artichoke

super-empath

that's what they'll call me when they tear me open

and dig down into the deepest place behind my breastbone

out will come all the emotion that had lain blue and glowing and dormant,

gravity forcing it down to something small and densely packed

and totally out-of-commission

the feeling part of me that lies frozen under the ice that flecks my blood,

the coldness that is so strong within me,

will be out and exposed and beautiful

but for now, my fortress of ice and stone and emptiness,

all things unliving, unfeeling,

is who i am,

controls my actions

and there is so little of anything within me

that i have built up my outer shell to hide it

to mask that absence

but i haven't done it very well

and the glaring void still shows through

when i get tired of making the expressions,

pushing up that energy behind my eyes

to look like

i'm there

and here's the terrifying truth:

i smile and react

but i can't feel it

it's just an act

to look normal

to hide the fact

that the world

has taught me

how dangerous

it is to care

empathy is vulnerability

so much more to me than the outside
but we judge by what we see - i do and i know
it can't be avoided

years i've wished i could let my hair tangle
grow out a beard (a hormonal impossibility)
and sit in the trees

better to be friends with the wilderness
the earth itself
than to hold faith
in the fleeting whims of humans


i don't need much
and i'm never lonely
(or, rather, always lonely)
and i think slowly
enough to savor those days

instead, money lies on my mind
like an unloving god
ubiquitous but unattainable
and grinds away my days
into blurred, detached memories
into dust

literal summer depression

third-class passenger on a sinking ship
watching the lifeboats go to those who have more
who, because of good bloodlines or cunningness in business
or wiles enough to marry up,
began ahead and will finish ahead

gray, unbearably hot days
like a post-apocalyptic backdrop,
really just the normal weather in this dusty valley,
cloudy but swealtering,
always on the verge of a rain that never comes

all summer is dirty pools and gritty hamburgers
leftover time and waning ambition

i've been asking for help but never seem to find it
and each day that passes when i watch someone else
slide through trials and stages of life, unscathed and confident,
weighs me down even more
weighs me down against the roughness of life

it shreds and tears at me
and someone said to never give up,
that i can do anything i put my mind to
but those were lies and tricks to keep me busy
to keep me out of the way

and the world is finally wearing me down
and i spend my days,
too tired to even sweat,
watching that boiling gray sky

and at night i lay on the floor awake
while the bugs that infest the house crawl over me
and pray, without faith,
that if no one will help me,
at least they won't persecute me
and maybe i can just leave,
disappear into another life

it's a strange feeling to lose faith in someone
you previously trusted, unfalteringly

to know they are fallible and have failed you
and will therefore continue to fail you
(failure doesn't happen just once)
and all the time you held out hope for them,
believed in them,
was wasted, foolish, naieve time

to have some person become almost a stranger to you -
that comfort of their presence torn away
until they become just another acquaintance
with whom you happen to have shared many experiences
(and even those are tainted with the sugary flavor of gullibility)

it's happened with everyone
and still i am duped into believing there will be someone,
well-intentioned and strong enough,
to not let me down

and each time someone else fails
my heart, once so healthy,
calcifies and cools
a little bit more

four years of jittery hands and white knuckles
being alone and faceless and constantly bound
in my crutches, like a child with weak hips
comforted by that firmness of man-made metal,
making my hands sweat and smell like copper

what was i waiting for all that time?
a savior? a hero. in all likelihood, yes.
and realizing again and again that strength only comes from within
and the external world only chips and scrapes at you
and leaves you feeling appreciated and only needier for it
less yourself and looking to others all the more

i have the impulse to follow the same habitual routine
i've followed every night
but i have nothing left to say
i'm too tired to make conversation,
too tired to apologize again
and it would only feel like rough-grained wood
sliding the lining of my intestines
sour and grating and unreal

i just want to feel myself rise up from my body
and hover in nothingness
for one more night.

loneliest in the strange electric light of night
waiting incessantly for the cowboys i once thought i'd marry
and in the glow of these flashing signs
i see that all life is death
and all death is loneliness

years squandered away by pain
and understanding others will never know
a curse of unusable knowledge
and pulled in so many ways
that a life on the road
is the best escape

and even for that exodus
that great purging of all the confines life has taught us,
i can find no companion
and i am lonely everywhere
and everywhere i find no respite
and maybe it is better to be lonely alone
than among the grasping hands of others

clicks and blinks in the blackness of night
and all the acidity of the human soul piercing out through the pores

camping in the back of an old trailer
with green, moth-eaten upholstery
and a smelly cousin
who will never learn to spell
and whose teeth will rot out of her mouth
before her 21st birthday

i can lie there with all the wonder of the past sins
committed against me
real or imagined
dreamlike and created
like stories from my fantasy world
until they wash across me
and become another confused illusion,
another secret like so many parts of my life
i can neither remember nor understand

smelling that mustiness
half ocean, half old carpet
i feel young again with the memory
of hopes and loves and the mystery of things yet to come

and i know
i am safe
no one will look for me here
in the back of this rusted tank,
my only home, as far as i can tell