Junkman’s Holiday

by djaiv

Posted to Poetry on 2002-11-15 16:35:00

Most of the time I make myself numb
so that the empty feeling spreads
from the in to the out. Sometimes
you do it for me, tightening the belt
around my arm with your words
and, with my memories, pushing the
needle. When the out side isn’t numb, just
the core, the empty is greater,
sucking all the life from me–
who gets it? Do you?
With my life do you replenish yours?
Or do you make a new one and
carry it around like the child
no one ever talks about?
Empty is empty, a lack of me. I’m very tired
of being full of myself, my skin stretched taut
by my presence. Someone else be me
for awhile and I will lie here on the carpet
and examine the world within.
Someone else be you for a time
so you can kneel above me
and caress me with your ghost hair,
wrap your hand around me and
squeeze until my eyes open and my
breath bugs out. But instead you make
someone else be us and get on
the bus singing Dear John songs.
And where are you going without me
outside me, beyond me? Are you just going?
No destination, just journey? When you
are gone, I tell stories to the shag as
I fall into myself from the inside out.
From this point I can see forever,
stretched out like the great green blanket
of promise, straight out before me.
I turn left and tighten the tourniquet.