Self-Preservation

Self-Preservation

I seek you within the pages of this book
I seek you through your words, I seek you
Through mine. I seek you within
An anonymous crowd. I seek
To resurrect you through memory
In flesh and blood. I type your name
In the facebook search bar, in vain.
And then I seek to believe in you
Through memory fantasy words silence
Dead, self preserving habit
Has made me say itsokayitsokayits
Okayitsokayitsokay for too long.
Because I know I must say
Itsokaytohurtallover
I know I can’t fuckyouoff
I can’t discard you like a useless
Scrap of waste-paper.
Dead, self preserving habit
Has taught me to smile.

Graveyard Ghosts, or, I Flee From Them

I buried these traumatic fears
and this pinching hurt
I buried them alive
I dug them a grave, I made
them a coffin, I disowned them
And I left them to die.

But my disobedient passions
burst out of the grave as ghosts
They pursue me and stalk me
and sometimes, they find me
Like the accursed Eumenides
Desperate to live, I flee.