 Shadows tell softer lies
Than mirrors Than your eyes Than your lips Than your calloused hands Possessively draping my hips I know I don't belong But where I'm meant to be isn't clear So keep telling those lies Loudly enough for me to hear I won't look at the wall At the way the light plays tricks On our lines Blending one into another When separate is what we are You say that you mean it I know that I don't Unable to tell a lie So I won't
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 A generation born in an ice storm
An existence encased in glass Trained faith to the intangible Making wishes to watch them melt Saying I love you is easy Saying I trust you is not Wagons without horses Only dying stars to hitch Forced resilience a toll paid to Darwin's spirit Evolving wings in place of roots Buying flat pack furniture Since permanence is someone else's hallucination The weight of an oaken heirloom Too much to bear In case of sudden flight Stacked in concrete blocks Five and six to a cell It's what we can afford Grass and trees slashed from the budget Luxuries sacrificed to the body's relentless Need to feed Vilified for selfishness By the ones who threw us out With the bathwater Because there was cash at the bottom of the tub We froze Glazed over Immobilized by the elements But you still ask why we're so cold When you had the summer of love And left us a long winter of discontent  You were always too big
Always too loud You stayed too long at parties And made inappropriate passes You had a bear's spirit Destined to lumber To frighten initiates But you were born only a man Your heart was kind That was what mattered You'd give the shirt off your back The food from your plate To anybody you thought might want it It's been years since I've seen you Floating in different circles Fate interfering with intersection But I knew you were there People talk I heard the news Looked and looked again There are only questions Destined to go unanswered Facts ground fine in the rumor mill Chaff mingling particulate with the consumable I'm not ready to choke it down I hope your flight was smooth That you had a first class ticket That the flight attendant winked at you Free drinks all the way You've joined your brethren And I'll think of you when I gaze at the sky Searching for Ursa Major  You put me on trial
In your kangaroo court Fabricated charges Created damning evidence Bribed the jury And convicted me without hearing my testimony You sentenced me to death Dealt the final blow yourself Watched as I twitched my last You were satisfied For a moment or two You've had time to think Haunted by my silent, wide eyed ghost Realized the choice was wrong You still can't fully confess your folly You'd like to resurrect me Thinking your powers of persuasion Can bring back your dead My body may animate Words may come from my tongue Smooth and hard like sea-glass But you're not that skilled Nor observant enough To note there's no glint My irises dull and milky Stones instead of suns The dead will only rise When they know You won't kill them again A pact signed in your blood But you won't suffer the cut  I held my breath
As you broke my heart It took weeks for you to do it I turned blue And I missed you the whole time I know whose bed you share now You know I refused to share it And the reasons for my choice Preyed upon us both Failing with one, tried the other Sometimes within hours You laughed when I warned you Told me you'd shut it down I hope it keeps you warm That the emptiness in you fills Your youth is a fuel And a joker in a game without wilds Maybe you'll change the game But I'd bet you get played Choosing that heart over this Guaranteeing yours will break in the balance Two out of three ain't bad  You went searching
Dug deep Your shovel forming mounds As you sunk lower Perhaps you found what you sought Metal clanking on ancient artifact But you're a poor engineer Didn't shore up the four walls you'd made It started as a trickle One particle at a time Cascading to your blackened boots And you didn't see Thought it had become easier The digging becoming looser Scooping what you'd already thrown Piling slide on avalanche It'll be in your mouth soon Choking it down Filling you with someone else's filth It's what you wanted To bury yourself You struck out alone Told nobody where you were going This place is remote Screaming won't help you And neither will I It's me you dug for Me you found Broke me from hard earned rest Cupped your hands and lifted me by a heel Out of this hole I'm walking away now Your pleas are becoming muffled And there's a smile forming on my lips Color returning to my cheeks I came away clean Your luck was not so good Like your grasp of physics In relation to the digging of hard black earth Or your decreasing ability to breathe  I am an accessory
A shiny bauble worn to distract from the day to day Taken off And set aside when the world needs no softening I am neither vital nor integral To anything but a specific ensemble To me I am yours Moments consumed with you I anxiously wait For the next time I catch your capricious eye Content to be held While you're holding  I wrote it all down
Slipped notes in drawers Sachets of sadness Smelling of salt and poorly pressed flowers Today I found your name And I felt nothing There was no hitch in my breath Reading it over and over Just to make sure It's funny because I think of you Nearly every day Like a dead thing that lives inside me A reminder of arrested development Fruit that would never bear I filled a thimble with foolish hope Watched it drip down the sides A ring of damp expanding beneath You'd said it was big enough But I knew the waste to come Some was better than none What evanesced can't be recaptured We created and destroyed The law of conservation of energy A lie both cruel and kind The eternal spring Somehow run dry  I didn't believe in gods or monsters
When I came here Solitary soles clicking on concrete Echoing between tall buildings I found the door Brightly lit Just as you said it would be Marble floors gleaming A sour smell beneath the perfume You thought I wouldn't notice I sat before you Allowed the appraisal Spoke the words you wanted It wasn't enough It's never enough This battle of wills The trick of water versus rock One of us will crack And I know it won't be me I will walk out of here There will be less of me But I don't believe in gods or monsters And I will leave as I came Alone  I was quiet as you squeezed my hand
Hard enough to make the bones crack And you told me to shut up I was quiet as you told another lie About your endless failures And diminished my successes I was quiet as you picked the lock To the room in which I'd taken refuge And forced your way in To demand closure that would never come I was quiet as you stripped myself from me To make me small enough to fit inside your palm The only safe size for you to be Good enough to yourself I was quiet as you joked at parties That you would leave me If I became pregnant And chose to carry to term I was so quiet They thought me nearly mute A background murmur Behind the scrim you'd built before me Playing the role you'd written yourself At center stage They saw through you Your performance hollow Believed mine Because fear is convincing But I don't want the accolade My voice is good enough |
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