As I sit at the bus station in the rain staring blankly at the drug safety pamphlet, things pass through my mind like all the things I want to tell you but can’t, because its like the line from that Pretenders song, “how can I explain, you don’t want me to.” But anyway, you get the point, its just me here with only myself to hear these hard luck stories, shut up crazy in mental quarantine, its just my thoughts circling around uselessly like that lice-ridden crippled pigeon over there on the pavement, I think it just said: “tell your story walking.”
Okay bird, I say, my thoughts may be no more now than compulsion diseased like the creatures nibbling at your sad gooseflesh skin, I’m sure you know how it feels to be eaten like this, but really there is nothing else left of love but my bittersweet madness here alone in the rain.
You were so young and beautiful, you could never know how it tangled up and tore at my heart to see a picture of you online taken at that party last week, still so beautiful I think it was that tender innocence in your eyes staring out from under the hard black fringe, you even seemed to be looking directly at me but in reality you are gone from my life and living on without me, just staring back at me from my work monitor screen.
And now I stand up and get onto the bus and I hand my money to the bus driver who looks so very tired, but has these reassuringly fat fingers, he seems more solid than I, who float up this aisle to the seats at the back where the emo kids hide.
And he drives me passing through all these places where I spent all the years of my life, so many things that had happened to me, see, I think I was once sick over there, I argued with him in the doorway just here, I was lonely on that busy corner, in that noisy nightclub, but really it seems just incidents that repeated over and over, over and over, this is a groundhog life eventually you wonder where will it stop and if you even learn things in time.
And lulled by the sound of the engine and the drone of the man talking on his phone my fingers rustle at the bus ticket and I reflect on the time and how it passed so fast that I never really had a moment to stop and understand what was happening to me, to us, just spinning in love like Alice and Toto it looked and felt like flame that burns so bright but in an instant its gone, leaving behind the burn marks on your hands, black charcoal scars on your heart, like all things they will heal over in time, it leaves behind a harder skin than before that’s tougher to break, yet apparently still more lovers will try.
But no not this time, I wanted it to mean more than it does, what is this anyway? Just more twisted scrap metal in the junkyard pile-up we are passing on the right, of course in my current frame of mind it reminds me of my life.
Please no not this time, I want to hold onto the beauty, the flat sparkle of the sky as you walked by, the look in your eyes as you smiled, because we were so happy and drunk in love but didn’t even see it at the time, spinning in love and high while other things took up the time.
Like the spreading of a pool of ink, poison wends its way through love. I Need. To. Control. Everything.
In the end don’t you know baby its all about me, my life its making a closed fist I’m crying and crumbling inside, but to continue on unrelenting and steeled there’s no choice but this, I know you’ll understand its just the way it is. As I love you and deny you at the same time, don’t you know I could see it in your eyes when you made me scream there was no greater satisfaction than this, I am helpless and open while you float above me cool, don’t smile at me smugly, wipe that look from your face, you betray your hidden belief that in the end I won’t exist.
And you make sure of it, nobody gets the best of me, this is my show get off the stage, I need it all for me, that’s just it don’t you get it you’re an accessory, I only need you for as long as you can stand to give over everything to me, I’ll confine you to the corners of my life, keep your legs open, I’ve got things to do, I need to fuck you. But don’t go, I love you I need you so much I can’t do this on my own. See I’m lying here with you in the bed looking at you with this need in my eyes, light reflecting from the balcony doors, we were in the room where so many lover’s moments become etched in memory, really I’m a bit frightened and I feel alone, “I missed you…so much” you said, and I felt it the pull of almost tangible need, and I was going to go to you, mother to baby, at the time I almost believed.
But no, wait, I’m confused, this is too hard and really, what’s in it for me? You’re standing up, pulling on your pants, switching on the computer, half talking to me half your flatmate down the corridor, we’re denying all for there’s too much need, and absolutely nothing to give, nobody will back down, god I think I hate you how can you take this away from me. Look don’t tell what’s now in front of you, wake up now I think I need you to leave.
Now it’s time for night of the long knives, it must be that time again to get sticking it in, maybe give it a twist for we’ve passed over this thin line between love and hate on which we’ve been dancing and laughing across the divide, now its game on for real, now for all that I needed and you denied, it is time, I will make you cry.
As I stand here on this windy corner my trembling fingers clutching this can in one hand, in the other this plastic bag, the bus pulls away and some young girls walk by me laughing they make me feel like a stranger, the sky is so heavy above and yet the world feels weightless as if perhaps none of it is quite there just pretending, tears stain my eyes and regret weighs on my heart like an old tired dog his collar and chain winding around my throat it binds, I remember all the words I said, my violent heart, my razor tongue slicing everything apart, the pain I must have caused you and when I think if the tables were turned, how right you are to hate me now, how fair and reasonable that I be spurned, left completely alone with your coldness and indifference towards me the only trace you leave behind.
I can only hope that one day you will forgive me and remember the love in my eyes. I loved you, I loved you, maybe I still do, never mind.