260314A
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The lines etched into skin,
by all the different things
that chanced to hurt us.
They are maps to secret places
where few chance to venture,
in fear of the same tragedies.
Our minds are cluttered rooms,
infiltrated by the kinds of laughter
where nothing is ever funny.
Another trap with no way out,
except to dream another dream
of whatever it is that cannot be done.
There is an archeologist
who is digging for some culture,
trying to get beneath the dirty surface.
The surface gets dirtier all the time,
with what we try to scrape away,
to show what there is underneath.
The value of the things that survive,
comes from what was destroyed,
and every love requires loss.
There are those who watch for that
always carefully taking apart,
what others would put together.
The fear of anyone breaking loose,
from their prison of solitude,
and a lifetime of indoctrination.
The martyr never finishes
anything that the martyr starts,
scattering fragments of new beginnings.
That too is too much love,
and there are those that keep a watch
on every instance of real passion.
They think it could destroy the world,
in some careless instant
of finding as passionate a lover.
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260314B
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I loved you so very much,
that I never wanted to see you again,
our never having found
the right things to offer each other.
I thought I was too poor to love you,
my always having empty pockets,
ending up on the short end of the stick,
as no more than a bit of marginalia.
I never quite managed to beat that rap,
and recall what it felt like
to feel as though one of the condemned
for having wanted you so very much.
I did my best to kill whatever it was
that had taken possession of my soul,
drinking myself into that blessed state
of temporarily comfortable oblivion.
Strangely you were the first girl
who ever bought me a beer in a bar,
as if that was your special mission,
and that was all I would ever have of you.
Then I had no idea what it really meant,
as to having learned a most useful skill,
concerning washing away something
that would otherwise never let go.
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260314C
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I never felt particularly comfortable,
as to the time I was born into.
Something inside of me was wrong,
the way a clock tells the wrong hour.
You never really understood me,
but then I lacked the words to really say
what it was about time and space,
that made me feel so absolutely strange.
I searched for places I could not find,
where poets drank absinthe in the night,
no longer caring if morning ever came,
into those dungeons of the soul.
You too were about lost love,
when anything would have been better
than what we ended up suffering together,
as to my speechless and foolish heart.
You fed me grapes that you peeled,
the way the Romans used to do,
and they were headier than any wine
that I ever chanced to drink of.
I gave you my favorite book of poems,
which were written by a female suicide,
because it was the only thing I had
that was really all that precious.
I smoked my last cigarette,
at the moment that you executed me.
I declined the blindfold and looked at you
with that sadness in my eyes.
So many times I wanted to see you again,
wondering where you went to, my lovely,
imaging that you gained a stellar life
the moment that you parted from me.
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260314D
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Everything seems cold.
So persistently cold.
As if a deep chill to the bone,
that never really thaws.
Life seems brittle,
always about to break up
into shards and pieces,
the way ice falls and shatters.
I am sure I have it all wrong,
never knowing the other side
of any of the stories that happen.
That is the problem with fiction.
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260314E
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Blamed for not following
the various obituaries,
that would mark closure
onto various dossiers
concerning these or those
moments of impropriety.
Those little failures of manners
that epitomize romance
whether it fails or succeeds.
Actions that took the place
of various forms of argument.
Something which has no place
in any sort of love making.
Despite little transgressions
I was always far too polite.
That was where losing began,
and why poets usually lose
as easily as do most gentlemen.
Strange how they already knew
there were better options,
the way crows always know
where the sparkly things are.
They could already read
the secret language of surfaces
to know which one attracts
and which one repels
in the ways that might matter.
Love was the window dressing,
not the matter of substance,
and everything taught lessons
as to what was truly real,
when it came down to deciding.
No one that I ever met
wanted the romantic I wanted to be.
Accountants from Hell
had already changed all of that.
I never found the one for me,
though I loved some,
and loved some far too much.
Another form of martyrdom
in the trenches of this society,
where the battle lines are drawn
on a daily and continual basis.
Most sold their beauty,
while others I don't know about.
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