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I Have Things
I’ve got regrets for days and days, dinner dates with the maggots of misdirection
Without etiquette they reach across the memory meals in haste for simple scraps
Best left for the hounds of indecency to ravage within their frothing jaws
They are my invisible friends, the umbilical forgotten to be cut, nourishing
My metaphorical navel, that empty siphon currently in a 28 year drought
I can make meals in ways and ways, give me a reason to speak and I’ll give you
A thanksgiving the pilgrims would have starved too rather than gorge on hospitality
I am not back to the future nor the past, I am back to the present, and my resentment
For the harlot of time, that incestuous know-it-all, grows with stirring impatience
I’ve got friends who play and play. Not with dirt and G.I. Joes but with needles and woes
Today you might give blood for a cause and a cookie, everyday they waste it for free
They’ve crawled to the destitute destinations searching for the one eyed man on broken streets
The King of bundles and balls, the brown and white, the colors the rainbow forgot to reveal
The tracks on their arms have hurdles between untouched skin, too close for a runners grace
They puss, scab and infect just like all the rest, scars mapping out morbid solidarity
Until the paraphernalia becomes a painful ally in a war that will forever rage on the backs
Of the weak minded. And the choice that became them withers with every lost battle
Leaving a no-man’s land full of sick, the living undead, eyes too sullen to look at themselves.
I’ve got love to give and give. I’m no Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, but I am sick and I have love
My book says I may be through with the past but the past is yet to be through with me
And children, devils and angels alike, are always being confused amongst us “adults”
As heaven’s guardians to the birth of new beginnings, sick with love and vomit
They are dangerous, mirrors unkind to the years in requiem realized by an aging man
Yes, I have love and I have this sickness, born and bred, chiseled out of fiery brimstone
I have fight against decay and dismay but my sugar coated shell thins with every lick
Until the child within me reaches the center of it all and I am devoured once again
Losing years of lucidity to sleep with the master of mediocrity, with no owl to ask “who?’.
I’ve got pain to repay and repay…to my enemies, to myself, to a life barely living
I’ve got scars that itch and itch, reminding me of memories, wounds unyielding to time
I’ve got dreams broken and still breaking, pulverized by hands too big for me
I’ve got cares I caress and coddle, I’m with them in the womb, waiting for birth
I’ve got a third eye that sees and sees…beyond the borders of all the careful caricatures
I’ve got lungs black and fragile, always admiring the subtleties within each belated breath
I’ve got anger fierce and bloody, exacting revenge on a reflection too acute for all the angles
I’ve got a home empty and crowded by faceless names and nameless faces, all too audible
I’ve got forgiveness to forget and forego…to my enemies, to myself, to a life barely living
I have all these things, so many things, but I have hope as well, hope for ever and always
I have it in the clean and unscathed arms that wrap around a lover’s back, leaving no stains
And the gentle smile she returns to me when such embraces have been lacking of late
I have it in the possibilities now allowed, no longer the parables eaten away by the parasites
I have it in the noose unfettered by regrets slowly being forgotten and diminished, no longer tidy
It’s in the new personas painting on my bare white canvas, building a much more ideal art
I have it in the knowledge that hope itself will fail one day, to be recycled and renewed
And the trials inbetween are what makes men into personal gods, healing the entropy
And I am willing to withstand epochs of lacerations for an era where I have it all…everything.
