Regrets, fears, promises-
Sometimes spoken, always honest.
Things I could have done.
Things I did too late.
Never on time or enough

I think I’ve gone mad.
I know she has.
Don’t I want to keep moving ?
Forward, enclosed in my little bubble ?
Like I have a choice.

Do I let her see these things?
Did I let her know too much weakness?
Seen cannot be unseen.
The unseen can’t be – through her blinders.
Being honest-equals target or truth ?

And I don’t love her to hurt her
But obviously it hurts.
So what should I do ? If anything.
Just keep hiding it?
Being honest-equals target and truth ?

There must be something.
To end this cycle for her. For me.
Destruction, fire, filth. Happily ever after ?
Seriously, I know there is.
No, really. I know there is.

I don’t know what she wants me to do.
I do know what she wants.
Though She just says keep moving.
You can do better,you’re going to be just fine.
Still it doesn’t feel that way.

I write Love Poems or
Self pity stories,with unfinished lines.
She only makes it seem too late.
I picture her, laughing, smiling.
Pretending it doesn’t matter. She is,
Free of me and my shit.
Pretending she’s free.
Pretending it’s shit.

One day I’ll look back on this. Write a book.
Poetry is too abstract, or is it ?
Maybe I’ll wrap it in leather, hope it smells like me.
Send it to her. Like the other did.
She’ll love it. Maybe I’m too old for that.

Maybe I’ll give her that
next Christmas.
My mind is so clouded.
Tangled. Twisted. Blacked out like curtains.
I can’t see what to do today, much less….

So I sit here,
distracting myself.
Wandering through her forests of doubt
Blissful neutrality doesn’t exist.
The cycle happened again.

I’m not sure if I really want it to break.
Sometimes I revel in the insanity.
Broken and on the streets
has no appeal anymore.
Cyclical motion sure beats standing still.

A daydream today struck me dumb.
I was here, you were there.
You called out to me and I let the connection fade.
I fell apart before my eyes while you watched.

I do not want to, and
I cannot stop this.
From happening again.

They ruled in a kingdom
of heartache and sin.
Where virtues flee,
in a dizzying exodus of trust,
born from betrayal.

The few good men,
the few good women,
pick at the bones
and carrion of the
presaged betrayal.

Wars and
rumors of wars
cold ones,
against terror,
or against drugs
kept them scared,
in check, and fearful.

They ran naked
and they knew it.
If they could see it
they believed He could too,
No one chased after them.

Frightened, they
dug out morals and values
from a stack of rules.
Delivered to a mountain.
Written in stone.

Hope lay beyond
the good and evil.
In the abyss, where
tenets cannot survive and
muted silver light darkens corners,
yet extinguishes the brightest sun.

Husbands, wives,
allies and enemies
castigate themselves,
Abandoning grey,
to enter dark obscurity.

Reveling in vainglory, yet
ashamed of their bodies,
they enjoyed humiliation
and the pain of seven sins.
They resigned aeons to the lap of the gods.

Devouring their frenzied flesh,
decaying from seed surrendered,
to the promise of peace and fruitless progress,
abscess from excess stained their troubled living.

The perseverance of some,
facing a tortuous nothing,
found a messiah, not vanity’s mirror
of high aspiration and praise.

Wolves in sheeps clothing
consumed by thought,
led the unfortunate
toward false freedom.
To sacrifice all to oblivion,
trading renewal for a thousand deaths.

Some toiled, challenged
by memories, and vast temptations,
by all things filthy and evil,
yet delicious. Beautiful and filling.

Flesh, gold,and pleasures,
their only possessions
on the road that must be traveled,
To the land beyond the good and evil.

They are teachers.
Guardians and
prophets sent
with a message
of vital importance
they cant deliver.

They are me and you.
We, who couldn’t hear it,
or who would
choose not to, in favor
of the voices in our heads,

Urging us to
keep up with the Joneses,
to worship what we hear
on TV or the interweb.

Fallen idols are
flesh, blood, and bone.
Not ivory towers
to live in, or gold amulets
to make us mystically safe.

Not marble likenesses
of ourselves that will
only resemble us
after we have fallen-
the day we are crushed
under their crumbs.

The poetry book falls, slow motion to the floor
and I take cover anticipating the ensuing
explosion of words, and wisdom
destined to be shrapnel to my soul.

Knowing nothing of modern literary warfare,
I jump under the table onto the shards of my life.
Broken dreams, shattered visions-
cutting me to the core.

This is where the scars come from.
Not from the mushroom cloud, unexpected
and spreading slowly through the room
intermingled with the fumes of coffee
that awaken me.

Without choice I inhale, and they burn,
singeing the tissues of my being.
Not the sickness – but the cure.
The rapid sting of alcohol on the wound.

I await the removal of the stitches.
Ripped out. Bleeding out-
past the world and onto the page.
Scars. Cleansed. Everlasting. Fallout.
Glowing as if under switched on artificial light,
Until living with them becomes familiar.

Noone At All, Was There

Today- a drive around the suburbs.
Me, amazed at how much things had changed,
how much things were the same.
The only constant, memories
and their associated regrets.
The journey was to go to a place
where I expected to see familiar faces.
A place of healing, camaraderie, support.
I had been told I would always be welcomed – loved
could always find a friend.

Doors locked-no lights shone brightly,
noone-noone at all was there.
I don’t take this personally,
its all so–deja vu.
I am continually perplexed
by this phenomena.
Continually finding those I care about
have disappeared–vanished.

Sometimes I can point to the catalyst,
or apply reasoning-or blame.
I’ve become adept at accepting my own responsibility.
I have not yet mastered the art
of being a friend, a lover, a husband,
a keeper of possessions, or a Saint,
but why people in my life find it so easy
to burn my bridge eludes me.

My follow through sometimes is lacking.
These days its not for lack of effort or desire.
For the most part, my motives are pure.
I never willingly, or knowingly
harm anyone these days.

Being blatantly selfish hurts me now.
My mild, blind, selfish nature
wields disappointment like a sword.
Am I meant to be a troubled,
disconnected, anti social loner?
A reasonable expectation
according to the textbook defenses
I “should” be relying on…considering.
I have worked too hard to escape those outcomes.
Slayed dragons, and wrestled demons,
let skeletons escape their comfortable closets,
and changed a plethora of behaviors.

Yet here I am getting the same results
no matter my efforts, and successes.
It is progress to not have to find
all I own in big garbage bags on the street-
copiously placed there by someone I love,
to not have the Police involved
to evict me from their lives.

I suppose I may never know the answer,
since the doors are locked,-no lights shine brightly,
and noone-noone at all, is there.

organ donor on ice

my very own words fuck me,
like im drunk on formaldehyde
live tissue covering a worthless heart
I am drowning in vague images
tv reruns of a single night
that has lasted my entire lifetime.

do I even remember
the last time I kissed a girl?
so, no this isn’t about a girl.
scarred deep inside my vital(?) organs
I am now only a sieve for paper mache
rerun glimpses of happy.

If I believe in God
and this is how detached
I have become, then
It is no longer a struggle
to fix the broken or write anew,
It is now just an inevitable ER waiting room,

so here I live watching myself
in the waiting room watching -waiting
the pink ice melts away in the tub
the endless drone of an auction
for a heart worth nothing.
and all I can hear is the auctioneer.