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up against me outside of myself henry says he is writing a sonnet a sonnet for miss palm he is certain then she will love him so interwoven with everything we feel we share the suffering I sent henry to the store for cheese and crackers I still had a full bottle of wine a red wine from davenport it awakens a will in us to struggle with the pain I am mired in my own substances I pull the matches from my pocket and light the joint henry has his eyes closed and there is a smile upon his face I know he is thinking of miss palm the same look I saw upon his dead face as he lays in his coffin tell horatio there are no more beggars to feed we have brought them all into the hall for the royal feast one wants to be afflicted with this alien pain an insidious temptation in the anguish as miss palm hands all the guests a flower without risking what she risks we are full throttled we are all soldiers fighting for her cause I knocked down the walls that were erected to protect her I want her to be exposed to be vulnerable to need saving because she has not yet lived enough I want time for her to flourish to grow wings and fly up to the heavens her life is a radiance that is shed upon the lives of others I am a lucky recipient of this radiance I bask in her light I am greedy with her light I want more and more I have not yet loved her enough I need to set free this tension that is building up inside of me an insidious tension like taut strings metal strings that someone is scraping a serrated blade against I cringe at the crunchiness of the anguish I howl at the moon clawing at the ground fulfill this beast miss palm I am bound by my suffering we are bound together by my suffering only you can free me release me from this pain my sweet love my sweet miss palm to hell with your hosanna and insurmountable ways view the sufferer’s contorted hands his grimaces hear his sighs and moans he has no faces no surfaces and no place all his resources are failing is dignity only something we have in death than what is this thing we have now is it character do the living have character and the dead have dignity is dignity only something that can be seen in the past tense miss palm cannot be envisioned in her singularity I would sell you to the circus all ten toes and ten fingers showing you the slimy under-section of your dream most people don't understand the word postmodern it is a word for eggheads someone in the other room was talking about hegel there is an irony about the way she speaks miss palm lives in an atmosphere tranced menace a kind of watered down version of your hardcore pornography her face contorts in agony over the mutilated corpse her face changes more than once into someone else's face miss palm had forgotten her lines and comes off as stiff and uncomfortable no one is worrying about it henry keeps painting pictures of little girls he has reawakened the venomous charisma ravaged and satanic he is giving her a monstrous does of pcp not political correctness a cruel child's parody of a damaged individual miss palm is alienated from pretty much everything except the particular obsessions she has developed she is immersed in the minutiae of her own fantasies I reached a point where I decided to write what I wanted to and I don't give a shit whether any one likes it or even gets it and I know many people do not get it that's ok there are always plenty of love poems that they can read even though this is a love poem it just happens to be a long one that disregards the rules of convention no