Just Like CLOCKWORK

When her smile splashes warmly at you,
when her tepid eyes pour into your view...
when she spills her fingers
through those coffee colored curls...

As her giggles brew and bubble at your jokes,
as she caresses all your slow roasted hopes...
as her heart steams over
just to simmer in your ear...

Maybe when she's sipping sweetly at your neck,
and I'm boiling into one big fucking wreck...
maybe then you'll start to see
that she's not supposed to be...

Maybe then you'll see...
that the girl your kissing
should still be me.

The nostalgic gray of that autumn afternoon
soaked itself around our rain-drenched hearts.
Billie Holiday softly crackled her devoted tune,
singing about everything we loved in parts.

We skidded along route four-forty-three,
silent in our warm reminiscing,
yet your warmth beat quietly next to me,
and I only wished that we were kissing.

You grabbed my hand in a whispering way,
just enough to let me know you were there.
I had to smile softly at our quiet cliché,
of our Sunday-driver love affair.

The rain continued to drip on that tan '98 Buick roof,
but our smiles dripped together with all of our unneeded proof.

The frigid rain sizzled
on the baking asphalt of my heart,
sprinkling wet scorch marks
where hatred once kindled.

Pleasured hisses drizzled
from the heated space between my lips,
where your kisses belonged
but only loneliness dripped.

The coal-black pavement
slipped into a skin of wet leaves,
just as the rain licked away
all that I left vacant.

The warmth of the moment
left something parched in my chest,
withering from thirst,
aching to be quenched.

The tinkling of the rain
melted a smile on my face,
my tarred heart still blistering
despite our burnt-out shivering.

You are that churning sickness in my gut,
that boiling, brewing bile that burns my throat,
every time I think of you.

You walk those cracked sidewalks,
breaking backs with every step,
keeping stride with nothing but your narcissism.

I hate that fake red “S” on your chest;
you're not fooling anyone, you're no one's hero,
especially not mine.

If I jump from that rooftop,
I know you won't save me,
I know you'll never be waiting at the bottom again.

But still, I hide behind cubicle walls,
silently hoping for you,
that hero who will never come.

The ugly girl is caressed by his touch;
she is an instrument - plucked apart, note by note,
creating a catastrophic quiet - a discordance of beauty.

She tunes in to the imperfections;
him, her, the bed - all imperfect when plucked individually.
Yet the strum, the beat, the rhythms created - that is harmony.

She knows how undeserving she is;
so she hides, disappearing into the sheets,
revealing her naked conscience and complications.

She drips into the cracks, lying bare with the cockroaches;
slipping silently beneath the bed,
afraid of her own nakedness.

Down there, her neighbors are cobwebs, her friends the carcasses of insects;
beneath there, she watches the feet of others,
safe from having to look down at her own.

That is everything though;
it all eventually hides under the bed forgotten,
it all slips through the cracks.

Finally, she stands naked and raw,
slipping back between the sheets and imperfections,
right where she belongs.