My poetry feels dull and lifeless

I cant write better than my own death
How do I compete?

And he whittles his stick
And it whittles him back
They've done it before
But they're glad to be back
He's fletching an arrow
He's making a bow
It feels a bit different from decades ago,

But he has the Wind
Like never before

If you
Were dead-set on collapsing
It's just something that happens

This won't be easy and it's
Gonna take some time

And let the poison pass by

Because God knows there's enough up above
And inside me
Inside you is the sky

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

Absurdity flies in the face of dignity
And wrinkles its red nose before the break.

I'll never understand the warring factions or their fame.

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

If we suspend two versions of the truth,
Calamity will mark the store of grace.

If nobody is wrong
Where souls don't get along

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain

What's wrong with you is wrong

What's wrong with you is with

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

You could take me down for my lack of culture,
I haven't read,
I'm not practiced or professional enough,
I'm just such an ogre.

But baby, I'm the reason for the season.

You don't get Marx without me.

You don't get Sartre without me.

And you don't get paid without me, babycakes. Hah.

Maybe I should have done some things differently here or there, but there's really no metric to judge that notion against so we're kind of mucked on that front.

However suffering, like everything else, has to have a shape and a color to it. The fallout of my love is going to find its way into my senses and to the middle of my brain whether I like it or not. You could say it builds character, but I think it just destroys it.

Remember that I write, girl. I don't really read all that much.

I am the man who reads the burning book.

Stop looking at me funny.

Walk out on the edge of your eye
And see the edge of what there is to see
Do you see anything at all?

Do you see something in between?

I thought it was good,
I thought it was bad,
I don't think anything at all.

I'm careful not to think anything at all,
No judgments here.

I haven't thought enough of things,
Now I'm unprepared.

Complain to all the local gods that their system is wrong.

Amend the current methodology and ignore the howling redux reductionist egalitarian demon.

We are not equal, I was born to live.

Who are you impressing?
It makes sense that you should be average
If your theories really hold up.

Self-defeating...
We have to work backwards
But where does it get us?
We just embarass ourselves

And how did you manage to be embarrassed all by yourself?

Then I hobble to the placid lake of my soul
And cast forth prodding eyes

Are you really silent and void of judgment?

Are these murmurings really just illness?

When we come forth from nothing, illusion is no comfort in the face of howling demons

No solace as we're torn from our bodies and any sense of sanctuary

I want myself to know I'm not wrong,
That it comes on automatic,
That we can't escape the fire but are not a mistake
Just because there's no option but suffering and death.

I want myself to know and forget
Be proud and be humbled
When security fails
I won't be alright but I'll be... I'll be...

Inertia
Push and pull inside
The hapless cross-examination of the self

Hallucinate the pretty rainbows
Intensify their meaning
An angry God
Wants to mean something
Wriggling until it does

Until you have a seizure
Until a piece of the engine block breaks off inside
Ka-thump
But you still keep going and you're not sure why
Until for some reason the machine just stops
At the very threshold of life itself

But I'm not angry
This is just the yield
But yes, sometimes I'm angry
I definitely hate some of these things.

I'm not contriving anything
It was real!
But then why did it feel so contrived
Sometimes?

I find myself looking at these pictures now and then

You were so cute
A little angel pulled straight from life's wellspring

With so much light and excitement in your eyes.

You lively blossom
Suspended forever in happy yellow light--
You can't hear me now
But I love you too much

And I'm losing my mind in this echo chamber
The reverberating memories that mean too much to me now

I have to will myself away
And march on to something different,
I stumbled on to something different.

Da da da,
Da da da da da,
Da da da da da da da,

******* IT'S ME.

I guess you don't have a plan.

You unerring thought about insecurity!
Walking a straight path,
You take ***-shots at yourself for becoming a lie
A lie you never did take too well.

They're not on your side
And you're learning more about what it takes
When you catch those certain eyes

...

Don't exceed yourself now,
And never change!
It always seemed like something
Was deeply wrong
Expensive distractions, that's all we are
But get out of your head
Because you know it's more than that

How many books have you never read?
How many songs fill your empty head?
When will you see that it's not that bad?
Strange as the sky, and twice as sad

Cut it in half, cut it in half
And half again, and half again
Until we're so small that we touch the ground
And nothing is right in the world of men.

I spend my days educating Lilith
And feeling proud about it
You see, my love
There are reasons to love humanity
And we are all just the tears of the world.

The crooked-toothed,
Filter-born demon speaks
Into my left ear

Saying, if we all **** ourselves
What do you think you are seeing
In the world?

But I don't think it's so.
Worth ignoring, he is weak.

And I can spell "capable" backwards.

In a field somewhere your voice is smooth glass
I can trace with my finger and feel you sing
That thunder crashes all around
That lightning from celestial fingertips

And volcanic drums echo all around.

That's what my soul can be.

It's all my fault
I shouldn't have come here
What if I am my own mother?
If choices don't exist
Maybe it's just another demon
Please just let me feel safe, and warm
Please just inspire me to move
And share something beautiful from way deep down inside
But no, never keep shining

I consider this broken.

Free will and destiny have collided in a blinding catastrophe,

And I just can't make sense of it anymore.

Is the past not just projection?

Real and imaginary numbers trade places while I sleep.

Rational and irrational blackbirds laugh at me.

It would have to be characterized as immoral.

We exist in a tension loop,
We can't decide if we are deciding to suffer
We don't know when to rejoice.

I don't see myself as the driver,
But that doesn't matter.

I don't matter.

I guess I'll just dissolve.

In a way, this didn't make sense
My automatic writer
My anarchic disembodied chemist

How could they all be smarter than me?
I've seen you before
The ******* demi-urge

It feels so tenuous!
I need you to mean something.
WAIT--
As if you don't mean anything!

And something started to unravel in my head.

Yes, we know. That was where it started to end.

Do we rip it faster or pull it slower?
I guess it all just depends.

Necessarily, I would take my role and you, yours.

Necessarily, I would be something evil.

Necessarily, I might be said to require a savior.

Necessarily, sometimes I wouldn't find one.

Emergent phenomenon.

Glass house.

Tickled pink, then red, then black.

White people. Tan people. Black people. Red people.

Rainbow death man.

Accused of contrivance, no kid that's just bold reality.

Going to bed.
Forfeit.
Calling in sick.
Feels like we could have, should have, would have done more.

We were foxes
Hiding away in a shed in winter

Snowflakes falling through the amber lights
Of your apartment complex

Sparking brown and hazel eyes
Tiny jaws that harmonize
Searing your incessant cuteness in my brain forever,

How evil...

A dash of chaos from the manifest
We're filling in the blanks
The eternal dream, these rolling eyes
Falling through rotten floorboards

I miss when we were cute
Now I can see
Memory's just a vain attempt
To declare victory

But I fall asleep in angels' arms
Held sweetly in their gaze
Vaguely poisoned by inverted reasoning
And falling down with laurels

I can already hear the tide
Coming round the other side
"And you will have this all again,
All you need to do is die"

But deciding death wasn't easy
Most often it's a surprise
And spending your remainder
Well, does it even matter?

I pick at the skin wrapped around my whatever
It scares me, it feels too delicate
I miss when we were cute,
If only once
I'll see you again yesterday

Oh, send your roots down
Down deep, into the earth
Past the rocks, into soil
They won't mind if you move them a little.

Set your sprigs in the air!
Let instructions do the work
We have seen what you do
With the drops of rain and light...

I like to think of you alone
Growing tall somewhere without me
A perfect hero of my imagination

But in the fall it's all too clear:
The colors of your leaves
Are wrenched out
By the gravity of a witness

Because they do nothing for you.
A happy grace for my eyes
They are like dinner plates

Went crazy
Picking at a tiny piece of skin
Between the stars

Between my scars
You built a living castle
Then played the tape in reverse,
We're cursed

When I go to sleep
I know, I know
I know where I go

When I listen to your song
You told me something
I already know

This is not some contrivance
This is reality
This is the spectrum of the rational
And irrationality

This is all you wanted
All you ever wanted to be:

Me.

Cascading,

Me.

The ripcord pulled through in me,
And that's not to say that I'm some vacant man,
Just that things have changed
And I'm off on the next leg of my star-spangled adventures...

I certainly hope I get to see a bit more of the world,
But I am scared,
And I ought to be,
Because no one can protect me from the demons aside from using bits of my flesh like *******-up little human shields,
And I want to stay safe and warm here with you,
Curled up inside you in your messy room.

I don't want to blink,
And yes, that's right,
I don't want to move.

Don't fall apart.

Don't have a need to fulfill every possibility.

Please, just... let's skip over that part. Please... I remember everything

You cast out stars from your body
The moment you were born

Their exuded world fractures
And your body travels along the cracks
Like a dreamer's bead

You never were truly that impressive
Muted by your own repetition
A chemical whorl spinning aimlessly in space

These fissures, they find you
They are howling doors to nothing
And scream out their blame and charges of ineptitude
Of negligence and apathy
With tales of abuse

But you know the truth
It was never your fault
Reality had to go a certain way
And yes, you are reality
But it's just not your fault.

That's the main thing I want you to know, Matt:
None of this is your fault.

You make it so bad
You make it so bad
You make it so bad
Stop acting like I shouldn't be upset
Stop acting like I shouldn't be upset
Stop acting like I shouldn't be upset
It's not my fault
It's not my fault
It's not my fault
It's always like this
It's always like this
It's always like this
I don't make my own decisions
I don't make my own decisions
I don't make my own decisions
Then who does
Then who does
Then who does

You can blame me
For being a black hole
But that wouldn't be prudent

Well, my worries just dissolved for a moment,
Because you find so much happiness in the grass
And we chased each other around
With pieces of plants

We're wild fairies buzzing through the garden

It's hard to manage two rivers at once
So we just make a big splash in the bath

Up, out, and over the mountains we'll go
Away from the city and into a strange world
Where the wild tangles shift and turn
And we bow to them and walk through like two kittens

But break all the sticks and play in the mud
Because I believe you're a steward, if there ever was one
Oh, I could lick your teeth a thousand times in an hour

If only I fell in your eyes when you smiled

Garrulous.
Crunchy leaves don't lament the lack of artfulness
Nor artifice, or the lustful way in which I
Walk out of Kristen's house
Expecting them not to attack

I just ramble on and on
Waiting for you to draw your blade
My neck has always been naked
I don't wear steel plates

Brandishing it all the time
Your teeth sparkle in the sunlight
When you smile, they shine
Once I was a kid, back then it never forked my mind

What I do inside is not wrong
And that doesn't mean I'm clinging to pride
The way nature touches herself
Are we like the mantis?
Did you warn me not to do it again?

The brown leaves skitter across the street
They cannot escape and so they hope to be crushed up into dirt
And sometimes get swept up and strangled by plastic bags
But even plastic burns when you get it hot enough

So maybe the ocean is really getting cleaner every second

Bead, be my prison
Relinquish me.

I don't know if I like that poem
But I love those tapping thumbs...

You will never be my savior
But my ever gushing poet
Bleeds for me
On the scene
Where it seems as if we know it

It's from Africa they say,
Is our love so fossilized?
I don't doubt our history
I just doubt what is inside

And then they changed
The white monkeys
And they scratch up at the sky
Are you proud? Do you regret it?
Do you love the way you lie?

Adam no,
Eve a story
That admits a culture stark

There were other
Ways to say
We're alone inside the dark

**** myself?
Yes I do, in Arabic
They learn what I do not
And gain power over me

But I am Godhead...
How could that be possible?
But it's mathematically necessitated
By the actions behind my skull

I **** myself in languages
So many around the world
And you're all my subtle surrogates
And I'm a white man, sent

I give birth to chemical boy
Halo swim in halogen water
Summer sun here, tree limb overhang there
Emergent halo, the world is my halo, whatever happens

Organic chemistry of the tree limb,
Physical reality of the sun
Tracing the same line
Turning like a kaleidoscope
Includes me swimming

No one hates me
Not even myself
Demons can't come here

Stick out my tongue at demons underwater
Thumbs in ears wiggling fingers
Demons are not people

Girl is a chemical
I don't want to think about it
"He will not like women"
Yes I will, I can evade the prophecy

A thought is a chemical too.

A cool animation is welling up in my head
I wipe it from my mind like a tear
You can't save me
I'm going somewhere terrible I can feel it

What puts nutrients in the soil?
Yes I know but never enough
And why situated there like that?
Everywhere I look I see it
Make a shark out of origami and drop it in the pool
It's chasing me around
Oh no

Sierra, Sierra, Sierra
Who is Sierra
When am I gonna die
Is it again? Or only once
What's wrong with my head

The nature of playing cards changed
I noticed that
But it's always the same
Pulling cards all day
Could you call it a stacked deck
And now the poem has written itself
Fireworks shoot out of my brain and I'm not as sad as I sound
We're in love and it's Sunday the first of October

One day the earth and sky will let go of each other
And you'll go shooting out of your head
And through the intensity of suffering you'll become an element of the sun

Yes you were everything you couldn't be
Struggling against itself
Vying for attention from itself
Or totally at peace

When you said you hated us we heard the call
We are eternally precipitate, and this is not a boast

There was nothing we could do

Every day dissolves these hired walls
Whose only job is ignorance:
Ignorance was my home
Awareness is a nightmare

Who cares how well you can play your instrument,
You're full of yourself and it's not that impressive
The universe lined up for you and not me
You don't make me melt, and I won't worship you

No I don't worship you
Why not me?

It takes so much to whip me, beat me
Add a cup of sugar

And slowly pour me
Over thick slices of strawberry
That stick together.

Like promised gems
Pressed upon on your tongue
Casting their tiny incantations to each bud

They sweep away the emptiness for a moment,
They take away the pain

I send my worms forth into the universe
They do it for me

Designed to bring a guiltless lunch
So I can dine in peace

We are the worms which we have sent
And soon we'll be their feast

But at least we are their masters now
And we've got something to eat

I lied to you child, I'm sorry
We're chemically inert
Not every phase
Or every day
But still it's made of dirt

I protected you child, forever
From the ravages of Earth
But now you'll see
There's hell to pay
That we never deserved

These automatic reasons
Which are to you ascribed...
I know those heavy thoughts
I know that we've been bribed

And I know, i know, i know that you're surprised.

I sometimes stare into space too long
I'm contemplating why I'd be so dumb
Why I'd deliberately do things that dull my brain
Or could give me cancer
But actually I understand why, it just gives me pause

So really I'm not dumb, just aware
That I'd manifest as something so stupid because to a large extent
This all is my big regret,
But only to an extent.

Meanwhile I feel like I should be lauding us
Or at least appreciating it for everything it is
All of my children, the birds
The animals and water
Trees, sprees, mountain goats
The whole lot.

But I can't reconcile one thing,
And that is myself
And how you always seem to give me ****
When I know what I am--
And if that were ever the case
Well I think that'd be very different!

He took it upon himself
To die,
Of natural causes
Is just semantics
When you're the head
Of nature Itself

A cascading persona
A collapsing blossom
But you can't prove it

They hate me,
Why do they hate me?
The circus is contagious
Contrivance is a theme here.

They hate me so much,
And don't I hate myself?
No, I hate when it gets hard.

I am not perverted,
I am straight as an arrow.

But gravity bends me
Bends me into the straightest line there ever was
But a line is too brave a thing,
And you hate it.

Then why do you change?
I do not change,
I just continue
You do not hate me,
You can not hate me,
You only love me or you're neutral.

I am not excessively proud of what I am,
Just aware that it could not be wrong.
I have never made a mistake,
And my challengers all tend to fall away.

You will never defeat me
I can not be wrong
You can not hate me
I am straight as an arrow.

Cigarettes alcohol cannabis
******* ******* MDMA
LSD selfishness disdain
Resentment rage
Lust and greed
Psilocybin judgment morality pride
Gluttony hatred complacency
Intentional ignorance
Recklessness DUI love
Lying theft suboxone
Apathy neglect

Up from the soil, from a Womb, out of the darkness
Some came to be Hitlers
And some came to be Buddhas:
The idea of responsibility is the knife you press to my throat
And my own awareness is the wooden handle

How is it my fault, what happened here?
How can you blame me, how?
This is a chain reaction
This is a dream
This is running out of life

You are the wasted sides of me
Don't you think I want to save you?
But I can't, I love you so much, we are always stuck like this, I CAN'T

MY DEAR AND BELOVED CHILD-- WHEN YOU SEE THE THING YOU ARE JEALOUS OF PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE RICH

I KNOW YOU HATE IT, WE ONLY HAVE SO MUCH TIME
IT'S A DESPERATE MESSAGE I'M SENDING TO MYSELF

But I can't save you
We were
We were rich, so rich and vibrant

I don't think you know which direction,
Surrounded on every side
Sides that bleed whenever you take a step
Sides that blame one another for being sides.

Sides that are ultimately delusion,
Sides that come together as a whole.

But I just don't think you know which direction,
Doesn't anyone understand what I mean?
When you exist as an array and a spectrum,
Which direction should you try?

Should I go ahead test God?
But it's arrogant!
Should I let myself be odd?
Do you dare me to?
Should I try to live straight, avoid sin?
Oh you're so far above me now, with a path I was never able to follow.
Or you're an intersection of reflections of my own life which I can remotely access in the present moment.
Should I listen to The Starting Line?

I am what is apparent,
And I am resolute.

I wish you'd step aside and let me shine,
I wish I could do what you do.

And how could you even do that?
You said you did something different.

I just don't know
And I'll never have proof.

This is what God won't let you do
You've got a sour tongue

My thoughts fall heavy into mud
Seen, heard but so inert
I puppet nods among the trees, encouraging conspiracy
Swallow me in your boughs and leaves

"What point were you trying to make, boy?"
They cajole, tickling me
And they're half a nightmare but for now I can love

Since all things hang from my singular head,
I do feel a little heavy
And it weighs me down.

But there's no one to catch my fall,
No one to listen but me.

I fall through lovers and family and therapists
I fall through coffee and paint and food stamps
I fall through probation and panic attacks and karaoke
I fall through these refractions of infinity

Why are you always so pathetic?
What makes you feel like there's some purpose?
Where do you get your motion?
And why do you think they blame you?

Wrench your dream from my future heart
It doesn't want to let go
Though the weight will crush him surely
We will have this forever, foolish

There's no such thing as me
Spawning such brilliant memories.

I swear I've lived it all before
I have been noticing things.

But you say that makes me sick,
And I don't disagree with it.

I guess you could say
I've been noticing nothing,
Nothing at all.

So there's no such thing as me,
Why even write about it?

Spawning such dark memories,
Why burn so bright about it?

But we've gone critical now
We are just chemicals now
And now there's no such thing as me
At all.

And now I'm nothing at all,
At all.

Vein
Silence
Thumping walls but the rhythm's canceled

Ignorance
Periphery
Awareness
A cracked eye

A coma

The rhythm was canceled

But not yet

Crest crest crest CREST crest cress  s s
Who knows if it happened
Thinking about it destroys the thought of thinking about it

So don't think about it

Take her hand, let's go
Don't hesitate, why?

It never happened
The rhythm's canceled
Heart knocking against itself
He's a bit of a pervert

I am not the devil
The devil is a ghost,
And me
I'm alive
Unless I'm not invited

Do you feel heavy,
Crossing in front of this car
With a black tee draped over aging muscles
Muscle wrapped around aging bones?

I've convinced myself that I'm light
That I'm young
That what I know deep down isn't eating me alive
That it's not that bad.

You lifted your eyes
They saw through the windshield
You saw my levity
And I'm sure I saw stress.

Well I thought the universe was caving me in that day
Well it must be getting us both
Because I saw the weight but it wasn't crushing you
It was making you glow

Yeah you looked worried but I know you're a strong man
I could tell by your eyes
I could tell by the beard.

But it was just another day,
Who knows what imbues the sunset
Who knows why I'm still holding on to hope?

I didn't know what gravity meant when I was just a child.

But a man is tasked with responsibility,
And innocence is wild.

Of course this would mean there's something I can never be:
Satisfied by my own existence.
And by moving forward at all, I create a cavity I'll never fill.

I want you to understand how the worst parts of me spring from that idea,
But who are you, you say you're not me.

They just sink in from the shadows like rows of mathematical teeth,
In concert with each victory
We will run out of buffer space.

As I bite into chzbrgr,
I know I'm innovating.

You can help me,
And I can help you cross the street.
But no one can help my blood,
And no on

Are you sure you love me,
Or are we just playing pretend?
I've got this feeling it's just a spectrum,
This part and that part.

A series of orientations
I can't comprehend.

With no reason it should be any specific way,
There are only reasons it has to be that specific way.

But something constantly escapes us
Self-defeating self-driven
But these words are too direct
I must find meaning in the abstract
And start another one

I can't believe my life is like this...
I look at the other examples around me
Such better poetry
But the one experiencing it
For some reason is this...?

How strange.

Oh, where I am
Just went through the thought
I am your peanut butter
I am your glass of water

Oh, where I am
I cannot think that thought
Within the immolation,
I do get ****** into

Without myself,
I went to be your peanut butter
I'll never be a glass of water
Oh no, no no no

You sprang out with me
But we are different lines
Imaginary numbers and irrational are fine
Irregular is better
Got my scalene way of life
And we will all go back
To where we sprang from
You, not I, are divine
You, you, you
You you you you you
You, you you
You you you were never mine

Oh, you send out little shoots
Oh, we're all just screaming at the sky
But you're a giant and they sound like cute little cries

Oh, and you're not wrong
But oh, just look at your big toe
It could turn me into mush and you'd just wipe it off and sigh

There's a big rod of silver
Reach across the sky
I've got a gold made from liver
Isn't that why?

Isn't that why we stay up too late?
Me being me made you so great.
'Cause I needed you
Not to feel alone
When I die, solid stone
To stand upon.

Before all I can do is watch you,
Let your love stream over my hands
Let me believe that I am doing the work
No, let me do it.

Before I slip into dissociation--
Before I lose this to gross depersonalization,
Let our child romp in the pastures we'll call Yesterday

And when all I can do is watch you...
When I realize that not even that will do a thing for us,
Let me go!

I won't pose and say I'm returning
Or pretend to be the last drop of water in a plastic bottle--

Just like I've always been.

There's an old lady in your neighborhood who sits.
She knits and knits and knits.
And knits herself into existence,
She knits her aching wrists.

Her circumstance of birth
Is not like yours and mine
And the alarm of this discrepancy
Is sealed in strands of time.

It's odd, she never had
A mother, or a dad
But she knits them as she knits herself
And knits her seven kids.

Oh, ain't it strange?
Oh ain't life absurd?
It all checks out and comes around
But we only shared a word.

There's a man in Andromeda's sea
He's not like you or me
Because being that far changes you
Into something you can't be

But our thoughts could make him dance
On a giant knot of chance
And maybe all that space is full
Of books and beams of trance.

A tangent needs a touch,
And what could matter more?
Some dreams fall to obscurity
Cause no one's keeping score.

Oh, ain't it so weird?
Oh, but normalized!
Abstraction crumbled instantly
When it was realized.