False Skin

The biggest star reflects off of
the most lonely car.
I am not alone.
I sit and watch the parking lot of the motel.
A man walks out
surveys his kingdom.
He is suspicious of me.
I could be fresh meat;
I could also be a bust.
Everyone here wears a false skin.
The trick is discovering the nature of it.
My mother is in a deep sleep
awake, but eyes blurred by
self-induced coma.
I smoke cigarette after cigarette.
The air teases my hair.
Asphalt glistens
and boys who act like men
ask me if I have someone in my life.
I wave them off like flies.
They hover not far off
their distant words like buzzing
in my ears.
Another sound intrudes:
my name.
I unfold myself and follow,
unresisting.
Later I will ask myself
which lies were too practiced
and which truths too forthcoming?
Even I wore a false skin
during the night that came
on the heels of that day.

Doors

It is in so many ways like a flower that is afraid of the sun. What do the innards look like? Are the colors ugly? The risk is too great! I must hide myself, lest the world see the garish truth and the clashing petals. It is in this way that I become a frigid thing, locked away inside many rooms. I pace the floors and I know these tiles so well that my mind begins to believe that I have imagined the ones before them. I can still recall the scent of her perfume. I close that door.
Running, I find that I am lost among many memories, and that another has been stripped from me; no matter how many frames I beat upon, it is gone, gone, gone.

Tree

A single tree's pale fingers
stretch towards the light
I am with them
Leaves pierce and flourish
I grow for a time
But when buds begin to pinprick
my arms turn inward
The flowers spring forth and bear fruit
I shrivel and my eyes flash
My mouth begins to speak
and blackness pours out
My inner tree lies dormant
until the cycle begins again

Solitude

Space. Time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Begin again. Ask questions directed at the silence inside your room and heart and mind. Do you expect answers? Of course you don't. Answers are make-believe here, figments of your imagination created in order to fill an emptiness born of both desire and hopelessness. You know the truth; secretly, we all do. Humans, by nature, are constant seekers of answers, but we are neither sincere enough, nor strong enough, to seek until we find. We settle. Always, we attempt at contentedness when surrounded by lies fabricated inside of ourselves. Such lack of understanding will doom us in the end, don't you think? So just wallow there, in your silence and in your solitude, and forget your questions. Forget God, forget yourself, forget the world, and its people and their problems. Forget time, space, matter, existence -- and simply die. Die, just like the rest of us. You'll soon see how easy it is.