The Closing Tear

Given how ugly the wound can be,
it's a miracle you ever
love yourself again.

Given what trauma feels like,
I don't blame you for
wishing it away,
selfishly.

You didn't open it,
didn't do this to yourself,
how could you know
how to close it?

That exposed nerve
causes you to twitch
and shudder
with each quantum breeze.

That brushing-by
breaches any security
you thought
you had rebuilt.

But without your will
and without your work
the machines inside you
soldier on.

You can feed them shit
or gold,
but they will turn to the sun
and work.

Soon you can run a finger
over a bump, once a gash,
and blood flows sleekly beneath,
instead of free.

And while it doesn't match,
and is too soft,
too sensitive,
not quite you - 

is there anything so perfect,
anything that means "hope"
quite so much
as fresh, pink, skin?

Commute

Every day
on my way
to work
I pass
the door
we exited
the last time
I held
your hand.

The trip back
down that hallway
was the bus ride
into hell.

Beginning on
a bright fall day
with dinner plans
and concluding
in tears and hatred.

With each fluorescent step
you gripped tighter
while drifting away
and I plodded,
frozen in crisis mode.
Knowing what it all meant.
It was happening again.

I was not powerless
to help it now.
I merely had to
live with
the decision
we made
(Yes, we)
and embrace
simmering, eternal,
guilt and doubt
every day
on the way
to work...

Past the hospital
and relive
your energizing touch
and overjoyed smell
as you held up
that grainy,
black and white image,
and said:

"Right there. That's your baby!"

Bobby Pins

 Years and weeks and months later

I still find your traces

in unlikely places

like bobby pins.

Seeds planted in

my furniture and floorboards

grow evermore,

like the thoughts you still cause me to think.

Like... I find them on the edge of my sink.

My car seats 

and couch cushions 

grow bobby pins;

shaken off diff'rent trees

by fights and long goodbyes,

and flings that taught more than love.

What else would explain 

the way they sprout, unbidden,

hidden like a stray hair

to stay there

until the day where

I needed them least?

Like when, during renovations,

I found one tightly stationed

below the century floor trim

and thought, like a goon,

something to the tune

of "sucks for him."

Assuming some poor guy

committed the same clear cut as I.

Your hair - 

once everywhere - 

has been gone

so long,

but its accomplices, 

these bent, ferrous,

little sticks

still bear the copper taste

of memory.

Once in a great while

they can make me smile

when I find another

and dream that I'll

plant a few, one of these days.

But when these planted seeds

grow to trees,

they bring my intuition

to fruition - 

like the time in the past when I looked forward to what would come.

And years and weeks and months from now

I'll count my graces

to find your traces

in unlikely places,

like bobby pins. 

-Alexander Black - October 2017

At Very Least

When I'm no longer fascinated by my tattoos,
When my dogs are making my life filthier,
and covered in hair,
When the best books have no savour,
When every song is bankrupt,

There's no fulfillment
Only stress, and striving
to death and a question mark.
They'd probably eat me
if I died here and now.

When work isn't an anxiety attack
or a black hole
or a way to feed myself;
Just something to do.

A little time with others
is the punchline to the joke
of the other ninety-five percent of life.
Like sorrow is the spearhead
but hope
is the six feet of oak that drive it home.

And love...well, nevermind.

Cooking is irritating
Eating just waste of time
Cleaning is pointless
Staying warm not worth it

Self improvement stinks of fallacy
and all the good advice
I ever took or gave
finds the stumbling block
of insurmountable self.

The words of my cynical
and callous favourites
mount in my soul
into something I wrote
better than they did.

"We are the lucky ones, my dear."

To get to live,
and love,
and hate,
and hurt.
To get to be here at all.
To see and hear and all.

And I thank every book I ever read
For my rational brain.

Because I know things
that I don't feel.

Assuming You're Right

*This is an old one I dug up, edited and was pleasantly surprised to still enjoy.


I like to hope that the sky will one day split apart
And spew back verbal vulgarity and chemical death
(I'm all about settling scores)
The sickening saturations it never asked for,
And we'll all be party to a most unnatural disaster.
Then, much refreshed, that simple wonder
you made a god
will swallow the bloviating, pandering bullshit
you built a life around
and take back what it's owed -
Your lives - "souls" if you prefer.

I bet that sounds crazy.

But until that time,
keep acting, confusing, offering, appeasing
but never searching, never asking.

Even if we do seven years tribulation
Then one thousand with this king of nations,
And you've moved on past the grave,
Some of you raptured away,
You'll find when that drama is said and done,
This will all keep spinning,
And probably be better off.

That's one there's plenty of proof for.

Sorrow, Smiles, Sarcasm and Stout

Seeking shelter in the sweetly sad
songs of my ancestors,
Where things are tuned
and toned down
as I've ever been.

After the hundredth time I rejected a set up,
a friend asked me:
"What even makes you happy?"
And I had no answer
But a blank stupid stare.
"You need some joy in your life!"
And I couldn't argue there.
"You need someone to help you
act your age. Be young for once."
But I've been old
Since I've been at all,
So I shrugged.

I've never wanted this.
I'm so tired of being tired.
I don't want to remember,
Or recall,
with every thing I do.

Like

After some off-colour silliness,
another friend said:
"You're so wonderful,
you'll find someone to love you
and make you as happy as you make us."
And with no shame I replied. "I did."
I saw, in her eyes,
her heart break for me,
despite the petty insignificance of my life
compared to her trials.
And her hug was the best one I've had in a long while.

I see that face still
Burned in the back of my eyelids
The light after the dark
Floating in the aether
of a sanity severed

Questioning myself
Calling my own bluffs and obsession
Reaching, in a dream, like a joke, for a dead past
I wake and fake a solace in false confession.

I hand out advice I can't take
And break and wither
I have become rot

Comparing falsehood
to a drifting now
You are the last
If ever there was a first
Or has it always been a lie?
Have these feelings always been a bad joke?
A pun of psychology and biology,
while the robot rusts.

A few years and change of sunlight and silver lining
and then the dark skies returned.
Well, it does feel like home.
Was I just two faced,
living two lives?
Goddamn me for a hypocrite.

Aw fuck it,
You gotta take what you can get.

If Jesus is always the answer, how lame is the question?

Have you ever lived with guilt
like a lung?

I tucked and rolled out of
a runaway train
of jealousy
and mistrust.
Overnight, becoming
everything I ever
earned myself.

Found my stride again
(finally)
in an uphill sprint;
Snapping every tendon,
Baby this is how I do things
Never too old to change, but
why would I subject you
to me?

Learned to swim
choking
and drowning
in a dead salt sea
of cliche tears
and archetypal heartache.
Opened my mouth to myself.

Sometimes it's better to lose who you used to be;
The first person to forgive is yourself.