A Steady Throb

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 28, 2000
Descending upon the arc of this great forgotten city,
where cowboys search in slumber for adequate bathrooms
and storage spaces for drowning mermaids.
Feathered crowns dust imperial shores
where knighted waitresses swim in search of old loves and bronze combs
with which to glide through the empires of their tresses.
Twitching pilots seek to help them explore a village
un-acquainted with disdain for pearls and perils of the saddest kind
Only they realize upon their journey through the overstretched sea
that nothing can be found or felt
when the absence of love saturates your mouth
so that even you know all to well what it’s like to stand on your own feet
and it is then you realize
when out of love
that swimming is effortless and without point.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is not how it should be,
I assure you.
I have noticed though, that with a substantial decrease in my anxiety
has come perhaps a coincidental but distinct decrease in the amount of my writing.
I am aware that these phases exist
Where every word that leaks from your hand
seems to only induce nausea and embarrassment
But I know that consecutive love of ink only strengthens the boat which holds my heart.
I smell bleach and nausea
aquatic billows of smoke and saline
and punctured ligaments that dwell in-utero
while absorbing stereophonic cells and laborious tunnels of all that is plain to the eye,
all that is landing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 20, 2003
I am sad in the most helpless way,
the kind of desolation,
which offers no romantic escape.
No summer to speak of,
the weight grows thicker
and the void extends itself from my soul to the farthest highway.
I have settled into a darkness,
which is far from enchanted,
far from purity or a steady progression from season to ice.
This is miserable,
tolerance for abuse is a disease I have constructed and planted years ago,
when I was too young to bathe alone.
Perhaps my soul like my heart didn’t close properly.
The shadows have grown heavier in my heart,
the light pours in like shafts,
collecting porcelain and dust in the sunken crevices of wood.
My soul is pure, from all the nights of alcohol,
powder and pain
but I still shine like a corpse.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spring 2004
Thank you for waking me from this dirty dream,
thank you for waiting for that ship to pass
and reveal something more ephemeral than the dreams inside me.
It’s nice to be awake and smell you in the morning when the sun is up
and shines open your eyes.
You will never know what it means to see the buildings in my heart reflected onto my bed
while you sleep and your skin stays with me
your love shines thick with song
and the golden smog of a forgotten city.
Could this be the mechanical ache of a tired soldier
or the shifting empire of a queen with emerald coils buried deep within her tresses?
Will I keep this up to assure that time reflects not the loss of sleep
but instead an opening space in my hand where tiny villages can perhaps be reset in stone
and the men can finally come home from wars and crawl back into bed.
Thank you for not hurting me
Not throwing me across the world
knowing that the only place to fall is back in your heart.
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