from atop the high horse of my own pretensions
Pretended to embrace;
Committing massive acts of thievery, fraud, and infinite lethargy
For the sake of juvenile, illegitimate art forms;
Seeking other seekers who exist autonomously
For the sake of personal independent credibility;
Leading unsuspecting, overreaching, overeating, understanding, undemanding,
Too forgiving, not forgetting,
Victims of domestic warfare
To a loveless watery grave
For the sake of my own loneliness;
Patronizing every segregated buffet
With courage enough only for a small taste of everything;
With the flavors of the day swirling around
For me to shoot them down
And pin their carcasses to elementary school walls
And Mormon tool sheds
And nature centers
And all the forgotten places of summers past
In the hope of rediscovering
Some old buried treasure
Be it wondrous or worthless;
With the uneasy insincerity of a rodent who pretends to understand a city;
With adopted methods
And repeated thoughts
And ideas which came to me in waking dreams of my own retirement;
Sharing, for a captive audience,
The formidable giants which
Inform our common denominator
Searching through myself for only the most indecipherable
With the fear of being understood
And the fear of being ridiculed
And pretensions of some preternatural predetermination for greatness;
With acceptance of predisposition for obscurity,
The cost of the inundation of the new airwaves.
The series of tubes that feed us intravenously
With information, information, information,
Having killed God and left material validation in His wake;
It could be that new gods are born in the minds of the innovators,
Those wonderfully wealthy
Whose social structuralism
Was a beacon to us all;
In the darkness of an architectural anomaly
Where lights extinguish as my body lies dormant
Alone and abandoned
Only by my own subversion;
Confined ever to a convolution of passages
While above me all my peers still carry on;
Overstaying welcomes
And letting emotionality
Color conversation
A sicklier green,
A green of a tree only just sprouted,
A green of a new recruit,
A green of an inexperienced schoolboy
Faced with the daunting and timeless act
Of copulation;
Somehow taking in the sights and sounds and smells
Of advanced mathematics
Even occupied, as I am,
With explaining my actions
Most eloquently;
Devoting myself to another cause,
Another, another, another
Always relaxing my grip by losing focus;
Desperately hoping not to let my fellow travelers
Lose their innocence
While I reluctantly, dogmatically
Keep mine on a leash;
Always keenly aware
Of the universe of worlds
Beyond my control,
And even my understanding;
On the increasingly frequent
Intrusions of risk
Into my significant reality
And the iota of explainable truth which guides the motion of my body but most frequently my mind;
Questioning the meaning of all words
Without thought or coordination;
Considering another restful journey
To clear my mind of human language
And in its place acquire thoughts and emotions from the street;
Without foreseeable direction,
Malice aforethought
Or noticeable signs of critical reaction
Giving birth to litter
Forgetting articles
And floating my sense of time up the Ganges;
Taking only seconds to counter the possibility of
Accepting more responsibility for myself;
Complicating matters with an interesting or bitter goodbye.

i jus now saw
some dude
literally move
the apt. dumpster
so to paint
the wall white
behind it;

a wall, which,
will be completely ******* covered
by the dumpster,
after putting it back
against the newly painted white wall.

plus im pretty sure they're calling for rain..

that happened.

i actually witnessed that happen:
and, then, proceeded to
turn around
-awkwardly-
to go back inside my apt.,
with two full trashbags in hand.

... do you even realize what that means??

somebody actually gave him
that task: "go paint behind the dumpster."
aren't there other things to do?
or is this guy's boss that much of a ******
that he'd tell his employee,
"heyyy soo.... the wall.. behind the dumpster --
you know that wall? yaa
it needs to be painted.."

i mean, it'd be one thing
if, like,
the wall were
visible. and gross looking.
and people were calling
and complaining
about it,
like it was some eyesore
that offended their
otherwise
aesthetic enjoyment
and anticipation
of approaching
the scuffed forest green
apt. dumpster.

but it's not;
so it's not;
and so
they aren't.

or i'd get it if people routinely socialized
hanging around dumpsters,
like a water-coolor
or something;

buuut they don't;
so it's not
like a water-cooler..

... yaaa, unless i'm missing something here,
as far as i know,
there have been no
emerging cultural trends
whereby large groups of people
are routinely finding some
sorta symbolic resonance with
the object of a
dumpster;

it's gravitas
doesn't exactly
prompt frequent and
spontaneous dialogue
around it.

it isn't a known cultural artifact,
representing something meaningful and
bigger than ourselves, creating cohesion
and establishing an intangible commonality:

behold, our goodly trash-bearer!
great eater of things prolly totally not needed!
humble builder of plastic trash continents,
swirling vortex in the middle of the high seas!

nobody says that.

ever.

and nobody
is overstaying their visit
at a giant,
smelly
metal maw
which disposes things,
either unneeded or unwanted,
long enough
to suddenly notice that
the wall behind it
could maybe use a new paint job.

it's not exactly a cafe.
it's a ******* dumpster.

that man,
charged with the task of
painting the wall whiter
behind the dumpster,
ought to be
painting
on a canvass

which we all could see,
visible to the greater public.
and we would celebrate it, with him.
we could all gather
together, and toast
to his mind manifest, his art,
on display for all to see.

i wanna see THAT.
**** the white wall
behind the
******* dumpster.
that **** can wait.

what visions would surface?
how would he render it?

what would
he make?

i dunno

maybe
he'd paint
a surrealist depiction
of a man
charged with the task
of painting white
a wall behind a dumpster
as rain clouds
rolled in overhead,
spelling out

"i am Employer.
destroyer of worlds,
and vibes.
feel my ****** wrath."

I'd always been used to disappointments. Disappointments of all kind. It was funny, though, wasn't it? How people would often laugh off disappointments; shrug, smile, and say something like "oh, no, don't worry about me - i'm used to it!" truth is, they weren't. And i wasn't used to it either. We wouldn't like to admit it, but every disappointment, every failed attempt at short lived sucess, every disastrous relationship, and every bit of spilt milk came as a shock. We're always expecting a positive outcome for ourselves; that just this once things might work out. What was the opposite of the word 'disappointment'? I don't think there is one. Everything is a disappointment, felt in higher and lower variations. Everything and everyone is a neatly wrapped up parcel, with a pretty pink ribbon, that appears a present, but is actually nothing but a disappointment waiting to happen. Exploding into sighs and tears and rubbed eyes.

Humans didn't seem to notice just how much hope every fiber of their being actually contained. Strands of hope intertwined with their DNA structure. It was really the only thing that kept us going when we felt completely abandoned and lost and utterly alone. I whispered it to myself, "Hope."

That same afternoon, when you physically entered my mind (since, all this time you had been living there, mentally. Overstaying your welcome, might I add.)  I questioned the growing smile on my face, contrasted with the painful 'gut feeling' I was experiencing as well. Since you left all I'd been hoping for was that you'd come back and tell me something along the lines of,  "I was wrong, I need you. I want you" and then top it off with the overused, 'I love you' card. I'd leap into your tanned, muscular arms and then, well. Well I hadn't really thought past that moment. In the three months you had been gone, all I pictured as 'happiness' was you loving me back.

pathetic, wasn't it?
We're all just looking for something bigger than we're able to find. Searching for more substance on this little planet with these heart breaking people. Okay, okay, people weren't all that bad. But one thing that people are, unintentionally or not, is selfish. We want the best for ourselves, of course.
even though I'd guided myself to believe that my life was all about you, it was in fact all about me, me, me. There was only one 'you' but there were a billion 'me's within me. A me who is happy, a me who is sad, a me who is constantly confused and a me that convinces me I'm okay.

And you see, we are all actually okay. Perhaps being 'broken' or 'damaged' just appeared more intriguing to both others and ourselves. Did I really want to be 'happy'?

Today I am grateful for the kindred spirits who walk around with
contented smiles tracing their lips for no reason
other than the blue sky above
free from blemish save for the few whispish clouds
clinging to the fringes of its domed expanse.

Together we - my kindred spirits and me -
breath the free air.
Its crispness rushing past teeth
over tongue and down throat
into lungs drying out the slippery skin it brushes on the way.

The wind in our chests is fleeting, transient;
never overstaying its visit.
But its hurried exit doesn't leave us empty or sad
for the wind always returns,
never wanting to be parted too long
from the close proximity of our beating hearts.

It’s the little things that are scaring me. About my OCD, my depression, my anxiety, my PTSD, my eating disorder. I feel like if I write this down it will make sense. That she will read it (even though I know she won’t).

There are things that I got past, left behind, and haven’t thought about in a while. Things that are coming back to me, and they feel like an uninvited guest that is overstaying their welcome. Someone I used to spend a lot of time with. But now I have no desire to see her.

No matter how many oils I diffuse, how many mason jars I buy, how many times a day I do yoga, how many bottles of organic apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, and raw honey I buy

She isn’t leaving.

She won’t let me listen to playlists on shuffle, it’s to chaotic for her. It makes her anxious when she doesn’t know what song is going to come on next. She cleans her ears with Qtips three times a day. Three Qtips each time.  She has to knock on something made of wood or paper 3 times every time she thinks a jinxing thought. If more than 30 seconds passes without doing so, she starts to panic. She can’t fall asleep without her queue filled, her clothes laid out, her bag packed and triple checked, the door lock checked three times, and lotion applied to her hands and feet three times. It makes me nervous and I want to help her.

She’s always tired. She does everything from her bed. It takes her 3 hours to prepare for a thirty minute trip to the grocery store. Another hour to prepare for a shower. She doesn’t care about anything. She goes to class, gets in bed, goes to work, gets in bed. I hate her. She’s so ******* lazy. She stares at her scars, and wishes she had more. She wishes they were deeper. She isn’t going to do anything about it, I assure you, but she can’t get it off her mind. The dog scratched her leg last week, and she’s become obsessed with the new scar. It’s sickening. I want to, but I can’t help her.

She is always calculating and recalculating things in her mind, money and time and schedules down to a T. Always crunching numbers. Calculating how much each minute of a college semester costs, and adjusting for every new factor that comes to mind. She can’t take it when anything throws things off by a single minute or cent. She can’t deal with changes in plans, or cancellations. Even if nothing is wrong. She’ll start over thinking, thoughts rapidly increasing their pace as they violently force their way through her brain. She has to ring her hands or pinch her thighs just to catch her breath. It’s painful to see, and I can’t help her.

She used to have small flashbacks during the day, easy to cope with, more like a day dream. And it’s been four years since they’ve been a regular thing. But now they keep her up at night as she tries to fall asleep. She’s in another place. She can feel it on her skin, she can hear it in her ears, she can smell it around her. She keeps getting lost in this world, and I can’t get her out of it. I can see her trying to fight back, but it takes her forever to shake them. She comes out of it, dissociated with her head spinning, and she has to turn the light on and stair at objects and count tiles or walk around to make sense of things again.  I feel like I’m watching her doing all of this and I can’t help her.

I buy all of this food and cook all these healthy meals, and she throws it all away. She just binge eats yogurt, boiled eggs, fast food and cereal. And I always hear her throwing up after. It makes me sick. She keeps putting boxes of multi grain cheerios in the shopping cart, and then putting them back on the shelf. Every week. She used to eat exactly 1 cup of that a day for about a year, and nothing else (at least nothing else that she doesn’t throw up). Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing diet for her, but I can’t stand the sight of them anymore. I can’t help her.



I just want to help her move on. Get out of this place. I don’t want to see her anymore. We’ve been friends since I was a kid. Her family is friends with my family. Some of my friends have friends like her, and some have no idea what I mean if I mention her. She doesn’t like to be around anyone, and no on likes to be around her. So I hide her. I can’t shake her. I can’t help her. I get her out of bed every day. I brush her teeth and help her to the shower. I get her out of the house most days. I help her write her emails, do her course work, make her coffee, and clean he room. But it’s too much. She’s a mess and I can’t help her.

I can't help her.

they say misery loves company and you made your stay longer than needed, overstaying your own welcome. and i’m not sure if you noticed, maybe you did… but when the time came to pack up your things you forgot to take your misery with you.

If incense is burned as a sacrifice, I'm setting my heart on fire.
It starts now.

Cut the "sorry" from my lips and rip the worry from my heart.

Sever the knots in my abdomen so I can stomach the thought of you.

Make me into a memory,
Woven together like
Strands of time thinner
Than my patience
And as elongated
As your favorite excuse.

Rid me of your memory that insists on overstaying its welcome.
You aren't ******* welcome.

Burn away the scars on my conscience, but leave the ones on my skin.
At least they remind me that healing still exists.

Let it remind me
To stop pouring myself
Out like honey
For boys that only see their
Own reflection in my emptiness.

Because for you,
I would have  gone to hell and back,
Until I realized that traveling to
A land with no love or compassion
Took nothing more than a visit
In your direction.

But despite it all,
You are art
And you will never die,
Even though you made sure
My feelings for you did.

Mid-April in northeast Ohio.
She’s bitter at the cold,
for overstaying its welcome.

The snow obscures the line
between the sidewalk
and the Devil’s Strip.

There’s a long line
of determined footprints
punched into the snow behind her.

Halfway through a song and a cigarette,
the CD skips -
figures.

These library disks never play for ****.
She ***** her fist
and whacks her Walkman.

Across the street,
in a wifebeater and sweatpants,
he people-watches from his front porch.

Sipping ***** and orange juice
from a chipped mug -
World’s Greatest Dad.

In his driveway sits a ‘97 Cavalier
with a plastic wrap passenger window
he’s hoping holds up to the wind.

Will this ever stop?
he says to himself, toward the falling snow.
A passerby might think he meant the weather.

Next door, she’s been up all night
with her newborn tornado siren
fruitlessly singing lullabies off key.

Six cups of coffee
keep her from collapsing
into a pile of ***** laundry.

She thinks about herself as a kid.
Thinks about how she used to like to
walk with her eyes closed.

How she used to like the thrill of it
the uncertainty and doubt of it.
This is like that. She tells herself.

She almost believes it.

Sadness needs no invitation
no open house
or big party
sadness shows up on your doorstep
whenever it chooses
4am on a snowy night
or 3pm on a sunny day
It has no reason or rhyme sometimes
It just seeks you out
and decides to crash on your couch
an unwelcome guest, sadness is
often overstaying any welcome given

You can move homes
You can run away
but sadness is quite the detective
even in the best hiding spots
it will eventually seek you out
and invite itself back into your life

there you are
sleeping in my mind again
second-guessing your presence
still hurts every now and then

a long-term visitor
overstaying your welcome
my heart was your home
now that feeling is seldom

the blame is on me
it's my fault in the end
there's no disguising that
i'm the one who invited you in

To meet the love of my life
And to listen to him talk
About the love of his life –
Honestly,
It wasn’t the biggest misery
At all.

Told me he was there
To wait for her,
And pick her up.
They would go home together.

There
Were sparkles in his eyes,
Was longing in his voice,
Was bliss with his fingers.

I was
And I am
Beyond doubt
Happy, to see him that way.

We don’t meet any time,
Because every time is cruel.
We don’t talk often –
It will be scary.

But meeting like this
One beautiful night
Inside a church
You wearing red
And I, in my best shade –
It isn’t bad.

To meet and talk
Accidentally like this
About the weather
How our lives go
Our political views
You’re engaging.

And I felt it too long
To be in your company
Or I might be
Overstaying
I told you I’m going.

But you did not let me go,
Like how it should be.
You took my bag like
How you have taken
A piece of me.

I wish that path was longer,
Or the church gate farther.
Being pampered
By a gentleman
That you are.

All good things must end.
So are these feelings.
Every time, all the time,
It shouldn’t be there –
This unwelcome emotion.

And I left
Like how I should do – I should be.
I left you my warm smile too,
And that part of me
Who is always with you.

It’s a dull woollen grey sweater day
Where the birds too have withdrawn their song
and tucked their wings in for winters chill fingers
that will reach out and capture their whistling tunes.
Dropping pleasantries on the big city boulevards
Hidden from prying eyes, windows shut tight
like mouths with no words left.

Winter comes suddenly.
With no pamphlets announcing a matinee
show of ballet beauties or bronzed horsemen
riding in the sultry sun on careless beachfront.
That shuffle sand and people into shady nooks
and under trees.
Winter does the opposite.

Each evening from now winter will keep the refrigerator door
open for chilled soups  to warm up to toasted breads
to bring a summer inside ourselves with its comfort.

Of course the weathermen will wander of course
talking up storms and snowfalls, ice and wind sleet
and temperature drops to keep the moods down
locked and lifeless, now waiting for summer to come around.

The garden will go limp with excuses
shedding its autumn floral displays
and standing bare and naked before
the mirror of winters reflection.

As each day passes, the mood will dampen down
and slink into caves of warm pockets.
We go from room to room
aimlessly looking out the snowy mountains
Wearing their white  skull caps like chinese market gardeners
waiting to harvest
the last fading greenery around.
Soon the snow will
capture the mountain ranges
and spread its feathery fishnet sheets
all the way down to the valleys.

This is it. The conquest of windchill against a blazing summer
Is complete. Down at the door level of temperatures
it feels unique to be so isolated and lonely.

The sun does come out but it acts s subdued and
lukewarm- not basking, not bright,
just staying for a short while each
day and leaving even before dusk comes rapidly,
never overstaying the welcome.
Author Notes

The seasons now change in New Zealand. Only yesterday it was summer filled with so many pleasant activities. Autumn has its own language of colours, but winter rolls in and rocks, drawing us into ourselves and planning for next summer. It is a warm winter now.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Have you ever looked at yourself in the
mirror and you just can't recognize yourself?
Yeah, those are my eyes,
and my nose,
and my lips...
Physically, that is me. I see my body
unhindered.
But there is a phantom there nonetheless-
haunting what is supposed to be
me.
It's like I am here, with all of you
and I am laughing and telling the story of
that one time... Always "that one time."
There are thousands of "that one time stories" I tell
you the way I want you to hear them
but never the way I want to tell them,
Yes, there's the facts but can you sense any of the emotion?
"But how did that make you feel?"
how did that make you feel?
Six words I've never heard
but six words I ask myself every day
A question I ask but I can never bring myself to answer.
A question so straightforward has become my archenemies
and something so simple has become so complicated.
And maybe that's why I can't answer, or won't.
The answer may be easy, but the truth,
the truth is difficult.
I don't know the exact words
or how to make you understand
It's like I'm suffocating and my breathing is
getting harder and harder, heavier and heavier.
I don't know if this is what it feels like to drown
or get buried alive...
but maybe subtract the water and dirt
and replace it with words, and I could imagine
it is.
All of the words left unspoken
and silenced,
the phrases I've kept hidden in my locked chest filled with
secrets and lies
the sentences I've tried to deny to the world, to every astral plane,
and to the demons I've allowed to take residence inside my very core.
I know there's such thing as a pill much too large to swallow,
but nowhere in my mind did I know that silence fit the expression perfectly.
And perfectly,
The words I could never utter I consumed- and alike I've swallowed one too many.
And now my eyes stare bloodshot,
my nose breathe like that in a doldrums state,
and my lips purse blue and frozen.
Internally, everything is shutting down.
So yes, when I see myself in the mirror,
the figure is familiar but I do not know
that reflection.
So when I look in the mirror,
I do not see me-
Instead, I see a visitor
overstaying a visit.
A visitor
longing nothing more
than a tranquil release back into
the current.

New, original
pains
keep creeping in
like unexpected guests
that insist
on overstaying
their welcome.

They become
permanent tenants
at a temporary
hotel:
having nowhere else
to go, no doors to let hem
out, there's nothing
you can do
but scream
at them
when you notice
their heavy feet
dragging across
your floor.

But most times,
you don't. They'r nothing but
background noise, like falling, accelerated,
into a whole
of yourself:
if the change is slow
enough,
there isn't enough
gravity
to be felt.

Life is but a
compendium
of this,
of these
small changes of
momentum:
lighting a cigarette,
or watching the rolling paper float down
to the floor,
wind from your
action
blowing it away
in trying
to catch it.

Not a bite to eat.
limbs cold & trembling
at the peak of summer.
I just want a place to rest my head.
Spinning,
fading in & out.
The life around me
closing in...
Heavy breathing
& traffic lights
blurry.
Vivid flashing reds.
Blinding shimmering greens.
Brilliant blinking yellows.
Thoughts,
unwelcomed guests.
Overstaying their welcome
as if they were even invited
to begin with.
It never goes as I expect.
I thought I would feel
safe.
But I only felt like someone else.
I withdrew...
I had my heart ready,
in my hands to be placed
into yours once again.
I can no longer ignore
when it tells me they are the
wrong hands...
I placed it carefully
back into it's cage
& kept it safe from you..

the blue clock ticks
with poor man marching boots
on a night
unwilling to wave goodbye,
overstaying her sky time
and shutting out
the skipping rope sun,
stealing his moment
in the light of day.

fleeing the scene,
carrying a satin-sack
bag of tricks
over my shoulder,
stuffed with a mix of gimmicks
and chips -
i crawl on my knees
on the lost chord path
blindly
following the hollering
blackbirds song
from the hovering,
hanging sky.

a vision of paradise
adds the last bundle of straw
to the cross i carry
across my broken back
in a one-way
seaside lane
on the beat off track
where a pendulum seesaw ship
swims to the shore,
calling my name.

in a race to save my face
on the spinning globe
roundabout,
the pickup stick paramedics
stop to disinfect my ****** knees
and resurrect me
with a white Gemini ointment.
while pumping my chest and
pressing the creases
of my ***** laundry -
back from the brink
i blink and beg:
**** me,
please.

in another life maybe
the rock that you tripped over as a child
wouldn’t be there
maybe you wouldn’t see that movie that day
maybe you liked that elementary teacher
maybe your mother didn’t shout at you for overstaying your bedtime
maybe you treated your sister better
or gave her that one piece of chips
maybe one of all these little things
or all of them combined
could lead us into each other
maybe we could fight over some senseless matter
and make love the same night
maybe we could wash the dishes together,
pick you an outfit for work and complain how hard it is to be an adult
but in another life it is..
because once you tripped over that rock
and i have to live knowing
that you will never even get the slightest idea
or a momentary thought
of how it would make us feel
to wash those dishes together tonight

a house without gossips nor gonifs with the missus

Maybe a pair of stray eyes
will alight on my post
might subsequently manifest destiny
as a positive force
to help me secure
a moderately roomy dwelling place
whereby we hang figurative hats
(the writer of these words,
and his partner in rhyme - ha),
would feel ever so grateful
carriage house, domicile,
pied-à-terre, et cetera

to till and sow the land,
(a manageable sized garden patch)
harvesting the fruits and vegetables
blanching, canning, pickling,
preserving, et cetera
experiencing collective soulful
labor of love
witnessing a bumper crop
(of so called weeds - ha again)
sharing with family and friends
that which gets produced
videre licet sweat of our brow.

After moving out
from 324 Level Road
(after overstaying welcome, -
and wearing out welcome mat
which parents of mine made
quite evidently clear
as their second born and singular son
struggled acquiring
and maintaining gainful employment
as well as hopscotching
from one college/university o another
plus qualifying to get enrolled
into various and sundry
county training programs.

After the then girlfriend (eventual wife)
blithely forewent using birth control,
no surprise when she
discovered herself with child,
which expedited shotgun wedding
and necessitated us
to seek out accommodations,
which we luckily
found in Hatfield, Pennsylvania
only to quickly discover
the presence of water bugs
that did congregate underneath the sink.

Though yours truly rented
that first said apartment
than when lease did NOT get renewed,
a few other different units
within southeastern
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
throughout livingsocial
on this oblate spheroid
threescore and five orbitz
around the sun,

nevertheless a homing instinct
wired into these lovely bones, who recalls
with fond memories the residence,
where this sexagenarian spent
his growing up years
(long since razed
and replaced with vinyl city -
cookie cutter place of residence courtesy
Gambone brother building contractors.

An electronic SOS broadcast
on a wing and a prayer
if for no other reason
than to offer a doodling yankee
the pleasure to craft
a wish upon a star poem
but stark realization
raises an ugly head
reminding self proclaimed
(Shakespearean scribe - ha a third time)

hemmed in courtesy
severely pinched financial circumstances
in tandem whereby sole income,
and affordability to move into
other than low rural development
low-income housing facility and most likely
(bereft of life insurance)
unwittingly saddled
with fees associated with cremation,
the least costly to wallet and environment.