fog in the roads

making driving harder than the rain

and some burnt candle smell

outside the windows

as if this were all a holiday facade

a miniature world on someone's mantle

lit by flame

i am drunk

in warmth and christmas carols

and my coat feels like something i should sleep in

and i wish i could be out with the people i love

in blinking lights and layers of frost

mist rises from the road

and water washes toward the car,

spraying the under-carriage as the tires spin

and there is a greened tint to the air

recycling bins zombies emerging from driveways

deep nights and deep feelings and i wish i could stay out and embrace them

instead of returning home

a defeated conqueror

lost in the fog of my own mind

lamenting the distance of once-a-year weather

likely already gone

traded for skirts and plunging necklines

and someday i will feel the fog rising from my grave

and lament the days lost to life

and the blindness of spirit

and i will search for those i've lost

and i fear that i will only find them on nights like this

once-a-year nights

back when i spent hours with rocks and caterpillars and ideas

there were such things as secrets

things too big to share

things which had lives of their own

stored up in my chest

monsters that i didn't know how to release

without them tearing me up on their violent escape

and these were not things told to friends

because friendship was so fragile and fickle and tenuous

and could so easily dissolve,

and because i wasn't these secrets

and i didn't deserve to be associated with them,

further weight against my forming personality

and i still keep secrets

because that is the thing to do

when something is so horrible that its escape

would maul those in its path

would massacre or mangle all souls within range

but no one else keeps my secrets

they spill out in a torrent

and people talk

and soon everyone knows

and my childhood instincts were correct

that someone cannot know a fact relating to you

without attributing it to you as a person

and i always knew not to let anyone too close

not to give anyone too much

but a sting of indiscretions

during a long-abandoned attempt to connect

plagues me still

and i wish i could go back to those days

when those monsters only lived inside me

and were not me

every morning i wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth

and an unsettled feeling in my stomach

and i wonder what i was doing while i was asleep

who i was eating

we went somewhere and someone told me they got a job at a beer bottling plant

this could also have been a dream, but bear with me and let's say it happened

it might seem hazy because i was drunk

which is ironic because in this memory

i was warning our friend

about someone who went into AA

after being a canner for Coors

and being paid in alcohol

everyone's always getting too far into something

and getting lost

i have another friend who was just found in Tennessee, homeless, dazed,

having burned through something like $10,000,

which had been left to him in a will

and my own brother, my own family

the stories i could tell you about them

and myself

now i just sleep and wake and there is no shock between the two like there used to be

and i can hardly tell

one day from the last

i just keep pumping away,

hoping you'll find the answers to your problems,

hoping i can help you find some relief

so i can believe it exists, somewhere in the world

relief, i mean

weeks like years

days like weeks

marked only by nights of full sleep

and empty mornings

sleepwalking naked through my room

and laying face-down on the carpet as respite

i awake with aches and stiffness

into the hazy blackness of 5 a.m.

to conquer another day

while my mind is still a few years back,

stunned into to stupidity

at the passage of time

rhythms rise and fall, trancelike

lulling me past hours and minutes and seconds

and i "live"

following some invisible piper

leading me on

and on

and on

october death

i push my shopping cart out into the mid-evening

of the parking lot

the air has a comfortable briskness i haven't noticed in months

and on the edge of each breath i take,

there is the faint scent of smoke,

that seems always coupled with a slight cool breeze

i think briefly back to firestorms

and the weight of that ash, inescapable

now, my eyes glance across the sky, out of habit

but the only clouds are remnants of a two-week storm,

monolithic and back-lit by the first pinks of sunset

as i cross the parking lot toward my car

a monster of a vehicle lurches toward me in reverse

the tinted window or the desperation of life obscuring the driver's view

i angle away without incident

but the thought stays with me

that at that moment, i would not have minded dying

and when my life is terminated,

i hope it is on a day like today

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