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what’s your problem? (can i help out?) what’s your poison? (let’s
go pass out)
before the heavens fall, we should share some time.
she can see that i’m not too deep. don't worry about drowning. just
leave your life-jacket there and come wade with me.
she’s up on a soapbox trying to orate (as spacey as the moon-landing
but twice as fake). she accepts my invitation and i pull her close enough
to let her know that
i’m only ugly on the inside.
i’m only ugly where it counts, or when the lights go down
or i open my mouth and let you in on my thoughts...so let’s forget about
it.
dip the bill and its masquerade. i’m a ne’er-do-well in a gold
false face.
on any night, she’ll say hello or pass you by.
i have to admit that i’m drawn to a starlet who’s clad in fashion’s
best, filled with feigned interest, and only ugly on the inside.
my friends are poets among thieves. they breeze through this city with the
garbage and the leaves. refusing to die slowly,
and good company for a quick poisoning; we’re all ugly on the inside.
(but let’s just forget about it)
when she waved at me from the widow’s watch,
she plants the seed that cultivates the cause.
she grew inside my brain just like a fetus, until i couldn’t help but
show.
and one day, with breakfast on the stove i'm sawing logs.
on a fishhook holiday scored by sappy songs. just light the lantern,
lock the door, and go kiss them goodbye.
her skin is sap and mine is tree bark. she drips down from my trembling arms.
if only she could be the Parker to my Barrow. she’s the girl from the
house up the hill. after all the things that i’ve been through,
it’s nice to know that i’ll come home to you.
“someday they’ll go down together. they’ll bury them side
by side.”
can you come outside? will you come outside?
just in time for the holidays you throw me a bone. (and i’m forever
yours)
there’s no excuse now. we’ll never come back and there’d
be no more of your dad. there’s no excuse not to aide and abet, and
never regret.
close your eyes and spin the globe.
spread those yellowed maps out on the living room floor,
and then navigate northward till you wind up in ruins. float away under a
bundle of balloons.
we won’t yet give up on those childhood dreams because it’s no
longer such a tragedy.
you’re safe here.
sitting on the side in high school, just don’t care and just too cool.
so self-sure, so sorry,
that graduation comes so soon. so now we’re newly sharpened pencils.
waiting right here
to be dulled. we are an ocean of puddles that are separate and unequal. wiped
down and
sterilized, stuck up and terrorized by peaceful wars waged by logo whores.
(there’s got to be some more to life than this carousel)
“take your time and watch the world go by;” is this all i’ve
done?
well, no more wasting all my life.
and so i went and saw a preacher, and was baptized by a curse...or perhaps
it was by
the spit that flew from the effort of his words. anyway, she flashes me some
ivory, and
bangs on the ebony a pulmonary rhythm intertwined with such an exquisite melody.
well, no more sitting on the side now.
i can’t toe the party line.
she punches me in the stomach with a smile,
and my life has just begun on this carousel.
though no-one can tell it’s causing your hell, you hide it so well.
she lives in a town full of clear glass homes, but keeps her bucket of
rocks in the basement. then she puts another bouquet at the side of the highway,
where
the rails cross over the road.
and she’s so unsure that if she takes my hand, all pale and white,
and she takes my love, so brilliant bright,
and she waits like death by my side...will the answers come easy?
and it’s oh so true that no-one really knows you. you’ve just
pretended too long.
with only ten fingers to point, the eleventh failure is my own. of the botched
and bungled. and she’s still unsure...that in between the right and
wrong and
weak and strong and queer and straight and the love and hate,
there are a million shades of gray.