The Calm State of Chaos

I don’t understand anything about love—

one day I’m faceless, sunken in solitude—

the next a rare smile, a reminder life

isn’t meant for dying.

I don’t understand why women are scared—

my eyes are porcelain balls.

my hair, a dusty cobweb.

I shame myself every night

before I flip the lights off

and darkness sits on my eyelids.

I have this monster that spins

the same obsession,

the same calm chaotic blend

of merciless clinging.

I try and squash it with darkness

but it spins dry rhetoric

like a restless wheel headed

toward hell. I don’t know how

to stop my clinginess.

I throw it in the dumpster

but it claws inside my mouth

and rests somewhere

in my diaphragm. the lights don’t help—

so I stay away from myself.

from women,

from the head tilts and glinted eyes,

from any form of affection.

I let cigarettes press their feet

across my teeth.

call the footprints

close enough to a woman’s patience—

her willingness to stay,

to say, yes, you are aflame,

but I won’t try and put you out.

I’ll bend the fire to your want-

I’ll allow you to love me.

but fire always kills

and cigarettes clog

and the earth recedes

into a black fog:

darkness that eats,

leaves silence curled in a ball.

there are strings of light waiting to burst

from my throat,

but they cling to everything.

they walk across my words,

relight my cigarettes,

stare out windows

when solitude crawls in

from the moon.

I’m always afraid of myself.

I can’t hide anything from quiet.

so I stare at ceilings

and let my absence speak-

because, my presence is too much

to be good enough.