on the eve of execution
This is very very strange. Very long and very strange.
I either love it or hate it. Either with a passion...
It has come this day
on which I count the seconds,
the trees that fly past my
breath-marred window,
a sicksweet condensation
through which I spell out my epitaph,
hoping only that its ghostly outline
will appear on the next night
imbued with a cold that
penetrates through bone...
My mind takes slideshow
photographs of this journey
that transcends time and the
logical progression of all things.
I am travelling backward
along a ray toward this
distinct[ly] terrifying point;
I force your hand to hold mine-
it resists. I pretend not to notice
as your pinky recoils from
the yearning touch of mine,
which searches blindly
as in some eternally childlike
game of Marco Polo, groping
to find the flesh that tells me
I'm not alone.
Darkness subsides and I
accept the finality in this
tragic lie - I only need your
falsity for a little longer, darling,
but until it is undeniably gone, I need
to believe that a light exists:
elusive, illusory, artificial, but there.
Like you.
The engine stops whining,
the car begins to cool and your
gaze intersects mine. An awkward moment
ensues, in which our minds recall
sex and Starbucks, cigarettes and
ejaculation. You break the moment,
as though you'd caught yourself
staring into the casket for a bit too long,
perverse and obscene.
The paperwork is long, detailed.
Monotony before death, death
preceding eternal monotony.
Cyclical.
I feel each miniscule increment
of the needle gliding smoothly
into the thick blue vein on the
inner section of my left elbow that I
suddenly feel so estranged from.
I have now become a vessel
for this travelling death, whose purpose
is to move from vein to capillary
and back, until the poision blooms dominant
over the oxygen deemed essential for life.
I ponder briefly the terminology
they use for this silent act;
putting me to sleep. A beautiful
disguise for "murder," a counterpart
to "manslaughter"... No one can admit
to anything anymore.
Sleep becomes a seductive thought;
it lulls me into the silence that pervades
in a growing emptiness I feel around this
body that suddenly is no longer mine.
I am comprised of parts: marrow, bone,
flesh, this mottled epidermis,
tipped with chipped gold polish
on the fingernails I never cut, only break.
I am decomposing in front of you;
my atoms are disconnecting and I am
expanding in an empty sort of way.
I am energy, thought, not form -
Skin cells drift freely through the room,
into the lungs you inflate to absorb
the oxygen that I am very aware
I greatly lack
Whoever calls this falling asleep
was either an insomniac or a masochist:
I do not feel the warm embrace of
heavy eyelids and weighted limbs.
I feel only the lack of your lips against
my forehead and the reassuring words,
"Everything will be okay."
Your pupils fly endlessly away from me;
they are the last thing I see
in this loss of sensory perception
before your back turns and walks out the door
in those final moments when I whisper, "I love--"
...
Cigarette smoke drifts over me.
The rigor mortis is setting in.
There are words that lay dead on my lips,
unspoken, purposeless, lost; I am.
I either love it or hate it. Either with a passion...
It has come this day
on which I count the seconds,
the trees that fly past my
breath-marred window,
a sicksweet condensation
through which I spell out my epitaph,
hoping only that its ghostly outline
will appear on the next night
imbued with a cold that
penetrates through bone...
My mind takes slideshow
photographs of this journey
that transcends time and the
logical progression of all things.
I am travelling backward
along a ray toward this
distinct[ly] terrifying point;
I force your hand to hold mine-
it resists. I pretend not to notice
as your pinky recoils from
the yearning touch of mine,
which searches blindly
as in some eternally childlike
game of Marco Polo, groping
to find the flesh that tells me
I'm not alone.
Darkness subsides and I
accept the finality in this
tragic lie - I only need your
falsity for a little longer, darling,
but until it is undeniably gone, I need
to believe that a light exists:
elusive, illusory, artificial, but there.
Like you.
The engine stops whining,
the car begins to cool and your
gaze intersects mine. An awkward moment
ensues, in which our minds recall
sex and Starbucks, cigarettes and
ejaculation. You break the moment,
as though you'd caught yourself
staring into the casket for a bit too long,
perverse and obscene.
The paperwork is long, detailed.
Monotony before death, death
preceding eternal monotony.
Cyclical.
I feel each miniscule increment
of the needle gliding smoothly
into the thick blue vein on the
inner section of my left elbow that I
suddenly feel so estranged from.
I have now become a vessel
for this travelling death, whose purpose
is to move from vein to capillary
and back, until the poision blooms dominant
over the oxygen deemed essential for life.
I ponder briefly the terminology
they use for this silent act;
putting me to sleep. A beautiful
disguise for "murder," a counterpart
to "manslaughter"... No one can admit
to anything anymore.
Sleep becomes a seductive thought;
it lulls me into the silence that pervades
in a growing emptiness I feel around this
body that suddenly is no longer mine.
I am comprised of parts: marrow, bone,
flesh, this mottled epidermis,
tipped with chipped gold polish
on the fingernails I never cut, only break.
I am decomposing in front of you;
my atoms are disconnecting and I am
expanding in an empty sort of way.
I am energy, thought, not form -
Skin cells drift freely through the room,
into the lungs you inflate to absorb
the oxygen that I am very aware
I greatly lack
Whoever calls this falling asleep
was either an insomniac or a masochist:
I do not feel the warm embrace of
heavy eyelids and weighted limbs.
I feel only the lack of your lips against
my forehead and the reassuring words,
"Everything will be okay."
Your pupils fly endlessly away from me;
they are the last thing I see
in this loss of sensory perception
before your back turns and walks out the door
in those final moments when I whisper, "I love--"
...
Cigarette smoke drifts over me.
The rigor mortis is setting in.
There are words that lay dead on my lips,
unspoken, purposeless, lost; I am.