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.
evidently all the words that wish to come forth from my fingertips are about you, so i guess that last line is out the window; i doubt too that even this will be the end of all the things inspired by you that are writ.
you are a frequent visitor of my dreams and in them we are still together and we are still happy―it is only upon awakening as the memories of how things really are, that horror and decay, flood into my conscious that the content of those dreams becomes nightmare. unending loss, utterly paralytic, so most mornings i don't even get out of bed for hours. even when night rolls over and suicceeds the day i often find myself still in a depressive trance that seemingly has no cure and no answer.
i lack the capacity to fully express how sorry i am for everything, for the doubt, the isolating, for the anger, especially the anger, especially for yelling at you, promising it wouldn't happen again, and then summarily breaking that promise. i lack the capacity to tell you how sorry i am you ever got mixed up with me in the first place. i lack the capacity to express how deeply i regret losing you, how i would do anything to slap my former self silly and tell him to wait it out, that it'd be okay so long as you didn't lose yourself in possibilities and events that haven't even happened yet. i can't begin to quantify how singularly and awesomely important a person, a force in my life, you were, and how losing you has made every other awful thing that has happened to me seem entirely trivial by comparison.
i've been such a dismal person to you. i wish i could, more than anything, take it all back. i wish i had let myself love and trust you like you deserved. i wish i had forgiven you sooner.
i've been so afraid to acknolwedge that i still want and need you in my life in any capacity because unrequited love terrifies me. i'm afraid of how week i'll appear, how foolish how pathetic, if i let myself love somebody who has no interesting in me. i've always been afraid of what people might say or think if they believe me not to be strong.
and i would have gone to my grave like this had we not come to the present moment―the realization that i cannot draw another breath without you in my life.
i am completely in love with you and i probably always will be, despite my attempts to convince myself otherwise. i know you can never love me in the same way again, and while it both scares and kills me, i know i must accept it. i simply need you in my life, in whatever form that takes. i'll love you from afar and i'll never bother you with my idiot thoughts of a romance that can never be again. i know we can never be together again. i know i still need so much work as a person before you can even feel comfortable around me again. i know i've said it so many times but i really am trying.
you fell into my life like some kind of crazy gorgeous meteor and you changed everything from the very start. if i had to relive it all not being able to change a single thing i'd do it in a heartbeat, over and over again, just be be there and present and enjoy your presence and your warmth while it lasted. i'd give up writing forever even despite the luxury it afford me if it meant we could be each other's again for even just a few minutes.
i know it simply cannot be. i won't hang onto the past and let it drown me―but i similarly won't try to drown out the feelings i still do possess (and in force). i just have to start living again
i'm so sorry for the way that i am, jamie. you were the best thing that ever happened to me, that could ever happen, and i squandered your care and affection like coins down the penny slots. i know i'll never meet anybody as good as you, you really were on the money with that sentiment, but i always believed it, too. you were a once in a lifetime event: an event i botched beyond all repair and recognition. i'm so sorry.
i'm sorry for my insanity, my jealousy, and my reckless disregard for everything. i'm sorry for yelling at you most of all, i don't know if i can ever live that one down, becoming just exactly the kind of person that made my childhood so anxious and miserable.
i'm sorry for breaking up with you over and over again over the same stupid thing i should have forgiven you for. i'm sorry i didn't know how to make you feel as wanted as you needed, because you deserve to feel wanted more than anyone else.
i'm sorry i haven't been there. i'm sorry about every time that i drank. i'm sorry that i was drunk when you met me. i'm sorry that you had to deal with me being sober for the first time in a long time.
i'm sorry for every single time i brought up something from the past. i'm sorry for my martha's letters routine. i'm sorry for hating myself so much that it ruined us.
i'm sorry for disappearing the last week and a half. i'm sorry it's taken me this long to give you a proper apology.
thank you for always taking care of me when i needed it most. thank you for always reassuring me, for being my fan, for cheering me on, for making me feel worthy. thank you for the best months of my life. i can only hope that going forward i can repay even a fraction of the kindness and understanding you gave me without a second thought.
thank you for rescuing me from the pits of hell i was in. i wish i had held onto you longer, angel.
i love and adore and cherish you more than anything. nothing is that could be more precious to me than you.
eternally yours, with love
to the girl with the most enchanting laugh in the world,
shonin
after nearly drinking myself to death i met a person that i could not account for. i thought at first it was some strange big show of the DTs but she remained after all. she is the kindest person i ever hope to meet. it's very possible that i adore her more than anyone else or even more than all the dead authors and pretty concepts in my head. i love her so much. she had the power to alter the trajectory of what remained of my life. i've never slept more comfortably in all of my years. i've waited so long to meet you, jamie.
