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.

Her Dream

Later you told me that you had seen me
through the treeline
Pale, like the moon in the sky
my limbs moving swiftly
You said you called out, caught my gaze
fleeting and furtive
Face quickly turning towards something
you could not see
Who were you then, you asked
that you would run from me?

Yearning

I will call for you, but you will not hear me.
You will see my smile, but you will believe it to be a frown.
I have reached for you at night, but shadows have this
nagging way of warping things, don't you think?
And our shadows have grown so long over the years that they
are almost all that there is to what we see of each other
most days -- half-formed apologies
and already-forgotten pleas.
Have you ever wished that things were different?
Prayed to every god you could think of?
I've wished that I were a different person, one that you
could look at and believe to be beautiful.
Because I'd rather you be blinded by beauty
than be turned away by my ugliness.
But this is not a dream, and my life is
not another one of my fantasies.
Reality is crushing.
The things we hope for may never come to pass.
Are you content with our current standing?
Will you stand there, passive, as the years turn our desires
to dust and our wants become the air that we breathe,
until all that we are is simply
old yearnings, slowly dying needs?

Love

Love transforms us all.
From a slimy thing to something winged,
or perhaps something that flies
to something that is tethered.
It all depends on perspective.
Are you someone positive?
Or are you self-destructive?
All fair questions when you feel torn
between two selves.
When you can envision so many heavens
but you are caught within so many hells.
Pick a side:
is it easy? Is it fair?
What philosophy do you adhere to?
Do you love smashing the pretty things,
or would you prefer to plant seeds in tiny rows,
so far from yourself that you can believe
they might actually grow?

The Wall

Peering through my lashes at those around me, hands clasped, silent. As lonely as they come, and about as adrift as one can get while surrounded by people who know you, but don't really know you. It's a two way street. But it wasn't always. I remember the days when the walls were first being imagined, when the mortar hadn't even been mixed yet.
I had no words then that could change the shape or nature of the roads we would later walk, purposefully and with a hint of resignation and defeat. I had no way of knowing what the height and breadth of this wall of disgust would eventually blossom into. But I felt the first creeping sensation of fear, and over time I learned what it is to be despised -- to be surrounded by those who vomit words that crawl into your brain, slither along your spine, and drop one by one, like stones, into the pit of your stomach. And then they take the resounding silence that their word-stones created, and they fill it with their walls.
After all this time, it would take a voice like thunder to pierce such a veil. Am I strong enough? Will a single planted seed be enough to spider-web through the mortar, to break it over time? Or must I rise up with all the anger of Poseidon, a thousand tsunamis at my back?

Phoenix Falling

Human fires: burning, consuming, killing. Everything we touch is slowly sucked clean of life, yet somehow, new things still manage to push through all the soot and cinders. Do people really believe that we, having only the power to destroy, are what coaxes that pale, fragile creature that we call life to go on? All we ever manage to do is unravel the beautiful ribbons of hope and love that hold us together. Always, we are responsible for all those little things inside of us that fall apart. Always we let go; we give up; we choose to die. 

Bitterness

My shame gnaws at me like a famished thing. I've felt it swallowing me throughout the years: consuming me and eroding me. How to run from a bitterness turned from others and thus unto myself? How to forgive amid the loathing and despair? Weak, I was. Always weak, and much like a famished thing myself. I didn't have the strength  to tell the truth, blinded as I was by fear and confusion.
Ah, I hated them; I hated them for the way they looked at me, when I knew the things that I did at the time. I despised the injustice sealed away -- this filthy little secret-- behind closed doors.
But wasn't I the one who truly faltered? Throat closing up rapidly, tears running rampant down my despairing face; I ran from those eyes with a false confession on my lips. Perhaps the truth wouldn't have been so hard to believe if I had actually told it. I simply hadn't been strong enough. And at night, I cried over my own failure. I was only a child, but I prayed that I could die in my sleep and be reborn. I wanted to be anyone, anything, other than myself. I prayed that the person that I was would die.
I never wanted to feel those eyes that smoldered with rebuke saying, "Tell the truth!"
The truth was always first on my tongue, only to be twisted and vomited back out as the lie.
THE LIE.
Why did I lie to them? Why did I let them conquer me and manipulate me into telling them the lie that they so wanted to hear? How could I betray myself so horribly?
Ah, I may be far, far from perfect now, but I was very close to it then. I only wanted them to love me, to keep me. But I was too weak, and in my weakness I destroyed my chance to be loved, and I am close to being cast away and forgotten by them, with relief on their part.
I am so bitter. How could I have been so weak?