(Cont.)

Are these entities

identifiers?  Do we know

who we are in the middle 

of expectation, especially

our own?  Is our heart 

that willing to change us

for the satisfaction of itself?

Or should we take the lesson

and move on to the next 

existential question,

not of who we are

but who are we to become

with no one to reflect back

what is right

and what is wrong...

Gems Washed in Dirty Dishwater

"Isn't it strange 
we move our lives for another day,
like skipping a beat..."

I suppose in the laundry list
of my convocations of the past,
a relationship was always
something I thought would last

Forever.  Like the tide
that comes in and out
in some fairy tale
island shore,

my interest is always piqued
by those that have come before
and succeeded.  My passion,
my idealism, my neologistic

search for something unique;
as if love was my own creation,
my satisfaction, my abomination,
like Frankenstein and his creature's

horrific transformation
from reason to madness
to reasonable destruction
in the face of disturbed madness

by those deemed un-mad
diagnosing him un-sane.
But a flower is a flower
which are petals to be plucked

and played the old game with:
He loves her, she loves him not,
and there we are struck
with an inability to see

the forest for the trees,
to believe in nothing
but the happiness,
to hear bees buzzing

amongst the tall grass
and lean back and laugh
at all the wild inequity
of this most devastating life.

To grasp at dandelion seeds
thrown wildly into the air
by a passionate breeze
and let them fall wherever

they might, as if life had a plan
of its own and you were just a part of it
this whole time, just a weak-kneed
supper attendant seeking

beauty in each fresh course
brought before you, and, testing
your tongue, find little difference
between dessert and the main

and trusting your taste-buds
has become a just a game
because everything up till now
felt like a dream

and if this is real life
then what happened
in the past eighteen months
that made me fall asleep?

Like, a Self-Affirmation or something...

Somewhere, in the dark distance beyond all the sad endings that have been, I write a fiction in my head of a way for all of this to work. I write the small scenes of intimate moments playing out between us. I write the big goodbye scenes and the big hello scenes.  I write the longing of letters back and forth. Somewhere, this truth exists.  If I am heartbroken tonight, then please let me be heartbroken tonight because tomorrow I will be better and it's not to make you feel guilty, it's to make me feel better, to make me feel something in order to feel something greater in a long little while.  Yes, I still love you.  Yes, I still think of you, but mainly in pain, which is why I write these stupid phrases of my feverish brain to extol the virtue of my pain, to wreathe myself in the fire of it, to bathe in the melancholy, to itch out malcontent, because I know it will only help me in the end, it will only allow me to be myself quicker and stronger and faster than I was before and pretty soon you find that love is just one aspect of you, that love is in fact ok to send out on the wings of a dove, to maybe come back with an olive branch someday, but that day is not tomorrow nor the next day and those days are my days, not to wait, but to percolate, to obfuscate my demons and speak pseudo-genius words to drunk bar patrons and prepare the next great part while I breathe in and someday, when I'm successful, when that dove comes back to me, I'll be ready to accept it and move on, to become greater in the eyes of whatever, because I deserve as much as that whole ocean out there can give, but the dove is not a hunting bird and I'm not interested in fishing for affection, just a will to live.

Hard Lesson to Learn

She wrote the rules on the bottoms of her shoes
on how her feet should tread,
and then followed them,
stepping one foot in front of the other,
finding how hard it is to go
when one follows the rules.

So she tried skipping, and hopping,
tried to run, tried to jump,
tried dancing, cartwheeling,
shuffling and high-stepping,
but nothing rid her of those
rules on her shoes.  One day,
she found sand, and felt

the slog of it, the painful drudge through miles of slough.
Then it occurred to her, if I take off my shoes,
perhaps my toes will grip better
and my legs will feel stronger
and body lighter.  And it was true,
she left her shoes with their rules
and felt sand between her toes,

felt sun on her face, listened to the waves crash
over the beach, and turned her eyes upward,
toward the light, as her feet felt happy
without those rules or those shoes,
and she learned to walk barefoot
throughout her life, lifting toes to arches
to heels and happily humming as she walked along.

Dreaming

We make love in closets full of overcoats,
whose owners rich discardings provide
a pillow for our lust.  I dream of centaurs
gleaming through the wild sun
and pause to take them in:
so vivid, masculine, so alarmingly
beautiful, in a way that is not handsome.

I see you then, underneath me, the coda
of our physic humming softly, waiting
for the alabaster end of our evening,
but enjoying too much the repeat
of the last simple phrase to continue
on to the end, and light up our night
with an allegretti finish.

I'm dreaming, I know, and pretty soon
I will awake to find you are not there,
a simple symbol of something unfulfilled.
You are like my Odyssey; a journey beginning
where another has left off and I know not
which path to take, or who to listen to,
but I do know that dark caves

and labyrinths will be explored
in order to broker a peaceful way back.
I will drift into the future, at the mercy
of those waves, and those sirens
whose island songs lull me deeper
into a drudging sleep, and one day
I will awake to find me no longer there

and all will be a foreign place around me.
So I stake a flag around myself, claim
myself for me, and strive to see, past
one-eyed monsters, and cooing women,
the dream of home, the place of comfort,
the saturnine ellipsis of all the stars in the sky
and waves quietly rushing the shore,

finally applauding my efforts to dream.

Lemongrass Sundays

It was as if she glided on lemongrass sundays,
her hair, golden, thrown past her face,

like she was riding in a convertible
toward a perpetual movie-ending sunset.

She stopped briefly to scent a mourning flower,
drooping effortlessly, parched in the sun;

an image to conjure magic from the delight
of all around, to suffer sweetly the stings

of bumblebees lazily rolling past the flower,
to rest the tips of her fingers lightly on the tulip buds,

and close her eyes in a sensual embrace
of oval thoughts; of a spectacular man

who once gave her a flower like this one,
who is gone now, but lives in the sweat

of her palms, in the heat of a midsummer night,
her lying, almost naked, half-covered by satin sheets

and breathing deeply the warm siesta air,
swathed in moonlight and the warm blue

of a star-ridden sky.  It sets the pulse racing,
then dives in eager anticipation toward

this unsettled loveliness and she stands up,
and walks on in her white flower print dress,

sunglasses already flashing toward
her next obsession.  It was as if she floated

from dreams and I smelled lemongrass
one Sunday as she passed by.

Monologue #3: Educated Tramp

She got a little lie on her face, a little lipstick that doesn't fit in, that says, "Hey Jack, 'how bout you come over and we play a little find the pickle."  Her jar is open, 'cept it ain't anythin' but.  She brings 'em over, steals their wallets, chains 'em to a bed and beats 'em to death, so she got a little lie on her face, that creeps at ya, cuz you know what she's about.  She leaves 'em wanting more.  She leaves 'em chained up dead in a different room each night, and ain't nobody found her yet cuz they all junkies or whores, or some shithouse racket that don't care about anyone or anything so nobody cares about them, how 'bout that?  How 'bout you leave this place before I tell ya more?  How 'bout I tell you that the President ain't got no balls, or the balls he got ain't big enough cause I seen 'em swingin' and nobody pays attention to it. How 'bout that guy that blows the whistle on every major government just got the rape whistle treatment blown on him?  How 'bout that?  How 'bout life makes us all losers, and all of us dream to be somethin' better, but we ain't actually anythin' better than what we were born with.  You still believe that nature over nurture shit?  Cause I believe that I'm a votin' American that don't give a damn what the fuck Congress does, I just bend over and take that shit all night.  How long's the night gonna be?  Huh?  Huh?  So we got a murderin' whore, a President with no balls and me takin' the splintered of a broomstick up my rectum each night so we can all sleep better.  Welcome to America, where as long as you're asleep, you're better.