Not a Home

This house is a shallow grave
Entombing as it provides
Practically complicated
Like I was before I moved in
Dragging my life around
In a giant suitcase
And I don’t know why I stay
When everyone else gets to leave
Gets to carry on their way
When the socks don’t match
In this lint free world
And I don’t trust myself
To breathe without choking
To live in these back rooms
Without giving up the ghost
Or acquiescing to your demands
This stillness rattles my bones
Cold and invading, it settles
Into my joints and marrow
And I’m too fragile to complain
But too afraid to walk away
Because I have no future
Without the thought of this house
Haunting me like spiderwebs
Stuck to the bottom of my shoes
I need it more than it needs me
I need it conditionally
And that’s what makes me dysfunctional
In a world where everyone is fine
Or at least pretends to be
Inside their own gingerbread houses
With the candy coated windows
And a gutter full of rain
But I’m still trying to swim.

Broken

I am broken
Fractionally incomplete
Frayed at the edges
By time and pretense
These conscious lies
Hanging around my neck
Like so much baggage
Heavy and obtuse
I am a tinkling glass
A banging cymbal
Crashing to the ground
But there is no fanfare
No symbolic gestures
No gathering at my grave
In tearful remembrance
Because I’m still alive
Stitched together
By time and consequence
Drenched by the downpour
Of my tears in the rain
Facing the wreckage of a life
Lived in the margins
Cracked and bleeding
Living but not really alive
Like a shadow of the man
I used to believe I was
So place a sign around my neck
Because I am broken
And somebody ought to know.

Used to Love You

There is an indentation
Where your body used to be
These transcendental longings
The absence of reciprocity
And though I never knew you
Not the one who walked away
I think I used to love you anyway

There are these constant whispers
From an incidental time
When all we had was circumstance
All the spoils without the crime
But these words, they fade away
Like this love from yesterday

And I don’t know why I never cried
Perhaps a long delayed response
Is waiting to claim me as its own
This measured nonchalance
Yet I can’t help this still refrain
If love’s the cause of all my pain

So give me time, this precious space
To help me see another day
To give me strength to help erase
These broken promises assay
Because nothing is beyond the pale
When love’s the author of this tale

Now hate has replaced apathy
That displaced love so perfectly
And all the stars I used to see
Have turned around to ignore me
Not the me you couldn’t satisfy
But the one who looked you in the eye

Because I used to love you
But now it’s time for goodbye.

This Anger

My anger is my shield
It keeps me safe and warm
While forcing others away
This oppositional force
Waxing and waning
With the setting of the sun
But I can’t reconcile hate
And the need to be at peace
Such a confrontational stance
Ripping me neatly in half
Blood spilled in straight lines
Tidy like I try to be
Yet life isn’t so efficient
It doesn’t hearken to my will
It doesn’t make me stronger
Unless I give it a chance
Because anger is not the same
As righteous indignation
Or this maddening storm
That threatens to overflow
Rising over its banks
And flooding my very soul
So I hold it at the ready
To deflect this scattered hate
Thrown this way like darts
That always miss their target.