I Close My Eyes

I close my eyes, and line up your life.

Searching for the pattern that keeps your heart beating.

What are you reliving? What are you repeating?

We sit here and we're arrogant

we can spin the moon blue,

with our beautiful theories and our well charted wounds.

the soul on our graphs, we throw dice and pull straws

all the while pretending, with effect we can cause.

I close my eyes, the lovers stand out.

the patterns emergent, the victims devout.

the torn little children, who went on to tear,

those they kissed and then slaughtered without a word or a care.

Ah, the knives have turned inward, as it happens with time

no more short lived obsessions, of sex and of rhyme

the widow who married her shadow has crashed,

her checkbook of poems, all written and cashed.

The eyes all looking backwards, a ghost enters the scene,

asking her to remember, the things she has seen.

The analyst quiet, with his hand on his face,

he asks me, "Is this not what you wanted? Your life yours to waste?"

We sit here and scheme, we sit here and plot.

we make steam from a train wreck.  We work the heart's knot,

that we claim to unravel, and though we cut and we tug

sometimes I think I lived better, with my old whiskey jug.

for if you take this away, there is nothing of note

a scared boy, a scared girl, with hands at their throats.

We have laughed at the blood, pretended not to be hurt,

we who made love in the acid, we who bathed in the dirt.

I guess there is no "Sorry" as there was no "Goodbye"

my vision exhausted, all that's left is a sigh.

a madman, a fool, an asshole, a jerk