downstairs. the voices. i lay awake to the voices. they crescendo in no particular time, die down slightly (i may close my eyes) erupt again. in a cadance they can’t control. in a swirling tsunami of sound. they swell around me. they form a cocoon so that i may lose my skin. so i may wall myself in, shed my regrets, live vicariously through strange voices choosing a late hour. choosing to pet each others questionable decisions. i am becoming them. i am rocking ever so slightly to the hum. shadows on the walls dance wickedly, my naked little fears run away. i shed them overnight in this chysalis. in this safe haven humdrum silent bed fed by voices. pick up a storyline from a deep baritone, drift off as a narrator in a lengthy surrealist novel, one where sweet home is nothing but a painted highway running past an apartment filled with voices.
Category Archives: insomnia
3AM
a sudden chill –
i own nothing.
not even this love
or sweat
or all the piles of regret
i accumulate
or the quiet dust
i lay with
or the way we framed
our bedroom.
i take nothing with me
save this
one last thought –
your shadow leaving
is a distortion
of its former self.
untitled (darkened opportunities)
like the empty hollow
growl of a stomach hungry, i lean into the sound of arms wrapping around me
oh i love how shallow
these men can be when confronted by such shiny darkened opportunities
i am a ghost
i am a cold vapor— i feel
nothing when gliding above
wooden floor boards. Dust stirs slightly
but that is all.
i want to be a spirit who
throws china with a resolute crash.
i want to be memories
that raise hair on your arms.
i want to be a phantom
you call to in the night, when no one is around,
and darkness
provides a cloak of opportunity.
But silence is my lover.
Leave
the light on
to see glimmers like tears that
won’t wet my cheeks.
(revised poem from 2010)
black eyeliner morning
black eyeliner morning
thin lines so intensely dark
dredging up emotions like those rock n roll
evenings of cigarrettes and skinny
black jeans smeared
sticky lines of whiskey, black dirt under
fingernails cracked
eyeliner like rebels haunting
a low e
battlefield glory orange
oh! how my heavy bones
trudge the hall
with the defeat of
an apparition
who, in death, has
accepted a weary
soldier’s march
at 3:39 a.m. the
house instead
settles down to
a definitive rest
and basks in the
battlefield glory orange
of streetlights
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