1.
There is an ugly space inside my head
That I have entered, locked the door behind.
The key? I swallowed it in lieu of bread,
And wait, so placid, in unfriendly mind.
Some men have offered to break down those walls,
To bludgeon hapless barricades to dust;
They move in with their mental wrecking balls
And start to swing, until I beg them just
To let me be. Let ugliness remain.
Perhaps within this cell I can decide
If there is room for me in your domain
Or if I must in solitude reside.
A chance exists, while I in prison dwell,
My heart's decay will not taint every cell.

2.
How shall you know me if I claim I love?
As Cleopatra clasped upon her breast
A poisoned asp, let fatal venom prove
Her feeling, if emotion she suppressed?
In this way should I strive to show my heart?
Or shall I hope for argent light to shine
An echo of my soul, and play the part
Of servant to this ardent art of mine?
Appearances may yet in both deceive.
I, for my own sake, could my own death seek,
And you could not know which choice to believe
At last, that I was strong in love, or weak
In faith. I lack the proof to make me bold,
So I'll my love conceal lest you be cold.

3.
Is any chance at love, then, worth the risk
Of over-feeling each and every slight?
Would not a heart I've fired out of bisque
Increase my happiness? If never sight
Of any blue-eyed, burning, handsome men
(Though I'll confess I'd rather eyes were brown)
Should bounce across my optic nerve again,
Is not that open heart a waiting wound?
My lack of soul may cause them to recant,
And I'll grow elderly without a love.
I with my present heart organic can't
Make guarantees it shall sufficient prove.
The empty clash of gears at least can serve
To bolster me when I have lost my nerve.

4.
I know you do not understand the voice
That whispers forcefully inside my head.
I know you think it just a simple choice
To hear or not to hear, to put to bed
The shrieking offspring of undiscipline
And simply sleep, possessing all my mind.
In difficulty stumble--should I sin,
Denying word and soul are intertwined
When you have said that God has gifted me?
How could I then refuse to pay them heed
And thrust my fingers in my ears to free
My thoughts from his possessing? Is my creed
So flexible that I can silence God?
(I pray you do not have the gall to nod.)

5.
I wait. My heart keeps sliding to my shoes
With every glance at clocks that slowly spin.
Too late, I learn impatience is a noose
Constricting, trapping all the blood within
My aching head. My fingers start to flail
A rough tattoo on my unlucky chair.
The clock stands still. I choose not to inhale
Lest ticks be missed in harsh inrushing air.
The clock controls my fate. If it should cease
My heart would too. Yet dead I still would wait.
With swift unblinking eyes at last at peace,
No force could my stark vigilance abate
Except your presence. Eyes, despairing, glance
At tardy hands that hinder my romance.

6.
At last there is a subtle twinge of joy
That seems so strange it stirs me from my sleep;
But happiness has been too often coy
For me ever to trust that it be deep
And lasting. Softly, so, I try to tread
Upon this life. And it so easy seems
While I am floating, heels high over head,
Attempting not to wake from gentle dreams.
I have no proof my heart is large enough
To hold this love and joy in it besides.
Perhaps it will just burst under the rough
And fearsome pressure that in me resides.
I am indentured to this prick of glee,
And pray my senses don't return to me.

7.
So buoyed am I by love I have become
A vacant, staring, bubble-headed girl.
I'm twice as light as air and floating some
Twelve thousand miles above the listless world.
Why is it that my joy must make of me
A clich�-ridden fool? I cannot seem
To find new words to set my poem free,
And all my weary syntax can't redeem
The smug convention of my joyous love,
And I must rest my longing for such art
As I can never satisfy enough
So long as happiness inspires my heart.
If, as I fear, my joy occludes my mind,
I'll seek creation of another kind.

8.
You make me feel like Toto glimpsing Oz,
Where once I was content with monochrome.
I frolic now on Technicolor paws
And trust in golden paths to lead me home.
So, should a scarecrow start to speak to me,
I shall not be surprised. Within my head,
The physics of impossibility
Have all been cast aside, and every thread
That binds me to this world I choose to snap.
And twine the ragged ends around your own.
My overburdened eyes with love enwrap
And I again am blind, but you alone
Have sparked in me the variegated hues—
A purely mental pair of ruby shoes.

9.
Were I to pluck this tender stalk of wheat,
So fresh and green, before it issued grain,
There'd be no hope for bread. And all my sweet
Entreaties could not make it grow again.
I fear I'll always be at war with time.
The planet and I spin so out of phase.
I'm wanting ever to believe that I'm
A victim of my own forgotten phrase
To steal your soul, and ripen all your heart.
I eat of what my eager words have picked,
But green fruit to my tongue is far too tart,
My strong assurance by impatience tricked.
Your love, like wheat, destroyed when it is rushed,
But my heart too unwilling to be hushed.

10.
Though my beloved lives, I'm but a ghost,
For his embraces are more real than mine.
As I, transparently, attempt to host
His soul within my breast, but cannot find
A cabinet that's thick enough to hold
His warm solidity in thinnest air.
And all my wreathing tendrils are too cold
To comfort human tenderness in there.
Is my affection wispy as my heart
That flinches with the tickle of his touch,
Or does the bitter anguish of each smart
Prove that I love enough, if not too much?
There's nothing I need more than to be real,
And welcome substance to the things I feel.

11.
So when you close your eyes, what do you see?
Does darkness reign within your tender shell,
Or does the phantom of your pageantry
Still frolic in your too-well lighted hell?
Do subtle buds and cunning blossoms spring
And twine throughout the gridwork of your heart
More fixed than concrete? Spirits swallowing
The darkest, direst images, impart
Upon your weary, conscience-laden mind
The fear that substance isn't what it seems,
And you have turned into another kind
Of specter lurking only in your dreams.
Aurora pulls you from your sleepless bed,
And still wan demons dance within your head.

12.
With all the love my friends seek to endow
Upon my shrieking head, there is a core
Untouched by ministrations, even now,
As loveless as it ever was before.
There's more pain in one lover's thoughtless word
Than all the jibes companions often shout,
And all the jeers a lover ever heard
Cannot compare to when the fire dies out
And strong indifference yet reigns supreme.
Cold ashes lie upon my steadfast heart,
Blown there from his, perhaps, or so it seems,
And I, in soot, lie drowned, return to art.
For words shall not betray my aching need,
And neither joy nor anguish in me breed.

13.
If life still seems tomorrow as it now
Explodes within the confines of my heart,
I have no wish to wake. Upon my brow
Then place a crown of laurel for my art;
And in my palm then drop a prick of blood,
More red than Valentines that never came.
And to my lips then press the fragile bud
Whose beauty I have envied. And the same
Soft petals gather at unmoving feet
As if those feet would stir and on them tread.
All this and more should heart forget to beat,
And brain lie dormant in my frigid head.
I pray to God to heed these fruitless cries,
But He no action takes, makes no replies.

14.
I shall, I think, make of my heart a stone
That neither cruelly cuts nor brittle breaks,
And cease to recognize pain as my own,
And laughingly regard these former aches.
To doctors it shall strong and steady seem,
And seem to beat, and seem to furnish blood.
But secretly I'll contemplate my scheme
That I be no more subject to the rude
And wretched circumstance that brought me low.
And if my heart should break, just as before,
And painlessly lie crippled by a blow,
Bestow it on a smelter for the ore.
My heart now safe, I move on to define
The substance that would best become my mind.

15.
I used to trust that trust would keep me young,
And loved the thought that love could make me wise,
So never dreaming to my lover's tongue
Would cling the poisoned treacle of his lies.
Yet fearing what that fear would say of me
(That I so soon refused what I had felt)
I placed love on my face incessantly,
And hid from sunlight, lest it cause me melt
In my reserve, and strong truth trickle forth,
That I had ceased to care where once I wept.
Too brief enchantments had done nothing worth
To breach the fortress where my heart was kept.
Though trust was dead, pride spurred me to conspire,
And he, unwitting, loved his trusted liar.

16.
There is a love that I cannot deserve,
So empty as I'm feeling, even now.
And still I stand, forsaken by my nerve
And losing every word that could tell how
There is a man who speaks of tenderness,
Such tenderness that I no longer feel;
But given to another, even less
A gift than when it first implored me kneel
At feet whose body wished that I would stand.
But standing brought my eyes in line with his,
And I could see I loved another man,
And there were other lips I'd rather kiss.
But here I still unmoving do remain,
And act as if I'm sparing him such pain.

17.
Your suicide of spirit may have pure
Intentions, but there is a vibrant streak
Of malice gleaming within heart demure.
Protesting moral compass is too weak
A claim upon belief. Do you excuse
Your dearth of conscience simply as the means
For empathy to flourish, and refuse
To exercise your mental guillotines?
Decapitate dishonesty unborn.
Do you owe no more justice to your world
But this contempt for righteousness? You scorn
Integrity as if virtue lies pearled
In separate shells of variegated hue,
And you can choose which gem is best for you.

18.
I'm starting to believe you live in vain,
Secluded within forty miles of steel,
Too angrily denying even pain
If agony betrays the way you feel.
So sullenly intend to intercede
(Once you become aware that danger looms)
Work to convince your heart it doesn't bleed
And mop up all the evidence from rooms
With barren walls, and floors made all of stone.
In shirtsleeves shiver at pervading cold.
No soul here for convincing but your own,
A task too large for one so rarely bold.
Accept that soon those cracks will open wide,
A yawning gulf with emptiness inside.

19.
Athena shall not mourn when you grow weak,
Nor soft embrace your battle-weary limbs.
Grey eyes would flash in fury should you speak
The slightest discontent at Homer's hymns
To beauty that you cannot touch or hold.
Is there no truth outside of glory's sphere
That you could yearn to succor? Must the cold
Unyielding silence of Athena's ear
Be sworn the only refuge of your heart?
I pray you are not earnest in your choice,
So steadfastly embracing distant art
That mortal woman cannot find a voice
With which to reach you, save we shriek in verse,
'Till laurels crown our fast-approaching hearse.

20.
I'd rather die than be completely numb
With life just ricocheting off my eyes.
Much rather shriek in terror than stand dumb,
Accepting all my gross iniquities.
There is a point beyond I dare not go
That cauterizes even healthy flesh.
Such searing wounds too quickly healing, though
So haltingly applied. It would enmesh
Me deeply in the absence of my pain,
And I'd find beauty in such bland surcease
That even joy could not replace again.
At far too great a cost I'd purchase peace.
Misplaced regard have mortals for our lives.
If pain be conquered, emptiness survives.

21.
We knew each other once, and now I fear
Your helpless loss of memory has turned
Existence into nothing more than mere
Documentation; so piled up and burned
Into the flesh of my air-starving lung.
I gasp and for your recognition plead,
For seven years too silent on your tongue
Have transformed independence into need.
And smaller now, each synapse in my brain
If it no longer has the need to know
Each second of the thoughts that should remain
Within your sullen mind. I try to show
Indifference when you deny my past,
But my facade of strength will never last.

22.
So now I know. So now I can proceed.
So now the empty wailings of my heart
Are too attuned to such gigantic greed
That I must trawl for pain to fuel my art.
So you are not in love. It seems a crime
That all my energies have come to this,
And I can murder sentiment with rhyme,
No weapon but the pen clenched in my fist.
So think I then, when you bid your good-byes,
That I'll distill some mental kerosene,
Ignite pathetic doggerel, or lies,
Until I've cauterized the poem clean.
I volunteer to stand atop a wall,
As if, if I could choose, I'd choose to fall.

23.
I used to think I'd never comprehend
The longing to destroy and not create.
But now I scurry to embrace my end,
And feel no more despair over my fate.
An arbiter with Satan never comes
To plead for death, as it is death he fears.
But I who long for respite am too numb
To bargain for extension of my years.
Destruction seems a holy lack of pain,
No evil lurking within entropy.
And Satan bares his teeth as I remain
Within the haven death became for me.
Now laugh at youths refusing to believe
That death, as sweet as life, can be conceived.

24.
I never thought my helplessness would grow
Into this panicked stranger in my mind.
I never thought the time would come when no
Amount of coaxing could tempt me to kind
Or gentle words of pity and remorse.
But come it did, and screams so very harsh
Came bursting from my lungs, till I was hoarse.
Their bitterness eroding healthy flesh.
And then you died. You simply ceased to be.
Those ugly words still hanging in the air,
And now that stranger has turned into me
And there is nothing left me to repair
Your broken heart or mine. We both are dead.
You in reality; I in my head.