Are You Aware the Shape I'm In?

I seem to be exhausting words but not emotion
as I scribble idle thoughts on the backs of pages.


Fill me up with ketchup
and honey mustard,
and watch as I bloat up slowly,
my stomach expanding,
filled with sugary sweetness and heat,
and smile at me blankly
as I continue to grow,
morphing into this creature that you will claim
you never knew,
but that’s a lie as I see you standing there,
blankly smiling at me,
pretending not to see the chasm growing within me
as you pour dirty condiments down my throat.


I try to write in tones familiar to the human condition.
I try to write in tones that encapsulate the entirety of being
and make the world spin in such a way that
upside down is right side up, and in which
the leaning towers of Pisa never fell into that deep pit
that harboured Lucifer, as that is now on the
same plane as the human consciousness.


Write, she said,
make words appear on the blank canvas of your soul,
curl the letters around the page so that you can
make art where there once was a tree,
tall and majestic,
proud and strong ,
rooted and ancient,
and now it is skinned and crushed,
molded to this stark white face to which I take
my ten cent pen and attempt to
recreate history in the form of universal song.


Trivial,
your smile said it all,
trivial.
That is what I was to you,
a word, not even an action;
a useless sentiment for a useless relationship.


You needed me when you were sad,
and now that the sun has risen
I become but a memory,
a fleeting thought when you hear that song play on the radio,
the one with the man crooning on his guitar,
speaking of how horses ran wild,
and then all I can think about is how you broke me in,
saddled, reined, and rode me into submission,
only to sell me off to some factory
that used my brittle bones to make super glue.


I close my eyes and describe this eternal need and want
that I harbour in my heart
for you and your eyes to traverse the distant lands that
amalgamate in my head,
as little babes with no arms float around the limbo
that is our collective consciousness,
soul, if you may,
rounded and perfectly shaped,
branded with a seal that belongs to no god.