this infection

Watching your dark coat retreat
against that dark night was enough
to make me realize that we would no longer meet
in the theatre on those long days. Your cuffs,
your suits, your shirts no longer need mending,
although I was happy to do it.
I will no longer watch you pretending
on stage, nor admire the way your clothes fit
on those long limbs. You are the only man
big enough for me, the only man I could
picture myself being with. I no longer can
avert my eyes from you and raise my hood.

I look at you from across the room.
I know that I will not see you soon.

Every day I watch the same man kill himself
over and over and over again.

A flash of light shrieks over the stage.
He has left with the sounds of a car.

His family stays.
There is no one downstage

and he bounds toward me,
a grin on his face.
I, too, would take a pride
in such a performance.
I, too, would do the same

but it is hard to match him
with the man i just saw,
broken with time and age.

Makeup has made him look
that way. I watch him get ready
each day

but he is not the same man
that he is onstage. Still, it's hard
to tell thenm apart, although they
walk and they talk and they move
in different ways.

Every day I watch him onstage
and every day it's the same. He kills himself
over and over again.

No one wants to buy my soul,
there is no price that they will pay.
No one knows how deep it goes.

Inside of me there is a hole
that withers, rots, and then decays.
No one wants to buy my soul.

Ravens, blackbirds, rooks and crows -
nothing keeps the birds at bay.
No one knows how deep it goes.

I've nothing left that can be sold.
No one knows just what's at stake.
No one wants to buy my soul.

I go barefoot when it is cold
to focus on a different ache.
No one knows how deep it goes.

I'm 29 and I am old.
Now everybody looks away.
No one wants to buy my soul,
no one knows how deep it goes.

i no longer find your particular kind of madness
charming. you do strange drugs
and chase young girls the way you
once chased me.

i was too young and naive to know what
i was getting into when i first met you.
you charmed me. i was an easy mark.

i was only eighteen and you swallowed me whole.
i was the rot in your stomach, the one you could
not get away from. i was the one who followed you.
i knew your every move

and when you left, you left me
hating the one you left me for,
when i should have been hating you.

but  i can remember the day i stopped loving you,
the relief of no longer being two.

you are the same, and i am the one who has changed.
now i can see that you are the one who is sick. not me.

you were the problem. not me.

i was only eighteen.

Someone's put me in a wooden box,
I can't get out unless somebody helps -
keys and doorknobs; hinges, bolts and locks.

A living doll that eats and breathes and talks -
someone's left me aging on the shelf.
Someone's put me in a wooden box.

They diagnosed me with dementia praecox.
They hide me when I'm in declining health.
Keys and doorknobs; hinges, bolts and locks.

I am the girl to whom most trouble flocks.
The only love I know comes from the belt.
Someone's put me in a wooden box.

When the truth came out, it was a shock.
You can't imagine just how bad it felt.
Keys and doorknobs; hinges, bolts and locks.

Words are cruel - instead, hit me with rocks.
My secrets have been told by someone else.
Someone's put me in a wooden box,
keys and doorknobs; hinges, bolts and locks.

In this barren bone-place
there is a chill that may or may not
be yours.

They have buried you deep, I know.
A bed of roses covers you now,
but I do not know just how far
the dirt goes.

I have forgotten.
It has been twenty years since they locked you up
in the trunk of the car. They drove you far -
you were in bad shape, but you were alive.

On that bare day on Lemon Road
they doused you with gas and they
set you on fire. A flick of the match
and you died.

They say you inhaled the smoke.

I have forgotten this, the day of your death.
It has passed by this year without even a glance
at the books that were written about you,
and I am sorry that I did not spare a thought for you
although I do now, remembering the day you died
and the events leading up to your death.

the trinkets on my shelf,
all the things i kept
belong to someone else.

(i stole them when you left.)
they are not mine.
you left me bereft.

i thought that, with time,
the ache would fade.
i was inclined

to believe that things would change.
they did not.
things stayed the same

and i knew you forgot
the promises you brought.

between the silences, there is an echo
of all the things we never said.
it just goes to show

how fucked up in the head
you would have to be to love
someone who loved someone else instead.

i face the obligations of
a regular life
and i am sick of

the lows that come with the highs,
the mood swings,
and how you lied

about so many things.
i cried
because you never gave me your ring.

you said you would die if i died
but you lied. you didn't even try.

My sonnets are quite terrible
I really don't have much to say
They're awful and they're horrible
They're all that I can write today
My coffee's almost done and gone
I really cannoy write today
I've been awake for much too long
I really don't have much to say
I was awake til half-past two
It was impossible to sleep
I did not know what I should do
And I grew bored of counting sheep

I really don't have much to say
There's nothing I can write today

We tracked her to a point, then she was lost.
With years that passed, all trace of her was lost.

We thought that we had pinned down where she was.
It did not last. All trace of her was lost.

Someone saw her standing on a bridge.
It happened fast. All trace of her was lost.

They said that was the way that it should be.
The stone was cast. All trace of her was lost.

Isabel, what have you done? How could you?
We stood aghast. All trace of her was lost.

The poisoned apple falling from the tree,
the finger-prick bleeds on the spinning wheel.
The princess in the tower is not free,
she's been pierced with the wicked witch's needle.
The hair she once let down has now been shorn,
the gowns she used to wear are tattered rags.
They tricked her so she gave up her first born,
there's nothing left to ride. They killed her stag.

The princes don't know where they ought to look,
there's many men but there aren't many girls.
They've been plucked from some kind of fairy book
and wander, lost, in some strange fairy world.

All those girls are rolled up into one,
all of them to marry the same son.