My Acquiesce

This callous cold bites my toes

And this worry keeps me awake

What an awful companion this winter chill makes


In the city that housed my adolescent fantasies

I came face to face with this wiser woman and she

Does not like to bullshit


Months before I was sure I could make a home

On this street

But tonight, when that girl and this woman meet

I become the slug on the wet concrete


At least I wished I was

Instead of this neon sign, always abuzz

The truth is, I am a chicken shit

In the face of sacrifice


But these months of oblivion had me so down

Among the subtle sweetness of this salty town

I am as shrouded as the slug

But as exposed as the neon sign, always abuzz

 There is no such thing as could have been


Yesterday is a long lost friend

But one I can no longer relate to

So often I have ached for you

Romanticized the past

Till it became a beguiling melody

The sounds evenly soothe and pain me



A hearty, heavy breeze

As rain drips from emerald trees around me

My new green world

Makes a muddy mess of memories



What was and what could have been

Are divided reveries with parallel paths

And on the road that landed me here

I keep traveling back

Gathering wreckage

Adding it to my suffrage



Each time the story changes

Or perhaps it is me who rearranges it

To satisfy the selfish parts of me

The parts that cling so dearly these pictures of what was



I dig through the memoirs zealously

But cannot see what I want to see

I see you and me

But dear old friend

There is no such thing as could have been

There is something eerie about this fog tonight
Quite cliché the way it envelopes me
Hypnotizing, how it makes me feel
At nearly midnight on Monday not worth noting

I guess it is just strange-- this street
One my feet barely know
Baiting, the way the fog creeps up the trees
And the backs of my knees
Calling to my curiosity
Till I am the black cat in the foreground
I have certainly had my go at center stage

I guess that is what makes this serenity so strange
The changing of seasons
Appeals to reasons that rumble inside me
But somehow they landed me
On this street in a fading October
I am falling like the brittle leaves
From a foggy tree

You are alive on this paper
You are in my room
Holding my feet in your lap
And making me laugh

You are still in love with me
In my poetry
Still making love to a shade of me
That fades gingerly with each sight of sunlight

In real life
I cannot find you anywhere

So I put you in verse to feel close to you
To love the ghost of you
That still sleeps beside me

But when I wake you are never there
When I wake, I cannot find you anywhere

I miss you in waves
The kind that swallow you whole
And spit you out in pieces

Upon a beach with familiar scenery
I suddenly doubt things like gravity
And my sanity
I cannot trust even memories
Since now they are all mixed with illusions
Caused by the irritating intrusion
Of self doubt
And on this shore, where I once walked happily about
I tiptoe

Afraid, I suppose, of the undertow
For I know I am nothing against a raging sea
Just a fading footprint
In a now faulty memory

What I am sure of

There is no longer an in-between
Words, once compounded
Are singular and stern
Worlds, once collided
Are filled now with yearning so potent
It fastens me to memory

What a terror a girl like me can be
Me with my wordy poetry
This bullshit blog
This woe is me

How heavy a night like this could be
If you still slept beside me
And I woke you from your dreams
To dissect my own

Could you still soothe my worried mind?
Still find the time to appease me
When all you wanted to do was sleep?
Why can't I just dream at night?

Why must these reveries haunt me so?
Make it so
I cannot fully wake
Because I am always dreaming of what could be
Living half asleep
And now, all alone

Hiatus

Under perfectly clear skies

A sun that burns my eyes

In a room that always feels strange

I encounter thoughts I cannot seem to arrange in a way

To make anything make sense



An imaginary fence separates

As if 400 miles were not enough

As if I needed some other arbitrary invention to keep my distance


Sorrow is so persistent

Like an unstoppable leak

And the sadness creeps till I am ankle deep

Wading, waiting for sleep

A long hiatus

Your echoing existence
Ripples through me
You are cocain in good weed
What is the point of good weed then?
I am not much for pen these days
Forgive me for not wanting to see my misery in print
So the sound of departure now becomes
The pounding of keys and heart
And there is always that part of the night
When I realize my foot stretches all the way across this lonely bed
When every thought in my heavy head congregates
And suffocates me
Till I fall alseep
If only I could rest in peace

The Recovery of Love

The abandonment of what was

Is done gradually

At first, unnaturally

I must rid myself of you

But a lover’s residue

Does not fade easily

Or painlessly

Or completely

What remains is a source of great pain

And even in the most of mundane moments

I am still made a fool

By involuntary tears

Or something more severe

I cannot drown it with even a dozen beers

Such sickness subsides

When all that survives

Is the legacy of a love once great

But in the quake

And amongst this massive ache

I know for sure

I must summon my strength

Rise from the rubble

And vow to build again

To let this end

Because nothing is more necessary than

The recovery of love

Since the alternative to abandonment

Is a life stuck in what was

And in a world that is no longer real

Quicksand

I can only stand so much
And for so long
My legs are only so strong
And so is my heart
To reach across miles and months of darkness
To stay afloat in this endless sea of maybe
Is more than just exhausting
It is pointless
Spare me your politeness
Just let me sink
If I am consumed with this sand and gloom
At least I am free
Let me down easy
Don't make me drown
In this endless sea of maybe and misery

I am bloodless
Loveless
Useless
Ruthless
Angry

I am filled with obscenities
and every once in a while
a stroke of serenity
on a long run when I hear the faintest of a heartbeat
covered up almost entirely by the pounding of feet

My feet

I run in circles
so I get nowhere
which is mostly the point
and every ache in every joint
remains incomparable to unbearable nights like these

They leave me bloodless
Loveless
Useless
Ruthless
Lonely

Quick Death

That moment

Slipped like rain down my skin

Washed me in late February change

Mangled more than just my hair

And you, were standing there

Such an odd thing

Like I had plucked you from a dream

And planted you here in front of me

There was no script for that scene

Line, please

Line, please

LINE, PLEASE!

I had to check— more than once— the pace of my heart

To ensure it would not speed out of my chest

Like a reckless teenager

One who crashes cars 

And left these scars upon me

I needed desperately to make the moment real

Needed some proof of it 

Something to feel so I could be sure

But I was too afraid to pause 

Too afraid the claws of it would rip me apart

So when it cornered me

With clenched teeth, I waited timidly

But that moment simply passed

Like a long breath,

A quick death

Ash

Uncensored emotion runs wildly through me
Lights me on fire from the inside

I burn quietly in this house alone
Beg like a child for the walls to swallow me up
To roll me like a river
So I can drown instead of quiver in this newfound nothingness

I can't seem to keep the truth down
Each time I digest a new piece of it
My weak stomach gets the best of me

Heartache and his wretched, wicked thievery
Takes most of the familiar scenery
Like pictures from walls
Steals all but these memories

That taunt and haunt me
I burn quietly like a smoldering fire
I have but one aching desire—
to be ash.

Breath of a Dragon

The breath of a dragon

Is the kind of thing you do not believe in

Until it is breathing down your neck

In that moment

I was quite sure of what the fire meant

Still I could not turn to face it

I ran

Over, under and almost through

But monsters have a way of catching up to you

And just before I woke from it all

The floor began to fall

The nightmare marched on like unanswered call

Scolding spit and a roar from its pit

I sat again at the start of this

Racing heart and bloody too

I bled from the very thought of you

And thought till there was nothing left

And death

Is the kind of thing you do not believe in

Until it is breathing down your neck