Don't Nobody Know......

i can smell the sweetness
of goodbyes in the innocence
of a kiss;
or a whispered hello
riding the waves of uncertainty.
i recognize that every
beginning is inevitably
an ending.
not because i live to die,
i‘m just dying to live.
dying to be free.
dying to realize my dreams.
dying to shed the skin i’m in.
dying to bleach my reddish brown
tinted pigmentation to become invisible.
dying to move forward.
dying with each and every
misstep,
mistakenly taken
for granted as foot steps.
‘cuz most days,
well most days
i’m standing still.
rooted in duplicity
dying two lives,
living two deaths.
neither of which fulfill
or sustain me.
at night
i live that of a poet
hiding behind verse
and verbs
dying to live for words
to build character,
create a subtext; or
at least be the predicate
proceeding the subject
of the self imposed run on sentence
oft referred to as a life that makes no sense.
i want to start at the end
but, it to has to begin.
and often,
i’m afraid to sit in silence
‘cuz i’m not sure if I’m alive
or dead.
if i'm simply the pregnant pause
connecting one sentence
to another.
and what, well,
what if i’m truly living
and this,
shit this is as good as it gets?
or if in fact,
i'm not living 'til death,
but dying 'til birth?
or if in fact,
i’m a blink in another’s eye,
an afterthought in another’s mind,
a dream she can’t wake from,
or a nightmare he has no escape of?
and what will be the words uttered on
the last day of my birth
or in first gasp of my death?
remember i’m dying to live.
dying to shed the skin I’m in.
dying to make it to the beginning.
dying to make it back to the womb.
living to die a death worth dying.
and begging
that each and every time
i fall to my knees,
either in prayer or defeat,
that those imprints are heavier than any steps
i could have made while on my feet,
‘cuz i want to be humbled......
kdtaylor, 2007
section 8 coffee publications
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