Poems: 240213 - February 24th, 2013

[Robert Morpheal]

240213A
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It is the experiences
we have not had,
that start to consume us
as we hesitate
towards the end.

Slowly giving up
on much of what we planned,
for the sake of intensity,
in the more immediate moments,
of being forced to depart.

Having no definite destination,
and unable to take anything along,
we cling to whatever is left,
before being broken off
and herded through the gate.

We never know for certain
what type of ending will befall us,
when we finally go
into the slaughterhouse
and meet our private executioners.

You left me to regret the fact
that we never actually made love,
or that the party we planned
never really had a chance to happen.
There was a film we never watched.

There was always something,
that chanced to get in the way.
There was always someone
whom you preferred to other men,
treating me like I was a dead soldier.

The losses tend to mount
much higher than I thought they would.
It was all that moving on
and going forward, in anticipation,
as if the answer was just around the corner.


I wonder if you found your’s,
though I have not really found mine.
And I needed mine
as much as you needed your’s.
It’s been that way since the beginning of time.

We are all prisoners in this dictatorship,
forced to say hallelujahs to the one at the top.
Most of us dread being found out
as to our unfailing insincerity,
and fearing a ticket on the last train out.

The crematoria are working night and day,
turning corpses into ash.
We all want something before we go,
knowing we can never really please the leader,
and we are hated by the high command.

You never thought to let me,
as if that fact might save me
from some greater form of wrath.
You never thought that it ends the very same,
no matter which, one way or the other.

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240213B
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You did not choose to make love to me
and we did not make culture together,
as any sort of repressed intimacy.

The guards laughed at our failed attempts.
They knew they had won.
We were prisoners imprisoning ourselves.

They gathered up their winnings,
growing bored from watching
our various expressions of pain.

You locked the door on us,
with the smile of an angel of death,
and I felt the touch of your dark wings.

I might as well have been plague stricken,
and you might as well have tossed my corpse
to the hungry black rats in alleyways.

Perhaps you did exactly that,
in some previous incarnation,
that we repeat in successive generations.

The script changes to suit the times,
but the paradigm keeps repeating,
same as a snake eating its own tail.

Maybe you followed me
through the annals of history,
so you could repeatedly break my heart.

I do not know that I really believe
in time, space and destiny,
though cruelty is always a fact.

We failed at saving the world,
and we failed at having a great party.
In the end we failed to be free.

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240213C
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I wanted to go to bed early to dream,
but I am too full of the taste of death,
to really be willing to sleep.

My fingers feel so very numbed
by the prolonged lack of your touch.
They feel nothing now but hunger for you.

I wanted to get away from it all, baby,
though nothing I ever said was really understood.
You could have helped me get away, baby.

I know you could have, but you never would,
really help me to get away from it, baby.
You always made other plans, didn’t you, baby.


Everyone has something bigger, better on the go,
even if it is nothing much, and no one knows.
That’s how we always lose, isn’t it baby ?

We are all dying now, from unknown causes,
and none of us expects or needs the usual sympathies.
Though I would have loved to make love to you, baby.

They say it is too late, no matter what the verdict is,
everyone is condemned in the end, baby.
It’s the way the game is played, and always was, baby.

You can read the pages in the news, for answers,
or you can call any of the numbers that offer promises,
but in the end it all ends the same, baby.

It all ends sadly, no matter what we chance to do,
the way a precious broken thing, becomes so poignant.
You never stopped to pick up my pieces, did you, baby ?

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240213D
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You might think of me,
now and again,
though I hardly know why
anyone really would.

I don’t think that much,
of me, or of you,
knowing how we slipped
between the lines.

Same as other mercenaries,
you never called,
you never came,
preferring other battles.

I could have loved you,
but you could never love me.
We came from different armies,
taking different sides.


That is the way it is,
with chance meetings,
among the rich and the poor,
the winners and the losers.

We were only another episode
in the same divine comedy,
one sending the other
to a new sort of hell.

That is the way it is
with eternal recurrence,
nothing changes but the language
of cadence calling.

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240213E
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I imagine that when I am gone
I will leave all the wanting behind,
to keep on wanting
what I never had any of.

My wanting will be left to want you,
and if it haunts you with wanting,
I will no longer be there to stop it
from ravenously wanting you.

Nothing I can really do
about the way it is with the universe.
Something always remains behind
as the remainder in the ruined equation.

I tried to count you into my life,
but you counted yourself out.
You added up and multiplied
in ways that I came to nothing.

I used to imagine it could have been us,
though that is far from fact and truth,
You were a kind of beauty
and I was a kind of horrible beast.

In those days you could have saved me,
but you abandoned me to messiahs
whom I could not understand nor respect,
in terms of any types of real intimacy.

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240213F
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I keep looking for a real invitation
from one or another type of beauty.
Something that would make me forget
all the beauty that I never really knew.

There are too many types of pain,
and too many types of solitude.
It all leaves a persistent gnawing feeling
of having found no answer to the question.

I am not sure if there is a question anymore,
though I once believed that there really was.
I would rather find ways to evade asking
and forego any sorts of answering.

There is nothing that I really have
that was not meant for you.
Everything I love makes me think of you,
as something too absent.

The torturer knows how that goes,
but you seem to love how he tortures me.
You could have ruined his pleasure,
but you never really did.

Sometimes I believe I know who you are,
but most often I have no idea who you might be.
I would know you if I saw you,
even if we had never met before.

I wonder sometimes if you really enjoy
these screams from the rack
as the torturer stretches my soul,
knowing that he can always break it.


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