040515A
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the numbness of fear
that gnaws
on your bones
you start to have cravings
for cheap thrills
and quick ways out
trying to shake loose
from all the losing
that surrounds you
all the plans you made
having been shredded
to comply with secrecy
you go forward
toward looking back
upon all that carnage
the world reveals itself
as its dead
strewn across the fields
you bury the remains
of whatever you came for
in unmarked graves
it is all ploughed under
and soon they march again
in nearly perfect rows.
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040515B
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It always comes up short,
and you weren't counted in,
so you fall out.
That vagabond sort of feeling,
that the beautiful ones ignore,
having learned to avoid it.
They are always perfect
for anyone except you,
but it is no one's choice.
Customary practices abound
that work against you,
but nothing ever works for you.
The nature of independence
being only a day on the calendar,
celebrated with rockets.
Anywhere can be out of bounds,
and there is no reasoning
that can take those punches.
Every error can be fatal
for some people,
and not for others.
Monkeys shake the trees
making people tumble down,
for having gone out on a limb.
You see their brokenness
tangled as Chinese puzzles,
that do not come apart.
You look at the signs,
but they do not tell you anything
about direction.
It seems the sky might open
so that you can surrender,
but the ladder is too broken.
You give yourself last rites
every time that it happens,
as if buying lottery tickets.
You have not won anything yet
with the hand you were dealt,
and no one loves a loser.
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040515C
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I remember you,
but I am sure you have forgotten me,
so I do my best to forget about us.
Wiping the slate is a process
that has to be repeated
whenever those traces reappear.
Stains that never quite came out
from the torn fabric of memories
that then ghost bitter sweet.
It is never good to return
to counting up the losses
that tend to come in between.
Tears long dried up
have long been revalued
as something peculiarly out of place.
No point measuring then and now,
in that cruel mirror of the mind
that then threatens to take one back.
Various marks that we make
leaving their peculiar impressions
the way newspapers accumulate.
Forgotten strings of words
that are proven to lack effect
on anything other than paper scraps.
Those litanies of events
taken out of any context
where they formed coincidences.
They way we sometimes believe
in the lyrics of songs
that circle around in our heads.
True that I would never ask,
and true there is nothing to tell,
as to what became of strangers.
We were destined to be strangers
right from the start,
though rumors might say different.
I could have saved myself
from having too much to remember
if I had known my own truth.
It is always that one moment
that never really was,
that proves to be the most painful.
It always leaves one looking
for something that one never had,
that proved never to be found again.
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040515D
------------
You always have to pay to play,
but that does not say
that you can pay enough
to ever really win.
They keep raising the price of love,
and lowering the price of bullets,
not counting the higher costs
of whatever passes as maintenance.
You are supposed to learn to gamble,
but they give you empty pockets,
pocket lint not being a valid currency
in any current day market.
There are so many new catalogues
that offer the widest range of selections,
that upon inquiry are all out of stock,
having sold out and gone.
They have conspired to legalize
all the varieties of pocket pool,
while complicating the rules
for any straight hand being played.
That clown Cupid is laughing
that you only scored blanks
on various forms and paperwork,
rather than a bullet through the heart.
All the new types of massacres
that come about with the trends
always putting someone else ahead
of where you might have been.
Caught in that hard place in between
forward and backward,
tied to going nowhere, but struggling
at trying to break free of being held down.
It drags you down, and it cuts you up,
the way sharks drag down and cut up
in their perpetual frenzy of hungering
for anything that is wounded.
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