What am I but a speck
of dirt in your speckled eye?
What am I but pink grimy gum
clinging to your pristine shoe?
What am I but a hapless fly
drowning in your three-bean soup?
What am I but a filthy dog
trampled by your stilettoed feet?
What am I but the nobody
you pass by on the cold, cold street?
What am I but a damn fool
for ever believing in that fleeting kiss?
Who am I
if I don't even exist?
He lounges on a New York bench,
a worn hat covering his eyes.
But he’s not sleeping.
His foot is tapping to a beat I can’t hear.
Slowly at first.
Then the rhythm picks up
and both feet are tapping,
tapping like the drip-drop patter patter
of rain splashing down.
It’s more intense now
as his hands slap his knees—a downpour.
Then I see what he really is.
He is a tornado powerfully twisting and leaping,
sucking up the gazes of passers-by.
He is lightning lightly dancing,
burning intricate poses into my eyes.
He is thunder. His passionate cries reverberate
through the crowd that has gathered.
I want to shout and dance and leap with him,
but instead I toss a couple dollars in his hat
that he’s placed at his now motionless feet.
Gathering clouds are glowering at me from above,
and I decide it’s time to head home.
Don’t want to get caught in the rain.
Sometimes on my daily drive to school
I would imagine what places I would find
if I just kept driving, driving, driving.
Would there be a serene country covered
in rolling, green hills, slightly stylized
like the ones you see in paintings?
Would the sky always be a pleasant blue,
openly accepting my clouds of worry?
I think I’d plant myself on a fertile knoll
and watch my woes billow out of my ears,
and my head would become sunny again.
After that I would drive to the open sea
and there would be an old, ornate boat
waiting to take me away to the Undying Lands
with Gandalf and Frodo and Bilbo Baggins.
They would say goodbye to their hobbit friends
as I stood alone.
“You are not like Frodo.” Gandalf would say,
grasping my shoulder with his aged hand,
looking at me with hopeful blue eyes.
But what does Gandalf know anyway?
Other times I imagined with intricate detail
the shattering windshield and cacophony of
crushing metal and my breaking body
as my car smashed into an oncoming semi.
house
abandoned, gutted
crumbling, moaning, rotting
memories litter the floor
tomb
He sees her then, his lonely victim Jane,
As heavy, black clouds crack and rupture.
Words struggle to breathe under the falling rain.
She’s lost after she steps off the train,
Venturing to find a distant, unknown lover.
He sees her then, his lonely victim Jane.
He encircles her, rough like a rusted chain,
And repeats the charade, saying he loves her.
Words gasp and heave under the falling rain.
Gazing at her pale neck, her pulsing vein,
He slips his hand silently around the cleaver,
And bleeds her then, his lonely victim Jane.
Blood splashes and swirls down the sewer drain,
While strength and warmth and light leave her.
Words cough and wheeze under the falling rain.
With a twisted smile, he basks in her pain,
And says, “I’ll make you a coffin of cedar.”
He kills her then, his lonely victim Jane,
As words sputter and die under the falling rain.
Frantic, sweaty. Death settled in around him,
thick and constricting. He was afraid of the end.
A memory is unearthed; a dead flower blooms.
All things buried in thought are without end.
She cries out for her lost love, her #2 companion,
a well-worn pencil with love bites on one end.
I think I’ll wear a white shirt today, but it don’t matter.
My job ain’t so bad, but my life’s a shitty dead end.
People murmur and stretch in their velvet seats
as credits roll and the film plays to the end.
Christmas came and went this year. Again.
And my stories always finish the same: The End.
Lately, you’ve been breaking so beautifully:
(I love to see you die.)
Day One: The Deconstruction of Your Mind
Hold still while they take an axe to your head.
Day Two: Rape of Innocence
And steal what made you good.
Day Three: Half-Truths and Absolute Lies
They fill the deep emptiness with nothing.
Day Four: A Blacker World
And they leave you hating.
Day Five: Coping with Insanity
You learn to live with what they’ve done.
Day Six: False Hope
But they trick you again.
Day Seven: Self-Inflicted End
And you finally say to them,
“Enough.”
The woman shrouded in a thousand eyes
whispered in what was almost a voice,
“To you, good sir, I do strongly advise:
Reconsider your unfortunate choice.”
“Take back your gold if you can, puny one!”
replied the filthy brute clutching her purse.
Then she struck with a glimmer in the sun,
her bow of metal, the Musician’s Curse.
The blade sang beautifully across his skin,
trailed by a melody of misery.
Gliding the bow along her violin,
she played his anguish ever so gently,
and bled out his red, saturated heart
as, note by note, she sliced his soul apart.