the thought of you that never was

i speak silence into the phone

you wait

 

poems pass me in the night

i never find their delight

but they give me the sustenance i need

 

on your love i feed

you wait

while i create illusions in my mind

 

on city streets i was named

lost souls and dark alleys

is the transliteration

i seek the permanent vacation of a vacancy sign

 

i long ago lost my shine

from too many walks in the rain

my words are just links in a chain

i have forged in life

 

they roll around my brain

words made me what i am

they mirror the mess that is my mind

while you constantly repair the rips in the seams

of the fabric of my reality

 

is there causality

beyond our ability

to perceive it to be so?

 

i know i will never know

i am the vibrations of the moment

 

decrees and atonement

is everyone’s epitaph

everyone except mine

i ease in the anxiety

of stress free without purpose

 

the razor’s edge is a fine line

but i walk it without cutting my feet

 

lately i have been discrete

but i cannot compete

with your perception of complete

and wonder if i’m the only one

who realizes i am insane

 

snow is profane

with the top down

i think beauty is pain

and fear the transformation

of the ugly duckling

 

diagnosis and prognosis

i am just osmosis

of all the books i’ve read

that reinforced what i was able to see

and forged what i believe

 

a fruitless tree that doesn’t believe in seeds

calling myself a onetime thing

i bring nothing of value

to the day after the apocalypse

except that i am responsible for my actions

i do because i want to do

to keep me from haunting the halls of an asylum

 

we’re suppose to beat our own drum

but mine is never loud

i hide in a crowd

as long as you’ve never read

what i have written

 

then you interpret me

within the constructs

of your perception

there’s nothing but deception

as we try to make sense

of the stimulation of our senses

 

oh, are you still waiting?

i cry out to be touched

by more than masturbating

while calloused hands grip

the thin veneer that shelters my thoughts

 

i can be bought

but there is no 30 day money back guarantee

 

just me

with all my working parts

the things i pass off as art

poems that don’t fulfill

the promises of an empty page

 

but still you wait

for the prize winning poem

and the acceptance speech

where i give you your due

finally proclaim what is true

that without you

i would be a beggar at every banquet

 

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