The Swagtastic Voyage

Title by Mark Granade, my lovely roommate. A strange name to fit a strange poem. I wanted to try a different kind of flow to my work.

simple words that held

no memories sicken me,

you are infectious

I know I should be happy. 

This is everything you wanted, wasn't it?

Or was it?

Sometimes I can't tell who I am,

my masks get tangled--meshed,

and I get lost in translation.

Don't know whether I'm shelled up in my fear,

or just got lost in the act.

A tiny lapse in this show, 

curtain falls

and suddenly things have changed.

It's not that I don't feel alone, 

it's that I know I'm not.

I've got this veil of a smile

that hides my past and thoughts--

makes me a mystery, a jar that won't open 

but is on the verge of breaking,

full of whatever I couldn't leave behind,

fragments of that another northern life, and it scares me,

  my own worst enemy.

These ghosts without sheets that break through my teeth,

crawl in through my mouth,

seep into my dreams but won't leave with the day,

become nightmares I can't flee. Yet

I know these aren't just projections of my sleep,

made from memories buried out in the backyard

and left to rot, these weatherworn skeletons

better left forgot.