updown/upright

When I see the sunrise, what do you see?
Is it a sunset, a moon, speckled pinks, or oily blacks?
We look through the same way,
updown/upright,
but our eyes do not align.
Camera one.
Camera two.
Water through water.
A dome above, and a dome below.
Separated by a well we can draw from,
when we are lonely.
Never falling through,
only running our fingers over the membrane.

fist

When is it?
Just all the time.
Only every minute,
to feel so wrong.
Wanting desperately to feel right,
but to feel right, we do wrong.
Never winning any argument,
cycling through the same moments.
I know what you mean now,
it's the hours.
They press tenuously upon us,
waiting for that moment,
when we find ourselves groping in the darkness
for that familiar comfort--
prickly as ever.
Waiting for someone to slap our hands,
with their supermarket checkout solutions.
All the time.
Hiding, isolated, afraid.
Ashamed.
And you think it's so selfish,
like we won't share our toys.
Take them,
save them,
but don't berate them--
when it's already hard, all the time.

i am feeling you in the notes of a song
like you wrote it long ago and gave it to a friend
the words are all wrong but with the melody, i understand
your fingers are tiptoeing over the keys
sighing each soft note
i could listen a thousand times and find something new to discern
crying a thousand tears and no smarter for it.

what if i don't want to get better
spend my day in solemn splendor
the kind of joy that makes you want to die all the time

its not depression, dont give it a word
they can be misused for personal gain
or convenient excuses

i used to chain it up in the backyard
and beat it when i felt weak
i thought we deserved the confusion, the pain

and now you want me to get help
like thats even what i'm after
the kind of joy that makes me want to die all the time

what if i still can't think about the present,
always occupied with how terrible it is to be ninety-nine
or what more i'll suffer before i do