Bitten Back Words

I bite my lips till the blood is 
blue rushing bursting blister banks -
just to not say 
the things you don’t want to hear.  

I know it’s time to leave now, 
just as the barman calls out 
over the foggy river, 
drink up please, it’s time, 
but I prevaricate  and circumnavigate 
the straightest of obvious lines.  

Loneliness is a predatory familiar 
who keeps me hooked 
with threats to the commonplace.

There are dishes to be washed 
and black bin bags 
to be taken out to the bin shed.  
I occupy myself 
with small tasks 
and entertain myself 
with unachievable fantasies.

Once I thought you were beautiful, 
but now you seem distant and dismal.  
You don’t smile anymore; 
and you talk about your life 
as if it had been foisted upon you.  

I'm trying to remember 
when you were charming, beautiful, grand - 
trying remember something 
that will keep me from walking out 
into the cold wind,  
for the magnet is pulling me stronger now; 
and my mouth wants to say something so bad, 
I know one day it will; 
and then 
the wind and the cold and the loneliness 
will grab me in an irresistible vortex, 
and we’ll be helpless 
to our destined separation.  

So here, let’s crack open another beer 
and watch another dull movie 
on the television:  
let’s absorb as much analgesic 
as will not actually poison us; 
so that we may 
sleep without fucking, 
sleep without missing, 
sleep without feeling. 

I will cheese wire my mouth now,  
sew fishing thread 
through my petulant lips.  

The pain of it will be nothing, 
for I do not relish the other...