Floating through a crowded space
Of turning heads and curious eyes.
An echo of the worlds embrace,
A fleeting struggle your mind denies.

Once accepted, strong, a friendly face,
Yet as earth turns around each day,
Confidence falls, sand through lace.
Each moment poised a shade of grey.

A ridiculous cry you know its true,
Yet something gets ahold of you.
It grasps your breath and feeds your soul
Of bitter noise, now less than whole.

Just snap out of this silly game,
A dangerous sport too much at stake,
A lifes at risk, more than a name.
Endurance more than you can take.

This too shall pass, repeat, repeat,
Struggle on, hold your head up high,
Stand and stay upon your feet
We never want to see you cry.

Every night as I lay in my bed
I am handcuffed and often lead
Into the halls of the prison of sleep
My mind confiscated by the dream police

Come to arrest me every night
Never do they read me my rights
Judge and jury all in one
Fast on the trigger of their dream gun

No chance at all for parole
When dreams are all that you know
Need a good lawyer defending me
When I am dealing with the dream police

As they are surrounding my mind
Pulling up in their black and whites
Peak out the window, all that I see
Flashing red lights of the dream police

I have been shallow, I realize that now
Considering my impact on others first
Leaving the concerns of materialistic importance for myself.
In this double life I have been leading I have fooled myself
Trying to find reason to believe in others
I ignored that it is myself that needs believing in.

My critical eyes have become my enemy
Rendering me blind to obvious faults
Without knowing, I have trapped myself  deeper in their clutches
Focusing on disconnecting from my mind
Backfiring because I'm back in their world
Unintentionally, it's all I think about.

It's time to rethink my strategy
Take a refresher course on my mission.
Attempts to suspend the command unwanted have been countless,
And unknowingly, I have deserted control of the living, breathing, me.
I blindfolded myself, but still peered through the gaps
So I'm closing my eyes, and pray sleep stays for a while.

Keeping finger and thumb apart
That is the one connection we shall still share
But no longer will i try to believe in my two selves
No, I will start believing in the person
The being that my movements and choices will give effect and reward to.
Me, out here. Living and breathing.

The ghost of me will never cease to exist
She will float, and I will let her continue for a while.
Don't fret, my beloved enemy, I'll be back soon
A Wendy to this Peter Pan story
Returning with needle and thread to sew my old shadow to my feet.
But now, I'm flying, no, walking back home.
Farewell.

Feel the guilt and its killing me
Even though it might be a mire perception of thoughts accumulated by my desires and insecurities triggered by my needs to satisfy and by the hurt of hurting   that is only felt by the kind hearts
A thing that might be a little pebble but it consumes the mind
Leaving nothing but worry and sickness and I'm tired so ill just break out with the truth even if it makes me look like a foul even if I'm crazy even if your the one doing me wrong  cause I'm sick and tired of this chaos of mind ill cut out all the bull shit. A clear conscious

My feelings are dead,
Reduced deceased,
Anger brings forth the beast,
From the very depths of hell,
Not feeling very well,
Depression got the best of me ,
Shake this beast,
Let me free,
Now you see the real me,
Writes in style,
Once in a while depressive hands strangle me,
Entangling in their mind control,
My mind is my own worst enemy,
At times I'm dashed,
My head is trashed,
Sometimes I write better,
No one else was in control,
Today,
I dug my own dark hole,
A few more writes will put me right,
The great escape you see,
By tomorrow,
Feet on deck and I'll be grounded,
I'll run free again!

By ladylivvi1



© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

There's only so many ways to cry
and only so many corners to hide in
outside your illuminated little head.
When the tears kiss your ruby cheeks
or trickle to the concrete
the realness will inevitably snap back.
But, if you truly try to,
you can sob and wreath forever in your mind
and still never have to stop to breathe.

Three seventy-five. At my current muscle weight, that’s the amount of force, in pounds, with which my fist smashes into my opponent’s face. Flesh molds against my knuckles, vessels rupture under the impact; I am that unstoppable object, that destruction you can only watch. I am that confused, hurt, angry child. I channel it through my arms, conduct it through my knuckles, watch it spark and jump from fist to cheekbone. This is the therapy I so wantonly crave, so needed. The only place I can vent the full wrath of my frustration upon the world; or…at least, a single member of it….

Jump back three days.

     Why can’t I see you more? I text her. Because I don’t want a relationship. She says. I don’t need a relationship. I just want to see more of you. I tell her. I’m afraid I’ll invest too much. She says. I don’t understand. Is that a bad thing? Seven years of friendship, two of off-on dates and rendezvous. How could you get more invested? What else can you spill after your hearts in a pool at my feet?
I drank a lot that night.

Jump back four days.

     I’m coming out that way. What are you doing tonight? I always initiate…everything. Always the first question, the first proposal, the first, the first, the first. Am I that threatening? Going out with friends. Homework and going out is all this woman seems to do. Maybe one less night with friends, one more with me wouldn’t hurt? Cool. Celebrating a birthday with friends, we’ll be out and about. Maybe we should meet up? If I’m here, she’s got no reason to refuse me…right? I thought distance was our only problem. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. I don’t want you to see me stupid drunk. What a stupid excuse. I actually want to see you stupid drunk. I will at some point if we keep things up.

     Long story short, a guy she sometimes fucks is going to be wherever it is they’re going, and she doesn’t want to have two guys she’s seeing in the same vicinity. What does that make me? I’m getting frustrated with all this confusion and sideways talking. My group incidentally ends up at the same place they are. I don’t even talk to her face-to-face. I’m such a sporting guy. She goes home...alone, to my relief. I get stupid drunk with friends. But never forget to message her back and act like everything’s cool.

Jump ahead a week.

     More conversations to clear up why I fill only one void in her life lead to more confusion. I’m frothing with it. It’ll be in my mouth soon. Wait…I taste it already.

     “Let’s drink and pick fights,” I say to a couple buds. Two hours out, we’re sloshed and trading licks in a back alley. The guy that had taunted and jostled me in the bar follows us out and picks a fight. Says I’m too drunk. Not worth it. I hide a smile, raise my arms, “Let’s see.”

     Shirts are off. Left hook to my ribs, I pivot an elbow, deflect with forearm. This leaves his side open. I duck his wild right-hand and drive a straight hit into his open spleen. He hits the alley wall. “Still want to take a drunk?” I taunt from my knee. He comes back, still sure of himself. I’ll show you what confidence does to us, my friend. He puts up a boxer’s guard and comes back, more cautious. Friends and enemies cheer and joan around me. I don’t hear a thing. There are thoughts. Dark, confused, smashed together, waiting to be dealt with. I focus on all of it. I focus on his face. I listen to the conversations that leave me more hurt and alone than they should. I lean into a false waltz stance, he doesn’t notice the feet. I notice his. He’s more drunk, on less, than I. Every time you breathe, I hope you think of me. The mass in my mind flows through my arms and legs. I charge and he punches straight where my head should go. I dodge right, grab his wrist, snap in and pull out, stringing him in an invisible flaying bed; my left elbow crosses his solar plexus, throwing him to the ground. Knees pin his arms. The hate, and anger, and confusion, and helplessness dissolve between fist and flesh, arc across the pain in my heart and the bruises and blood flowing freely from a fool....

Never entice a man with a need to portray his problems upon a heedless world.

     His friend steps in and plants a well-thought-out fist against my jaw. The one on the ground is down for the count. My friends don’t step in. They know me. I roll off him before his friend’s hit can follow through. Now I have physical pain to channel, too. I grin and my assailant isn’t comforted. This is the release I need. This is my way out. This is what will help. Fuck you, world. Fuck you girl. Damn all of you for your games and your feelings and your mysteries. To hell with why you think you need to hide your heart. Wear it on your goddamn sleeves. Fuck your dishonesty and your insincerity. Fuck your exes. May you all drowned in your lies and guilt and shame. Damn you for assuming I’d ever judge any of you, for not taking my love at face-value, for thinking I had anywhere near the ulterior motives you all harbored. My left hand grabs his left elbow, simultaneously blocking a right jab and flipping his arm out of the way for the full force of my right arm into his ribs. A cacophony of bone and flesh giving way to my wrath meets my ears. He yelps. Never yelp when you’re trying to be strong for a friend. Keep your damned lips closed, asshole. He recovers only slightly before my right meets his face. My arc is perfect: the momentum of muscle as it curves the natural twist of a muscled arm, the darkness of my life gathering on knuckle-tips like obsidian gems glinting in the dirty hallway between worlds of vice and vindication, the cording muscle releasing the pent-up rage of a thousand lives gathered in one body.

     Connection shatters worlds. The horror of life bleeds across his broken window to the world. The reflection of my jeweled nirvana wink across his eyes. See the world I live in, failed rescuer. See the hopeless honor I hold in my bosom. Sleep with the knowledge that even when you try, someone will always be there to flash the dark, jaded realities across your eyes…and bring you to my level.

     The other friends won’t budge ‘till I’ve stepped past. They part like the Red Sea for me. My ark is empty until I interact with the world tomorrow.

Brief peace is better than none.

-###-

what will you have left
when there is nothing
but darkness shrouded
in conceit of faded light?

when there is no money,
no power, no science, no art
no alcohol or drugs to take
your mind away from thought

when there is nothing but
nothing itself in shameless
night where death, being the
only option for life, derives

madness out of your vexation,
your surety of what is and is not,
and that hope was all you needed,
you find it harder to believe than deny

sin.

I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun silvers, guard the grasses
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums;

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited voyeur,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:
There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...

If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011