Of Broken Things

Beware
the pull.

The strange beauty
of broken things.

The fracture
unthinking
breeds treachery.

The sirens
don't sing
to your health. 

Get your fucking splinter out of me.

You left your splinter in me.

I gave you lunch and moral support.
Held your hand when the pain wracked through.
You said it was like barbed wire
scraping your insides raw.
I assumed it was the cancer.
Now I wonder it wasn’t the cocaine shakes.

 Fat lot l know about either.

You took a nap and you took your chance.
The Shins and your mouth.
Wincing the Night Away
and the late afternoon sunlight
streaming in from the sea.

And you left your splinter in me.

Right in the middle by my breast bone.
I guess I'm lucky you weren't aiming for the heart.

I made you coffee after.

Gave you leftovers to feed your body
And books for your soul.
I’d have given you anything.
Easing your emptiness,
that became my Holy Crusade.
Thank God, you'll never know.

And then, a couple of weeks or so later,
when you took me out like trash,
How come you got to keep all I gave you?

And all I got was this splinter.
This phantom shard in the center of my chest.

It’s real for all it’s invisible.
Too insipid to be called painful
too persistent to just ignore.

That's the size of the damage you got done.

Get your fucking splinter out of me.

Shut in. Shut out. Shut up.

I'm sitting here 

hating the sound of my phone when it rings

and still 

I'm pushing against the silence 

that's thickening and crusting over in this room,

smothering the furniture and the books and the TV flickering wordlessly.

I'm cultivating inertia. I'm courting apathy.
I dont know what I'm doing. 

Ignoring the things that need done, doing things that have no meaning.
Boredom. Lethargy. Exhaustion.

What is this? 

It would be so simple - to walk out into the world.
To engage. 

 

But right now it seems to require a monumental act of will. 

And right now I'm cultivating inertia. I'm courting apathy.
I'm letting the lonliness achieve critical mass.

Recycled Ode to a Beachtown.

For Goa, December 25th,2000. Reissued for Galle, February 6th, 2011

Swimming out into the pinpricked night,
cleaving at the amorphous blue
with arms of curling smoke.

A spinning shuttle;
fairy-light spirals in my head.

A face in the dark - old; spry.
The dancing embers licking her fingers dry.

Beachfront in an hourglass.
Waves of euphoria pummel
the shores at the edge of time.

Orion sinking into slumber;
whisper goodnight,
and on the rim of the ocean:
crouching, hidden - Daylight.