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Dissociation saves, in my soul,
A shard of grief
For the next friend of mine
That leaves.

Hiding away into fantasy,
Pretending when I let mind
Slip from the hinges
Into the foresight.

An Atlas hold on my sky
Before the fall,
Knowing bracing
Won’t save bone from
Shards and splinters.

Fearful of loneliness
And forgottenness,
Shaking at honesty
Taking my fingertips
To write the truth.

Fantasy embraces me gladly,
As the thought of you two leaving,
Takes sanity and peels it
Like a scab.

Please don’t forget about me, my friends.
28 lines, 246 days left.
It's a struggle
I understand---
The point is lost
When comfort
Of the bed takes over,
But failing
The challenge twice
In a week
Is noteworthy.

The point cannot get across
If it's all but a car
With flat tires,
For this road has no time
For brakes to depress,
And we knew that stepping in,

But surely we can do better
To not deplete the message
Of wasting any moments
Than the example we've set.
Laziness is no longer an excuse,
It's a mindset;
Don't let it breach the line
Of permanence.
25 lines, 267 days left.
Brash as a wave
Is your verbose overbearance;
A noise box without a crank,
Just spit and sputter;
Have no breaks.
A false embrace
To make a step towards
What you said you wanted
Because a train on a track
Stops at nothing
Without a destination.

I have to confess,
When I feel your skin
I picture someone else;
When I look in your eyes
I look at my reflection
And question
My intentions
Wondering if I’ll
Ever have the strength
To admit disingenuity.

Puckering lips begging
To be held by another pair,
And mine have no desire
They just blankly stare.
I find more romantic fulfillment
From a pillow late at night
Than your arms
Intertwining within tangled sheets
And fake smiles.

Is this the ****** of the story?
Or did I just finish you again
Because I’m so dry
That I can’t tell why I even
Give you my time or attention.
We’re disingenuous acquaintances,
Not even lovers,
Not even friends,
We’re just here
We’re just convenient
And I think I’m finally spent.
44 lines, 330 days left.
The sky is still dark
It's early morning
The smell of dryer sheets fills my nose
As I grab my scrubs and head to the shower.

The warm water runs down my body
Drips from my hair
As I think of all I might do today
How to save and heal lives.

I've put in the work in class,
I've studied disease processes,
Their cures and treatments,
The proper assessments and labs.

It's all so abstract on the pages of textbooks
A disease exists as a concept in my head
The treatment plans seem so simple
And so straightforward.

In the simulations I've done
Everything is controlled.
As long as I do everything right,
Everything will turn out fine.

Now on the hospital floor,
I receive my assignment,
And the paragraphs from textbooks come to mind,
As well as the practice questions and simulations.

But walking into my patient's room,
The conditions and diseases I've studied,
Are no longer conceptual.
A living human being is suffering.

Checking the labs and diagnostics,
Just how uncontrolled real life is,
Begins to sink in,
And the reality of inevitable failure sinks in.

In the hallway I gather myself,
As I grapple with the new reality,
That I won't be saving lives today,
My assignment is to make what's left as good as possible.

My sudden change in perspective,
Is nothing in comparison though.
My patient has an adult body,
But the mind of a small child.

During one of my routine assessments,
My patient winces,
Unable to verbalize their pain,
They strike their head and cry,


"What did I do wrong?"


My heart breaks.
This poor soul,
Cannot understand that a disease,
Is not a punishment.

They cannot understand,
That something indifferent,
Without intent or thought,
Has begun to end their life.

How cruel…

All I can do is hold their hand,

Give them medications to dull the pain,

And wish that you could understand:

You didn't do anything wrong.
77 lines, 353 days left.
Josh Pearson Jan 2021
Should I fear the sunset
At daybreak?
Should I be numb?
Or should I gild a mask
And live out the rest
As though
Acknowledgement
Of the bell toll slipped
And pretend.

One day
Has through been marked
And life goes on.
No beginning
Can avoid the end
And certainly
Not one such as I,
I’m a piece of the puzzle
A star to blaze
In the night.

The only question on my mind--
Will that blaze carry on
Through the night sky
Careen through
And outshine
Andromeda,
For galaxies
From millions away
To be awe-inspired
And unite if only for a moment,
Or will it be snuffed out
Only to be left
In the memory of few.
34 lines, 338 days left.
Josh Pearson May 2020
The heart takes the blade
For kindness
And for hate.
The sun shines
A new day only
For one to fall
To his knees
And either break
Or pray
As a corpse will lie there
In the end
Either way.
Born on the edge of
A Yin-Yang
As her first words
To him
Were not of love,
But of hellfire and flame.
How can one love another
Who birthed something else
That day?
How can one call another
Mother
When she carves hopes
And dreams
And banishes them
Into dirt
To be washed away
By her rain
That prescribes guilt
Although blameless
And yet, blamed
While within five minutes,
As his ears: deafened
From the screaming voice he heard,
She says she loves him.
Is there any other irony—
Tell me—
That is more so absurd?
40 lines
(insta: faltering_soul)
Josh Pearson Aug 2019
Faded memory
Of warm light
And entrancing laughter
And conversation
Desiccated,
Devoured
By rusty decisions and
Time,
Eroded by weeping skies,
Banished behind
Locked doors and
velvet curtains—
Folding into myself
To keep out the cold;
The silence left in place of
Muffled laughter,
Drowning,
Suffocating emptiness,
Dissolved by endless grey
When it seems
All these moving parts inside
Are yearning for an escape.
Will there be anybody around
When time takes hold
As my soul drags behind
Out of control,
Bound by friction
Sparking from the ground,
Withering away
Into less than a whisper—
Into a shallow, bloodied river
Taking shape from the *****
Carving the mountainside,
As the eyes that stare
Are blinded
By the despair
Of the clock inside
Drained of its force?
I want to feel happy days
Just once more
Before the trough
Sets the tide
For the last time.
The timer is set,
As my brain stem
Rooted from a seed
Planted
Thoughts with intentions
To undo me.
I’m a lone wolf,
As not I was
But forced to be—
As everyone eventually
All will leave.
For stardust we are,
And will return.
Why not sooner
Than Fate's watch predicted?
What is the point
If a universe vast
Sews insignificance
Into a soul gone astray?
A heartbeat of strain,
An aneurysm of suicide,
A fractured spine,
Of one
Attempting to be Atlas,
As the weight of the world
Collapses,
And nobody is there
To help bear the burden,
To offer a hand.
If to stardust we shall return
In this heat-death wave,
And if alone a life is spent,
The point is not;
It is all just a waste.
Empty spaces are buried
Eventually,
With the inevitability
Of our signs
Which used to have
Highs and lows,
That soon will cancel out
Into a plateau.
Hands creep to fists
Maniacally holding in
The impulse decision.
Terrified with rage,
On the brink of
An out of body escape,
Yet the universe in question remains.
A sky-bent feeling,
As nothing is certain,
And the dirt caves beneath,
Reminiscing in this moment
As the sky fades,
And the fall sets in
Before the break.
Is there anybody out there
Or am I alone
Again in this
Claustrophobic empty box
Lashing out?—
Giving way to the silence
With voices beckoning fists
Against the floor,
The walls.
My cross-eyed head
Tossed into insanity
Virtually proliferating palpability.
Alone fixating around
The point out there
In the stars
Staring down,
As the insignificance begins to ensue
From the audacity to look up,
When feeble heartbeats write
The bombshells battering.
In this eulogy,
I can escape.
For, the loss of one
Is enough to inspire many,
To briefly give rationality
Instead of insanity,
But turbulent tides
Ripple the shoreline
Of friends,
Of family
Gathered at a presence
Now gone
Into the deep
Of Mirkwood,
Where nothing is ever certain.
For, if the path is lost,
Never one
Can find it
Again
Is there anybody out there,
Or is it all a dream—
A simulation,
Or some shattered, harsh reality?
Nothing is certain—
Just bent on hermeneutics
And epistemology,
Wasting the nights and days
As time beelines away.
Hysteria eating the populous
On a sun-burnt earth,
Whose skin begins to drought
As the primary of the system,
The sun,
Begins its red giant phase
Cleaning the slate,
Without a doubt.
Shortening of breath,
There emerges a flame,
Burning all oxygen left
As every breath inevitably
Digs at one’s own grave.
This—
Is the way the world ends,
In an inflexible game
Of end times,
Of no escape.
In night terrors,
This new reality was forged—
The origins of the pain
And the fear
Caught by a thousand
Staring eyes
That used to understand,
And now are turned.
The nightmares
And this rage,
Throughout these years
I have held deep within,
Now depart from the hold
Because the strength I don’t have
To save them
From who I am anymore.
I am a Jinchuriki,
And this demon inside
Is slowly tearing through
Muscle and bones,
Exposing nerves.
I’m bleeding out
With nobody around
Because I can only speak
In euphemisms
To drown out
These signs,
So that I don’t have
To accept the gravity
Before the grave.
The fear swells underneath
As the skin
Becomes marred,
Eventually splitting
Apart
Into
An ‘existence’
That would make
That choice of word
A paradox.
This time,
The sky fades to black
As the loss
Of everything that
Could have been
Slips through my fingers
Like sand
In a hourglass
Ticking away
My last night.
In this room,
Not a lot it would take
To make anyone
Peel out of being tame,
Fill with poison,
Let out screams
That not even the best
Can fake.
With these walls,
Hallucinations take over
When I realize that
The ones I trusted
Put me here
In this place—
This white roomed
Institution.
All I love
Is out of my grasp,
Tormenting my failures
Through the bright light
Of the room,
As if they think
A physical light
Will transpose a mental one.
Is there anybody out there?
Because it won’t be long now
After this soul once admired,
Becomes lustered,
As the signs become chronic,
Philosophy becomes strained,
And the look of denial
Deep in the windows
That stare within
Are enough alone
To bury me;
Will anybody ever really stay?
It’s hard to wake up
From dreams that cast
Such a dark shadow
On even living here.
So I stay up all night
Because what’s the point
Of dreaming
When the only change
Is the calendar day,
When still,
Frames paint the past,
The straitjacket sews the facts,
And nothing’s fine.
264 lines
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