I don’t know how to be loved. What’s love in return, an empty promise? A time capsule dug into the earth, blind to the color of blood; it’s always dark when it drips. The black ink from my plume is evidence that it exists. Push me away, push me to the grave. A cedar oak coffin, 25 years been astray. Tuxedo diaries, a 6-foot hole doctrine, malaise. I don’t want my heart; who wants what can’t be refunded? Beauty and the Beast heralded nothing. Every evening at 7, I get visits from something I can’t make out. It has a face that doesn’t resemble mine. I hate myself; here’s my heart on a pedestal, a delicatessen. A velvet crowbar in a derelict vessel. I hate myself, a delicate specimen. I hate myself, perilous, deadened. It’s a dead end; there’s nowhere to go. I dig at the tar road with fingernails, dripping hemoglobin. That ship has sailed. Mars rover, seasons orbit; there’s a reason I mention space and sea, heaven and hell, good and bad, rage and peace. I learned the other day that water can’t exist in space, and it’s ironic how both those places are where I want to exist in.
Spaces become objects of fear; the skeleton in my closet is draped in the most obvious veneer. I escape ominous, but here is where I feel the safest, with a revolver against my cheekbone, with the feeling of hollowness in my throat. My tears are dripping, insipid tears are dripping. Where’s the medic? White nursery cotton; my blights are burgundy. I prefer to be sought rather than be caught while I’m seeking. I call out of work and cough up these words until my lungs are out of these words.
Attracted to affliction,
In bed with paroxysm,
You left me at the altar without my kiss,
Wedding song to funeral home,
How the heck am I supposed to get through this?
Tears are dripping,
I loathe myself,
A victim of circumstances,
What did I do to deserve this?
Oh, father said it wasn’t his fault,
I’m just so angry that I’m unwanted,
I could go to a battlefield with guns drawn and still be uncalled to come forth, now that’s unwanted.
So, I call myself an alien, and everyone laughs,
And no one’s there to pick up my spaceship when it collapses.
They just point and they laugh
Or turn away because it helps,
Tears are dripping,
He hates himself.