Ensnarement

You won't look me in the eyes,
hold my hands, kiss my lips,
whisper tender, loving words
while I fall asleep next to you
in a heavenly feather bed,
stroke my hair, or pat my head

(anymore). 

You will look at me seductively,
lick your lips, speak your mind
about what you want to (fucking) do,
and I said stop-no-really-stop
stopstopstopSTOP!

You can't hear me.
You don't listen.

(I tried to tell you no.)

You ensnare me in your eyes.
Your false pretenses and broken promises
provide a comfort. 
They are always there.

(Just as I am always trapped here.)

Precarious Balances

Precarious balances between steady and unstable
are obvious, when the rope we walk rocks back and forth.

There is a rope that we tip-toe,
as humans emerged
in humanity and evil.

It is constantly fluid.
It moves with us and against us.
We never know which direction
it is planning until it is too late.
We have either crossed it,
or we have fallen below.

Falling below the line hurts
more than a broken bone at an odd angle;
it hits right in the home of things.
We find that we can not breathe,
thinking we can't possibly go any further down,
and then this rope drops us down two hundred more stories
that we did not think we could go,
that we will not survive.

We bruise and break our hearts this way;
do not talk, do not scream, just whisper apologies
that no one will hear, because our voices are just too far gone.

There's nothing here for us;
it is an empty carcass.

Listening closely, though, we hear others dropping
one by one - like flies - as they say goodbyes
that are not due to death, but to unfinished cries.

Precarious balances between steady and unstable
are obvious, when the rope we walk rocks back and forth.

Perspectives

This empty ghost town
is full of dusty memories.
Particles of them float in the air,
and she and he and you and I
will catch them on bittersweet tongues
and in our runaway hearts.

There's a building half-torn down;
a construction project forsaken
in the hopes of better times,
of better lives.

This empty ghost town
has a white wall painted
with dreams by way of graffiti.
There's no way to miss it;
that one there, he wanted to be a doctor,
and she wanted to be a teacher,
and they wanted to be the first pair of twins
to fly to the moon and back.

There's a building half-built;
a construction project that's the beginning
to a different world,
to a different view.

This empty ghost town
may not be so empty after all.
There's hopes, and dreams, and aspirations
settled in the bones of the city,
and it shakes, because it feels
it may one day breathe again.

There's a building half-there;
a construction project where there's no one
to tell it what it sees or what to do,
where there's no one and everyone
all at once. 

June 28th, 2012

In This Old Cabin

In this old cabin where neither person speaks
one word to the other, there is no intention
of sparking conversation. There is no sincere
invitation to tell the other about a key-and-lock love.

Her eyes are dull and lifeless. Her words are as repetitive 
as the back-and-forth sound of her rocking chair,
as the motions her hands make while she cross-stitches
her life into pictures no one else will understand but him.

His eyes are empty. His words provide no gentleness,
no tender love, nothing to spark her back to life.
His rough hands rub together, but he has forgotten 
how to take hold of her hand, how to make her happy.

In this old cabin where neither person lives,
where the key and the lock no longer work together,
where words are said but have no feeling,
there is little left to say but goodbyes.


June 25th, 2012

Matchmaker

When the time comes,
fingers will scrape the palms
of another's hand.

When the time comes,
arms will stretch into the galaxy
to find another's embrace.

When the time comes,
eyes will find their match
by the way the other pair shimmers.

When the time comes, 
two bodies will seem like one,
like they're closer than the stars.



June 22, 2012

The Citadel

She shows only a fraction
of who she is; she picks and chooses
the parts she wants to show,
hides the rest underneath
her carefully ironed designer outfit.

Her thick walls are solid:
she will not let the cold, cruel world
invade her violent internal war.

There is not even a scratch on her surface;
she purposely keeps it smooth, even, unworthy of notice.
She will not let the dirty fingertips and corrupted minds of this world
touch her own; not because she's better,
but because she is worse.

Her thick walls are stone:
there is no way out, all exits are blocked,
and she will resign to playing games of "What if?" and solitaire.



June 16th, 2012.

Exposed

Tick, tick tock. Tock, tick. Tick, tock.
Red second-hand bloody with murder.
It kills every minute in slow torture.
It spends in a circle - it never stops -
one always hears the tick, tick tock.