The Enviable Truth

I feel too often we have to lie with our smiles and our words and say the truth with our eyes.

de·bauch·er·y

I have to make my voice a kind interruption
an invitation
a never overstep
a politeness unknown to me at the second
I may or more likely may very well know you too well
In the very midst,
Knowing what I don't know
Saying what I don't say
Doing what I never do
And then
Doing it all over again.
Just to live as you live better than me.

Charles Bukowski is better than anything

I'm sorry I didn't listen to you more. I'm sorry I didn't listen to halfway through whatever you were saying, at all. I'm sorry I didn't see you for what you were. And that what you were was to be slipped through my fingers in seconds. I'm sorry I didn't get your phone number. I'm sorry I didn't get your address. I'm sorry I didn't look deeply into your eyes I don't know the color--Or of the hair I think was black. I'm sorry I didn't get your surname, your more than nickname, your whatever would link me to you and the still knowing of you.
I'm sorry I didn't copy down what more I could do to be like you. For at twenty you amazed me and forever more meeting and passing a stranger on the street will be as close as I ever came to knowing you truly.
No matter how deeply you looked into my eyes and knew my first and last name and maybe even my address. How keenly you followed who I was and where I had been.
I'm sorry I wasn't better equipped to handle knowing and being around an artist such as yourself because now all that lines the insides of plates I scrape and knives I wash and buses I blend into is guilt, and that same worry as before that kept from knowing anything especially that hug that will never be cashed in on.

I only want sinking ships

I only want sinking ships. I only want the disasters. I hold out until the time is right, until the flicker is gone right from your eyes. Right at that moment, the hound dogs come out. There starts the whispering, the yearning.

All I want is for you to echo how much I don't want myself, in the end, and the pounding, the scratching, the digging leads to the surface, and right there, I'll love you! Tell me I'm not good enough, and everything will be at your command, because a part of me believes, more than believes, I'm truly not. A huge f'ing part.

For the record, I don't entirely believe it was just pity

Think about how much  you owe on the water bill. Think about stomach pain. No, don't think about stomach pain. Think about baseball. No don't think about baseball. Or you'll risk thinking about the bedroom for your brother. The one your mother made six months before she died. The same room the cousins you raised now sleep in, probable will until they graduate from high school. Just think about anything but him.
Think about crow bars! Play the game over and over again until this awkward moment that these held in tears have sense to fall into passes. Don't think about how he'd walk into a room and be the only one to say, and mean, "that drawing is good."Don't think about how he saved your life. Don't think about his name. Don't think about his career. Don't think about his life so inappropriately connected to yours for  a blip of time stolen with but the price of sheer despair and pity. Don't think about him. Don't think about him. Don't think about how there was only one man who made you believe in angels. Because you'll think about maybe you'll survive. Maybe you'll surface. You'll think things aren't so bad. You'll think to try harder. Just for him. When you know he'll say 'No, just for you."

Clouds

I realized I should live the life I have. The life of a young, slightly attractive woman with some spare money and maybe not too much talent or sense but ambition. I'd give a kiss to any man who'd give me a chance at this world. Lay my life down on the line for five cents worth of credibility in a good company. I know who myself to be. And this is not her. Weak, sick, not admired, unprepared, flailing, blaming, sleeping too much and working too little.
Whatever this comes to, it can't come to this. I'm worth more that this. I see more than this. I know more than this. I don't have to live this way. Who cares if I've failed? Since when has this world built itself up from anything but failure?

Fifteen Minutes

"Are you okay?"
He shouted through the passenger side window of his car.
I gave him a thumbs up and a weak smile.
"Are you sure?"
Thumbs up and slightly better looking smile.
"I'll buy you a drink when I get back in 15 minutes!"
He shouted again through his passenger side window rolling it up this time and driving away. As if that offer made all difference in the world. I'll be in the arms of someone softly holding me in 15 minutes. I'll be crying my eyes out to family in fifteen minutes. I'll be forgetting that I had a nervous break down in front of a bar in fifteen minutes. I'll be vacuuming the floor I promised to vacuum in fifteen minutes. I'll be doing the dishes, the trash, put the dog to bed,  all the menial work that keeps a relationship alive.
I'll be soothing myself, I'll be talking myself down, I'll be making amends, concessions and compromises that will hurt but be for the ultimate good in fifteen minutes.
In fifteen minutes time this will all be over, brushed away and gone because I am who I am and there's nothing that drink can do to make that any different.

And after fifteen minutes I don't know what the hell I'll do with this life.