"Wallflower"

It was a nihilistic night,
despite the beers and cheers of such colorful creatures,
partying and parading in a magnificent masquerade,
and still something is amiss.
Perhaps it's my own relentless, fermented fear
that has been brewing since I was a boy,
bubbling up like one too many wasted years.
This scene swims with a natural chorus of girls and boys
while I stand in silent defiance
shaking sporadically with nervous noise
to the stereo who spits out hits I’ve never heard before.
I need another drink so I can stop overthinking
of what to say if someone should catch my eye
in their butterfly nets.
I smile big with the atom bomb laughter
to make sure no one can peg me as "out of place",
leaning back and pretending to be apart of the party
though I'm wearing black just to blend in.
I pose in a marble manner, steady on the surface
while my nerves launch a firework race.

But I can feel every stare go through me
as the poetry daggles delicately in the dark air.
According to eighteen people here
I don't actually exist
and to the others I'm either
an enigma or an obstacle in front of the fridge.
I figure I must've found the formula for invisibility
when I was four
wrapped between the blank pages of prayers unanswered
waiting like dead skin to be peeled back and read.

Another atom bomb and I almost forget to laugh along
but my face doesn't glow like their lanterns,
it doesn't flicker when my tongue tickles the air.
It's fake and flat, pasted on plaster with painted petals.
I'm a wallflower whose buds have not yet bloomed
standing in an awkward angle at the corner of the room
when you walk in.

They call it a crush by the wait that overwhelms
between breath and rest.

You knock me out faster than Tyson in the title bout
and you can see by my sizeit don't take much to topple me.
I'm falling harder than history on New Year's Eve
hit like a paradigm shift sucker punched me.
You flutter around and fit right in and I can tell
you are perfect.

That's a powerful phrase that the uncreative say
only because they don't understand;
perfection is not a direction dictated by people,
it stands like pieces in each of us.
Yours pierces my eyes and sizes me up,
for a second you aren't an am
or a were
or a will be
only an is,
forever free, far too beautiful for me.

I am merely an ill-inspected irregularity,
an assembly line escapee,
a crumbling cobweb someone forgot to clean up.
I imagine if I tried a dialog with you
the deafening spaces between words would destroy me.
I'd do something dumb like strip myself

I'll still be there
like the scabs of spring
and the aftertaste of rum.

down to the skeleton and swear
that when they take all two hundred bonesI want to say what everybody should be screaming,
that you are a violent roman candle eruption
sonic booming half the light spectrum on a volcanic vista,
the aroma of slow burning memories
of magic markers, mistletoe, and mystery,
the green flash on the horizon, hanging like Gatsby's hope.
I know you have flaws, faults and failures,
you've been abused and been a bitch
but that doesn't alter the envy of angels,
the fact that when you walk out that door
everything in existence will be a little bit darker and more dull.
I want to say I accept you
as is
from your sparkplug smirk
to your gnawed nails because you are perfect

and whether some two-faced fucker told you otherwise
or a little boy lied to get laid
I've seen more faces than wishes during war
and yours is more special than sentences can speak.

But I don't say that,
I don't say anything.
Instead I watch wishing
I wasn't a thin sheet of wasted paper
but a window where you could look out and see
exactly how wonderful you are.