9.24.06 Poem by dan hightower

Straying like the lost forlorn instigators, the need outweighs the want sometyme’s and the want which prevails is against the need and pulls the loosened string to unravel the garb of happiness, the angled eyes peering like wanting hands in a pool of sound, searching for the words and touches to make the nights seem less despondent, less fragile when the morning call comes to face the reality of the ensuing day, the daydream of nightshade fades into nothingness while curtains are pulled like heroin needles to approve the blinding internal discourse, the infernal desires that creep like danger into a mind riddled with stifling contradictions, the contortions of it all making the body electric shudder under the stress of that decision to not decide which is still a choice in the face of indecisiveness… why have I chosen this I ask in my conversation of self, the tattling troll intrinsically stamping “moron” on my head as I stroll to the rolling cemetery where I will soon find my soul as the empty flesh bag wanders the wasted tyme left orbiting the heated source of my disdain, the lighted new world at the end of each corridor called day… ironic how in a moment worlds collide and shapes consume the present like a peasant in a past life eats the leftover happiness of an elite mistress cackling in the cobblestone across the way from the skid row nomads who keep watch over me in the murkiness of a dead season, a blowing wind carrying the carrion of me left from the version of her I hide inside me, the vestiges of a life lost, even in the losing I can’t see the option, even in the piercing perception I can’t step aside from the dangled fruit, the serendipity has become sullied by circumstance, the circumstance has been and not become, the becoming has undone what was once tightly bound in a neat package, well placed and shaped perfectly to house me, to keep me distant and safe, to offer asylum, to effect me, to be affected, to be numb, that has gone and now the repression is manifested as never before, the hatred for the unknown is beginning again, the lost tyme is now the shadow unshakable and unmerciful breathing down on me as I climb the pit, the outer circles enclose the varied selves and shackle the opportunity, the anger grows and I become smaller in it’s wake, bobbing around like a broken cork…