What crippling weight is this?
You bear upon my chest.
You, a rusted anchor beneath my breast.
Too many years at sea,
I think,
the depths we've gone
failing to sink.
We set course to find pleasure
never knowing just how deeply
we'd come to treasure
a fool's dream.
Reality breaks,
a howling wind,
the treachery of consequence
& my soul grows weary.
We put our hopes into the mast
sailed far away from any past.
But old habits did not stay ashore
& a storm is raging in the North.
Now this ship is breaking down.
I feel you dragging in the deep.
I see the plank beneath my feet.
I am breathless.
I can't concieve the darkness it would be
to dive in & cut you free.

A subtle change of airs,
The fall to Earth.
A sweet chill to linger on fingertips.
Fresh roasting scents
Permeate the silence
To replace each passing conversation.
Finally.
The thousand dollar smiles
& whirl of diamond indifference
Fade to music from worlds
Whose language I cannot speak.
Blessed introversion.
It was never a business to be be forgotten.
As the sunsets draw short
So sheds cynicism
& the sickly copper taste of commodity.
Let me vanish into cashmere
& the beauty of written words,
Be carried away on the flicker of candlesticks.
Relax
Into the elegance of stoicism.
I am that I am.
A season unto myself,
Craving the solstice.
A peak of serenity in crisp autumn colors.
Reclaiming the safety of the night,
Mythology dances across the sky
& as the flames from the hearth
Warm my machine cold soul,
Passion burns through the tired facade.
Let me be drunk on these fallen leaves
& drift, thankfully
Into peace.

Wrong
Wrung
Ring
Ring my doorbell,
Wring my neck,
Rid me of this mortal wretch.
*****
Wrench
Can you fix it?
Get your toolbox
You're ill-equipped
I don't qualify
Quality
Quantity
I am not enough
For this.
Too tough
To kiss.
Rough life I've lived.
Live
Life
Lie
Lay back.
Just take it.
Let it happen.
Swallow
Swallow me up.
Swallow me whole.
Throw me down into a hole.
Wholly
Holy
Even God forgot me.
Oh his drones did try.
Saxophone & sweat
Promised hell when I die.
Choir girls & Inquisition
Tore my words, tried to burn me alive.
Then the good chaplain,
Samaritan?
Charlatan.
Daddy out of the way,
Me on the streets,
Mommy where he wants her
Worship at his feet.
Fret
Bet.
I am not afraid.
My debt is paid.
In blood, in tears.
Lost dreams, lost years.
Country roads, cold beers.
Bare
Bear
Burdens
I am brave.
Strength
Truth
Power
You'll have to cut them from my flesh.
Fresh
Blood
Brooding o'er my funeral,
Don't worry about my death.
I still feel pain,
I still draw breath.
My hearts not cold,
My soul is still old.
I haven't set a thing in stone.
******
Skipping rocks.
Flying planes,
Sail away from the docks.
Shoot me into outer space,
If this is Hell,
Heaven can wait.
I'm dancing with the Devil
& God is always fashionably late.
Create.
Tell
Tales
Tails
I'm not done yet.
Evolving
Incomplete
Completely me.
Pecan pie & sweet tea.
Nature
Treks
Blessed Be.
Naked
Exposed
Second for the money,
First for the show.
This is a test,
No time to be gauche.
Gross
Shocking grace.
There's still sand in my grave.
This cannibal inside
Still has a taste.
Human body beneath my tongue,
It's essence still fills my lungs.
Chest
Heart
Beats against this cage.
I'm too young to feel this age,
So don't you dare save the date.
Once the wolf works with the mirror
It's finally free.
Then I promise,
You'll be seeing me.

Goodbye, Old Friend.
I wish you well.
I am your Heaven,
You are my Hell.
Ill-fated we are, to have Life on Earth between us.
Yet the Stars & Moon rise to reunite us.
I traded you for mountain tops, but finally the ocean was our downfall.
To avoid repeating the past, there can be no Civil War.
Goodbye, Old Friend.
It's only forever.

I'm up late again.
Can't stop my mind from racing.
Going. Going. Going.
Obsessing.
Ironically, late at night is when your brain is at it's most creative.
Is it any wonder the best artists are insomniacs?
I've been fighting that.
"I need to sleep at a decent hour so I can wake early & be productive."
"I NEED this particular item to write this particular thing."
"I cant sit down & write/draw/create in a filthy house."
"Someone might call or need me, I can't get ****** in to that now."
"I need to clear my head before I can sit down & do this."
"I have my routine, all my daily tasks that must be accomplished, before I have time for myself."
I NEED TO STOP BULLSHITTING MYSELF.
I NEED TO STOP LETTING THIS BE AN EXCUSE.

See, I want to write.
I want to paint.
Draw.
Shoot.
Design.
Cut.
Glue.
Hammer.
Sew.
Create.

I used to do these things to a point of obsession. To a point where they kept me from completing every day tasks.
I remember as a kid, I'd get in trouble for using my school notebooks as a drawing pad.
Or the teachers couldn't keep my on task because I was off in my head scribbling away at some story.
God himself could not pry me from what I NEEDED to let out of me.
Then I grew up.
I think thats what happened.
Suddenly I had so many more things to worry about.
I had to put away childish things.
Life became so much more than the fairy tales I made for myself.
I forgot how to be what I was.
I only knew I had to do things.
Stupid, every day, grown up, necessary things.
That became my new obsession.

I traded one for the other.

Now I stand on a battlefield.
I have chosen the darker evil.
Doesn't make sense?

Remember Peter Pan? His life was full of adventure & freedom & joy.
The grown ups, the ones who forgot how to have those things, became bitter shadows of themselves.
They lost everything for all the wrong reasons.
I don't think I ever felt more closely identified with a fairy tale character (or characters because I find that the many different aspects of my psyche very closely identifies with most every character Peter Pan.)

Anyways.

For several years now, I find that I have been trying to reclaim this lost part of my soul. I don't think anyone, save perhaps 2 or 3 people realize just how important this is to me. These are people that would have known me in my early high school years, before the dreaded piracy of true adulthood took me away.

Why not just pick up the pen & write something? you may ask.
Well, it's not that easy.
Not for an obsessive compulsive thinker.
I'm not using that term lighty either.
I hear brats toss it around like a fashion statement.
Like having OCD is the new trend.
Just because you're a neat person doesn't mean you have a disorder, *******.
I know how many steps it takes to get from each corner & point in every home I am familiar with.
There are patterns in my day that, if broken, send me into emotional Hell.
There are many aspects to this disease.
This illness.
Whatever one may choose to identify it as.
I haven't found something I'm comfortable with yet.
I'm only just beginning to be comfortable with facing this truth in myself.

I let the only reality & peace I knew be burried away & my brain formed this militant prison of order around it.

The good thing is, my heart knows better.

When I'm able to bust those walls down for even a few brief moments in which I can slip past the compulsions & allow complete chaos take my hand & create, I am free.
When I become inspired by something & am able to mentally break away long enough to pursue it, it's like capturing a god ****** unicorn.

Unfortunately, more often than not, I find inspiration fade away. The many excuses I wrote before, just the tip of the iceberg, take hold & beat me back into my weakened submissive routine. I literally have stood still, as though at a play, & watched my head battle in itself to convince me NOT to follow the idea.
I may be *****, but I am no one's slave.
Least of all to myself.
Which begs my fear: control.
Why do I control myself?

Art is not controlled.
Creation is not controlled.
Beauty is not controlled.

These things cannot be tethered to definition or reason or logic or mathematics or laws or routine.
So the war inside me rages.
The problem in my head with its finger in my face is rationalizing ignoring the passion in my heart.
That disorder is sorely mistaken if it believes passion is in any way rational.

So this is what stands:
I am fighting an illness, something I aim to fight & beat & never succumb to again.

Creation is the air I breathe & no matter what worldy or sensory things bring me pleasure, nothing fullfills me like raw thought pouring forth from me.

I cannot stand by envious of the lives & accomplishments of my peers because I was too weak to take hold of the only true thing I hold dear. I am sick of hearing myself say "if only I could" or "maybe some day" or "I used to". I am done crying myself to exhaustion because I physically cannot pick up a pencil.

I don't know where to start.
I guess choking through this & fighting off anxiety attacks as I type is as good a start as any.

My most beloved author, inspiration, & life long hero, Anne Rice said,

"Keep the faith. Writers need faith...Just keep writing & believing in yourself...Just write until the juices start. Don't put up with Writer's Block...eventually you just have to write & write & write."

Write I shall.
Until it gives me anuerysms from fighting these tiny ticks & compulsions.
Until the tears are of success rather than submssion.
One step at a time I will conquer more than I ever thought possible.
I will take back my heart.

I am a sparrow flying back here.
Nothing really changes, even after all these years
There's still the old dirt roads & memories,
Front porch drinking & pipe dreams.
We'd talk of traveling until we grew old,
But I'm the only one that hit the road.
"Some day I'll ask you a question,
But today is not that day."
Our curiosities drove us mad
Wondering what the other would say.
Our secrets brought us closer,
You reminded me for whom to suffer.
The blood you spilled to keep me safe,
The nights I drove when you couldnt stay awake.
When we were kids, it was the laughs
But now it's arms that bring me back.
The winter chill rolls around,
You know it's not long before I'm in town.
We're old souls together,
Animals of the same pack,
Birds of a feather.
Now you tell me I stole your heart,
How much you miss me when we're apart.
You come to me as a wolf in my dreams,
Reminding me of everything we could be.
But it's the promises we can't keep.
You hold me like you mean it,
The look in your eyes make me believe it.
But you're still you
& I'm still me.
Both runners trying to be free.

I got this voice, you see?
No.
You don't.
You don't see the way I do.
You don't hear the way I do.
You don't feel the things I do.
The world just isn't the same to you.
You don't understand how important this is to me. To the very fiber of my being.
It's just pen & paper.
It just words.
No.
It's not.
It's having an entire life revealed to you by watching someone smoke a cigarette.
Sounds of the greatest song you've ever heard, but haven't written yet.
The nagging poem about a heartbreak you can't forget.
It's not that I see.
It's that I'm shown.
The world telling me all the things it wants to be known.
Still I tend to fear that all the best stories have already been told.
I have an order.
To you it's a joke.
I just want attention.
I'm making excuses.
It's sounds totally crazy.
Maybe I am.
I'm ok with that.
Are you?
When I speak in lyrics & it sounds dumb in your head,
When I allow myself to be giddy over something I'd just read,
If my shoes belonged to someone 50 years dead.
Does that bother you?
I find wonder in all the trivial corners of the world.
I don't reject any little joy.
Infinite possibility.
How often do you refuse to be pleasured?
All grown up, no fun little boy.
All this chaos is my beauty.
It pecks away at the disease trying to contain it.
Thanks Doc, keep your pill.
This is my test of will.
Obsession.
Compulsion.
Dis-order.
******* irony.
My madness lies in my heart,
Given the whole world to make my art,
& my brain, at least some part,
Tries to control it, Kayla you need a chart.
THERE ARE NO RULES!
You can't see what I'm fighting.
You can't see my own mind being held captive of its own accord.
Key to freedom.
Just break that glass.
Then what if I shatter too?
You control what you allow in,
I cannot.
I'm controlling what I let out.
Afraid of the things I write down.
It's begging not to be forgot.
Tiny, tiny steps.
I'm afraid to crush the flowers
Trying to grow in shadowy ruin.
Creation is finding it's way through the cracks of what was.
Foundation.
Deterioration.
Inspiration.
If you wage war with yourself,
Do you ever really lose?
Until you can dance in your darkness,
You never really find your muse.
What you can't understand is the way I love my demons.
Most people run from theirs.
I dine on blood with mine.