I feel best when I live in my head.
Glass reflections never mirror
Who I really am.
The unborn self, suppressed -
Fears peering into
Its own depressed eyes.
And nature’s deceit knows
Too well that forlorn whisper:
“You could be free.”
I wanted it to end somewhere
Between here and Paris.
Pills spilling out of my hand
Like a broken strand of pearls.
Stuffing my face with
Powder and grace and lies.
They found me hurling,
Curled up, heaving,
On my way to heaven
In a black back alley
With foam coming out of my mouth
And threw me into
One of those cool white prisons
For those who understand
The horror of the mundane.
I feel worse when I live in my head.
Tranquilized without tranquility;
Electric shocks to hammer out
Any eclectic thoughts.
Because I think of all the other
Things I could be -
While time hurdles into its blood-
curdling kiss, and whimpers softy:
“You could be free.”
The dirty silk of money in my palm,
Currency for self-discovery -
After a feigned-calm reprieve
Deceiving those who are cursed
To strangle strangers’ strange fates.
A train ticket in my purse -
To a city whose wincing
Lights offered that divine line
Flinching, flinching, shivering
Between torment and desire.
So I arrived
In questionable attire
With frail and scarred heart,
Bruised and used,
But painted and pinned and
Scorching for touch.
Behind every curtain lies a truth
And as I slinked out on the
Brink of myself – an illusion -
Because the illusion was the true me
Unchained from the world’s delusions.
Under your gaze I’d remain -
Those venturing eyes
That dared not venture anywhere else.
A flinch of a cinched waist
And that thirst –
A hesitation, a dedication, a mystery -
Bursting through our
Ever-dying veins.
Behind unspoken longing dies a truth.
Pangs drenched and un-quenched,
Sending unnameable
Questions with your eyes
While my doomed youth
Dissolved towards that fierce,
Untameable destiny.
And you – taunting me,
Under the shadows of your lashes;
That chiaroscuro fiasco
Haunting much more than lust.
Your hands -
Intricate works of art,
Your heartbeat -
Some strange poetry
I can’t ever know.
In some way,
I’ve
always been held
hostage in my own body.
Undone,
unknown, undone,
Until I am dust.
I feel best when I live in my head
Avoiding, like a weary dancer
The kind of despair
That
aches in my
arms.
And so, imagined - unharmed
Old age won’t touch me
But you always will.
