Ghost Inside This Place
I wanted to write something real.
Get past the jokes and the irony,
the deflection, the armor,
and say what I actually feel.
I wanted my words to swell
and move like the sea–
let my censored mind abandon its post
and expose whoever’s left inside of me.
But I can’t do it. It’s gone.
Not the feeling–the ability
to reach down and pull it out.
I haven’t gone heartless.
I haven’t gone cold.
I’m just terrified.
So I fill up lines with bad puns.
Pretend I’m doing something grand.
Spend my time on empty rhymes
and ignore the shaking hands.
I can talk about the fiscal cliff.
Life on Jupiter’s moon.
Multiverse theory, string theory,
whether we’ve evolved too soon.
I can pretend to have empathy
and pacify with every phrase,
hide inside the person I used to be
and never show my face.
Blank pages on the desktop.
Empty lines on my face.
The soul that lived inside me
is just the ghost
inside this place.