i just wished
that i could still pretend
you cared about me
like you used to.

then again,
i hate myself
for thinking about you
in the first place.

is this a poem?
i don't care.
i hate you.
i'm sorry.

i only see her when i'm drunk, you know
when my intoxication throws me headlong into
that space between missing you and missing the heat
of somebody, anybody, burning on the altar.

our dance is not as elegant, because she doesn't know
the footwork like you do. the arc of her body isn't as near
and her lines aren't as clean and precise.
we know the steps, though; we know those.

but after we move in time for a song or two,
after the crescendos and the sustained major peak,
i remember, bowing and panting as though before an audience
that she'll never move me like you.

ATTENTION/ATTENTION/MAYDAY/MAYDAY/ATTENTION
oh god please help me oh god, oh, oh god
ATTENTION/ATTENTION/MAYDAY/MAYDAY/ATTENTION
i think it's coming, rushing headlong this way
ATTENTION/ATTENTION/MAYDAY/MAYDAY/ATTENTION
it's the darkness, the monster, the forgetting of all things
ATTENTION/ATTENTION/MAYDAY/MAYDAY/ATTENTION
oh god please, someone help, someone help me
ATTENTION/ATTENTION/MAYDAY/MAYDAY/ATTENTION
before it takes the words away, before it claims your name for its own
ATTENTION/ATTENTION/MAYDAY/MAYDAY/ATTENTION
if i'm not here when you are, look in the black pit. it's where you left me.

remember?

the monsters of money
have come back to this place

their new batch swarming
like flies over just-dead meat

i do not trust them, for
i see the hyena in their eyes

it is innocence, they tell me,
that they are new and learning

well, methinks they are not
so much "innocent" as they are

ignorant and savage
sharpening spears for the pig

but hey, daddy had money
and mommy had time
so they've decided to come to college.

it was the right choice once.
at least, it sure seemed like the right choice.
defend and protect, i said.

i donned my righteousness like armor
its gleam so bright
everyone had to look away.

and so they did.
but they can't see
that inside it i'm burning.

they can't see
that it's a thin patina
over an ocean of regret.

and though my armor shines on
they can't see what i see
that there is no feeling anymore

no hope of escaping the
silent crashing.
i think i hear the ocean.

the only change
he had perceived
in that year of observation
was that the abyss was
widening, widening, widening
greedy for the mass
of all the things that used to be.

won't you put out the light
and come to bed?

so far from Golgotha
i have come,
brushing dust from my eyes
bathing in sickly streams
to get rid of the stench.
(though the blood,
nothing rids me of that spot)
sometimes the sun sears my skin.
other times the rain admonishes it.
but regardless of the weather,
the time, and the distance,
when the wind blows in from Calvary,
i can still smell Lily.