140713A
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Accustomed to empty rooms,
that were meant for something other
than what they were forced to become.
I have banished all my invisible friends,
the way our ancestors banished demons,
who were always teasing with possibilities.
I know what Lenin would feel like,
if he could feel anything at all,
lying under glass in his mausoleum.
After so many years of waiting,
he too would want vodka and a woman,
having been cold and stiff for far too long.
A strange way to gather lovers,
some of whom go home and masturbate,
unable to consummate his resurrection.
After such a long time he might understand,
why I do not want a revolution.
I only want a party that lasts until I die.
Hollywood would only matter
if I could project the movies
from my dream screen into public view.
Shock theater for the masses,
making them realize
how boring and trivial our lives have become.
We would give Lenin a walk on part,
as someone who had returned to the crowd,
talking to sellers in the marketplace.
I would appear as a youth
killing Russian soldiers simply because,
that was what I was programmed to do.
In the end we would give it all up,
inventing new ways to escape,
the tedious rituals of both peace and war.
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140713B
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The biggest disappointment
was that you did not miss me
when I was gone.
That was what convinced me
to never come back
that way again.
I decided to go on
to other types of pain,
finding new ways to be tortured.
There is always the faint hope
that there might be something
more exquisitely painful than you were.
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140713C
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I failed at fame and fortune,
always spinning my wheels
in all the wrong directions.
Sitting in dismal grey cubicles,
studying how to be a better prisoner.
I never knew any of the right people,
and my entire lifeline reads peculiarly
like the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I knew you would show no mercy,
passing over me,
the way an angel of death passes over.
I wanted you to have a trinket
of something that I made for you,
but that too would be lost in the crowd.
Nothing ever gets to go that far,
past all the censors and bureaucrats,
that keep deciding who we are.
I used to have much larger dreams,
but none of them were approved
by any of the grey faced authorities.
You were only another illusion
on the other side of intellectual razor wire.
Someone I could never hope to approach.
The guards in the towers would open fire,
as soon as I made the slightest move,
toward anywhere where you chanced to be.
Dunce capped and placarded in my nightmares,
declaring my freedom from nearly everything
that I ever could have hoped for.
Sometimes I am nearly convinced
that it is only my ugliness that stands in my way,
and that you are one of the beautiful people.
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140713D
------------
If it is not really given,
then it is not really for the getting,
and you can tease all that you like,
Sometimes the streets are crowded
with gestures and suggestions,
and only the few that are insane
actually say anything out loud.
I never received your invitation,
I never met you on the street.
You did not even say goodbye
in response to a fugitive hello.
I am only one of the mad people
who lost their way in the jungle,
mistaking drumbeats for signals
leading to another village.
Perhaps I am the last of my tribe,
There are a million ways to divide
and a million more ways that destroy.
The world is merely a conspiracy,
to make one desperately want
for whatever one cannot really have.
It offers no consolation prizes to losers.
I do not think that I ever won anything,
but it was all a battle from the beginning
right down to the very end,
and I am still fighting for nothing.
I will never really know what it is like,
but that always goes with the territory.
Makes any words said about love
ring like bullets striking what is hollow.
I needed something gentler,
but that is not the way it ever goes.
It is always a hard load into the chamber,
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140713E
------------
Picked off so many times,
the way a target is picked off
on the shooting range.
It usually happens that fast.
Sometimes point blank.
As eliminated as the toe tag dead.
Push of a button world,
where tears only lubricate
the next trigger finger impulse.
The sort of thing
that puts a sudden stop
to whatever plans were being made.
If I had one stitch sewn into me
for every hit I have taken,
I would be as stitched up as a rag doll.
All the words strung together
the way beads are counted out,
mean as little as the token hugs.
There is nothing really happening
except a slow form of insipid death,
crawling along the veins.
Something very slow acting,
but it affects the heart and the brain,
deadening the constant ache.
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