Human Wreckage (Part 3)
I can’t walk out on this feeling,
Cigarette burns phantom-project onto
The backs of my hands like leprosy,
Hackles rise on the nape of my neck,
Ghostly pliers wrench my fingernails out,
Dripping protoplasm, blood and skin
In white china wash basins.
I don’t smoke anymore or miscalculate where
To stub the butts; I fear only life in progress and
My facial disintegration in the silvered baubles of man’s
Vanity, aging and wrecking away.
The Japanese don’t torture me,
And never did; I don’t bite my nails,
So blame imagination for this particular afflict.
The pain sourced from loss of youth, of not having things
To look forward to, of you and I when young.
Of holding hands, fingers slick with chip fat and
Salt grains and vinegar, on choppy seaside promenades,
Looking out at the distant sea,
Wordlessly proclaiming and swearing
To that promiscuously bruised horizon
Of love never ending, eternal.
You are still by my side, but you are no longer her,
She of the curious beauty and eager body moves,
Rapid foreplay and quick, easy orgasms.
And I am alien even to myself; we are not
The callow couple, innocent, loyal to dreams…in love.
I want the past back, but it is a
Slithering rush of dead air, filtering nowhere,
Only breathing migraine memory in my head.
Blindingly compelling with a litany of longing:
I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back…
The impossibility of my one object of desire, my past,
Grins wolfishly, shakes head and wags finger,
Vampirically draining my soul from off white to near dark.
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