Waiting Room

I'm tired of waiting. Waiting for something that won't even be nearly as magical or romantic as I want it to be in my head. Waiting for someone that I'll just end up meeting through friends or at some job I hate. Waiting for someone that I'll eventually convince myself isn't good enough for me or someone who figures out that I'm no good for her. I won't fall in love at first sight and say "I've been waiting my whole life for you. Where have you been? Why have you kept me waiting?" I'll say "Where the hell were you when I needed you most?" I'm not a patient person. I feel like Odysseus making his way to a Penelope he's never met, a Penelope he's not even sure exists anymore, loves him anymore, maybe she's met another suitor. Is there really someone out there waiting for me, wanting me as much I want her?

I'm so afraid of love. I don't want to be disappointed by it.

The Fun is Catchin'

It's kind of a running gag,
like how Kenny always dies
in some sort of
horrible construction paper disaster,
the silly thing that keeps happening
for no apparent reason.

Or some vastly complicated Rube Goldberg machine
but more like Mouse Trap
in that
this farcical, brightly colored atrocity
means nothing in the end.
(no one ever cared about actually catching the mice)
(though I suppose it's never about the end is it?
always about the journey
through the marble maze
and launching the green plastic man into the tub)

This infinite mobius strip
of one-sided affection
This Nascar race of gauche turns
Is circling the drain
and I'm pooped.

I'm tired of this game
I'm the fat kid playing tag,
chasing and chasing
the ones that got away.

I just don't want to get picked last, y'know?

The Worst Year of My Life

It's kind of funny
how life flows and folds,
one day one might find
someone that you would call a brother
transform into some arch nemesis;
the Lex Luthor to your Clark Kent.

It's odd trying to track
through paths of muddy memories,
the ways and means we took
to get to where we are.

This road to now
is littered with broken branches,
limbs that have fallen off
our family tree.

We try our best to reattach them,
stick them in a bag of ice,
stitch them to our sides.
Sometimes they fit again,
still perfect puzzle pieces,

But mostly
they atrophy,
and are too far changed.
Triangular shapes
shoved into square spaces.

And how should we feel when the pieces don't fit?
Is it odd that I feel so content?

Maybe they were a cancerous tumor
and not a benign cyst
and maybe they needed to go
so that we could function.

Maybe they were just an appendix,
an unneeded organ,
something only good for exploding,

Something that was better off
being ripped away from the rest of your guts.

Terrible, Terrible Love Song

Every time I touch you or whatever
It makes me want to love you or something
It fills me full of feelings and stuff
Every time I'm in your vicinity it makes me feel kinda nice
Kinda warm like a warmish feeling
Yea you know.

'cause love is like awesome
and awesome's the best
and the best stuff's way better
whenever you're here
and choosy moms would choose you
if you were peanut butter
and peanut butter's rad
just like you

you make me lol
when we're talking on aim
and every time you text me
it makes me colon closed parenthesis
and when you poke me on facebook
it makes me feel pretty good

A Brief Dissertation On How Much of a Douchebag This One Guy Is

The words from last night
were still spinning in my head,
flying slow circles around my lifeless body,
picking me apart.

To him, I was some sort of Ethel Rosenberg;
some traitorous,
blacklisted,
commie bastard.
In his eyes,
I was one of “Them”
and “They” were
apparently,
“assholes”.

The picture he had painted
resembled Guernica;
something fucked up
and chaotic
and ugly.
He always spoke in terms of black and white.

I wanted to vomit brown green bile;
that’s how sick I felt,
that’s how much the agent orange burned
as he cut me down
with the speech he had prepared for us,
the words he had put to paper.

In his wake it feels like
“I am become death,
destroyer of worlds.”

Maybe he's right.
Maybe I should exile myself from Thebes,
and wander blind and alone
contemplating my crimes in the darkness.

Rain On a Wedding Day

I tried being sweet.
Little love notes,
tiny gifts,
that plush bear that says
"I wuv you beary much";
the whole damn thing.

Then here's you
with your giant cartoon anvil
poised to drop onto my chest
when you say:

"That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

So fine,
whatever,
you win.
I stopped caring.
The sweeping melody
of this perfect soundtrack to our movie
has scratched into an abrupt halt
and given way to suffocating silence.

No more returned calls,
no more going out of my way to see you.
And I think when I sing that

"Sometimes I feel I've got to
run away, I've got to
get away from the pain you drive into the heart of me."

And now how's this for a new development?
She told me that she
"desperately" seeks my attention.
Now that I don't freely give it to her and all.
So I suppose old adages ring true
Jerks win
The guy who kicks sand in the nerd's face
gets to hang out with Gidget and the other beach bunnies.

I know she's bad news,
just another dumb girl.
It's fake plastic love.
And it's tearin' up my heart.

But you know,
I've got a resolve about as strong
as an Alka Seltzer tablet in water.
So I give in
I'll take any empty affection she'll throw at me
'cause like a wise man once said:
Love stinks.

Make Like a Tree and Leaf

I am french fries without ketchup,
Charlie Brown without Snoopy.
A clown without a circus.
She's leaving.

Stop all the clocks.
Hold back Apollo's chariot.

She can't go now;
not while I feel like tying her down
to a set of silent movie railroad tracks;
not while I'm still reeling,
from feeling like Lando just sold me out to Darth Vader.
Et Tu Brute?
I am Michael Corleone
whispering to Fredo-
"I know it was you...
and you broke my heart."

But really, instead of wanting
swift, bloody Sicilian revenge,
I just want to know that (like me)
she'll also endure the pain of an amputee
haunted by the phantom of their limb.

I sit on her bed and watch her pack.
As she smooths out the wrinkles in her shirts,
all I can think about is
tossing all of her personal effects around the room
and throwing her plane ticket into the fireplace-
(though I think she'd be quite cross with me).

I think I ask too much of time,
and too often I waste so much of it.
Even now
when I ought to be saying
everything I won't get to when she's gone,
I instead just write these silly lines,
and write this poem
as the silence fills
the increasing emptiness of this room.