230713A
------------
These are worn out times,
in all the worn out places.
Threadbare relations
that never get as close
as the weave in any fabric.
Crisscrossed lines,
that break off and pull out,
leaving it all falling apart,
the way seams unravel,
and it all drops away in pieces.
Material that is examined
and repeatedly reexamined,
during searches for imperfections,
until all the fibers are teased out,
frayed to tatters.
Most of those you thought you had
have faded, leaving only stains.
that never quite wash away,
joining the lines of fate,
that appear on your palms.
--------------------------------
230713B
-----------
Boredom does strange things
to the mind and to plans.
It is the easiest way to begin
drawing circles
where lines should be,
and lines
where there were circles.
You keep crossing yourself out,
as weary of it all as a priest
who has fallen
into a year of Sundays.
You keep giving yourself last rites,
as something to do,
to pass the time.
Every nerve ending in your body,
wants to get up and crawl away,
regretting its entire evolution,
from the Big Bang onward,
becoming a whole universe
marching toward its oblivion,
with nowhere to really go.
You begin doing the unthinkable,
to escape the same old rituals
as are prescribed by the clock.
Then you threaten
to break its hands,
in what you perceive as a failure
to move forward fast enough.
Becoming fluid you imagine,
sliding under locked doors,
to get away
without being noticed.
You could evaporate
leaving hardly a trace
if not for the red in your veins.
You start contemplating
various roles and scenes,
without caring even slightly
whether they are resurrection
or damnation.
It all seems entirely the same,
need for something different.
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230713C
-----------
You were only an illusion,
and now I no longer believe in anyone
who ever gets that close
as being any more than an illusion.
Not that I know who I am referring to,
when I say that to you,
because it has happened so many times
and the well eventually always runs dry.
The smile was wiped off your face,
when you heard the news,
and I was no longer an object of interest,
having become tarnished again.
You must have been one of those birds
that collects shiny things,
looking for a place to nest,
and for something more than a juicy worm.
----------------------------------------------------
290713A
------------
You punctuate the conversation,
with nothing to say.
I know it is time to move along,
rather than loitering.
Neither of us wants to appear to others
as if we are committing a criminal act
in plain public view.
Our discussion a form of vagrancy,
avoiding anything of any importance,
gathering handouts of information,
insisting on accomplishing nothing
that any future will choose to remember.
We could have pissed the sidewalk
with our trickles of small talk.
It is all a polite sort of refusal,
where everything goes a separate way,
and no real secrets are ever revealed.
Neither of our faces appears anywhere
on the current round of wanted posters
and we might not see each other again
for a long stretch of years.
--------------------------------
290713B
------------
They give you too many ways to die,
and hardly any way to live.
They tear at everything around you,
until they get to tearing at the flesh.
You cannot save yourself from it,
and you know there is no one to save you.
You could never get those doors to open,
but they blame you for that too.
Your words were always thrown back,
sharpened up, to do the most harm.
When people walk past you now,
they try to look away from all the scars.
Tired of being the odd element,
that has been grouped into the wrong set.
You are the remainder of a calculation
that offered no real solution to your life.
You have lost all your confidence,
No one really wanted you,
when you had nothing else to really give.
You are forever behind,
and you can never catch up.
Having lost too many prize fights,
no one recalls your name and you get no love.
If it was really happening
it happened somewhere different, to someone else.
Every wish that you ever made
turned into something more easily betrayed.
The sack tossed into the river
feels the weight that is dragging it down.
That is always what happens
when everything right goes completely wrong.
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290713C
-----------
The suggestion
falls into dead empty space.
No one wants to,
and it is time for another drink,
as if that will wash away the sin.
becomes a force of habit,
knowing the crowd
always has better things to do,
that have all been done before.
One has to fight the desire to escape
all the many kinds of nothingness.
Knowing there is no way out
of the trap.
The call never came.
--------------------------
290713D
------------
You get tired of trying to build up
what you cannot ever afford to maintain.
The embarrassment
is always about what you do not have,
and what you have is never good enough.
People tease you with connections,
that they have no intention to really make.
The sort of rendevous
that waits anxiously at the window
for what never arrives.
It is too much like planning a party,
and finding out that there are no guests.
Everything fell away,
in the flood of everyone else,
leaving only some debris to clean out.
You feel suppressed,
the way it feels to be held under water.
You came too close to the surface,
and each time they pushed you down,
hoping you would never come up again.
Life always belongs to the famous,
and a slow agonizing death
to those who feel driven to try to rise.
No one persists at that for very long
unless they learn to love the pain of it all.
The only saving grace
is that you can become addicted to pain.
It is better than feeling nothing at all,
and now and again someone touches you
even if only in passing.
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