Saturday, March 31, 2012

It Goes On

How many ways can you lie to yourself

to keep the pain from tearing you apart?

Are there words are there whispers are there memories

just to allow you to breathe?

Do you remember the person that you once loved

would you know them now in the light?

Or would you pass each other on a crowded street

like two strangers who’ve never met?

I feel sick, I feel lost, I feel broken and torn

at the thought of who you’ve become.

Did I ever even know you at all

I can’t remember any part of our life.

You are far away now with the one that you wanted

you just couldn’t wait to leave.

Chasing something you never even knew that you had

if only you’d looked to see.

I gave you too much, gave you all that I had

a mistake I will never make again.

There is so much regret, so much pain I can’t bear

I can’t wait to leave this place.

I want to run and kick and rage and scream

but there is no one here to hear.

I want to be done with this hurt and this ache

but it just keeps coming up again.

I wish I’d never met you, wish I’d never seen

that smile that stole my soul.

I wish I could forget you, wish that I was free

wish that I could salvage my heart.

  

Monday, March 12, 2012

It doesn't matter

As the reality of this settles in

the seams are beginning to tear.

I am coming undone and my insides

are falling out everywhere.

I blew the sobriety 2 years earned

and drank for 2 weeks straight.

Now today is day three of beginning again

and it feels like I’m back at square one.

For two nights now as I’ve sat here at home

the flow of these tears won’t cease.

Tonight I cried at the gym, at the store,

the reality tearing into me.

This is what I have now

you are never coming back.

I know this in my mind

but my heart just cannot accept.

I talk out loud to myself through the day

as the thoughts of you creep in.

“It doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter”

I say it over and over again.

Wants and needs don’t matter

for the one who didn’t choose.

You got what you wanted and I got this

and that just doesn’t matter to you.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

1999

*Written for dversepoets.com   Poetics: 1999*



To the question where was I in 1999?
I was turning 30 years old.
I was living what barely passes for life
and I was hanging by a thread.
I had spent the better part of the past 10 years
putting poison up my nose.
Masking weakness and defeat with manufactured strength
and trying to slowly leave this world.
In the beginning it was amazing
this unbelievable explosion of life!
Excitement, passion, a zest for everything
all the things I had never had.
It was something like falling in love
in the honeymoon phase of things.
Where everything is out of your wildest dreams
yet you never get that back again.
Quickly it begins to turn on you
to take you from within.
No matter how fiercely you chase that feeling
the need is all you can feel.
It begins to take you slowly
first your heart and then your soul.
Eating away at your body and mind
leaving no part of you whole.
I was hollow and empty, a shell of myself
a ghost with visible scars.
Walking around in a deepening haze
bleeding just to feel alive.
On my 30th birthday I woke up
the year 1999.
I decided that day that I was finished
and wanted to take back my own life.
I exposed all my secrets to someone
to whom I could tell the truth.
I wanted to be held accountable
by virtue of being known.
The easiest way to walk away from life
is by hiding in the dark.
The process is slow and people forget
to keep looking for you when you are lost.
13 years later, I’ve found myself
in place of challenge again.
Life has dealt me a rotten blow
and I am forced to draw all of my strength.
I have delved into the depths before
I have crawled and scratched and screamed.
I will come out of this victorious again
I know how much I can achieve.


Saturday, March 10, 2012

Swimming

Days and weeks have passed endlessly

into more than I could take.

More pain, more loss, more emptiness,

more than I know how to transcend.

So I crawled into a bottle

where I thought I could go to hide.

But glass is transparent like a fishbowl

and everything can still be seen.

Trying to disappear, to fall away from this place

it’s all I’ve ever known how to do.

We all follow patterns that define us

it’s inherently who we are.

Yesterday I came to the end of a road

the end of feeling this much pain.

Today will be the first day

that I try to be something new.

I’m floundering, falling, lost and alone

but it can’t get much worse than this.

With scars and sickness and drenched in fear

I will try to take that step.

I will fall, I’m sure, and trip and fail

but I’m going to try again.

It feels like a last chance, or I’ll never survive

it feels like it’s time to give in.

To surrender to all that I cannot change

to accept all that I do not want.

To forgive all this hurt and just walk away

and try to learn how to do this alone.

Regret

Part of me wishes I didn’t know

half of the things that I do.

The lies, the intent, what you truly felt

and what your actions took away from me.

I’d still be here believing in you

and the pretty things you said.

That this was about finding something missing in yourself

instead of you leaving me for her.

All this talk about growth and personal change

means nothing anymore.

You’ve never spent a moment alone

it started long before you left.

Knowing what you did and what you meant to do

has now found me in this place.

Where I wish I’d never met you

and that I wasn't here all alone.

If you had only told the truth to me

it would have changed everything.

By lying and disrespecting me

you destroyed everything we ever had.

So now I am left to trying to find the way to heal from this

to falling out of love, and accepting that you left me for her.

I am trying to understand how you could just become

a memory that I can’t even trust.

You are so far from who I thought you were

that I can’t clearly remember your face.

You never look the same to me again

I’ve put all of the pictures away.

Surrounded by so much loss and pain

I am trying just to survive.

I wish I’d never come here

and never given you my heart.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Downtown

Today is the first time I’ve been back here

since I got the message that we had to talk.

This quaint little downtown promenade

full of shops and cobblestone streets.

I used to love to come here

with a book or by myself just to sit.

Sit and think as I watched the people walk

sit and try to get myself centered again.

As I drove through town I tried to avoid

the places where you work and live.

Yet the streets were closed and forced me to turn

as I passed right through your world.

I haven’t been back here either

where I used to go every day.

To take you home from work every evening

I thought it was home to me.

My breath comes fast as I park the car

and walk across the street.

The ghosts are literally everywhere

shaking the strength out of me.

Tears are coming randomly

I remember everything from that day.

I left the theater and got the text

and my life was forever changed.

I’d put you on a train for a few days

to go and visit a friend.

Yet apparently you’d gone to find a way

to say your last goodbye.

You couldn’t wait until you got home

to tell me face to face.

So in six minutes, six years ended

and there was nothing left to say.

This is no longer a special place for me

and I am trying to breathe through the pain.

But it’s too hard and I have to walk back to the car

where the memories and tears flow like rain.

Nothing

I can feel it slowly creeping in

becoming the silent definition of who I am.

I am detaching, and separating myself from anyone else

I am distancing and crawling inside.

I don’t want anything, anyone, to be anywhere

I want to sit alone with myself and mourn.

I am falling and fading and can’t seem to give a damn

nothing is keeping me here.

I am broken and bruised and bitter and cold

I am distant and quiet and forlorn

I am sad and frustrated, in a state of disbelief

I can’t accept what has happened to me.

This whole thing has taken me down to my knees

stripped away all of the strength that I had.

I am numbing this pain that I can’t take anymore

and I am falling away as I do.

There is nothing here but me and the sounds of silence

nothing has become all I am.

I can’t see the light that I am told will come

and I’m so tired of fighting to stay engaged.

I am heartless now as mine was ripped away

the hole where it was is empty and hollow.

There is nothing within me but the spiral of this pain

and trying to figure out what I did wrong.

There is so much more than the loss of you

which in itself is almost too much to bear.

There is the loss of the entire life that I had planned

and all that I had worked for in myself to become.

How does one begin again

when everything has gone away?

Spirit and heart stripped down to a bloody pulp

disconnected and cast astray.

I can’t find myself in this emptiness

or the core of who I once was.

When I all that wanted and loved is gone

and I have been so easily replaced.




Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Counting Hours

1 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 4 o’clock

4:30, 5 and so on.

I count the hours ‘til morning

chasing you through my dreams.

I dream of you here, I dream of you gone

both poignantly tell the tale.

I dream of your face, I dream of your skin

I can actually feel you here.

I dream of your weight on the pillow

I feel your breath on my skin.

I hear your voice and awaken

to the reality that you are not here.

I dream of myself running, screaming

through the streets calling out your name.

 I dream that I’m begging for mercy

yet no one can hear me scream.

I try through the day to counsel myself

my lonely and aching heart.

To understand the reality

that you have left me here.

I stay busy and try to focus on things

 to deter the thoughts of you.

But then I come home to this room

full of books and silence and me.

You creep in slowly as the evening passes

you slip in through the cracks in the walls.

You lay down next to me in this lonely bed

and like a ghost you sing me to sleep.

Through the night you actively haunt me

and I cannot escape thoughts of you.

I know you are gone, I understand

but my heart just can’t set itself free.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Distorted Reflection

I’ve stopped looking into mirrors

my reflection no longer shows.

There seems to be a line drawn

down through the center of me.

One side is familiar, vaguely

I’d know her if we passed on the street.

I’d touch her hand, and hold her close

and recall how we were once friends.

The other side is shadowed and hollow

and lurking around in the dark.

With a voice that is hoarse and broken

spewing venomous words from its mouth.

I am torn apart in the battle

they are tearing me limb from limb.

My demons are fighting my angels

weapons for destruction in hand.

I am reeling and spiraling and coming undone

as the battle within rages on.

From the outside you’d never know it

but inside I am bloody and worn.

Every thought comes to me in images

pictures, tattered and torn.

Images thoughts and scattered words

represent nothing anymore.

I am losing connection to places,

to people, to things, to me.

As half of me stands here bleeding and raw

and the other half can’t find its way home.



*For dversepoets.com    Translucent Poetics: Writing Spoken Word