33.

Life

My therapist is a peaceful animal
Checking my brain
For the bandages I dream up
And choke my wounds with.
I am late for life
This much is clear
Halloween is every night
& like a spiritual transvestite
I change my feathers
While the makeup is rubbed well past
The dark place my mask use to be.
When the good doctor presses into
Its creases
the wounds burn even deeper
Like an orange blaze
That fills my bones.
It is clear that with age
I am more gone
Strolling past the innocence
& charm of being
an angry young man.
I find myself in the sun
Blind & confused
disowning the spark of being
silent & overdone
Like a ghetto of flesh
that has been razed
With ghosts made of ash
that fall asleep
in the cracks of the street
I am not even here
For the feedback
For the tapestry of forgiveness
For half made hearts.
I close my eyes
Instead,
carried away
Under strangers feet
Who tread
On the powdered flesh
I loved so much to live in
So much
I can’t even remember when
I loved so much
I can’t remember what
Made me mortal
Or where the tenderness
That I pressed to my heart
Disappeared to.
I can’t remember
The love that dislodged me
In to the burning curtains
Of this world
Or why my nightmares
Even bother to migrate
To the gates
this late in time.
I am the weight of an empty
bandage & nothing more.
I am a bonfire of dust
That knows not why it burns
Nor why the world melts.
I am late for life
With no memory of how this
Pain began
Nor why it guards me insatiably
From the trembling lips
of this evening.
My therapist is a peaceful animal.
I will unclasp my hands
& climb back through
The window inside
My oblivion.
Memories are tireless
& I can take no more.