WHAT I WRITE

Your critique of
What I write
Is surely correct.

I am
Hero,
Heroin,
Villain,
And helpless Bystander
Of all I write.

Perhaps
the best I can do
Is a kind of
Elegant Narcissism.

If you can take only
Small doses of it,
Bless your heart;
I understand.

I can only take
So much of what's inside
And then
I just have to write.
You see,
This is not so much poetry
Or coarse prose
Than it is me
Trying to save myself.

If it means inconveniencing you with
What I write,
Why then,
I thank you for the indulgence
And with you as a witness
To my life
I can take
One more breath.

WHERE HAS LOVE GONE?

It was clear
From the moment we met
That a dangerous die
Had been cast.

What in me longs
For this suffering?
What in you pines
To make me suffer?
Where has love gone?
What did I do to scorn it?

You are my shadow dream;
The opposite of the kind angel
I am supposed to want into Existence.
I am like tortured and torturer
And surely grateful
That you cast the whip
At my rose red back
For me.

It is wonderful
To be right
And prove beyond the shadow of an
Unreasonable Doubt
That women are
The horrors of my childhood
In every stage of a man's life.

Do you see how women are?
Do you?
I told you so.

I told you so.

A COLLECTION OF SCARS

And sometimes he felt like
A collection of scars.

She argued that scars create
Stronger tissue.
He said
"Sometimes what doesn't kill us
Makes us crumble."

They sat in silence.

And sometimes he felt like
A collection of scars
Made up of all the
Rejections,
Bully punches,
Sneers,
Judgments,
And later on in Life,
Self-made traps;
Set to reinforce that he was powerless.

With all this garbage
Filling up the container
Of his insides,
So much else had
Slipped away.

How he longed,
Still to this very day,
For that beautiful girl in elementary school
To have kissed him.
For the chance to have lived his talent
Rather than suppressed before a prime time audience.
To have the GQ body
He thought all boys were handed out
As they became men.

How he longed
To love all the fault
He saw in himself.

After all,
Friends said he couldn't
"Just relax."
And it was painfully clear
That he was underperforming in life and
Pissing it all away.

And sometimes he felt like
A collection of scars.
Looking, searching, longing for a home.

MY ALMOST OTHER LIFE

To know how I live
Read what I say.
I am no mystery.

Somewhere,
Deep inside the cocoon,
There is a light and laughter.
All this darkness
Is what happens
When a boy is left alone
And begins to believe
That they were right.
For abandoning him.

I don't think that
What you see,
What you read,
Is who I would have been
Were I born into a
Different Life.

I would have been
Well adjusted,
A singer,
Had lovers,
Done good things for charity,
Lead a perfectly
Decent and Full Life.

None of that happened.

Sometimes I imagine that it did
Or feel resentful
When I see others living
What I was cheated of.

Do I hang my parents by their feet?
Blame fate, God, society?
Find solace in the New Age
Where wounds are justified as
Crucial Lessons?

It's all one big mind game:
Poetry,
Past,
Truth,
Pain.

I hope that redemption
Is immune and impervious
To bias and self-deceit...

Because I need a win.