you're not in that dive bar anymore
it's not the best place to wait for me
in fact, i don't know where you are
i just have an endless list
of everywhere you're not.

or maybe you aren't anywhere,
just a ghost in my mind, a misperception
maybe a failed communication
a dream gone awry or one of those unanswered prayers
the happy people go on and on about.

i'm just so sick of the ones-who-have
telling me how to handle my i-have-not
and i'm tired of asterisks next to my name
and after thirty years still being the one
who feels the need to explain

he called me a genius again
not everyone can have that
perhaps there has to be some
torture to find the truth
and in my melodramatic, egocentric way
i bend my head to keyboard
and think to myself over darkened, flying fingers

it's just another thing
that is so much nicer to read about
than to feel, than to live with
than to try to paint pink and
assign positive adjectives

i can't even feel self pity anymore
because it's so cliche
so used like april lilacs
and albatrosses around callused necks
there is nothing fucking new under the sun
just holes in the ozone
and an acceleration of sound