a poet's lonely dreams

Demented Lover

I reside on a black and white estate with painted walls and dead flowers.

Every room in the house has broken windows and no bed or blankets.

There are roaches and maggots all over the walls and food is spoiled in unknown places.

An old lady sits in a rocking chair on the porch and hasn't left in over a decade.

My lovers spirit solemnly haunts me and I haven't felt warmth since they've departed.

Many nights have come and go, but the darkness and the shadows have yet escaped the inside.

I used to tell my children about happiness when they were alive.

I used to be a hopeless romantic.

I used to leave my house, every wednesday, and go to the supermarket just up the hill and buy popcorn and chocolate bars and soda for our family movie nights.

Now I'm a vandalized old fool that has no purpose in life but to regret everything.

I don't have pride in a single thing I've done.

I've wanted to die since when the snow started falling, and now it's falling again.

For the 80th time since my expiration date disappeared and I began to exist.

Once a year, on the longest day of the year, a man comes to my door and tells me he hates me and shoots me again and again and again.

And once a year, on the longest day of the year, I bleed out on my living room floor for exactly one hour, until the old lady gets up and puts me in the brown-water bath.

Dead bug remains float in the discolored water, and I sit and soak for a long time.

The lady never returns and I get myself out, and I go and lay in the dead flowers and talk to my deceased lover for a while.

She tells me, in long periods of silence, how her day was, and I respond with a rundown of my day.

"Watch your diet! Take out the trash! Don't forget to pack the kids lunches!" She repeatedly tells me the last things she ever told me, and quietly I cry, as I do as she's told.

"I love you daddy!" I hear my daughter say to me though her lips have never moved.

My son gives me a hug, though his arms lay limp, and walks out the door, though he stays flat on the floor.

They pull out the driveway, and never turn around, though the car stays parked.

I never heard from them, so I know they're dead.

My lovers spirit tells me daily in my head.

They wouldn't leave daddy behind, because daddy was a good man.

He just needed some time to get his shit together, but he's okay.

He would've found another job, he fucking promised them.

He just loved them so much, and they loved him.

That's why God stole them from him.

Because God wanted to love them and he couldn't have them.

That's why daddy started drinking before they left.

Because God wanted daddy to drink.

That's why daddy choked his faggot seven year old son to death, because God told him he had to make the fucker bleed.

That's why daddy put his five year old daughter under the tire and splattered her head, because God told him she shouldn't be so loud when daddy is trying to sleep.

That's why daddy beat mommy, because God told him to hit the bitch and she'd never leave you.

That's why daddy won't die, because God won't let him be happy.

Because God knows what's best.

And God is never wrong.

That's why they never came back.

Because they died somehow, and God has them now.

But it's okay, because daddy loves mommy, and daughter, and son.

And one day, he just knows he'll see them again, when he wakes from this crazy nightmare.