deadened

an interesting truth we share
in muttered occurances
of hyperboled humor (read: unflattering truths, too cutting to speak so casually about)....

i quietly suggest that
i'm.dead.inside
we laugh and I turn to the side,
cause if you caught the curl
of my upper lip
you'd see, and you'd know
that I'm starting to trip
over the times
that I've said that joke
and tended to look
away
is a place that i've thought about
an illusion to separate myself
from this existence
turned dis.as.ter
and i manufacture
great antiquities of
terribly ill-worded phrases

i quietly suggest that
i've been done for a long, long time
and that nothing will bring back the deadened years gone by
three to be exact when
i'm really wanting to blame someone
(read: you) but i know better
and it's probably more like 8

when i decided that a
wholesome acceptance
of my gifts would cost
me my world
by requiring a consciousness
to painful to bear
i deftly deferred
and suffered a more interesting
fate
of quiet
numbness and .despair. of not knowing
the potential that could be

art given up in
order to survive,
hindsight suggests
it be an oxymoron:

that ultimately
either road
leads to sudden
internal death
(read: of sorts).

and that's how i'll
imagine it could never
quite be,
whilst making cracks
of deadened selves
rotting inside
(me).