this is how I make myself clever:                you too, clever minded, looking for the joke

I roll myself up in balls of sadness              is what all of this seems; cruel world wind

manageable hurt that you might never see...      It sweeps through my middle, I ache for that

...butSomething is missing I                missing something, breathing through charcoal

drive the periphery of these teeming city nights

I                                                                eyes and lungs and heart missing a step

smoke cigarettes until they fizzle                the entire, everything seeming foreign

out in my darkness

I                                                                           just cigarette smoke dancing from my

something is missing                                       finger tips slipping on the edge of that missing

I

miss your face in the unlikeliest of moments                  I thought, more...I know it, can't say it

wake up clutching sheets

I                                                                         dreaming Dali paintings, melting

laugh too loudly

I                                                                           confused reality, dreaming though waking

something is missing                                                   my head hurting, I am missing you

I                                                                                   my far off place, removed, safe

smile at the wrong places

I                                                                              smiling at myself and the twirling star bursting between

do the most mundane things I                                               the I's

feel ghosts between my thighs                                                  who are they all to say

something is missing                                                                            they are happy?

I

wear too much lipstick when I'm out

I                                                                                                     I wear too many masks

wander listlessly through people

I                                                                                                which one do I own; all of them?

want to vanish lick my wounds stand falsely proud                      it all turns to the same page

I

something is missing                                                                              the last one, exeunt.

I                                                                                     I know that which I don't see

am missing                                                                       my eyes are liars...they are

                                                                      Missing everything,can't see that inside thing

                                                                                     Straining too hard against the wind, pushing me backwards

- and, clustered around myself as I am, in the tiniest of melancholies towards nothing

you mightn't see me missing-                                                             towards the past

you flashing by                                                            creeping, light bulb flashing here and there...I go.