jezebel...

i voided the room…
blank photos barren of face or form;
white-draped paintings complementing colorless walls
stripped bare of essence, of expectation…
emptied of emotion
within echoing silence…no music, no voices, no weeping…
a clock’s faint ticking notes the passing…

surfaces are clean, cleared of clutter and concern…
sterile, starched and solitary,
lying face down with hands lashed to Birdseye posts…
no touching allowed.
no sighs, no abject and self-effacing apologies…
no humiliation…
no pleas for love…
negation – nothing – nullified…

sinking into soft denial and denigration,
where betrayal flutters eyelids and postures
with paralyzing pain and soul-wrenching sarcasm…
she laughs at me
hands on her hips, slapping her knee...
“fool,” she scoffs, “you deserve this, again…”

“he loved me,” i whisper…
”he said he would love me forever.”
“which meant what?” she demands…”six weeks?
look at you now…you are lacerated, ground glass.”
“but he promised!” i scream…
“they all do,” she sighs…”when will you learn?
they cannot love you…”
she taps her forehead meaningfully,
gesturing for me to follow her

now sliding into silky soft recesses where
she leads me; i follow a pattern of concentric circles
ever tighter – growing smaller and smaller
until like the pain of memory and loss,
i slip away…
forlorn and forgotten

she will never forgive my love;
she never has…

jezebel…
prism gates...
ja allen

dream lover...

the specter coalesces on the surface of my dream;
willing me to surrender…
i sink inside steamy walls where you wait…
you take her hand and pull her toward you;
embracing her, kissing her passionately but
i feel nothing because it is a dream…

i stare as you make love to her and the emptiness
washes over me, stilling my heart and
relegating my senses to absence…
feeling nothing when
desire trembles in every extremity and explodes at each movement…
but dead embers
never feel want or stir tender passion…

features remain indistinct – unrefined…blurred
as you attempt serial connection…
for i never see into your eyes or feel
the warmth of your mouth on mine –
or feel the touch of your hand upon my cheek…

i know your words, your thoughts;
i hear your sighs and your unending silence…
i listen to your concerns, your desires—your
memories of lost loves…

while i remain a shadow who adores you
bartering for your attention,
waiting, always waiting for a sign of love…
an imperceptible nod of acquiescence,
a bend in your relentless resistance…

the specter arouses from his slumber,
shudders imperceptibly,
grabbing my shoulders and pointing to my left
where all the lost loves smile and nod…
amused by my sudden shock…

he beckons me to take my place at the end
of the long line…
as they shift to make space, i blink back tears
realizing the quixotic twist
of this agonized long-lost love affair…

dream lover...

prism gates

ja allen

gabriel...

the blast blew me into yesterday
destroying the delicate hold on my fabric of existence…
annihilating intricate bonds of lucidity and love,
while Gabriel trumpeted my return in wretched exact trills…
his jewel encrusted mouth wailing a torturous, wrenching, guttural agony…
exacting broken bones and bitter bile…

i spit my teeth into my hands and watch my eyes disintegrate
as slowly I sense an exit from the grayest of avenues…
saturated in blood and broken by betrayal, I journey here to die…
as I have each time…for the same reason…
the end of days has returned again sooner than expected
with violence as its method of operation…

it resides within me stronger than before – the garrisoned
grasp that blended beauty strong for a moment—
that positioned passion for realization and promise for awakening…
but the broker bargained too late, asking too much for so little…
the negotiations turned sour and died on the table without arbitrage,
in the final analysis only pity was offered…

it was put out quietly on a paper plate, shoved under the door
without a sound…just a whisper of doubt as each minute
ticked away in seclusion under the wary eye of expectation, waiting
always waiting and watching;
finally recognizing the pattern of destruction filling in the final
formation as the truth revealed its presence.

its cryptic cruelties bit deep into my heart, causing seizures of
pronounced colorless residual anxiety….
brokered bottom line exaggerates the essence of loss…
jagged with ragged edges and pointed rejections;
for the end result is banishment and betrayal…
the gag of universal truth…

once again a prisoner of the end game…
bastion broken by bigots who careened the carrier
and jettisoned hope and promise for the sake of normalcy;
i am not there for you – to incorporate into ordinary dreams;
i cannot exist there for you only here deep inside where senses
translate into surreal dreams of love and longing…

gabriel
prism gates
by ja allen

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