pedestrian...

it could not be stated otherwise
than awkwardly,
cumbersome, listless and distorted…
wedged like a tumor
in this microscopic space.
the feeling is too large for words;
pain will not be defined,
honed or cured…
it lies like fear on the extremities of truth,
darting in and out of vague shadows,
teasing the tongue into madness…

it can never forgive the memory of you…
i cannot fathom the depth
of your unrelenting silence…
it is too imposing not to be real;
yet, i am here—is it that i cannot forgive?

you force me out here where sound
screams, jarring the senses and
words leap like blood from an open artery;
ugly, disjointed complaints spraying
my world with mundane, monotonous sounds of dying

the agony of absence shatters my equilibrium;
the center spins, gyrating out of control…
i hang on trying to stop the spiral dragging me down;
underneath are your penetrating eyes daring
me to lie again…

how much better the room beneath the floor
where words whispered,
slid by with grace and compassion…
how magnificent the allusions in a vacuum…
how much simpler to be still…


pedestrian

soliloquies
ja allen

starfish...

i eat my words, as you suggest;
but they have lost their edge,
rubbed raw by make-shift sanity…
inside this raisin-walled world of me;
shriveled with age and too much sun…

i perch precariously on the rim of your truth
where I can just see inside
but cannot touch;
cells we mingled mid-air
have floated away,
our coarse agreement rusted
with tears…

i sing to you on the beach at night,
wondering if the words are important anymore…
we molded such fragile conditions, you and i;
but they conflicted;
love could not emerge in arenas of contradiction…
a fool crushed the shifting castle inside the cave;
now there is heavy silence and dread;
suspicion with no corners to weep…

the sun bakes my flesh
and saps all residue of moisture from my tongue…
the words, dead leaves of an old tale,
are scribbled in a foreign hand
on a sand bank…

the beach stretches on forever
like my mind—but i have forgotten the clues
allowing me to reach back
and experience the wet memories,
embellished by longing,
obscured by age and distance,
rewritten on the sands of time…

starfish...

soliloquies
ja allen

précis...

soft sleeves of despair descended
until you arrived to fill me with life…
as i turned in my aged cave,
reaching with yellowed nails
to scratch my name—you turned aside the
claws of my intent…

the words we tossed at each other
were coats to cover the cold,
alleviate the dampness;
as much as i needed your eyes
in order to see, i had to close them forever…
as you grew cold.

i could not risk turning back and
getting caught in your tomb…
there were no truths we could hold together…
no past from which we were immune;
our eyes strayed inward from right angles;
we dissected truth until it lied…

our lips grew parched, sealed…chanting “it
must be mine;”
you escaped with your truth, i with mine…
now we must find a place
to tuck it away like other relics we accumulate…

there is a pack rat that digs you up from time
to time and carries you back to me;
each time you return, you are changed,
decayed by memory as
one by one the parade enlarges, as
another of you files by…

i realize you never existed…
i created you to fill my days
and at night to push the blood through
my veins to my heart…

précis

soliloquies...
jaa

heights...

it is an ebony slate so
you cannot write upon it—
nor can you erase what is written;
on it you either posture like a corpse,
or you slide off slowly with your knees
unlocked to absorb the shock
of dead eyes staring through me….

but i am careful now, alone here
where no visitors come…
in the morning the slate hardens
into memory with echoes the texture
of steel wool…
the hand that offers me my pain
builds my walls with it…
the slate is my floor…
i keep it polished with sighs
that are educated and disciplined….

in the afternoon someone drenches me
with a bucket of blood;
my words run together in it and
the floor becomes deadly.
the blood is my own, of course;
it spills over the edge and soaks
clean walls beneath me…
they throw it back to me
when they have had enough…

in the evening after the sun has fried
cells of longing, it flips
onto its back and slips away…
now i am cold, like a dead
satellite…i crawl on my knees feeling
for the edge;
i am alert; i cannot sleep afraid to dream
of flying for
my life is braille…

I recall that once someone was here with me;
i still hear the echoes of his screams
as he fell…i think he tripped
on my words…

heights...

soliloquies
ja allen

snapshot...

when you learn to dig through the words,
boxed carefully between boredom and innuendo,
straight and tall and wooden,
you will discover none are
offered without need…

none are without reason;
if they appear false or vain,
perhaps, they are meant to be,
or, maybe, there is another layer
left to uncover,
a core left of center of your understanding…

of course, if you peel away too much
from the surface, you will find nothing left.
the isolated words
reveal nothing…together they are a clue
to some sort of vague beginning,
shouts hushed to whispers,
braille marks on a dark wall…
crowded together, in a hurry,
impatient and tired…

even as they are borne, they have died,
like the need they expressed…
nothing remains constant…
truth, like time, passes on
from moment to moment…


snapshot...

soliloquies
ja allen

man...

i must fill my days with dreams and fantasies;
nothing has meaning except these moments
of pure escapism penetrating edges of my sanity,
skirting reason and defying rational thought…
finally only perception and memory matter…
as the world grows bestial and barren.
belying the truth of stated hypocrisies that
we were created equal…

there is a vile stench of cynicism wafting through
corridors of corruption as
i face your dour expression daily
and hear the denigration spew from you;
for i am not required to perform, only to endure…
that makes me insignificant in your eyes…

i am only a vessel to be filled by you…
pursued, shot and stuffed and
mounted on a broad altar where you sweat and toil
posed in bas relief within your phallic dreamscape…
you discount my humanity as scalable against my worth…
you view my tears as liabilities against power;
you insist upon beauty and youth and innocence…
without which I become indentured to indifference…
against the backdrop of your subjective memory
i cease to exist…

as i slip underneath the glass surface where the view
fragments and closes in myopic splendor…
i am lost inside an aging body whose youth fades with
each step down toward the bottom;
the inversion cannot lift my spirit to meet your omnipotent
disdain of me and my wretched grasp
upon your reality—your vision of the state of man
and his subject—woman…
so if you deign to tolerate my presence,
you will only dream of long-legged beauties
whose loveliness inspires you to write lyrics
or soft lines of sweet poetry…
while you ignore the richness of me who has
lived and loved
and who knows exactly what you need to make you whole…

man
prism gates
ja allen

interludes...

unyielding uncertainty summons a sense of depravity…
manifesting itself as intense unease measured
against the backdrop of a throbbing beat and an insistent voice
calling me out from the back stoop where I inevitably wait…

always torrid want shimmers in the distance, an oasis of desire…
i try to unwind stretching heavenward to achieve release,
final climax from my torture….
outside my range of vision,
you stand forever unreachable,
holding me at arm’s length as a form of retribution;
admonishing me to wait on the edge until it is my time…

i weep inside wanting you so much that my mind fragments and
bits soar away on the echoes of drums and strident chords…
when i cannot wait any longer for your unspoken promises…
you acquiesce, stripping me bare…

soon warm tears will mingle with those of humility as you sink
into me and let me feel what I have dreamed…
i will always want more because you never give me enough
of the essence that is you…
the words of your mantra…
daring me to deny you and walk away…
are pointless when you know I cannot….

you realize i can never be filled
yet you allow me to suffer with the belief that I can;
that there are limits to longing…
that eventually the flame will extinguish itself and
settle for sanity…
when you know it is not true…

there is no end of the road for me…
only one tortuous journey after another
as you toy with me and my adoration,
placing strictures on my love
as you wait for someone better—someone
who loves with purity and honor;
someone dancing in the arms of romance and idealism…
as you wait you throw me scraps of love
As each of you tread on me on your way to tomorrow…

interludes

prism gates
ja allen