when there's nothing left to distract you
you are alone
and closer to death

a note you should keep in your pocket
to remind yourself
to get swallowed up in the complaints of each day
clicking away like a gear
this notch the same as the last

did you do enough
did you feel enough
to save yourself from the realization
that you're careening forward into nothing

was this day enough
to tie you down
to really connect you

what happens when you're finally alone
and you recognize your fear
what's the value of love
when it's just another distraction

rolling around in the back of a motorhome
bouncing and heaving down a highway
waiting to cross a state line and see some change out the back window
always invisible
but perceptible in my 8 year old flesh
certain of adventure and progress

later, driving on hot days
strapped into a car, irreverent
with irreverent boys
windows down, my breath caught by a freeway breeze of no discernable temperature
smooth lips like my own
and clean sweat
adventure but no progress
just stasis in the heat
miserable and comforting

later still, nighttime in a passenger seat
lights glancing across the window
even patterns, neons flashing at a club
confined in a clean car with a clean man
ready to take me home
to deposit me back into the real life I didn't manage to escape
despite the smiles and drinks and smoke filling the space between my atoms
no new adventures, just repetition compulsion
and backpedaling to that fork where I took the wrong road

feelings are fickle
happiness and destruction are one in the same

i could tell the exact moment it set in
a perceptible dip in the atmosphere
the first scent of rain before a storm

i felt the wobble inside me as i backed my car out of its spot,
windows fogged, mirrors obscured
in the silence of a parking lot at midnight

too much coffee lately
too many nights left to drift into mornings
too many preventable mistakes

and now the feeling in my chest of a breath exhaled twice
the loneliness and disastrous longings
a lifetime of sad songs and self-pity

give me back that blood burning in my veins
that tightness in my fists
that sudden, stupid awe

later

i'm already getting comfortable

Someday, with or without your help,
I'll overcome the acid, the oil in my blood
The tendency of every atom in my body
To pull towards a nonpolar covalent bond
With everyone who is lonely and sad and cursed with this rotting blood
Like attracts like

But forgive me until I work it out
Until I balance my pH with the right chemicals
Until I sanitize my blood
The things inside me are working against me
And they are pulling me

too excited
amped up on sugar and caffeine
and getting a hunchback
an old lady hump
i want to go out and claw at the ground
dig until i feel the dirt under my fingernails
have a healing spa layer of mud over my skin

dig until the earthworms find me
and i hit bone
and i can bury myself in nature
and the past
and damp darkness

god i want to be out of this room
away from this machine
i want to be chewing weeds
and spitting words
so my fingers, so clearly made for digging,
won't be mangling words on a keypad

i have no more patience for typing errors
no more patience for typing

deep in the night
i feel its waves washing over me
cool like some outdoor breeze
sheets billowing on a line
moonless
all tactility

i feel you like a ghost over me
appearing for this moment
what do you want to give me?

i'll accept it
i'll be your new car
your midnight stream
your comfort
and your desire

what can you give me?

in some private world
ancient
i let myself slip
into that background
communal instinct
out of this personage
i am only body
and lunar understanding

every molecule is impossibly light
transcendent
and vibrating with fire
and you bring all that exists
into me
and we are as dense as everything
surrounding us

you are a stranger
off the spectrum of good and bad
in a series of moments
no time passes
i want you
god

i am a ghost
faceless
nameless
washed out by camera flash
in the night

i am wooden
a hollow tree
carved out
solid
but not sturdy

clandestine