Tiresome ringing in a humid night
and I lie across the sweat-dark pillows
punctuated by apathy and anxiety.
Fireflies off the fan-blades in concentric
strobes are my EKG. Inside the melodrama
we're all bottom-feeders and mouth-breathers;
parasites on the synthetic blood of angst
and ennui. An echoed voice and I hang up
the phone, umbilicus returning to its womb
and I'm the afterbirth of a stillborn effort.
Reach out and touch someone, anyone; at night
all voices care and the measure of a man
fades with the lights out but the stutter
of a dying air conditioner pushes around
dead air like the care-less touch of a board-game pawn.
If I'm missed, then I've missed the message.
Memories shift before sleep: an experimental kiss
was a promise/a nothing. The perfume was a lustful
phantom locking us in smoke-emotions together. Silence
is a strange way to say you care. Delicious pretensions.
I crawl under my Wal-Mart linen and push my face
into the fabric-softened pillow, flipped over
to hide the sweat like a towel, and console myself that
another night and you'll keep your word to me.
Five minutes, one Kleenex, and a fantasy that you'll (never) be later
and I try to close my eyes, counting the beats
of the old fan above me, pretending its a heartbeat
that I pretend I'll miss.
[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Baron ]
and I lie across the sweat-dark pillows
punctuated by apathy and anxiety.
Fireflies off the fan-blades in concentric
strobes are my EKG. Inside the melodrama
we're all bottom-feeders and mouth-breathers;
parasites on the synthetic blood of angst
and ennui. An echoed voice and I hang up
the phone, umbilicus returning to its womb
and I'm the afterbirth of a stillborn effort.
Reach out and touch someone, anyone; at night
all voices care and the measure of a man
fades with the lights out but the stutter
of a dying air conditioner pushes around
dead air like the care-less touch of a board-game pawn.
If I'm missed, then I've missed the message.
Memories shift before sleep: an experimental kiss
was a promise/a nothing. The perfume was a lustful
phantom locking us in smoke-emotions together. Silence
is a strange way to say you care. Delicious pretensions.
I crawl under my Wal-Mart linen and push my face
into the fabric-softened pillow, flipped over
to hide the sweat like a towel, and console myself that
another night and you'll keep your word to me.
Five minutes, one Kleenex, and a fantasy that you'll (never) be later
and I try to close my eyes, counting the beats
of the old fan above me, pretending its a heartbeat
that I pretend I'll miss.
[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Baron ]
