In my mind you are going to see him
you are on I-10
you are driving
you are driving to see him
to see him and be his weekend fuck.
And as you drive
you are listening to the cd I made for you,
that I gave to you today
for which you told me how sweet I was.

As I write this I might as well be
stabbing the pencil through my palm,
spreading my arms outward, a notebook
attached to each, looking heavenward.
I want to be your saviour
and I get off on the crucifixion.
But I hate to hear the nice-guy-best-friend martyr
drill from anyone else
(why do women always claim to want the
nice guy but date the jerk?)
perhaps because I feel I invented this
goddamn tired petulant whine and I
have the keen insight that it's all bullshit.
There are no nice guys
there are only different forms of emotional disorder.
This nice guy who has the self-esteem of a
dead fallen leaf and can only survive by
clinging slothlike to the upside-down notion
that he is right on the inside and that
everyone else is fucked-up and this
is why he is alone and if
they could only see
if they could only see
if they could only see
then someone would love him and fill
the gap he cannot cross himself.
I know this martyrdom well,
I have worn its ring for years.
And though I see its self-fellating folly
and though I call it bullshit
I still come on a ladder to its window, saying
"I just want to hold you,
just hold you tonight.  And that's all."
And so in my mind
in my mind
In my mind you begin to cry
I can't let you be
cuz your beauty won't allow me
wrapped in white sheets
like an angel from a bedtime story.

Mark Kozelek wrote it and
Mark Kozelek sings it
but you know that it might as well be
coming straight from my voice,
telling our story,
the night I was hopelessly wrapped
in white sheets, wrapped in you,
wrapped in your white sheets.
Your back to me as you guided
my hand over your body
"But... but I want to kiss you,"
I whispered.
"I know you do,"
was your answer.
This is the closest I would ever
be to you, little more than a
convenient device.  Hating myself more
for somehow loving this unbearable cold.
Have you forgotten how to love yourself?
In my mind you are turning the car around.
In my mind you are crying,
you are crying and turning the car around.
"Please kiss me," I whisper
"please, please kiss me."
Let this be what my paradigm demands
Let this be anything other than what it is.
In my mind you are driving back to me
In my mind you have heard what is in the
music that I wanted you to hear.
In my mind
In my mind you want me to love you.

I stretch my arms out wider--
Why have I been forsaken?
Because it is bullshit.
"Why do women date jerks?"
First answer "Why am I writing this poem
for you?"
This is my complex
This is my hypocrisy
This is my projection
In my mind I am cradling you tonight
but I can't sleep.

I can't sleep.



CD Mix, September 2002
by Kevin S. McFadden
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

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