New Stuff, you know you want it Options

[PalePhoenix]

I've heard enough bitching about trying to "excuse" earlier work by dating it. Trust me, I've dated enough things that needed excusing...but not this. I'll put whatever I'm currently producing here, and to hell with anyone who feels compelled to judge things by something as narrow as chronology...

Get your weekend thump-thump on.

[PalePhoenix]

Understanding Visits

Drunk and ignoring my back,
I feel real oldness invading.
I couldn't move well before,
and now I'm swinging
on the patio. This is
where I feel almost connected
with the other windows.
I feel resented
by the widows
of an ideal that died
ages before I arrived.
Therefore, I remind them all
of something unavailable,
now unacceptable.

Disconnected and feeling the lack,
I reel in old sentiments.
I moved so well before
I knew how I was cheating.
On this level, it is
how I feel best directed
to the other faggots.
I feel celebrated
by the orphans
of an idea that includes.
Ancient, before I arrived-
therefore a rewound existence-
I am eminently available.
Acceptance matters not.

Disaffected and blocked,
I appeal to the ancients.
I moored so well before,
then I knew I was defeated.
I'm on the level.

You know you can take direction.

The rest, they are left, uncelebrated.
An ancient arrival controlled-
it's exotic, and understanding visits
to the dayroom of our lives.

[PalePhoenix]

Less for Loves

Counting graves, less for loves than labors lost,
I grow restless. Insatiable. I need even vanilla
sex to distract, to replace more expensive distractions.
These are the nights I regret not having
the convenience of chemistry, the patience
for collage, or the stamina for a booty call.
Not that I have this endless rolodex of exes,
but I have never run out screaming
for Mr. Right, Tight, and Now-Tonight.

Recalling faces, more for the contempt than familiarity,
I get expensive. Inconsolable, I need a filter,
philters to disarm, to screen the toxins from me.
These are the ways I imagine succeeding
at convenient sex and impatient romance.
From college, or the stagnancy of misspent youth,
what I have is a ceaseless, seamless slide show.
But I have never stopped dreaming
of the slightly drunk and utterly incorrect.
He's something missing from my life.
I want him to be alive.

Forgetting names, exactly as I've done with women,
I greet cheap dates. Uncontrollable, I should be shot.
Phlegmatic to a fault, I keep the merely adequate at bay.
These are the men I envision fucking
when no one else can see. Inpatient lovers
with inconvenient hang-ups, or a taste for self-abuse,
what I end up with is the opposite of sex.
But I will never stop trying.
To the men who don't make much of my time,
pull your own hoses while you may.
I don't have the patience to bury you all.
And I don't like Mondays.

[PalePhoenix]

ornamentalism

Pinecones bursting with the sound--if not the force-
of broken bones, spill their seed everywhere.
Gymnosperms, they lay their most vital parts bare.
The purpose of their existence is so ornately crafted,
and then tossed away on the wind, often to die.

This is a microasis, a toybox within an arid city.
It is so perfect in its ability to deflect
human noise, I find myself
resenting silly things, like birds at dusk
and people leaving too soon after dawn.

Beigestuccodisgusting with the passive-aggression-
if not the overt offense--left by years of uselessness:
Exterior design. It plays with our first impressions.
The purpose of it has been forgotten
and now it is an obligatory ornament. There to ignore.

This is a macrocosm, an expansion of tiny beings.
It is perfect in its ability to reflect
human inadequacy. I test myself
daily, reattempting to see what it was
meant to be, and why people seem to like it.

Lazy guardrails leaning, with the posture--if not the poise
of decrepit fools--protect no one from death.
Safety measures, they invite human error.
The purpose of their placement is long gone,
and now they stand as ornaments, dangerous.

This misshapen world, a paradox in paradise.
It perfects itself, by initiation.
Humans live here. Silly things
that would complain about what they like.

This post has been edited by PalePhoenix: Aug 19 2005, 03:27 PM

[PalePhoenix]

It Is, Is It?

Loathsome, cynical creatures exist, subsist
within a place meant for the merely failed,
the almost-rans, and the ne'er-do-wells.
They do daily endanger the status quo,
the raison d'etre, and my property value.

Desirable, delicious people show up, damaged
at my doorstep. Begging for their recognition,
their volition, their immolation...
They regularly demand accessories
for their outfits, and mess up their value systems.

Lithe, creative individuals duck out, escape
from a scrutiny too scalding. They merely fail,
whereas the runners-up spend themselves
trying to be noticed. I wish they'd all do better.
Their reasons are selfish, but I remember mine.

Disturbing, disdainful faggots appear, interrupting
my pretty home. Screeching for attention,
the misdirection, the genuflection--
they require explanations
for their sins. I fuck with their principles.

[PalePhoenix]

Sex Toys

It's a party where all the beautiful people
mix drinks among themselves and talk
about the splendid things they'll never do.

It's an offer of illicit thrills that twist
perception and benumb the guards that stand
vigilant and remote as satellites above Desire.

It's the ecstatic contact of flesh and fiber
that pumps like the raw sewage of lust
through the veins and arteries of the unsatisfied.

It's an elegant scissor, that crafts paper men,
each one flimsy as the next in line,
a snipping Siva that can destroy what it creates.

These are the devices of divine employ-
when we fancy ourselves godlike
and make temples of our bodies
to desecrate with sin.

(1991)

[PalePhoenix]

the best course

Then they sat me down to show me
a short film about adaptability.
It featured two rodents,
and two Little People. I believe
it was a pleasant fable
for humans who do not mind
thinking of themselves as animals
trapped in a maze, looking for cheese.

Instructionals such as these...offend me.
They pretend to be
philosophy. Covering every
conceivable conclusion
with a smog of ambiguity, they forget
often, the best course of action
is to escape the race.

Then they sit next to me, appearing
to enjoy their short lives, without irony.
I represent a different animal-
and to little people, I'm scary.
It's the noisy predator
that humans pay no mind.
Thinking themselves superior creatures,
far off screams don't equate as food.

Warning labels like this don't belong on me.
I only play at that Personality.
Uncovering their preconceived solutions
with a scythe of ferocity, I don't forget
when the best way to act
was to leave their face intact.

(2002)

[PalePhoenix]

As Satellites

I have no answers, when the phone rings-
only the knowledge that it is night there, too.

Whose questions matter more
at any distance?
Around the earth--or beneath me-
even in the skies
we search for validation-
why we have gone so long,
been born to an age of accessibility,

remain as satellites forever.

Vigilant and remote, we wait
for our truth in facsimiles
and email masturbations.

I touch the cradle
of my phone,
see that it has rocked a generation,

and loathe a temporary future
of lovers on command.

I have one thing to say.

I won't be there, slave
to the screen, line, or box.

Requiring a conservative cellular technology,
I must have your heat around me.
Someday, we will feel again
what we only reach out and touch.

When I hit Redial, I want the answers-
proof, that when day comes to each of us,
you will be there.

(1992)

[PalePhoenix]

Other People's Things

I am my own man
sitting in someone else's room
in someone else's house
at someone else's school.
I am my own man.

Strip me naked,
set fire to everything
and throw it out the window-
onto someone else's lawn-
I am still my own.

I am not trying
to get back into mommy,
kill daddy, or sell my soul
to yet another lover
in a bed that's not his either.
I am here for now
because I want to be.
I am my own-

For the moment.
I am going nowhere,
but I may not be,
tomorrow. I am not coming
from anywhere you have
been before. I made it all up
to be interesting to myself.
Now, I am here, my own-

and you are reading
something you didn't write,

don't understand,

don't care about, and

will not ever duplicate.

I am not your man.
I did not stop one moment
to write to you about
the empty world I occupy
with other people's things.

I did it for me-
so I could give it away
to someone else
for a while, someone
who believes

he deserves it. To burn

when he realizes
that he owns nothing, too.

Not even himself.

That will be mine.

(1989)

[PalePhoenix]

in & out, too

Cardboard façades are the shining smiles
that countenance my dissatisfaction
in my fellow men. There was once a time
when the revelation so many were the same
on the inside reassured, even excited.
It could provide connection. It was an in.

Colloquial forgeries are the shortcut paths
that I could have taken to happiness.
Among my brethren, there's a once-in-a-lifetime
idea that love or where you find it is unique.
One the outside, this is true, often proved.
It should allow correction, but it's an out.

Creative fallacies are the showy vestments
so many sport to feel included and envied.
Within my minority, it's a one-two step
that adds acceptance like water to a chiapet.
On its surface, life seems magically imbued.
It encourages corruption, to feel "in."

Candid photographs are the shopworn moments
of an existence meant to represent honest.
Outside my milleu, once upon a time,
these instants were less crafted, not so mimicked
at their core. We used to shop for ourselves.
It's the new way, to forget the old, when you're out.

[PalePhoenix]

zoology

We are each parolees from dread.
Having been released
from invisible prisons of our own making,
we check in, frequently,
with those reminders of our lost time,
catch up with the old crimes, and
attempt to better ourselves
in a society that likes labels.
But for two-ton ankle bracelets
no one else can see, we are free.

We are all refugees from addiction.
Having love replaced
by invincible people of our own invention,
we indulge, repeatedly,
with facsimiles of misspent youth,
crush on the old archetypes, and
try to reinvent ourselves
in the image of likeability.
But for two dozen brandnames
we are unique, with nowhere else to be.

We are escapees from death.
Having momentary reprieve,
with intolerable poisons of our own choosing,
we lie, endlessly.
By extrapolation from our latter days,
flush with new money, and
tempted by our beloved illusions-
but for twenty years of epithets-
we are like nothing you've seen, free.

Read the little placard. It will tell you
genus and species. It will tell you
what the animals want you to see.

[PalePhoenix]

Saprophyria nihili

Maggots of the flesh unite!
Be seed upon the ground.
Infest mother's wombs and redirect
the choices of the living.

See this flesh, this world before you-
undead in its pain--and tunnel-rape
its rights to breathing free
and living without fear.

Shit your hate into its bloodstram,
chew at every chance of growth.
Destroy the loveliest pieces
of its sex and make them

cry for hell.

The hopeless and the malcontents-
they have dreamed you into life,
that you may fester
in their brains-
wrap tight, writhing, on their vocal chords.

Maggots, make your corpses speak!
Give them some new lie to teach.
Instigate the apathy-
cold and translucent-
decorate the dank interiors
of their unused minds.

Substitute yourself behind their eyes
until, for grime, they cannot see.
Let their retinas be your piss-filled humor
and show them what hate looks like.
When you cannot see
inside your skull, you

cry for hell.

That it may come quickly-
faster still!
and receive you
from an earth possessed by death.


Author's Note: This last one was written sometime around 1992. The two prior, at least twelve years later.

[PalePhoenix]

Life's Short

Turned around
to find a time speckled with misconsceptions,
with grandiose ideas of death and failure,
and realized that life is always threatened
by a fatal form of mediocrity.

Looked inside
to see that one's demise was seldom spectacular,
whether well-loved or reviled, you pass
from a more direct form of availability
to another plane of reality.

And that airline's gone bankrupt.

Turned over
a new leaf, like growing sideburns when
you start to bald, and have mistakenly amassed
a chronicle of my existence that testifies
to a grandiloquent obscurity.

Looked among
my co-conspirators for someone to share
the smallest truths about getting by,
when it seems no one knows you're alive,
and was disturbed at the dearth of alacrity,
the lack of passion.

And that's what I get for waiting.

Turned corner
after corner, improving my odds of survival-
not so much more because I wished to live,
but dying's so easy and life is so hard-
and that makes its own veracity.

Looked beyond
myself and saw a more necessary future-
one that contained a little more hope
and beauty--not for its dramatic success,
but its appreciation of brevity.

[PalePhoenix]

Antiques Roadwhore

Now, what is one of these books worth,
when you factor for wear,
time, transport, and content?
About three pounds, fifty pence,
just like the label reads.
Where it was bought, perhaps, has less import
than what it was gotten for,
but only time will tell.

Then, this page is worthless
and all its sister leaves.
Poetry, prose, and pure fiction-
three things for small audiences-
they buy their own importance
from the ill-begotten
and those who think themselves wise.

Now, a time you can only find in books
and probably other media
like the Internet, an MP3, or some version
of data wired to your brain.
Just like the label will read:
These are the misbegotten,
for those who can't tell time.

Then you'll invest this with value
and all your friends will think you mad.
Poems, written before you could lie,
are an assault on the senses.
They try your patience.
You've no idea what you've got,
and those who think are, themselves, fools.

Now is the time for all good girls to part.
It's the only message that
makes these pages priceless.
Then you only have to sell your soul.

[PalePhoenix]

barflies

Pathetic, nameless bar. Well,
it actually has one,
but it's lost here. It's eaten
by the neighborhood.
It has no personality.
It wears no shirt,
but it remains tightly buttoned.

Demons of indecision
wrought by mannequins,
bar people. They pretend
to like you, even though
you smell funny
and you say strange things.

Pathos, named accordingly.
It describes dysfunction,
and you'll find it here. Beaten
by your neighbors,
you can feel sorry for yourself
and put up with their shit,
but it's still too proper for its own good.

Demigods of concomitance
brought low by ape-men.
Bars, people, and poseurs,
they love no one, even when
you look right
and you kiss their ass.

[PalePhoenix]

BURIAL VAULTS

How many times have I been fired
from a job becuase I could not
fit in?
I sit here wondering
that, in a hammock
chair, in my favorite shirt-
which reads BURIAL VAULTS-
in the sun and pleasant temperature.
Is this the death
I traded out of cowardice,
from the chill and chemicals
of New York City?

This shirt comes from there.
Rather,
from a girl I once called
a friend, who lived there.
She might now be anywhere.
She might even be
a woman.
I miss relationships
like her. I haven't had any
since moving to Phoenix three
years ago. I put on music
that she and I would have
like then, just
like many girls before her.

Phoenix is another planet.
As accustomed as I once was
to that alien feeling,
I should have realized my
mother would have felt it
first. And moved.
Dragging my impressionable brother,
she arrive, pronounced it worthy
of her rebirth,
and proceeded to re-create
herself in the alien image.

Though my brother actively loathes
this place, I doubt
either of them know
what drives them. I've fought
long and hard
to get a sense that they did.
That they fought at all.
It might make me
understand better why we are family,
not just an accidental collective
of Flaming Re-creation. Like its namesake
the city's somehow supposed
to do it for us, to burn off
embarassment and heartbreak.

For me, Boston did this thing.
Then Buffalo, then Albany,
then NYC, then White Plains,
then New Orleans. Then a few of the others
again. Let's not forget Long Island.
That place which created me, yet
seems so inhospitable. I suppose I
wouldn't be afraid
to live there once more. I'm just
not in the mood to die yet.

Which brings me back to my original point.
How many times has my meager means
of sustenance turned around and bit me
for grabbing its filthy tail?
Each time, I gave
so much energy to have passed their tests. I can be
profitable and charming when I choose.
Have these jobs taught me
nothing, I wonder?

Am I still the resolute twelve year-old
who understood--quite suddenly--the value
of comfortable shirts, good weather, and new planets?
Possibly, I may have become--much by accident-
the kind of creature I always wanted
to be, the one
who gets the finger from people
I don't respect, and then smiles
at them, benignly. I still have
all I want,
without much time lost wondering
about their needs.

[PalePhoenix]

leper...

Their behavior infuriates me.
It incites the passion
of offense and disgust.
It is the urge to clearance
I feel when heavy furniture
must be moved.

A chore. A bore.
Something best forgotten,
driven to the forefront
of consciousness.

Having it there annoys.
Fighting it enjoins
a greater awareness.
I resent being so undervalued.
I regret those I have
not corrected.


...messiah

They are there to excoriate me.
I incite their passion
with offensive language
and misplaced trust.
Theirs is the need for guidance,
the feeling when too heavy flesh
must be removed.

A whore, adored.
A thing secretly remembered,
which drove them
to the depths
of ecstasy.

Leaving them there a moment,
wishing only to be joined
with a greater awareness.
I resemble a being
they have overvalued.
I regret they drown
in their sins.
But not mine.

[PalePhoenix]

s e e n w r i t i n g

Seen writing, they
imagine the worst
in themselves, known.
Only by their own.
Smelled wrong, like
taken for a stranger,
there is suspicion
in them, like smoke
on clothes. Spills
with the taint of booze,
sent aloft by heat,
remind us we're trying
to seem cheaper.
At home, alone,
with pricey thoughts
we misspend youth
leering at the
merely pretty.
We wonder when
they'll write of us.

[PalePhoenix]

Crass Menagerie

Glowing undersides of glasses,
the sheen of indiscretion-
how they glint in the candlelight--entreating
us to fill them. To remark on their beauty.
To be full, and to have reflection.
These are privileges of the idle.

These are the advantages of
our deception. It beleaguers us.

Shimmering edges of glass,
they scintillate without discrimination,
and everyone can see.
We defeat ourselves.
To be filled, we collect beauty.
Once sated, we become indiscreet.
These are all such familiar errors.

We who are advantaged,
it's our responsibility
to win this war, to be just...

Growing plastic in a digital petri dishes,
it is how we recreate ourselves.

Glitterati edging on infamy,
we lack direction,
but beg others
to follow. To remind us of our old ugliness.
To be vulgar, and yet so rare in sharing,
this is the byproduct of bile
and vision.

See-through souls set out for supper,
we dine on each other's egos.

[PalePhoenix]

F. U. N.

fatalisme

Phases fade
into each other, cusp on cusp
blurring both growth and
an odd indifference to strangers.
Those beliefs you hold
when you are twelve warp, wending
their way into a future
full of possibility, open
at both ends and absorbing
something like sunlight that shines
from within, putting sharp colors
and a bright edge on everything

uranisme

Faces faze
each other, cups and cups
of booze both gross
and disinhibiting to new people.
Those ideals you keep
when it's midnight in a bar, bending
your present into pretzels, you're
full of shit, hoping not
to seem too much a fraud. Abhorring
something like loneliness
but with other people present,
and your exes shadows on everyone.

nombrilisme

Phrases fail
us, gold on cold
tombs too close
and terrible to the old.
Those gaze met
when it's half past four, surrendering
not to contemplation, but to
the end of it, you are eloping
with a rake, a fake, or someone
to hate five minutes after she's gone.
But with no one else to see,
you've escaped that way
a dozen times this year.

[PalePhoenix]

evade destruction

Planes, silver missles, rise
above the nicotine-stained atmosphere.
You are here, and all
your friends, too. The nothings
we have to do for money
are fatal in their mediocrity,
killing us slowly
with the thousand Songs of Myself
we hear in our ears, pieces
of themselves that they strew like so many
audio piñatas of the damned.
We want the same thing,
and it should be cheaper.

Bodies, warm collections, sink
below the beige-fabricked cubicles.
We are here, and all
our enemies, too. The too-good-for-you
set what strangely makes less
and the fatalists of analysis,
killing us slowly
with the uncountable New Rules
we need to memorize, lest-
for ourselves--we have no meaning.
Fleshbags fitted with headsets,
we want what we deserve
and it is so much more than this.

Phoenix, amatuer incarnation, brings us
back to the bare-essentialed ideas
of who we are; and all
the people we know, enemies.
The cleansings among the Great Unwashed,
like powerlines strung across invisibility,
will be the last death of me.
Killing me slowly
with a shitstorm of stupidity is
finally
enough of them to destroy all
audible objections to the status quo.
I want more
and am too accustomed to getting it.


NB: See here for "eve of destruction."

[PalePhoenix]

supersluts

Where angry aesthetes won't tread
barbers barricade themselves in
between walls of washing products
and glittery semens of less specific nature.
A rainbow battlement of bottles,
tubes, tubs, and tankards
designed not to keep the demimonde out,
but the inner demons in
a state of flux
somewhere between self-loathing
...and fabulous.

Where common creatures such as I
blithely baby ourselves with
strange scents of weaponized talcum,
and befitting haircuts of a less costly kind,
a pride march of time stampedes.
Tinctures, philters, and topical
poisons not to keep the impotence down
but the nether parts up
in a state of panic
somewhere between self-assured
...and manic.

Where secondhand clothes are sold,
low cholesterol wraps roll off
counters cleansed with caustics
and other truths diluted to suit
a gay parade of fools.
Toejobs, Pop-Tarts, and thongs,
distractions not meant to be overdone
nonetheless bespeak our simplicity;
a state of distress
somwhere between designer genes
...and being undressed.

[PalePhoenix]

[strych-sixty-nine]

Suspecting the time has come
another lizardskin shed
growing metaphysically bigger-
never about size, but what I
needed to inhabit
with my unburdened self.
Some dream in sepia
as I mull invented worlds
the deep-gashed shade of Japanese maple.

Secret spectrum come undone
by other wavelengths, messages sent
owing their literality to better
mediums outside what I
wanted to discover
with my newfoundsense.
So few see flowers
as more than egocentric scents.
The best among them are garden geisha.

Supposing the sublime in everyone
has grown tiresome.
Overblown metapersonalities, dead
from the quest to be better,
come to relieve themselves.
Some speak of dreams, dark
as husks of rice
the brown of city ice and factory streams.

Suffuming a submarine is dumb,
yet it's the cause celebre of therapy.
Ownerless bodies ebb to me, barely
breathing for the fear of living.
Come to reduce themselves
to ash, sparks from which to start
a burlesque of spite,
Gone when volcanic vapors part
they'll show you what they're made of.

[PalePhoenix]

Loxosceles Later

Mating birds, filthy things,
the beautiful pestilence
they bring ironically
absconds with children
and the elderly.
It is clearly meant for me.
Bones and spirits
like twigs, theirs should be
the disease of pigs. Against
fervid infections I mount
petitions and protestations,
secretly expecting infestation
from those I ask to lunch,
the ladies who protest too much.

Demonic curses, and poison,
one should know enough
to enjoy them. They are
the strangers in an open car.
They remind us who we are.

Mute swans, paddling, wet,
sound the silent baritone
of death. They trumpet
with insects in their wings;
like pigeons, usher the inmost
of hellish rings. Like ashes
on baby's breath, like turpentine
and crystal meth, these
ignorant vectors fly-
carving their patterns,
their tattoos in my sky. Why

fleets of hearses, and venom
found in their blood?
They want only to be loved;
and I, to retire. Would that
I had been born a spider.

[PalePhoenix]

Survival of the Fittest

She who shows me
her soul crawling
with maggots, larvae
of her conscience
infested, pretends
that she needs
nothing of acceptance.
She craves integrity
but she tries to scare me.
She needs a proof

that someone knows
what was done to her
and honors her
survival. Of the fittest
responses I could
present, there is only
one that will not
append her tormet.
And it is a form
of rejection. Of the way

the rest have seen
of her perception
of how they've been
inadequate. I am
expected to regurgitate
the same noise made
by insects yet, from me,
it is a sound of wings
and of squirming things
that have found out
how to fly.

[PalePhoenix]

I'm trying to figure out a video that works with current presidential candidates. Try this for a soundtrack:

[PalePhoenix]

equineamity

Stop this carousel. I want to get off.
Too many plastic horses slipping
past, reappearing again
and again, maddening. Help me
from the floor--the speckled
mirrors fracture fantasies-
the rainbow grim of their
ceaseless hooves. I have
ridden to submission. I want off.

The cotton candy gloss
laminates sensation, and I tremle
with the cogs that rob me
of escape from twisting manes.

I will be sick, hurl technicolor
bits of living to the gears;
choke the calliope
of death as surely as it has
sweetly asphyxiated me.

This horse for obsession;
that one for responsibility
and need, are of one creed
for obligation. I want
to hack my steed

to pieces, gouge its eyes,
be free its manic whine,
and recover
somewhere else.

Away from the carnival
the carousel
and the sputtering
neon glow
from the revolving barn

I can be stabled.

[PalePhoenix]

Sabotage

So she could say I told you so
she put the gun into her pussy
and pushed it deep-
pulled the trigger-
and gave birth to one last
revelation as the twenty-two cooled off.

So he could say I told you so
he strung himself up from the fan
and pictured something else
entirely, as he swung by the TV.

So she could say the no one cared
she locked herself away for days,
stopped answering her machine-
until she could convince herself
that no one was really coming.

So he could say that no one cared
he got drunk every night for months
and had sex with ugly strangers
who paid for the cab ride home.

So she could say she had no hope
she stopped working at the mall-
just quit her noon to eight
in favor of old romances
on cable--and ordered in
every food that made her puke.

So he could say he had no hope
he insulted all his friends,
dropped out of classes in the city,
and drove his car nowhere
until it ran out of gas.

So she could say that nothing mattered
she sold her photos to a magazine
that can't be sold in stores.

So he could say that nothing mattered
he called in sick for life
at the art supply store downtown
where he spent all his time
smoking and stealing watercolors
for an unambitious portfolio.

She she could say the world mistreated her
she dated impotent men
and lied to her therapist.

So he could say the world mistreated him
he cheated on his taxes
and told his parents he was gay.

When they broke up, each said
I told you so.
You were never right for me.
I can't stand your abuse.
It's killing me.

They each saw something different
then, their eyes reopened
to the world that told them so.

Worthless without love for self
they could not see
the world from whence
their pain did come

until pain was all they had.

[Xaotrix]

So she could say I told you so
she put the gun into her pussy
and pushed it deep-
pulled the trigger-
and gave birth to one last
revelation as the twenty-two cooled off.

I think this is some powerful imagery, if a bit disgusting. I like the structure of the piece, the way it sort of works backward in telling the story of two lovers. Romeo & Juliet should be the title, I think, but I get the "sabotage" idea just as well.