Fallen for You
I’m always surprised
when people like me.
Can’t they see through me?
Can’t they see the constant
demons I swat away like flies?
When I introduce people
to my ghosts, some shutter.
Others, stop liking me,
and instead they love me.
For they know what I know.
They have seen what I’ve seen.
I’ve poured enough booze into
my crown to seal the soft spot
and fill a void so big it’s the
space that God is supposed to be.
I’ve lobotomized myself into a
grinning moron finding faith in
not giving a damn, and laughing
at the punch-line of the apocalypse.
Drive a nail through my lifeline.
It will not hold me up.
The gravity of this gut feeling
always brings me down to Earth.
I am pregnant with death.
We are hung by the tube that feeds us.
Pull the cord, an umbilical parachute
unfolds out the tunnel of light.
Into the fire. Eyes open. Alive. Free.
Baby, if it’s heaven or hell is up to you.
Photo by Richard Vargas
Westley Heine is the author of Busking Blues: Recollections of a Street Musician and Squatter (Roadside Press 2022), a poetry collection Street Corner Spirits (Roadside Press 2023), and a collection of short stories and poems entitled Cloud Watching in the Inferno (Roadside Press 2025).
