anhydrate


i am holding on
to madness
with a vindictive fear
of being left alone
inside myself,
a claustrophobe

with a non-toxic
crayon on the padded
walls of my central nervous
system,
i draw flowers or clouds
to pass the time

and converse with myself
in verse or rhyme.

do you who love me
like a best friend,
or a test case to be taken

but for granted when
a makeshift sanity’s in the making,

do you stand there
like a hinge against the locked door
to make yourself useful
in a metaphor:

i see everything to be artistic
even when it’s plenty dull;

i carve your face into the wall

round, cheekless
with a pure Nordic pallor;

you were one of
the snow angels i used to sculpt
in the backyard
when i was younger,

as if the winter sky had given
birth to you, a flavorless
afterthought of woman,

‘twas my presiding suspicion.

you who have caught me in a compromising position,

naked,

so i have nothing with which to strangle myself;

alone,
with only the texture of my flesh
to fold between my fingers,

your eyes peer through
the window
locked in a calm focus,
an intense allure,

i think you like watching the light
catch me at particular angles,

or how i float upon the softness
of cushioned floors.

i think your life is perpetually
cold and unwilling to negotiate
the ways of circumstance,

it shows in the way
you tear up
at the sight of your lost lover,
how you relentlessly fought
for custody of your heart,
and in your mind
you didn’t deserve the constant
strife,
the unmanageable anger,
the alcoholism
and drug use;

yet with those blue eyes
fixed on me,
and a wanting in them i myself
have oft desired to see,

i’ve got a hunch that

you’re going to open the door,
aren’t you.

the sound of sliding deadbolts
tears through my body
without hesistation or apology,

i fall to my knees and cover my ears
to prevent your
hearing the mayhem in my skull,

the inevitable
truth of what shall
swallow you when you
wallow in my hole,

i let you
relapse into your memory
of the comical, pleasurable,
gentle soul i was from the
time we first met until
we went our separate ways,

in the years of more normal days,

how quaint that i remember them still;

you are drawn to my beside and
your understanding why,
in the arms of madness,
i should leave myself defenseless,

shall be the only thing
that preserves you;

if you hold onto reason
you must entertain delusion:
to pose the possibility that
common sense is senseless

to contemplate all beautiful
disfigurements of thought,

to think you ought
escape yourself and be
a part of me instead,

to find chaos stable
when in fact, my mind as such,
is rather normal;

i think you’d much
prefer the onslaught
of my able twists of thread.

shall i measure you in doses,
inject you through intravenous

allow us both to lie comatose
until the gates of eden greet us;

or dare i eat you out, up to
the heart,

to digest that which may best
ease the torment of being apart?

we must hold on to delusion,
if we’re to live within reason:

to never think it quaint that
we should fancy ourselves dead,

in all the branching paths
down which our fickle steps might tread.




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