Lost in L.A.

I can’t stand to love you

As fear and loathing rises like hair on skin

It scares and disgusts me to care for you

I’m horrified to fall and it sickens me to lose

So I hold and push you at the same time

This is a narcissistic nihilism

Where I don’t want to believe in anything but us

But I don’t believe we will exist

It’s tearing me apart and it’s holding me together

And I don’t know if I know what I don’t know anymore

Am I crazy

I paint self portraits on your eyelids

So I can see my reflection when your eyes are closed

So I stare at you when you sleep

And I imagine that your vision of me is why you’re so peaceful

I try to caress you till our hearts beat in syncopation

So it feels like we are one

Because each pace fits in each pause, a long steady rhthym

That I accent with kisses like high hats

And you sing Billie Holliday

Dammit I can’t stand to love you this much

To feel tame under your touch

To run wild from your influence

I say bestiality becomes you

Late at night trying to hold me under the full moons glow

When you realize I’ve spent many moons

Tearing apart the hearts of angels

A ravenous wolf happy to kiss a woman

With her tongue dipped in silver

I want you to slay me

And give me life

So that at midnight we can entomb ourselves between the sheets

And rise again in the morning

Let our nights be our Passover

Are you my Judas or my Peter

Will you betray me or denounce me

I say you’re my John the Baptist

With me through and through

Your happiness scriptures my significance

And my commitment worships you faithfully

But my insecurities hide from your judgment

I don’t know why you’re here

I often joke that I am your two way mirror

I see you and you see you

So of course I seem as wonderful as you actually are

This isn’t about skin color servitude

I could die with you on the frontlines

But if I couldn’t have you in the meantime

I wouldn’t have the dictionary that gave me the meaning of sunshine

I hear he aint heavy and laugh

Cuz graves are the only things that don’t get tired of holding you

So I dig through the dirt I’ve done

And in my heart I want to bury you there

It’s hard to hold this in

So as this rose grows through the concrete

I let my tears nurture your impact

I can’t take feeling this way

But I can’t help caring this much

So often relationships are similes, it’s either like or as

Ours is a metaphor

I find refuge here

But a sanctuary is a home for the heart hell has its sights on

So I pole dance for the devil

Trying to grapple a pillar of strength

I can’t live this way

But I can’t die not loving you

This is my dialectical diatribe

My ballad of balance

Where I blindly weight why I can’t wait to hold you

Against why I can’t hold the weight of having you

Why I can’t remember before you and I can’t picture after you

I can’t stand to love you this much

But I couldn’t stand to not love you at all

So I say to hell with it

I’m here for you

Orchestrating this concert of contradictions

This symphony of Socratic method

The ramblings of a man who found an answer to a question he tried not to ask

From the day you spoke to the me you didn’t know yet

To the day you spoke to the me you always knew

The shame is that I at least thought it made sense to you

© 2007 Christopher Dion Massenburg