Stalker Story

Your disappointment woke me
Early on a Friday, probably
Money or a woman,
Or company politics or
Something you are building
Gone bad
Once I might have cared which
And asked with concern
But now it would be annoying
To feel you searching the sensors
Stealthily transmitting your
Limited range of emotions

Such fantastical technology
So expensive
How interesting you must be
Galvanic skin response
Measures of heat and respiration
Perhaps that is how I sense
When you orgasm alone
But what of the hollow emptiness
That so often follows?
The cold numbness that fills you
What technology exists
That could inform me of that?

I know these things the same way
I knew what was happening
On your first real date with J
When you were bored and
When you connected bodies
Or have you convinced yourself
I followed you that night and
Used my super-duper x-ray vision?
Have you found the expensive
Equipment I snuck in and planted
At your desk, molecular samplers
Audio and video, cutting edge?
I must have, of course, how else
Would I have known when you were upset?

When you were still posing
As my friend
When I still thought you
Perceptive

I don’t care about the lies
They improved a good story
But it was pathetic when
You started to believe them
Is it easier to imagine
That the minutiae of
Your life has my interest
Than to be confronted with
How sad and dreay it is to
Have an unshutterable window
On your tiny, gray, world?
Your powerful heart, caged.

Does imagining yourself
A Victim
Instead of a liar and
A Fool
Distract you from the way
Your life shrinks around you?
Tedium
Build and watch TV and
Self-pleasure alone
Watch TV and build
Sink in the warm sedation
Of alcohol and tedium and
Your easy, undemanding
Indifferent friends