belief

i am a fool for belief
and its sweet everythings.
i know the nearness of faith
when falling on what can
only be felt.

i believe in meanings,
am meant to have
meaning.
if i am alive to hear the cries
i am meant to stop them.

here in this suburb
meanings gave way to
less-than,
the relief of exorcising one's
demons
by declaring

they

don't

exist.

i've been fucked for believing
in meaning. i was told,
"it means nothing,"
and i believed that meant
something -
what
a holy fool i am for falling.

it has always been
those demons
who keep me strong.

now i pick up my scraped knees
my knotted knuckles
and still believe.

for me

I'm so lost.
I feel like the wind is pushing me around
and I'm strong so I remain still
but I get no where.

I want to push this approved love away and
I want to have the simplicity of being alone

I can't say one thing and do another, I won't
settle for anything lower
than I what my mind can reach on its tippy toes
I'm not being pushed I'm being prodded

and like any woman who's had sex at least
once knows, that's not pleasurable it's annoying

but how do you say, "let me alone" ?
how do you wish to go back to nothing
when the newness isn't even stale?
how do you slam the door on some
poor lamb when you are a lamb yourself?

How do I ignore all the calls and whispers, messages
letters, texts, shouts, searches, comments, pressure,
heavy silences, packages, pages, and voicemails

how do you get away to be alone how do you make
someone understand that ALONE doesn't mean
never and that TOGETHER means occasionally?

no man is an Island but Islands are in chains so you
always know the nearest person isn't that far
but the distance is important.

I always knew there was more to this than appreciation
and love, but this commitment is so hard to find worth
it these days
and YES it's because of me
and NO it doesn't mean
I hate you or don't care

I can't talk to anyone but my mother more than twice a day
without getting annoyed because I know if it's more than
twice the words really don't mean much
and I can't waste mine because
Can't
You
See?

I have so many important things to say
for me.

Truant

I wish I had given myself more time to forget the day
and leave behind all this concrete.

I wish I had just walked into the woods with courage and dreams

and a pen

something to give me the push to write without worries
to have nothing to really write about at all

I wish I had given myself freedom and the
choice to live away from demands
I would do anything to just leave
hang a sign, like they do at small family owned stores
"out to lunch be back soon"

no obligation to really comeback at all,
no pressure or reason to hurry
or be bothered.

no one to want to account for me
no missed calls or
unread text messages
or fear about where I must have gone.

The silent pleasure in riding myself of all those voices

to be a deserter must be so splendidly frustrating

and free.

MisMatched

I feel like my personality has been mismatched
and the tv doesn't help.
on the glowing screen
I keep seeing my propagative attached
to some clueless single minded character
where is the complexity?
I see good hair and lively lives
and success that I can't imagine for
myself.

I am not the most sentimental,
or thoughtful.
honestly I forget a lot of the
things I say,
cause I know if they're off the cuff
I mean them

and I think myself into inactivity
because I can't have one mind
I still find the highest solace in being
alone

and I've never depended on anyone for my drive

I am mismatched in personality because
there is no reason
these ideas should be trapped in this
character, who can never really
stop.
and.
speak.

Habits

this diet of rainy days and
my thoughts and snubbed invitations to
birthdays, drinks, and coking
I can't quite remember what actually
happened all that time ago
my thoughts are, more selfish than they've ever been
and I still can't explain why a night in sounds better
than any kind of night activity with anyone.
I've got 1000 miles to remind me that
love is precious and another 1000 to tell me
that love is hard but only inches to remind me
I need to work get better analyze
understand that trust and reputation aren't
transferable credits.

I need to stop dreaming of dreams and
use my fists to build a reality I can cope with and
vent my frustrations in beautiful poems and
mind vacations where a paradise exists
but is wholly unattainable, yet see able and real

I've come to realize belonging is overrated,
passion is akin to air and adversity
weeds out everyone who's not worth my time
but still this isn't quite what I imagined.

being alone, thinking,
listening to the rain fall

fiction

i don't have anything in me
that hasn't been put
there by a movie. (flesh and bones
and bloody noses.)

when i die they'll take my body
away on a dolly.

DOCTOR 1 TO DOCTOR 2:
"she's stuffed with scripts,
and all her organs run with ink."

'cause i'm a paper man with
all the wrong dyes, just a
paper man with two lost hands
and the kind of blank-page
panic that makes manics sing.

this girl is oh so ever clever,
pretty like a bookcover with no body -
an actress. and i'm the pages
that want a spine but got no glue -
the writer.

i love her fiction,
how i invent her over
and over and over again
to reflect and refract
my reality.

we live in these flickering frames of light,
and we have never been so alive.

because you know

it would be better if i could take my thumb
and wipe away those dark crescents beneath
your eyes, but i'm not a painter, and i'm
not God, and i'm not the sleep you're losing
over her, and anyway she's standing at the register
with cash in her hand like i'm about to have
quarters for eyes. i can't take your look
but i'll take the coffee i haven't ordered yet but
that you have in your hand
because you know.

my face says more than my choked throat does,
is that any surprise? or are we fooling ourselves
when we talk, like it means more than the wordlessness
that passes between us when you pass back
your lit menthol and we're singing all the same songs?
it's like the times we throw down on the floor
with the haze and hot breath. i give you goosebumps
and you laugh, say i can't do that,
not even when you ask sweetly
because we know.

he shows up when the cup is empty and tells me
you're not very cute, that you have nothing to hold onto
and nice noses don't do that. he's trying to help
in his backwards way to stop my train from derailing.
he doesn't know it makes it worse, that my arms
are heavy from not holding, that i would take
my brazen fists to his face for your honor,

because i know.