the angel passed you by
you broke free from her embrace
and when this happens people they say
that her arms were thorned like a rose despite her gentleness
or that her gaze was enough to to instill a guilty sense of being so totally and unjudgementally pitied
and that these things are what threw them from her arms.
i will not say such things.
or if i am at gunpoint forced to say i will whisper passively that
her wings seemed tired and i thought myself able to walk more than bear the sight.
let us not say things that are not for us to say
dust yourself off, the road ahead is long
barkeep, another round.
have you ever woken up to a 7 A.M chime that wasn’t for work but for
the other thing?
shaking
have you ever
driven down a very unpaved street on some tin-sickle bicycle
shit on wheels
and seen a dawn that was more befitting of a twilight?
in it’s cloudy sunpour,
and imagined your death many times at the wheels of vehicles heavier than yours
imagined under or over?
imagined if you’d even realize what was happpening?
when it very truly and surely was?
thoughts hanging over a field that you’re not sure when they’d cut down
since you now noticed?
have you ever
had insane withdrawal-conversations with the circle k lady
(always not the usual one)
as if from a second-story window
until you could fumble out the bills and nickel
for your life?
and battle with your own bikelock
wondering were the cops to show soon?
seen blood veseels in your closed eyes?
walked along grass and felt a burning that was not sun
and an aching that was not muscle
and glanced over your shoulder religiously?
wondered if the half-fog was there to begin with?
and crashed coming into the driveway
and tried to unlatch a gate that did not want to be unlatched
and got it all inside
and still couldn’t breathe
a sigh of relief?
it becomes agony to realize that you've
not enough energy to face the night and
not enough peace to sleep
i watch the moon in its flight
and in that pale darkness i am at once reminded of and bedazzled by
the memory of your eyes that surpass the end of the night
and the bedazzlement gives way to a sense of complete loss
and i am profoundly moved to inaction
and i watch those clouds in the night going somewhere i can never be
and it becomes evident to me that it is not nor was it ever me i wanted to be
so i go inside searching for a substance-high i know has absolutely no substance
i cannot fathom why you wished to save this world
it killed you with such solipsistic whimsey that it'd give a stoic a hard-on
you were probably the finest mind of our generation
i was supposed to be the back-up
now i'm front-runner in the first heat
what's more is that these people don't want to be saved
no-one searches for heroes any longer
they just want martyrs
statues
more imbecilic idolatry
take a look at their libraries:
full of dull books thick with words that say almost nothing at-all
walk around any city block one time:
homelessness, poverty, crime, egregious filthiness, discarded hypodermic syringes every 20 meters
this is the product of all human history and knowledge
we lost something essential when you left
and my sorrow since then
engendered by the complex flame of my embittered emotions
continues in its acuity with no apparent end in sight
plasted with just a sip of my bottled self-deception
and until i am covered in it and i am become one with it and i am it in itself
because i could not
and seemingly could never
construct myself an escape into the fantasy of daily life
there it all is!
the shock-and-awe of it, of loving so madly and being so madly loved
and the unfortunate proof of how tremendously love burdens the soul
juxtaposed with the contradiction of the poison of loneliness and desolate nights at the end of a bottle
the vulnerability of the darkness of hurt we all bear like the cross
the impossibility of a single true embrace
and words that i never knew i meant that slipped out
in haste
and anger
like everything
steeped in self-contempt and irking fucking misery
which only served to amplify how abrasive and raw the words that followed:
"you can't fucking save the world!"
were.
and now i stand looking at the world as though it were through a foggy and shattered ashtray
and everyone is gone or going.
idiot dreams of idiot ghosts
(full of themselves, like myself)
that stalked the icy streets
of my childhood Pennsylvania
where i onced dreamed,
now dream no longer
the cartilage of my soul
bare and broken
smelling of exposed sinew,
reeking of dry blood
something flays me daily
that i cannot name
i've looked in all the
dictionaries
but if there's a word for it
it isn't in them
life is unusual to me
and i'm told it oughtn't be
the closed-circuit of my
being here
strangles me beautifully
until my horrid face
turns to horrid dust
dust that were you to ask it
would tell you without saying
could have been a smile
the unfastidious night was crawling across my desk like a wounded spider
some common terror-babbling was shitting its way into my ears from next door,
dry, dry shit really, my mouth was dry
and the beer said super dry
the woman was like an ulcer to my being, then
it wasn't her fault
we just weren't good together anymore
but neither of us wanted to admit that
because it was just too much damn work
for both of us to go hobnobbing among the freaks
for a replacement.
we were both waiting for the day we'd wake up
and the other would be gone.
it was like some kind of shit-vaudeville, except it wasn't funny.
we just sat there in the dark
working at our beers
occasionally cooking up a shot
listening to the inane garbage gurgling in from the television next-door
eventually she threw a glass
against the wall
and became very quiet.
she was gone
the next morning.
something awaits for me on the other side of the concrete
besides all of this plain anxiety and all the things i've done wrong
and can never make up for
no more tall packs of strong beer and no-more no-more no-more
dreams that beam in contrast of how wrong your life has gone
in the uncomely kingdom of waking men
you have lived a long time without love especially towards yourself―
maybe you are willing to live a little longer?
see where the thread you have followed so adamantly leads:
in the end you will be either right or wrong but at least you will know
i gilded her with the heart of my sensibilites
with my history, and with the men who carried me far through the night
when no-one else could or would
now my booksheleves are lined with viscera, waste
things that can be mine no longer
the sky is real blue out there but i don't go out
except before dawn
to run myself ragged down a stretch of bare ancient crackling road
sharpening my body and my appeal for some vacant future puppet i'll have settled for
because my capacity for loneliness is taken
because my kingdom is laden with darkness unremittent
my cities tumble
because a memory, just a memory
is something i never wanted her to be.
i'm a real bastard, and i suppose i always have been
so it is an astounding thing that i of all people
should have become a poet
normally i keep my voice tinny and obsequious
with beercan highs and lows
but the real bitch is that when i'm sober
all bets are off the table
even i do not know what i am going to
think
feel
say
write
sing
or do next
and it scares the living shit out of me.
it has taken me so far out of the realm of people
that when someone breaks through my usual recalcitrance
they will always
always
regret it.
this is not a plea for pity or understanding
nor is it justification for the kind of human refuse i am
in fact i would rather everyone assume i am incapable of guilt or shame or regret
because the truth there is something even i don't want to fucking face
no, this is a personal reminder
to never
allow myself to fall in love again.
you've finally succeeded in making me hate you
and i suppose i hope i've done the same
now that there's blood in my eyes from crying
(not a metaphor, there's a small sea of red in my sclera)
and all's said and done.
how fitting too that it should be this day
on which we chanced upon one-another nearly half a year ago now,
on that christmas eve when you sang to my choiceless soul from the cantos of savior-love
(which i now know must have been borrowed from the madness of stars long dead)
that catapulted me long from the foregone conclusion to something with the glow of having a future.
it was of course foolish and i ought to have known better by now
so the joke is indeed on me
and there's no point faulting you for anything.
this is not to say that it wasn't ever any good, but that i wish that good could last―not a miscalculation i am likely to make again.
we were just not suited to each other, thus we've made our last mistakes
and we part only knowing of the future that the paths we will each tread will be strange and entirely separate
and let it be known that these are the last goddamned lines i will write of you.
