Picking Up the Pieces...Again

I really don't know where to begin.  Things were supposed to be different.  And then, once again, I happened to myself.  Much faster than before, but the result is the same.  I'm left wondering if I'm a vile creature, and she's left regretting that I ever existed.

But I'm not making any excuses.

Right now, it feels like I am mentally incapable of reciprocating love.  But my heart seems unaware.  And my body keeps jumping left and right, an independent uncertain of which side to vote.  But the fact that it keeps happening tells me one startling truth that I've probably been aware of, but have been unwilling to embrace.  I am the problem.  So many different women can't all be wrong.  Especially when the methods and madness keep feeling the same.

I've stared at myself in the mirror for the last 10 minutes.  I'm trying to see who blinks first:  the charismatic poet still looking for true love or that heartless bastard that keeps fucking up the potential.  My latest scary thought is that I really can't tell them apart.  Because if they are one and the same, then this is going to be a long, lonely ride.  It's a good thing I've always embraced talking to myself.  Misery loves company, but it's hard to find when you're constantly all alone.

Even now, feeling like an emotional scab that's been picked at and momentarily left to heal, I have to laugh at myself.  I'm the hypochondriac complaining about medicinal side effects.  The suicide bomber who is irritable because the backpack is too heavy.  Meaning that I cause my own pain.  I imagine some saying shut up and suffer like you wanted.  But I am, like all of my relationships, conflicted.  I want love.  But I worry too much about what it should feel like, how long it should last, and whether it is deserved.  I start questioning.  Dissecting bits and pieces, until before long I've cut dozens of holes into the fabric, simply because I thought a strand or two looked shabby.  This is my nature, and I hate it.  But like anyone feeling stuck being "some kind of way", I really don't know where to begin to change.

Bring on the sleepless nights.  Cold sheets and the weight of an empty bed.  The worst part:  I can remember each one of them next to me.  And I'm not saying that to be callous.  It is a sad reality that I can't escape.  I've run into a few of them from time to time, women from my past who now stare blankly, as if they don't remember, or stab me with icy eyes, unable to forget.

Reading this, I make it seem like I'm Colin Farrell.  (I mean I've had some strange relationships, but I haven't propositioned any 70 year old ladies, thank you very much)  In actuality, it's not really that bad.  I'm just a bit mishap prone when it comes to love.  I'm hoping one day soon, I'll correct this.  Until then, my heart is as fragile as glass and now comes with a disclaimer:  Objects that appear in glass are much further away than they seem.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

This is How I Imagine it Feels

Losing Track        

by Denise Levertov

Long after you have swung back

away from me

I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore

on the tide

and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:

am I a pier

half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion

I lose track,

the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before

I know I'm

alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black

timbers of me,

a light growth of green dreams drying.