Don't call

Love of my life,
pot-headed tramp,
guardian angel,
jug-headed bitch,

9 times
you rip apart
the open wound
that you un-stitched,
at the wrong time;
each time you try
surgery
with trembling hands
and amputate instead

love of my life,
pot-headed tramp,

You're impotent now,
and I'm not sane,
you did 'it', and how,
don't call again.

'And from here the well-loved Brutus stabbed and mark ye how the blood did flow, like rushing out of doors, for Brutus as you know was Caesar's Angel. When Caesar saw him stab, ingratitude much greater than the traitor's arm quite vanquished him. Then burst his mighty heart and at the base of Pompei's statue, while all else ran blood, great Caesar fell.'
William Shakepeare

'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows'

-The Tempest,
William Shakespeare.

2:43 a.m

I sleep late
rather often
and get up early
hardly there
and wonder if
your walls are better
than the palms
I planted there

I wonder if
the breeze is worth
the cold and wet
and sun and rain
or if the walls
that keep you safe
are charming in
their brick and pain

I wonder if
I am morose
for lack of shelter
and lack of wear
and wonder if
you smile too much
because you breath
a stale-ish air

I wonder if
you draw too heavy
and leave too little
to exhale
or if it will be
my end to
draw easy
on this heavy air

The Final Quatrain

I built a massive city with you.

Large structures, tall buildings, open spaces, gardens, restaurants, bars, alley ways, parking lots and I marked them all with cryptic words, undecipherable to the rest of the world. I don't know if you remember the marks. I did what we couldn't in the real world. Illusion is the first of all pleasures. So in the specificity of the design of our city I included all your idiosyncrasies. It was a beautiful mesh of all our basics: color, taste and touch.

I built the axis of the city. The tallest tower. I built it and I gave it to you. I stocked it up with silken robes. I lit warm fires inside. I never stayed there, but as a guest. I preferred looking up at you. I preferred believing you were closer to the sun than I was.

I built an altar for you. As a compliment to the tower. A celebration of you, for the world. I felt selfish about keeping you to myself. It was the first thing that started to rot when the city began to decay.

I built walls, all around. Defending the city from everything around. When the day came, I couldn't. But the walls worked for a while. Till you wanted to stay within them. They even looked aesthetic.

I built roads to lead you out. I built carriages to bring you in. I carved poetry on the walls that I built to remind you of why we built the city in the first place.

Why did we build this city? We agreed that we both had different conceptions of what a city should be than the rest of the world. But it became difficult to build a functional unit in isolation from the rest of the world. So I started leaving, always to return.

Last when I returned it was at your behest.

The city has suffered since then. You haven't tended to it. I've come back and waited for too long and the isolation that I built is unbearable without its cause. So I am leaving the city. Not how it is. Because it breaks my heart to see it rot. I will destroy everything that you abandoned. I will not let my poems on your walls decay. I will tear it down, stone by stone. I won't make the place virginal again, but I will make it unlike our city. And I will erase the mention of it. So that those try to build a city do not fear the attempt.

The story of decay is sad and long. It belongs to an idealist and his muse. It's really a story of how the world was right. Nothing worth knowing about.

I feel a lack of ability in trying to conclude this in soothing verse, and so in brusque prose I declare, that this is the final quatrain, of poetry, in motion, over all the walls of the city that was spoken of.

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feelings"

Oscar Wilde

Bad Poetry

In so many words
let me say
what I meant,
in the first place
that is to say
I only wanted
to let you know
that in one line
I changed the words
and I could say
what I wanted to
and what I didn't want
to say.