Stop

I don’t need a verse. I don’t need a stage. I need a megaphone. Who cares if 76 people read this? I’ll slam the door behind me. I won’t ever look back. Take these coupons off the dashboard. Cigarettes are gone and my mind is ecstatic. Forget the future. Red beans and rice will do. Woman, don’t talk to me now. I know the repercussions. My actions speak. The intonation of my voice doesn’t seem to be clear enough, loud enough to get through to you! The pressure you put on me. I’m shedding. This movie is pointless. It’s already July. It’s hot. I take one day off. This is legalized murder, innocent soldiers, my ass! This was the bayonet used in Tripoli. Turn off this radio. My ears cannot stand it. I can’t sleep. From whatever I understood about this lovely figure and that pure soul is gone. It seems that if you try and you succeed, you stop. I am inert. My heart beats faster these days. Erase what I knew about that one time. Forget we ever had that. Remember I had to go. Work to eat. I can’t see if I turn off these lights but I can’t think if they’re on. I don’t believe in me right now. I believe in death and destruction and rotting corpses. People must pay for what they have done. The devil won’t do justice. I’ve spent 300 dollars on this damn car and it still doesn’t love me. I walk. I haven’t shed a tear for years. I am immune to this one feeling. Life goes on without me and around me. One day I’ll fly. Feet hurt. I’ve got this aggravating feeling outside my head, like it’s floating in a protective shield, surrounding my hair, skull and it picks away at me like a steadfast mosquito—oh the blood that will squirt when I kill it. Hang me out to dry. Spit me out.

I am going off the deep end. Kick that shit up to 103 mph. Let me hit the water. Dive into the ocean. Forget what I said about it. And don’t tell her. The water will penetrate my openings, my ears. My lungs will wail. I will not bare the withstanding pressure. The sea runs through me. The bubbles are trapped. The commotion is secondary. I can’t swim. I can’t get out of this one. Minutes turn to seconds. All those times he took me there mattered. Those trivial pursuits I embarked on mean nothing now. She whispered something that I was unable to make out and she let go of my hand as I walked on. I drifted away from her, her world, boarded another ship, sailed to another land, stomped on a new ground and awoke in a different time.

Some mornings I look at her and think. While she lays there, dreams unabated, I sit. Her presence is the reason I expire.