Tuesday 1/31/2006 10:14:00 PM

She looked outside. Gazing past her own reflection in the window. Ignoring the street lights as they tried to distract her from so much darkness. She saw the street speckled orange in the glow. The naked branches of a lonely oak so firm against a barren, purple sky. And she asked herself, why can't I be more like that. Content just to be there. Solid in my exposure. The stars always but a fingertip away.

She wrote her letters. Some terse and others verbose. Wearing her truth in ailing punctuation and misspelled words. As every feeling she'd tried to convey came ricocheting back to her like rogue bullets.

Tagging every trigger. Labeling every moment that judged. Until a jury had been assembled in her mind and the trial begun.

She listened to every argument. From her truths and her lies. And swallowed every hiccup of sorrow as each witness testified.

She knew she was guilty. Though she knew not what of. She agreed there should be punishment. Only she couldn't understand how they couldn't see that was something she'd long ago begun.

Monday 1/30/2006 11:23:00 PM

The smash of the moment as we intersect. Full brake. Face to the windshield. Awash in broken glass and folded metal. These are the costumes that we wear. As we live collision after collision.

Drive me. Into every blindspot we have. I never wanted to see. Just to feel the impact. That need so urgent. Every day the last day of our lives.

Pendulum thoughts. Thinking too hard. Counting everything lost. Tick. Leave. Tock. Remember me when I'm gone. As if I ever wasn't.

Hour after hour bleeding through their bandges. Every night so red. And I think too much. Because that is all I'm left with when.

There's no poison in this drug. Such temporary evils we exist upon. As every chance we stole from each other. Borrowed love.

And I think too much because thinking is all you left me with.

It's so easy to kill yourself by putting the blade in someone else's hand. And they'll never know they weren't the reason.

1/30/2006 10:35:00 PM

Stop. Put the cap back on that bottle. Cannot finish it yet.

Talk. Shoot each other with those blank bullets.

Watch. Waiting for that tender toe to land on a pebble.

Our past is our present. It's what we become. Scalloped on the tail of that river as away from us it runs.

We chase it. We follow. Never realizing it's chasing us.

Who I was. Oh, you did know her. Every wet drop in that painted finish. Scratch the enamel now, but you won't recognize what's underneath.

The taste of beer still in my kiss gives only to my lone swallow. The wrench of memory turns tighter. To the left. There is no loosening those rusty bolts.

We are. Always have been just what you wanted.

The feel of your touch. Melting ice cream. Cold and sticky on my skin. Filling every pore. My one moment of. My time machine. Don't take me back again.

1/30/2006 10:07:00 PM

One line drawn. Writhing toward. One arrow in your palm deserting reason. In the fist of your clenching heart it struggles to breathe.

We got so drunk that night I completely forgot how hurt I'd been only hours before. We took shots like mouthwash and sucked the taste out of each other's tongues. And I remember being accosted by the thought suddenly. At the edge of orgasm that this was my one and only chance to be happy with him. That soon the alcohol would steal our consciousness. We'd wake up in the middle of the night sober and not wanting to be in that bed together.

And then he'd leave. And he wouldn't come back. I couldn't let him. That he'd never really been there. And no amount of alcohol could displace that fact.

They were so similar. He and the alcohol. In the way that I looked to each of them to love me, but neither actually could.

Where does the arrow point now?

Sunday 1/29/2006 11:27:00 PM

His mood swept over me like a kiss too deep. Rife with implications. Frayed flesh trying to mend.

We'd wandered. Our deserts. As always we had. Searching for water that wasn't to come.

Bemoaned the clouds for not providing. Solitude is as much a prison as it is a fortress. From high up in that tower it's hard to let down your hair. Lose it all to the notion of rescue that may never come to pass.

They stampede as if they want to save you, but what they really want is to be saved. Their horses snort and whinny eager to run. But the moment that you let them they accuse you of not having your saddle stayed.

And you tell yourself it's only love. Just the sad little dreams of selfish hearts wanting to own what isn't theirs.

They could have everything and still they'd want something more. Because they're human. That's what they do. Turn those cravings into addictions. Until everything they have is lost. And what they wanted doesn't even remember their name.

We're never so tragic as we are when we think what we want is what we can have.

Never so alone as when we realize it was by it we were had.

1/29/2006 10:05:00 PM

Strangers by just inches. Pieces not broken. Only disassembled. I can only pretend to know them. I never really can. And hope they'll return the favor.

It's only easy when it's hard. Decisions lost to circumstance. Pressed firm into these molds we can only become what we are.

Stranger by inches, but strangers still. Lone moon amidst a billion stars as the ocean breathes with it from so far away.

It's easy to remember all those lessons. They stare from the ink that stains my hands. But to know the lesson is not to understand it. That is perhaps, the one thing time can never give to us no matter how patient we are.

If despair is my wisdom. Then words must be my mentor. As they draw their maps within.

I wanted to know each of them. And when I found myself unable I just pretended. Because I didn't want them to know I'd failed. That all my words could amount to nothing. All that listening couldn't take us those few inches closer so we'd not have to be strangers anymore.

And wisdom was not to be found in a broken heart.

I couldn't let them know these things about me. So I lied and said what they wanted to hear.

And all those strangers, I became their friend. Though none would be mine.

Saturday 1/28/2006 12:18:00 AM

It's gone.

Over.

Relinquished.

I am not lost. I am found in my hatred. For living.

Time will welcome arrant hearts. Those that never had a home in the life before this.

It wants. It becomes. All that I can be waits there in the dark like a flame undone.

I've found my poison. All that's left to do is take it.

Friday 1/27/2006 11:10:00 PM

Angled with the scope of your memory. Past and present toiling together in the prison that is happiness. As you remember it. Or could imagine. Alone is the only true reality.

On the wrong side of the page I wrote. And they couldn't read. Every mirror broken. All reflections too dark to see.

The chance hardened as paint does when exposed. What strokes unfinished preserved forever in the portrait of our reluctance. Every colors as solid as the truths we'd made them from.

People try to be. Always want to. Have. Know. Own each other. But even if we could, what good would it do. Knowing even as we fall to sleep together we'll still wake up alone.

Touching me from so far away can you still feel anything?

We want to be so much. To wrench the world from its throne and crack its crown. But we'll always be the same. Alone.

Bodies collide and we convince ourselves we've escaped. But it's just a different cage inside that same jail.

I used to think I hadn't yet found my home. Still searching for. But now I know where we all belong. Where we all are.

Alone.

Thursday 1/26/2006 11:50:00 PM

The door stood open. Silently asking which side you'd choose. The latch shifted into place as did we. Another threshold on the verge of entry. Heavy hinges ladden with hours so much darker than these fallen eyelids.

We slept to dream of each other. And still the nightmares became. We stopped breathing to hold that moment. But still it left us.

They always do.

Cracked windshields in the wind. So much debris.

I thought I could live this way. That it was the only means there was to. I thought I could overcome the pull of the past. Ratchet those moments into their slots.

That time knew better than I did. Or that at least, it had a plan. To wrap the sheets around the corners of this matress. As elastic as it pretends. When every last chance has been drained from.

But still that last corner just won't reach. But then again, it never did. There is no blanket big enough to cover us. To turn those icicles into what we want to be.

But it's all right. Because to love you was privilege enough. It's all right. Because if I had anything to left this was how I'd want to lose it.

1/26/2006 10:29:00 PM

It was summer that we lost ourselves in. How it could be so hot though the sun seldom rose. How long the days could be though we scarcely ever woke up.

Life was an ocean and we were the sand. Smothered in its incessant embrace. Built upon and demolished over and over.

There were songs. In manic rotations. Offering reason where there could be none. There was beer. And Xanax. And all the drugs that are synthesized when bodies wrench.

Every moment fatted like a calf. So plump with a hunger gone long unsated. Eyes above and neck below the blade.

It was long and it was short. Like all loves are. A ladder without any rungs. And still we tried to climb it.

Until every last layer of skin had been peeled from our palms. Because what's at the top of it must be why we've let ourselves live this long.

Now I know what it means to have everything and nothing.

1/26/2006 12:17:00 AM

acoustic moments in
the chorus of;
stubborn songs from
the past, straddle the
chords lost to when;

your perfect stare
spun deep into, the
echo inside that has
always begged, for
someone to hear.

come close to apex
forgiveness looms, still
with faded fotosteps
tumbling upward on
stairways too smooth.

nothing knew us, as
we did each other then;
consumed by the cripple of
our desire, we were so old
to one another, and still so new.

i lost nothing, but gave
everything to; as every
addiction foretells, want
becomes need, and we revel in
the lack with veins so swelled;

piercing the flesh over
and over, in search of how it
felt when that needle first
spilled its heaven
under my skin.

Wednesday 1/25/2006 12:18:00 AM

The color of your dream is blue like mine is. Cold and hard. As the ice picks and billows with the grin of winter. We wake up shivering and thrown from our robes. Empty as the skins we've discarded.

Just one more to prove to myself that the night is not the predator it once was. And I hunt it now as once it did me. My loneliness the shotgun.

We've slept for so long. And now we arise to lives so different. To learn that yesterday could've lied to us. Or that what we believed of each other could be untrue.

Without our carbon copy hearts we render the balance. Still drawing checks on empty accounts.

Tuesday 1/24/2006 11:24:00 PM

I wrote a line in a previous post that I'd like to revisit. It was kinda thrown in there and I think it deserves to be more of a central character. So here I go again.

It's listening that I regret the most. Especially when I remember what I haven't heard. The sun there in the sky, caught behind the clouds. Rain on the roof when the lightning screams.

I thought I knew how hard it was. And how easy it could be. I could strangle in the long strands of pain if I only put my neck through. Let them do the work for me. Or I could shred them into confetti and throw them to wind. A celebration of forgetting.

But it's not what happened. It's what never did. It's not what they said that I heard. It's everything they didn't.

The ghosts will haunt as they choose. My only choice is if I listen. Climb those soft stairs. As they lurch me toward that sullen space. Every life has this place. An attic or a cellar where everything lost is neatly stored in boxes carefully labeled.

Taped seams try their best to keep the contents contained. While large handwriting on the outside tries to explain that what's in there you're better off not revisiting.

The ghosts will tell you to open them. To look inside. But you don't need to see what's in there to remember how much you wish it didn't have to be.

All the things that never happened. And I listened for, but didn't hear. And everything else I can't explain how I miss when I never really knew it.

But I do. It's all inside those boxes. And it's hard enough just seeing the containers. So don't ask me to open to them.

It's the listening I regret the most. Because there's so much I needed to hear. That I know I never will.

Monday 1/23/2006 09:54:00 PM

Strangled memories swell to the rhythm of my choke. I get where I'm going eventually, but I'm always in reverse.

Where it goes I am taken. Trailing behind like the string on a balloon. As it drifts away toward the sun. And empty fingers grab at with fists too plump.

Recovery comes in sudden downpours. Saturates quickly. And evaporates just as rapid. Or if not recovery, at least, the notion that someday it may come.

Only to be written. As this life must be. Yellow with the glow of arbitration as my life bargains with itself for another exception.

What is that shadow that lands sometimes upon your ponderous brow. When thick in thought it asks you again what your destination is. It's just the sour of misfortune. The whiskey of disappointment burning your throat. It burns going down, but give it time to cocktail with your blood. Let it change you. As you want it to. As it intends.

And follow the path of yesterday as it leads you back to the present.

Soft enough are the words. To be a cushion when I land. Dark enough is the truth to convince me to jump.

One thought tinkers with the other until all are in pieces.

It's always so easy to take apart. Always so hard to put back together.

You've fumbled me again and again. And still with every throw I wait to be caught.

In reverse every mistake appears to be undone. The world is careful and considerate. In reverse everything we are is closer. And yet so much less permanent.

And love is its own vaccine.

Sunday 1/22/2006 11:26:00 PM

Harvesting moments. Saw-toothed and awkward conversations. Like adolescent bodies caught in the transition from unripe to mature. The more you conceal the changes, the more apparent they become.

Belted throats frantic with words unspoken. You swallow your thoughts with every breath. Wondering if they've heard any of what you haven't said. And notches. So many holes punched in. To accomodate every extreme of our gluttony and our starvation.

Hope not withstanding we rush the altar of our deepest fears. To find solace in our own worst predictions for ourselves.

It's easy to feel it once it's gone. Linger with it like the smoke does over your head. As you inhale the poison and breathe it out again.

But there. In the moment. With them. The blood pooling in your palms. You just pull down your sleeves so they won't know. Because you want them to be free to leave. And only to stay if that's what they always would've chosen.

It doesn't have to hurt unless you want it that much. And how could you. Knowing even if you did. It won't have to hurt at all if you just have the right medicine.

Seomtimes the cure only makes you worse. And the disease is the only thing that can make you well again.

1/22/2006 10:21:00 PM

He rushed across the street way ahead of me. He was at the door of the restaurant before I'd finished closing the car door. And I hurried to catch up with him. It was then that it dawned on me that I'd never really been with him. All those times. All those meals. All those sexual liaisons. He'd never really been there. Or acknowledged that I was.

He was wearing jeans with an old t-shirt tucked inside them. I always hated tucked in shirts, but for him I made an exception. As for me he'd made so many.

It was a fancy place and we were both under dressed, but this was jersey. There's no such thing as a dress code when you're a paying customer.

We ate the same as we always did, quietly. A few words about business and then we just ate our food until we were full. Then he paid the bill and we left. And he walked ahead of me the same way he had when we'd gotten there. Only this time I didn't try to catch up with him. I knew I never could so long as he didn't want me to.

That was the first step in letting go. There'd be so many of them before I'd actually do it.

1/22/2006 12:09:00 AM

I woke up ugly because of the night before. Conditions waiting to be true. What if they never are.

Laying these hearts like rugs. Hoping footprints will be made.

I never forgot. I just conceded. That I'm not enough for anyone.

Amd you make your attempts at breaking my heart again. BUt what you don't realize is that you never did.

I could've loved you if I wnated to, but I was never young enough to believe I should.

You wnat me to be crippled because, but I was just born this way. You want ot save me, but I can can swim.

What you want to do for me is more for yourself than it's ever been for me. What you want to feel I already gave you.

So if it's gone, it's because you didn't hold onto it.

I felt you. As sure as I've ever felt anything. And I would've loved you if it was at all possible.

You want to change. I udnerstand. But changing me won't change you.

We don't need to love each other to know why we should.

We don't have to trace those bodies to know that they're dead.

It hurts sometimes. But it's not your fault. It always did.

It's so much easier to believe we almost had.

BuI know we weren't even close.

Stretch that rubberband as far as it will go. And just blmae it when it's broken. It's never our fault until it's over.

It was gone too soon. I feel it. But there's noting we can do.

Trace the outline as often as you want, but still the dead won't be awoken.

Saturday 1/21/2006 11:06:00 PM

Why do we have to choose? Carry those axes around with us. Blame the leaves that fall for the changes in us.

It's not like the door was locked. You could've walked through it any time you wanted.

What no one seems to understand is that what I want isn't what I need. Because I don't need anyone. But sometimes, yea, I want.

Is it pity for? Is it your own desperation? Have we not learned anything from each other? That desire is so easily mistaken for dream. And then when you wake up it's just that much harder to make the bed you've slept in together.

I want to feel soemthing again. I admit. That intensity that used to drive these frayed words. But I don't. And even if I could, it almost doesn't seem worth all the effort.

We were friends. Before everything else. To me we were. And after too. We were following roads that never led anywhere. Stranded together.

But when you got your engine started again you left me standing there. With nowhere to go and no reason to care.

Alone because I want to be now. Because friends are just lovers who don't want enemies. And love was just an excuse we used to feel each other.

Friday 1/20/2006 11:17:00 PM

The frame hung right where it always had. For years. Over her head the other one. The one without the mask.

It's cold, but it feels warm under my tongue. These shallow steps take so long to move anything.

It must be the distance. In the mind. How it ferments. Becoming more poisonous with every opportunity we let lapse.

The trouble with healing is that they know you'll be looking for new ways to break. Because how can I stay like this? Staring at the world down there from the edge of my cliff. Watching them bustling and bumping so unaware of the distance between us.

My life is one way glass. I can see out, but they can't see in.

Thursday 1/19/2006 11:19:00 PM

Steal a breath away from that kiss. Hide it in your heart. You'll need it later.

A lifetime has happened since.

Nothing has changed, but everything is different.

A finger on sweating lips. A thumb against the tongue. The drive there didn't take us nearly as far as the one to get back again.

A wall of trees. So tall. Bending over to cover. A stone skipping across the pond of my heart. Leap by leap announcing to the surface that it would soon be broken.

It's listening that I regret the most. Especially when I remember what I haven't heard.

Time swallows and we hope it won't digest too quickly. That there'll still be a chance to sequester those flavors. To taste them one more time before all those moments are metabolized.

Nothing is ours, but we always find ways to convince ourselves we have it. Because just to be close to it won't do. These reckless hearts always want to own what can never be possessed.

The color of their eyes as they change to look at. The tilt of their head as it considers how to touch you next.

The moment that they looked at you and forgot anything else existed.

I don't want to talk. I'm no good at it. The words fumble when I'm sober and don't know when to stop if I'm not.

I don't want to lose you. But then again, I never could.

These wires crossed for a second. And long after they'd separated still that electricity remained where we'd left it.

Harassing me for a reason to feel it again.

I'm not electric. Just drawn to it. Like any atom is. We were never need. Just the lack of it.

And there you go lighting me up again.

Wednesday 1/18/2006 11:59:00 PM

There's not time enough left to remember everything. Sift through every moment to find the slivers of gold lost in all that sand. I trust that they are there. That is wealth enough.

There are ways to love yourself even when you don't. In the ways they react. In the wondering where they go and if they'll ever come back.

I just saw then and nothing more. Like I always do. Like the minute hand to the hour. It doesn't know what it's counting toward. But still it must go forward.

They may say I'm lost, but they'd be wrong. I know just where I am. Every blade of grass. Every leaf that falls as this kingdom weeps.

They might see a puzzle in pieces. The image lost to the shape of its disarray. But I know the solution. And it's mine to use as I see fit.

They may appear like storms in summer. Sudden and torrential. Imagining me to be hopeless because hopeless hearts are not wrong to break. Or to be forgotten.

But I am not hopeless. I am merely questioning the nature of.

That we could be so vain to think that the world waits for our invitation. Or that we're even on its guest list.

There's not much to know. The words are deep, but I'm not. There's not much to know. I thought you would've by now if that's what you wanted.

Everything we are. Everything we were. Not lost. Only not ours to keep.

Possession is nine tenths of the law. If there were a law for the things we've done. The other tenth are choices we've made.

More than I can make them, they tend to make me.

1/18/2006 10:23:00 PM

You think you want to hide. Get cozy there in your cave. You're content hidden until someone finds.

He sent a message that among other things, said, "We both have a lot to talk about."

I just yelled at the screen - No Fucking Way!

It seems we've already talked, so many times. About everything and nothing.

He's a great talker. And just as good at listening. But I tend to speak that way. By listening. And it's hard to hear.

I don't know how he found me. I don't know why he would even seek.

But the only question that matters now is whether or not I wanted to be found.

I don't know. And even if, did I want to be found by him?

_________________________


The other day I discovered a site (trainwrecks.net) has linked here. Evidently they think alcohol and poets should be separate. Huh... what world do they live in?

It was cool and funny and all. I even linked back to them. It doesn't make sense to most people. All this darkness. They see the words and think this is what I am. It's always been a problem. No one seems to get that the words, the dark, are only one facet to a many sided stone.

If I really felt I was a trainwreck, I would've been more hurt. But I'm all right for now. The pain simmers in me and I ladle it out into this empty bowl. Soup to feed the loneliness. The pain is in everyone. But very few of us are fortunate enough to find nourishment in it. To make it our own instead of it owning us.

___________________


I wanted to know and now I wonder if I can. Or should. The shifting of the smallest pebble alters the entire mountain. It's not enough just to climb. When you can't go over, you must dig through it. Follow those tunnels in your mind as they lead you deeper. Out is not what we seek. We want to go further. Wherever that might lead.

She must know. We to eachother. The weight of the word's appraisals. Thick on tired fingers. Alone together. That the words build a labyrinth. The more we write the more complex the maze becomes. That they own me. Always have. I am their slave. Trapped inside a voice that never speaks.

The more they listen the less they hear.

I think I could know her. And maybe she could know me. That we could be alone with each other. And we'd not have to change, but things would.

_____________________


He said I should close the sigh tag and I almost wrote back. That the sigh never closes. That's important.

And I wondered why. Then. Before. Now. As if answers are something love has ever offered. I remembered his hair. Orange and soft like an autumn sunset. And the time I wanted to touch it, but was afraid.

He split me open like a blossom ready to burst. And every color once hidden screamed with relief.

All that happened between us was too important to me to let him become just another lover who wanted to be friends.

Friends I thought, was something we always were. So why should after be different than before or during.

No one wants it to be or can explain, but it always is.

We can't go back. And why start again? Just to lose what little we have left.

He said he'd be nice to me if I was nice to him. And I thought, I always had been. I just can't pretend when I'm sober that this is what I want to be.

All these almost conversations leave me with the feeling that nothing is as real as it once was. Life. I don't really know what to do with it. But I try.

Tuesday 1/17/2006 11:03:00 PM

It's never dark enough. I can always see some small piece of flesh. Some beacon of memory refusing to go dim. As if a candle were ever so bright that it could lead me through those dungeons or find what in those corners is lost.

It's never late enough. Especially since I decided I had to be more of a nighttime alcoholic. 8pm became 9. 9 became 9:15. And when the movies stopped playing I wondered how I'd wait. Keep on waiting as though I wasn't really waiting, thought I've always been.

It's only a color. Just one crayon in a box of hundreds. But it's the name that you remember. And how it look on that empty page when it dared to fill those outlines in.

Just lies that make feeble hearts laugh out loud because well, there's nothing else left to laugh at. Just myself and the ways I find to break again.

It's like we wore those shirts without regard for what was written on them. And when we took them off it didn't matter. That skin could absolve what words couldn't.

You wear your life like filtere fitted to lenses dark. Feel the shutter pressing hard against your finger as you attempt to take a picture of what is gone.

All my cartoon tattooes and my faulkner references means nothing now. They're just ink caught under skin that doesn't remember them and metaphors to stark for real life to accept.

What I wanted to be isn't this, but it's not so different. A little less dependent on the actions of others. It's not the alcohol that is my weakness. It's people.

It's not broken I fear becoming. I've been that so often. It's feeble.

Monday 1/16/2006 10:57:00 PM

The ugly opens wide. Showing its thick tongue. Curled like a slope up to heaven. That it sees with slits for eyes and is drawn to our weakness like a magnet. Attracted by its opposite. All we fear is everything that makes it strong.

Because weakness is our shield and our weapon against everything that is sharper. All those friends hewn hard. And the moments that bite. All aspects of life that demand from us more strength than we've been given.

I'd like to have stories to tell. As other lives do. Carve their memories into monuments. Boulders whittled down into shapes hearts can digest.

But my stories all run together in a capricious litany. Their faces all blur as the backdrop cycles. One endless hour that never remembers me.

This must be what addiction is. Unable. Unwilling to escape yourself.

And how close it cuts to those veins without spilling too much blood.

So alive in every instance of death it forces upon us.

This once was. And might've been changed. But now it will be. With or without my consent.

The ugly opened wide. Its heavy tongue between its fangs. Its wet lips drawn back from them.

And the weight of its hunger so fat on you.

This must be what addiction is. There in jaws about to bite and not compelled to move.

1/16/2006 12:04:00 AM

There was chinese food. There was silence. There was the swell of thoughts I couldn't articulate. As we devoured our food the moment would devour us. And I would scramble to recover what had never been mine to have.

There was loss because I'd been give the illusion of connection. And I'd taken it readily. Because at the time, it was what I needed.

The world works in mysterious ways, but people don't. They build their staircases from the materials available. You might be the bricks. You may be the mortar. But either way they'll be stepping on you.

He turned me into friend because he knew that was what he had to do. Not to keep a lover, but to lose an enemy.

Because we had sex many times, but love was something we'd never made. Not together, nor with anyone else.

To make love you have to believe it exists. Or at least be able to take it on faith that someday it might.

As many times as I told myself I loved him I never was able to resolve all the things about him I didn't.

I guess love isn't something real outside of verses. Hearts escapade as lives, but eventually life overtakes them.

The truth is the good memories are worse than the bad ones. That I can go back to find it was almost possible. And knowing now that chance is gone.

The truth is I'd have been more content having never known that life could be as different as it was then.

That hope could appear in the look you stared at me with. And just as quickly both you and it could disappear. Not that you never were, but that it doesn't really matter what we've been.

All clouds flocked together. All eyes closed until the truth decides to confront us again.

And what we were real once more, if only for the time it takes for hate to interfere.

Because it the only way I know anymore to understand.

The truth is I know we never could've known eachother because then it would've been too real for either of us to face.

And I just wish sometimes that bridge would've broken sooner. So that I'd never have known what it feels like to be on the other side.

In your world it was never a choice. So how could you ever know how difficult it was in mine.

How could anyone ever know. When those words never arrived.

They should've known. That's what I thought. But I was wrong. They weren't right. But I was wrong so many times.

Sunday 1/15/2006 11:33:00 PM

Socks still on. Bed still made. The contingency plan took effect. Just a few more beers and then we'd both feel better. The night would bend and fold into soft packets at our feet. The rug would be lifted and soon nothing would be left except what we wanted to feel.

No red roses. No sonnets. Culled from withered hearts. Just truth so brutal that there had to be beauty in it. Some real scars. Some figurative ones. Skin lit like torchieres as the ceiling embraced us.

There was never the necessity to take off our clothes. See eachother undressed. It was better that we only saw what we had to. Shorts and t-shirts showed more than enough. Every breath that blinked between us. Every moment snatched away from that other life he had.

It was all so alive then. Like dying must be. Seeing it all transpire one more time before it's all gone forever.

There'd always been too much time until then. There'd always been so many paths. But none that ever led anywhere. I knew that one wouldn't either, but I had to follow it. It might not have had a destination, but I knew there was a journey there. One I wanted to know.

He only saw my breasts once. They were too small for him I think. He always lingered on my arms. On my back. Looking for somewhere no one else had been.

I never saw his chest. He wouldn't let me. I never knew what he concealed. Not there or anywhere else.

We never knew much about eachother other than that we both were looking in all the wrong places.

My consolation that he's better off with his life now having known me.

1/15/2006 10:52:00 PM

We never said much; before, during or after. We only had conversations when we couldn't see or touch eachother. Not just one person. All of them. That must be the reality I imply. That intimacy has nothing at all to do with flesh. That pleasure and sentiment exist in separate worlds.

I used to think about it sometimes. Saying something. Before or during or after. But the words would only rotate in my head until one touch or another blotted them out.

If one is and always has been so compelled to write what they're thinking it's obviously because they have trouble saying it. And while words might mean a lot to me, to most they're just words. And actions might speak, but they just don't say enough. Sometimes a voice is required. No matter how you act out how you feel, it still needs to be articulated if anyone is ever to take you seriously.

I used to imagine during and after how different it might've been if words could happen. Break their threshold as they'd broken mine. But penetration is much easier to take than it is to give.

Before all was always fog and sidewalk cracks. Stepping gingerly over them. Following their course by rote. Because sight was not to be relied upon in those situations.

Experience sent memos, but I never read them. Because always at the time one moment seemed more than enough. That if I could have that I'd not need another one.

Before was always kinda sad. Asking myself why I wanted to sample what I knew I couldn't have.

During always left me lost in an emotional storm. The pleasure and the pain fronts colliding in a frenzied eruption.

And after never seemed so bad. It was finally over. Whatever it was we had supposedly been to eachother. And there'd be plenty of time again for getting over.

We never said much. Not myself or any of them. I used to think about saying sometimes.

But now I realize I had been saying all along. Just no one listened.

Saturday 1/14/2006 11:50:00 PM

The fabric is swollen black. Clutched to sour breasts. The hour is eager to follow the pattern of broken veins.

With the white world out there. And the grey within. Wearing your habits like pajamas you construct a tenative bed. As if to sleep could give rest to such adamant fears. Alone in your crowd you pass silently from one stranger to the next like a virus on their fingers.

The fabric is close to your skin. As you wear the colors it becomes. You touch a finger to your chest and feel the subtle indentation of life as it carves its steps.

The white world out there upon you gaze and tell yourself it's only a facade. That the sky has fallen. But that it can and will fall many times before it's done.

You think the end of the world is waiting somewhere in a small town or a small country. And you imagine it. All those earnest lives floundering once their purpose has been stripped. You imagine it and smile because purpose is the one thing you've never needed.

It's strange, that the world turns white here sometimes, but in other places it's always grey.

And you think to yourself. If the end of the world were ever to come it would be as white as this one is. And they'd never see it coming. But I'd be ready and waiting. I always have been.

Because the end of this world has to be the beginning of a new one.

1/14/2006 11:34:00 PM

Without memory there'd be no pain. If we were created without the ability to remember we'd never feel sadness for more than a moment. Never know loss for more than a second. We'd be ghosts. Cameras without film. Seeing life through the lens, but unable to retain the images. There would be no ache. No missing what is gone. We wouldn't even know it was.

Everything. Every emotion would last for only its natural duration. And when it was over we would move on as if it had never happened. Because for all intents and purposes in our minds, it never really would have.

We wouldn't be able to recall the good either. Though it might have happened. We'd know it as it occurred, but thereafter it would vanish. Lost to our minds like wisps of smoke to the ceiling of a bar.

Everything. Every emotion only existing in the space allotted it. No longer. No less.

There'd be no artists. No poets. Only people living the moments they are given.

It wouldn't be a beautiful world. But it wouldn't be an ugly one either.

Memory is the reason for all our pain. All our sadness. And yet, still, more often than not, it is the only joy we have left.

I just wonder if I'd be better off not knowing how kind life once was.

Friday 1/13/2006 11:30:00 PM

inverted epiphanies
fall like snowflakes
as the season changes;

gone before they could.

as though every
color of the spectrum were
ours, to own, to mix until

we matched again.

i just drink, but i
haven't been drunk in ages;

there's just a better flow
to the world when, as if in my
life a speed limit's been posted.

adn time swallows slow, in
smooth gulps, as if it's not
hungry anymore. is just tasting;

adn there still are flavors
to be found in these dead flowers
and nelgected gardens.

i know just what i am,
but it's never known me,
because it doesn't want to;

because life is a fairy tale
we imagine to be real, and
i don't remember once upon a time
or understand happy endings.

1/13/2006 10:38:00 PM

The words follow the outline of the darkness. As it shapes and is shaped by the weight of my apathy. There is no bargaining in this pain monopoly. There is no grace in the sprint of this crippled heart. Just a growing distance between the start and the finish.

Could I tell myself? Would I listen. If I told myself this isn't a lonely life. This is just the only life I know how to have.

Would it be better to have none at all. Pop it like a swollen blister and wait until every drop of pus has drained from it. Maybe, yea, I suppose it would.

Words can only heal so much and then the rest leaves such a big tumor. This poor life condemned to be mine. I feel sorry for it. I grow on it like cancer. Smothering anything good there might've been.

This lone, last friend of mine offers no more solace. Even alcohol does nothing for me now. I'm not drinking anymore. I'm just echoing the motions that once changed me.

Only they don't anymore. Nothing does. The night scowls and the words wince. And the sentences are born. But the cord remains uncut.

Their tiny faces turning blue. Their miniature lungs shrivelling. As they wait to be cleansed. And I hold the cloth, but my hands only shake uselessly as they slowly suffocate.

**My apologies... I realize 'pain monopoly' is a line from a metallica song. Master of Puppets I believe.

Thursday 1/12/2006 10:44:00 PM

The night again awash in that usual sepia tone. The color of disregard. You may unravel the mummy, but underneath you'll still find only a corpse.

What is it about alcohol that makes all this loneliness seem only a dream. That now I sleep. I sleep until there's a reason to wake again.

It chases through my blood like a viral contagion. Full of apathy and inspiration. That I can exist in this state indefinitely. That I can still be a poet though I've nothing left to write of.

I wonder does every life have a method. As this is mine. To channel the pain into manageable footsteps. Each their own Jacob's ladders leading them in equal steps down to hell and up to heaven.

The ladder is not difficult to forge. The trick is in keeping it upright.

Wednesday 1/11/2006 11:36:00 PM

is the same phrase
not your arbitor,
as we vex these
footholds unbecoming?

awash in this
deep blue somethingl
as though we were born
knowing who we'd become;

for anchor's sake.
for every drop, it falls
again, with the knowledge
that it always has.

i'd like to know
soemthing other than
how it ends, but all that
rain fell before

i had the chance to
catch it, for every leaf
those branches let go,

somewhere below they wait
to know, why you let them.

and what remains of the
places where we once grew.

1/11/2006 10:27:00 PM

Something so near you can see it even with your eyes closed. Something so far. The breath from a lover's lips you've never had the chance to swallow.

Something so close. That It's shadow burrows under your skin. And it becomes a part of who you are. Something so close. Like every moment is to the next. And still they remain forever apart.

Words in your palm where flesh should lay. Throat bloated with oceans of escape. So much that you're trapped. Trapped again, just in a different way.

All I see is the moon as the window spreads its jaw wide. A the millions of stars that solicit as so many lives look upon.

That's all I see. Eternity above my head while under my feet time is stalled.

Just the nights as they so happen. Skipping like razors the wrong way over wrists. Like every breath. Every word that pierces the page. Sharp enough to draw blood. To leave a stain on that parchment. But like every pen that's ever tried to write, they never go deep enough.

The casket follows the corpse. And it doesn't matter who gets there first. The only funeral was in our heart.

Tuesday 1/10/2006 12:01:00 AM

My thousand miles. It continues to count. This demon arrogant probes my thoughts As one by one I open each vein for it. My mountains climbed loose themselves in the distance. Where everything high and low is evened out again.

My dying flower. So pink against all that pale. In every dream still I fail you, just as in life I did.

Does the hour not change, though awake we still wait for it. Seeing it now disrobing. To fetch with warm thigh darkness stiff. Naked as the moments it steals from us. As each moment becomes all we never meant for it to be.

I hear it in my blood. I feel it in every pause. That moment that waits for the change. Both driven by and crippled with.

As if every hour were just as able and each one in turn only waited for our decision.

That ir were so simple. To pull the blanket back and touch the sheet. Warm as you remember it. And it still remembering you.

Put us both to bed and let there be no more dreams until.

Monday 1/09/2006 11:17:00 PM

So it burns. The soft end of your heart. Lit up bright with a flame embedded deep. All orange and freckled with the ashes that fall off as by itself it is consumed.

So it burns. Hasn't it always. And the more you try to drown it the more intense the heat. That every method you use to suppress ultimately strengthens it grip on you.

Not a victim. Just unsure what weapon you should choose. Not a criminal. Just torn between the crime and the justice.

I guess it's easy to say we reap what we sow. But every seed we cultivate is not planted by us. And once those roots sprout they're hard to dig up.

I suppose we must amend on our own no matter what the excuse for might be. That's not the dilemna. It's finding a reason to that leaves me lost.

Every leaf from the highest to the lowest. They all must fall come autumn. But some will always fall farther.

Sunday 1/08/2006 11:26:00 PM

Bluffing? Hardly. There is no game. No bets. Absolutely no cards in my hand. Just empty palms facing up. Waiting to catch the next word that drops.

How many hands have we been through? How many suits have we fretted. Listening to the music of the chips we'd toss. Meaningless representations of a wealth I no longer possess.

I thought you were old enough to know. Knowing you'd suffered more than I have. But sometimes I guess, age has lessons to impart which no hardship can impress.

The only bluff was the one you assumed when you convinced yourself I was what you wanted.

I couldn't lie to you. Pretend to be recovered knowing this disease never ends. Life is so many things. But most of all it's wishing things could've been different.

Maybe life is the bluff. That it asks us to and then never let's us.

Saturday 1/07/2006 11:05:00 PM

When it urges with the stiff tongue that it will. When all the cigarettes have disappeared, but there's more to burn. Keep it close to your lips as the act of becomes the loss.

Swollen with the ease of nights dominant. Those oceans flow unrestrained. And you are content to be drowned in them. At least they touch me when nothing else will.

There's no way back to where you've been. Only replicas that fool the desperate. You change the channels, but the image it constant. life isn't tv, but it's so much like it. The ugly looking beautiful. The rest forgotten.

I wasn't strong enough to die. Nor brave enough to live. So I settled somewhere inbetween the two. I'm always alone, but I was never lonely until.

There's an empty bottle for every paragraph. They dance together like fooiish debuatantes. With their gaudy dresses and expectations failed.

There's a bottle for every hour that's ever asked. But the questions remain sober no matter what I do.

Friday 1/06/2006 10:02:00 PM

Hollow cabins in restless sleep leave the wakeful scrambling for the salvage of discarded years. All that then I threw away now has become buried treasure. And still I dig on night after night with these holes in my shovel. Always believing if I could only dig fast enough that they wouldn't matter.

Every cap adds to the stairway I'm building. This crooked staircase that goes down and up at every step. Leaving me stranded by the force of my own momentum.

It's inertia they say that keeps bodies at rest. And the same that keeps them moving. That is if they ever get started.

There's science in it. That must be true. But what's to account for the chemistry we use to make darkness a place we can see in. And to make a vacuum a place where we can still breathe.

What is the science of pain. And what can it teach us?

Wednesday 1/04/2006 10:44:00 PM

The sweetest kiss. The one that never disappoints. The further I lose myself the more you find in. Like a broken mirror you reflect all those pieces that I struggle to put together.

They were always there. But you're the only one that shows them as they are. At the foot my thoughts they gather. All unattached and mishapen. Crying for a solution I can't give them.

The first and the last are the best. One to taste for the first time. The other to admit it never should have been..

In the first I still find hope. That happiness is ours to pretend. And in the last I find satisfaction. That what we are isn't always what we ought to be.

It seems to taste me as I do it. As the night slips out of its dress together we touch her with the awkward poise only given to poets and alcoholics.

Is this mine? Theirs? Or someone else's?

Where do i go now that these paths have been revealed?

Only home again. I would. If such a place could be found.

Or barring that. Away from here. Away from this self. That sees every color in, but boradcasts them still only in black and white.

There are so many colors. If only it would allow me to see them again.

It's my fault, but you can see, I'm sure, how essential it is to blame something else.

1/04/2006 10:00:00 PM

An arbitrary recollection sprouted in my brain. A distant friend asking if I've ever been to any meetings. And I didn't think about it then, except to laugh, but it dawned on me that AA wouldn't suit me at all regardless of my desire to quit. Don't they say prayers and stuff like that? "God grant me the strength to... blah blah blah"

They do that. I'm pretty certain. If not that prayer then others.

That's the sucky thing about being an atheist. There's no super power to grant you anything at all.

So why if I feel that way don't I find some religion? Easy. I can't. Can't believe in god. Not possible.

Just as sure as some are that he exists I am as positive, if not more so, that it's all a load of crap.

That's the funny thing about beliefs. None of them can ever be proven wrong. Nor can they ever be proven right. They're not real. So what they claim needn't be either. They're just ghosts in our hearts that will either be our Jacob Marley's or our Grim Reapers.

I sorta take offense that AA is religiously oriented. No one cares for the godless. An organization set up to help people ought not be so narrow minded.

Not that I would join anyway mind you. Groups and me just don't happen.

But the funniest part is I understand. The prayers. The need for them. When you can't find the strength in yourself what better place to turn to.

Tuesday 1/03/2006 11:06:00 PM

One sermon is enough. The night ferments and guilt is distilled from. Lips tug hard on the last of those bubbles. The empty container begs to be replenished.

Especially since.

We calculate time as it does us. Tabulating reasons to live as death confronts.

In the darkness its face does form. In your solitude you remember how close you once were to. That blade as it caressed your skin. And promised to open every vein one knot at time until there were only echoes left in.

One night tells more. Another tells me less. But the voice I need to hear says nothing since.

The hour is propelled by the lunge of your loneliness. As it feels for that switch. To turn on again all those dark fixtures.

The hue of my skin is paler now. The gallop of my heart somewhat crippled. As it runs on across fields parched. And tramples every flower in.

To stop now would leave me so the same. To continue no different.

So I go where memory neglects. And still is given time to heal like a broken bone within its cast.

Sunday 1/01/2006 11:27:00 PM

So many images lost in the fragments of these lives. So many zippers hidden at the back of their necks. There's no wearing. Only being worn by.

Like the clamor of the words as they pursue that closet within where only empty hangers are left.

Where do you keep those costumes now? Or do you just wear them all at once.

Thinking someday those zippers might vanish and you could become.

Tomorrow is just an angel whose wings have no feathers left. And on the one night of the year when most we expect it may fly still it is only tries and fails us.

We let time prey upon when it's we who should be hunting it. We blame it. We beg its mercy. But time can't change. It can only count all of it that we've wasted.

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