And it's like you expect me not to hurt;
I mean I am the perpetrator,
but that doesn't make it any
Easier

Easier would have been everything working
All the cogs aligning, workin' properly

I almost lost it on a .gif
I almost cried from viewing something that reminded me.

I made the right choice, because the cogs are aligning on my side,
they're workin' properly
But that doesn't make this grandfather clock creak any less.

Tomorrow, the phrase
“I love you”
will belong to yesterday’s lips
my feelings for you
will belong to yesterday’s words.
Soon I won’t remember the chords
of your madness
or the taste of your sadness
sitting on my tongue like chocolate mints.
So in these last few weeks
we pull at the strings to rip
at the seams of us with ****** fingertips
cause in a slice of time
your name won’t belong in my rhyme.
You’ll be another past lover
that lives at the bottom of a shoebox
shuffled together with the love letters
of other men who swore themselves to me.
When my daughter fingers through
the pages dedicated to your eyes
I’ll softly remember you
throwing rocks at crooked pottery
from ceramics class. I’ll remember
that dark December and
your flimsy reflection through tinted glass.
I’ll remember what it felt
to be young, naïve,
and madly in love.

ashes from spliffs,
smoked at night to
make me water spilling
off a cliff,
waft in the breeze
that is me.
crumpled papers crunch
underneath bare feet,
deceased trees smothered
in new meanings.
empty six packs stack,
cardboard towers guarding
against attack,
old bags, newspaper ads,
a half-full coffee cup
stands tall by the entry,
waiting for commands,
sacrificed to dispel sleep,
towels lay thrown in corners
with acted malice
an attempt to practice
being callus.
this in no apartment
it is a
trash palace.

insidious...
the forces that bend us toward self-destruction

insidious...
the illusions that feed those malevolent forces

insidious...
the stories that construct those obscuring illusions

insidious...
the thoughts that metastasize into those deluding stories

insidious...
the mind that identifies with those detrimental thoughts

innocent...
the soul that succumbs