earlkonig:

A man walks into a bar and says:
                                                Take my wife–please.
                                                                                    So you do.
            You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her
                                                and she leaves you and you’re desolate.
You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man
                        on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains
                                                                                                on the ceiling.
                  And you can hear the man in the apartment above you
                                    taking off his shoes.
You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up,
                                                                                    you’re waiting
            because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be
                        some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together
                  but here we are in the weeds again,
                                                                                         here we are
in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense.
                        And then the second boot falls.
                                                            And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.

            A man walks into a bar and says:
                                                Take my wife–please.
                                                                        But you take him instead.
You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich,
            and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you
                                                                              and he keeps kicking you.
            You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work.
                        Boots continue to fall to the floor
                                                                        in the apartment above you.
You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
            Your co-workers ask
                                    if everything’s okay and you tell them
                                                                                    you’re just tired.
            And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.

A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
                                    Make it a double.
            A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
                                                                                 Walk a mile in my shoes.
A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying:
                                    I only wanted something simple, something generic…
            But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.
A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
                        but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
                                                      but then he’s still left with his hands.

18

Two brothers: one of them wants to take you apart. Two brothers: one of them wants to put you back together. It’s time to chose sides now. The stitches or the devouring mouth? You want an alibi? You don’t get an alibi, you get two brothers. Here are two Jeffs. Pick one. This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them. Jeff or Jeff? Who do you want to be? You just wanted to play in your own backyard, but you don’t know where your own yard is, exactly. You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You’re still right here.

eustacemunson:

       He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest
where a heart would fit perfectly
               and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place—
                                                                                       well then, game over.

pulsifers:

What would you like? I’d like my money’s worth.                                        Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—       swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood on the first four knuckles.                                                         We pull our boots on with both hands but we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do                 is stand on the curb and say Sorry                                                          about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

— Richard Siken, “Little Beast”.

theprincedouche:

I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything,
         couldn't do it anyway,
just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made
         any sense, anything.

And I can't eat, can't sleep, can't sit still or fix things and I wake up and I
wake up and you're still dead

Siken, “Straw House, Straw Dog” (x)