it’s chills when i get close but it’s nowhere to be found, when i brush that bad word i stop myself from jotting down it
some things are meant to be forgotten
i’m really not articulating that very well
on purpose?
do you hear lightning before or after it strikes?
how does that bitch know when a quake is coming?
my hands get really cold sometimes and i get really gangrene sometimes and i say the wrong things sometimes because it’s the same thing i find that you face over and over looking at the same thing over and over before it makes sense
when it does tell me where its meaning went
JD- Center Nowhere is about not knowing if you love someone or not.
it was yesterday
(no it wasn’t
but it felt like it)
when you told me
“i can’t picture myself in the future
with anybody else but you”
and that made my heart stop
because i could see myself in the future
absolutely
with a hundred different people
and a hundred different outcomes
but i couldn’t see you
that hurt me bad
the same way you would’ve hurt yourself if i would’ve said what i said here
my future is clear
but my conscience isn’t
what i said
is not what i meant
i remember when you said
(you didn’t say this
because you can’t)
“my love is an ocean
bountiful in bloom as can be”
i would have told you to stop it
it was too sappy to be sweet
and you would’ve laughed
and i’d have laughed
but that wouldn’t be me
how many times haven’t i been able to tread waters
when i’m in too deep
and it pulls me even further
and then i can’t breathe
and it holds me even tighter
and i can feel my head
get lighter
and lighter
i couldn’t write poetry
because with every line i was choking
suffocating to myself
until the stanza derailed
and i could breathe again
it takes me back to then
(back then, yesterday
where i would have…
…
…you know?)
with your temple pressed against my chest
and my heart beating two times too fast
when i wanted to say something
but then you said it for me
“i can’t picture myself in the future
with anybody else but you”
(that you said
this next part isn’t me)
“otherwise i’d be dead”
and you would’ve laughed
and i’d have laughed
but that wasn’t you
and that wasn’t true
that’s yesterday in my head
today i’m looking at you
wide-eyed and splendid, with an entire life ahead
(me too)
that i can’t picture
spending with (anybody else but) you
because when i looked at you back then
i knew i’d already killed you
truth was the final blow
(that i know)
and so
i lied
and we’re alive
tomorrow
you’ll be on your own again
looking for love again
and i’ll be on my own
with a future ahead
we leave behind
free to unwind
free to live
on another road
JD- What Happens Next is about not knowing what to do when you haven’t chosen someone else but they’ve chosen you.
l. they were two of a kind
and totally captured
by the adventures they had shared and conquered
a pair
of rambunctious runaways
come from
some place before
he does recall
when she and he weren’t familiar
when the future was an ocean
and uncertain
swept away
by serendipitous sea
the circumstance of which
remains to be
seen
these were things
however
we only chose to believe
because she had been lost
since his arrival
ll. the child
we called him
hers was unspoken
and resigned further west
where the sun sets
a great hollow rests
“should you seek truth
and should you find answers
you will follow its shadow
to an ending”
many days and many nights
the child voyaged further
to the end of the earth
to find her
at its end
there was a hollow
the child reconciled
with the brilliant aura of truth
“i know you,” it said
and then vanished again
III. what is youth to a creature who has never heard its own bones creak and shudder underneath the weight of this body’s gravity?
who has never been held accountable?
never indulged in those dubious spirits?
never felt growing pains?
never plucked a gray hair from its own head?
and he feels trapped
totally captured
conquered
he does recall the crest of those parting waves
broke upon the shores of what should be real
all at once
remembered
like a flood that tugs
wrinkles where his skin should be
wrought with loss
wracked with wrong
gone.
Al-le-go-ry Noun-the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence.
JD-“This creature must be compelled” about young love and the allegorical journey… the life and death of the spark that ignites the passion within others.
Verbalchemy 