recency and dementia, volume 1
SO LONG. Sorry.
I had lacey white taffeta gown illusions and raspberry
custard contusions to remind me that we were my own
delusion of hoping you’d be more than a momentary intrusion
into my pinksoft allusion to the femininity I keep locked behind
a door disguised as promiscuity-I hide inside the whore
when I can sort and pack no more and I don’t want to be found
she deflects the sound of confounded meaning and shields
the sight of black belts wound ‘round wrists and bound to
bedposts at four in the morning; I twist free of the memory
of letting you have me and sink further within a shell
whose emptiness requires the temporary comfort
of foreign male parts inside her…I can’t live in this
darkness anymore. I’ve tallied my score and retrieved my clothes
from the floor, sore from the leather and the hipbones
and the ambivalent way you tethered me to stay before realizing
with dismay that you’d rather expend your efforts on any other
girl than the one laying beside you, cautiously insecure, who used to
pray for the strength to endure another day of wondering,
waxen and unsure, if you could ever love her… But the manner
in which your skin bristles like cantaloupe rind tells me otherwise
and I find myself naked beneath goosebumps that rise
in this stagnancy you’ve left behind of sourly recoiling from touch
like I’m the kind of girl who charges by the hour, so you leave me
to unwind, to unravel, to unfurl, powerless over mind, curled infantile
around the knees I scarred while discovering the world, blinded
by an innocence that circumvented common sense and I hurled
myself into the coalescence of life acceptance dispensed
indistinguishably between poppies and poison oak…
The best things on earth are cloaked in disaster, so I bask
in the smoke that rises like laughter from the one dying ember
of the cigarette left after everyone’s gone home for the
night, drug-choked and soaked in chemical bliss
but miss powder and pill still deceives you at will,
her goodbye kiss in the morning is one I won’t miss as her
momentary thrill cannot justify the guilt she’ll cause me to feel-
she will compel you to wish you’d never been born into these
streets filled with such profound loneliness; this is the life
we’ve created-and all we can do is embrace a belated sense
that we waited long enough before breaking down the dam
and succumbing to the imminence of the flood thought abated;
this is my date with fate long awaited and I patiently pace
within this state of being I’ve sedated, anticipating the
frothy rush of river tides that will crush me up against
the sides of this man-made, concrete amusement park ride;
I am elated to shed free this body I’ve so hated, to eliminate
the fleshy places you caressed, which I later grated free of all
skin-this is the baptism that will rid me of this sin of having
given myself to you all over again; I accept that ‘we’ will never be
and I am happily freed from years spent daydreaming
of an impossible future I thought I could see between you and me-
this unanticipated catastrophe, this antiquated tragedy, is a welcome
reprieve from the monotony of minutes that listlessly spin and weave
a lifetime that can achieve little more than dying painlessly,
crumpled, torn, and alone- and so I choose the violence of this
calamity, of concrete against bone, skull against stone, to shatter
the endlessness of this habitual ritual and leave it, broken, tattered
and worn, discarded in favor of being reborn.
[beneath the weeping willow whose consistent sag and sigh cannot begin to indemnify
how very forlorn she must be, I have planted the seeds of hope sprung from scorn;
they feed off the sap that bleeds through the gaps in her bark worn down by their greedily
lapping at each bead they can squeeze and extract from her vellum skin-she seeps sticky,
thickly, trickling from within, wilting wordlessly as she concedes and they steep in her
relinquishment of worldly, bodily needs; it is only through such final deeds as these
that any creature of nature, plagued by the illness of mortality, can ever expect
to truly be freed from this pain that depletes us of a willingness to live and ultimately
defeats us by breeding bitterness and hatred, succeeding only in tainting
the lives that we lead…]
I emerge from the bramble and weeds that converged atop the tinted skin
of my skeleton, a hue akin to blue; I breathe in, slick with morning dew,
without the copper-tainted aftertaste of ever having been in love with you…
Do you remember when you said I didn’t deserve the sub-dermal
Bruising that he found so amusing or the private way he filleted
my heart and sewed me up having replaced only part? Your deception was like
reliving it all from the start, but worse in ways because of how versed
you are in mastering the art of cruelty-my perception of your greatness
proved to be a profound misconception as you wound up becoming
astoundingly perverse, floundering in your desperation to maintain a façade
of perfection-you’ve lost your foundation and the insulation concealing
your subversive methods of attaining self-satiation has dispersed to reveal
your integrity as rehearsed; you have been stripped bare; a stark revelation
of the emotional emaciation than darkens the air surrounding a boy
I used to care so much about, while now I can only stare blankly
in your direction, devoid of the elation you toyed with coyly
to reinforce the false sensation of caring reciprocation-I can only
avoid the infection that you impart, deflect it by rejecting from memory
any conception of the worthlessness you made me feel as a reflection
of your own inability to deal with life; I have absolved myself
of this burden, resolved my predilection for accepting abuse
through the conscious correction of every excuse I put to use
in failing to protect myself from your collection of unsolvable issues
that insist you deflect the hurt you cannot dissolve-you cannot
expect me to absorb the pain you project anymore, for the process
is too obtuse and suspect be allowed to persist as the depression
from which is devolves will never cease to exist, as you consistently
fail to dismiss it as illegitimate. I cannot assist in perpetuating
my own mistreatment anymore, which will desist as I have become
impervious, evolving into a woman you cannot resist, everything
you wish for and nothing you deserve-I am the opportunity you missed,
something you can reach for but can never hope to have as yours.
(I have restored the dignity you intended to suspend, have defended
it against a pending fate you had portended; but my efforts are amended
now, no longer expended on lending support to extend this distended
war of loving you, whose existence depended on whether I’d attended
your show, a believable, conceivable blend of caring put forth and contended-
your blatant pretend that such caring could mend our broken friendship offended
me; as such I comprehended the absence of your love, and thus the war was ended).
I had lacey white taffeta gown illusions and raspberry
custard contusions to remind me that we were my own
delusion of hoping you’d be more than a momentary intrusion
into my pinksoft allusion to the femininity I keep locked behind
a door disguised as promiscuity-I hide inside the whore
when I can sort and pack no more and I don’t want to be found
she deflects the sound of confounded meaning and shields
the sight of black belts wound ‘round wrists and bound to
bedposts at four in the morning; I twist free of the memory
of letting you have me and sink further within a shell
whose emptiness requires the temporary comfort
of foreign male parts inside her…I can’t live in this
darkness anymore. I’ve tallied my score and retrieved my clothes
from the floor, sore from the leather and the hipbones
and the ambivalent way you tethered me to stay before realizing
with dismay that you’d rather expend your efforts on any other
girl than the one laying beside you, cautiously insecure, who used to
pray for the strength to endure another day of wondering,
waxen and unsure, if you could ever love her… But the manner
in which your skin bristles like cantaloupe rind tells me otherwise
and I find myself naked beneath goosebumps that rise
in this stagnancy you’ve left behind of sourly recoiling from touch
like I’m the kind of girl who charges by the hour, so you leave me
to unwind, to unravel, to unfurl, powerless over mind, curled infantile
around the knees I scarred while discovering the world, blinded
by an innocence that circumvented common sense and I hurled
myself into the coalescence of life acceptance dispensed
indistinguishably between poppies and poison oak…
The best things on earth are cloaked in disaster, so I bask
in the smoke that rises like laughter from the one dying ember
of the cigarette left after everyone’s gone home for the
night, drug-choked and soaked in chemical bliss
but miss powder and pill still deceives you at will,
her goodbye kiss in the morning is one I won’t miss as her
momentary thrill cannot justify the guilt she’ll cause me to feel-
she will compel you to wish you’d never been born into these
streets filled with such profound loneliness; this is the life
we’ve created-and all we can do is embrace a belated sense
that we waited long enough before breaking down the dam
and succumbing to the imminence of the flood thought abated;
this is my date with fate long awaited and I patiently pace
within this state of being I’ve sedated, anticipating the
frothy rush of river tides that will crush me up against
the sides of this man-made, concrete amusement park ride;
I am elated to shed free this body I’ve so hated, to eliminate
the fleshy places you caressed, which I later grated free of all
skin-this is the baptism that will rid me of this sin of having
given myself to you all over again; I accept that ‘we’ will never be
and I am happily freed from years spent daydreaming
of an impossible future I thought I could see between you and me-
this unanticipated catastrophe, this antiquated tragedy, is a welcome
reprieve from the monotony of minutes that listlessly spin and weave
a lifetime that can achieve little more than dying painlessly,
crumpled, torn, and alone- and so I choose the violence of this
calamity, of concrete against bone, skull against stone, to shatter
the endlessness of this habitual ritual and leave it, broken, tattered
and worn, discarded in favor of being reborn.
[beneath the weeping willow whose consistent sag and sigh cannot begin to indemnify
how very forlorn she must be, I have planted the seeds of hope sprung from scorn;
they feed off the sap that bleeds through the gaps in her bark worn down by their greedily
lapping at each bead they can squeeze and extract from her vellum skin-she seeps sticky,
thickly, trickling from within, wilting wordlessly as she concedes and they steep in her
relinquishment of worldly, bodily needs; it is only through such final deeds as these
that any creature of nature, plagued by the illness of mortality, can ever expect
to truly be freed from this pain that depletes us of a willingness to live and ultimately
defeats us by breeding bitterness and hatred, succeeding only in tainting
the lives that we lead…]
I emerge from the bramble and weeds that converged atop the tinted skin
of my skeleton, a hue akin to blue; I breathe in, slick with morning dew,
without the copper-tainted aftertaste of ever having been in love with you…
Do you remember when you said I didn’t deserve the sub-dermal
Bruising that he found so amusing or the private way he filleted
my heart and sewed me up having replaced only part? Your deception was like
reliving it all from the start, but worse in ways because of how versed
you are in mastering the art of cruelty-my perception of your greatness
proved to be a profound misconception as you wound up becoming
astoundingly perverse, floundering in your desperation to maintain a façade
of perfection-you’ve lost your foundation and the insulation concealing
your subversive methods of attaining self-satiation has dispersed to reveal
your integrity as rehearsed; you have been stripped bare; a stark revelation
of the emotional emaciation than darkens the air surrounding a boy
I used to care so much about, while now I can only stare blankly
in your direction, devoid of the elation you toyed with coyly
to reinforce the false sensation of caring reciprocation-I can only
avoid the infection that you impart, deflect it by rejecting from memory
any conception of the worthlessness you made me feel as a reflection
of your own inability to deal with life; I have absolved myself
of this burden, resolved my predilection for accepting abuse
through the conscious correction of every excuse I put to use
in failing to protect myself from your collection of unsolvable issues
that insist you deflect the hurt you cannot dissolve-you cannot
expect me to absorb the pain you project anymore, for the process
is too obtuse and suspect be allowed to persist as the depression
from which is devolves will never cease to exist, as you consistently
fail to dismiss it as illegitimate. I cannot assist in perpetuating
my own mistreatment anymore, which will desist as I have become
impervious, evolving into a woman you cannot resist, everything
you wish for and nothing you deserve-I am the opportunity you missed,
something you can reach for but can never hope to have as yours.
(I have restored the dignity you intended to suspend, have defended
it against a pending fate you had portended; but my efforts are amended
now, no longer expended on lending support to extend this distended
war of loving you, whose existence depended on whether I’d attended
your show, a believable, conceivable blend of caring put forth and contended-
your blatant pretend that such caring could mend our broken friendship offended
me; as such I comprehended the absence of your love, and thus the war was ended).