there are walls in front of me.
a tried metaphor, but a true one.
(and in one trope, i construct another)
walls. wall after wall
after wale after wale
after wail after wail
after wall after wall
and i'm still no closer to whatever
destination i have
in mind.
i don't even know what it looks like.
i just want it to look like something other than a
wall.
one day, i went side to side.
like a courtyard, i was enclosed.
i broke those walls down too
and found more bricks
upon bricks upon
bricks upon
bricks.
one day, i went backwards.
oddly enough, the walls kept going. they kept on going. had i not bothered to turn around the very first time i opened my eyes to all this brick and mortar? when i try to go back, memory-wise, i don't recall ever doing so. it's been so long. i can't believe i never marked where the beginning was. i have no idea where i am. perhaps i've been going
right all along? i went to the right on accident, perhaps. sometimes i fall asleep among all these bricks, and when i rise again to resume hacking outlines of me through them, sometimes my orientation doesn't seem quite right. i eventually learned to mark which wall to go through next after one too many uncertain mornings, one too many times where i may have went
left by mistake, actually. and once you're mixed up like that, left isn't left anymore and
right isn't right anymore. maybe
left has been
forwards all along, maybe i'm so mixed up i've been going forwards thinking it was
backwards all this time -- no, thinking it was -- i mean -- **** --
maybe i've been so mixed up, i've been going backwards thinking it was
forwards all this time.
i get so turned around these days.
but weirdly enough,
no matter what,
despite it all,
there's only been
wall after
wall after
wall after
wall every
way i go.
Aug 9, 2025
Aug 9, 2025 at 10:46 AM UTC
Writing gets hard,
but the sky and the stars tell me
that I am the star even in times
when the rhymes don’t flow that smoothly
and life isn’t a movie.
When I’m at the cliff’s
precipice and my fingers are stiff,
tremors wracking my body
as I struggle to embody
something confident and godly,
it seems so much easier
to burn away than to stay drained.
But prose is my way
of praying,
and even if the deities of my brain
decide I must embrace pain another day,
I take literary measures in an attempt
to stay sane.
Jul 23, 2019
Jul 23, 2019 at 12:09 PM UTC
On days where salty tears lick my cheeks,
or they hide just behind the cages of my eyelids,
I feel full, not hollow.
Preferable, perhaps, to the emptiness found
in staring blankly at life and seeing
the still run down like paint and the moving brake like cars
all around, helpless to stop it
as a mind crumbles into broken acceptance.
But a cup can only hold so much.
A *** can rumble angrily on the stove for only
so long before its contents spill out,
slipping and darkening down the sides
before dying away against the heat below.
Sure, we're contained, maybe like tea kettles. But
all of us have holes that whistle,
a call to what stirs inside, and I
am no different.
Every day,
my small heart shivers and shakes,
petrified by even the idea of my own steam escaping.
It rattles at the threat of an exponential scream
of evaporated failures and aborted thought
wrapping itself around my tongue and teeth
before spilling out to float in the present air,
only to hang itself
like a fog over everyone's perceptions.
I guess that's the difference between us and tea kettles,
or cups or pots.
Water moves forever in its cycle,
falling down as rain, or snow, or sleet, or hail, or
rising up into the air to mesh with it seamlessly,
adapting beautifully to the pressures of its natural peers.
But water is not sentient. It does not remember its past,
does not consider its present or future.
Water speaks a language of unquestioned togetherness and
a blissful absence of mind.
Maybe our folly is memory.
Our puffs of commentary marinate on the brains of others,
and, maybe for the worse,
ourselves.
They float around in a haze of the brain,
eroding at our integrities,
some fogs never cycling out until we rattle
for the last time.
Unlike steam, unlike water, we ponder our past forms
and our personal sins sometimes forever
until we sizzle against time's heat,
burning out at the mercy of nature
and our own kettled minds.
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 8:18 PM UTC
When will I stop feeling okay and start feeling more?
Jan 21, 2019
Jan 21, 2019 at 11:35 PM UTC
My relationship with mirrors is strained.
When I look I usually see what's probably
myself. I look better, probably, than before
when I slept no more than
3 hours every night
and spluttered through life
choking on words and stumbling over
misconceptions.
Now all of that is merely a buzz
trampled by a maximum dosage of meds
that let me function in life
but make everything a bit numb.
I much prefer numbness to personal nihilism.
Other times when I look in the mirror I
don't see much of anything.
When I'm in public and
the innocent looming presence of others
threatens my mind's fragile ego,
I see them abstracted in my periphery,
their glinting knives of eyes
sparing me a passing glance
(She's just smiling politely,
but my skewed eyes glimpse
faux teeth and behind them gargled, ****** judgements. I don't judge the digust.)
and I skim over a transparency
of myself in the mirror.
Too bad I can't actually disappear.
(Or maybe I can.
But I try to stray a little farther from those thoughts.)
Sometimes I feel heartbreakingly
ugly in that mirror. Lonely. Unwanted.
Even with all those doting eyes on me.
I feel relied upon for something. To be
the one who makes them laugh. The one
who fills the silence. The one
who works hard even with setbacks.
(Do they even expect that of me? Or do I?)
When
in reality
I'm none of those things.
Not truly. Not really.
Theres always that tug of opposition in me,
that feeling of ingenuity, a touch of facade.
But I don't want them to see an ugly side.
The side that mistrusts violently,
that lies stagnant with thoughts screaming.
Clamming up in the face of oppressing quiet.
The side
that rears its head when
they look a little too close.
Maybe it's my truest self, that broken side.
I wouldn't know. There
are too many walls. I can't even break them
myself.
Or maybe I've broken them all,
but I'm blindfolded,
feeling around an abyss with my eyes
wide open,
vision obscured by skin-tight fabric.
I could just,
untie that knot behind my head,
spiral further and further down--
just to feel something else--
But it's safer in this uneasy emotion.
I dont know if I'll ever find myself in
the mirror again.
Jan 21, 2019
Jan 21, 2019 at 12:12 AM UTC
im unliving. unloving. unlovely, within.
my skin buzzes under
moonlit nights. my fingers dig in.
i ruin myself, over and over.
i peel away
what makes me imperfect,
only to find
that
my sins
always grow back.
i am barely living.
the night peels back
these layers of tentative
satisfaction.
i find my mind naked
underneath the blackness. i lack
the ability to hide.
my barriers are meaningless,
factless,
as they really are.
where do i go to hide from the truth
while under this moonlight?
will i ever be perfect?
will i ever be great?
will i even be good enough?
i know the answer. i know the answer.
and there's nowhere to burrow away from it,
but my fingers find a way.
into my scalp, into my lips,
into my face,
and blood blooms.
i can still feel that.
i can still love that
sharp, stinging, pain.
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 7:17 AM UTC
A pencil is of dreams,
the Sandman sings sweetly on graphite.
Unlearn your rules,
unleash your light.
Dance on rhythms of pentameter
and sing melodies that twinkle
on the tip of your tongue,
alliterative opera and assonance
played among the bass that is literature.
Sometimes you must ignore the pain
in your hands,
let callouses build and relish
in blood filling your blisters.
Pain here means progress.
Sweep agony away for the sake of day then sink into the ink of night.
Float on clouds of fantasy and write.
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 11:21 AM UTC
imagine a calloused doubt.
cracked, chipped, clicking
like warped wooden floorboards.
soft from overuse
but still overrides willpower
in one palpitating breath.
grimy yet illusive
like your teeth after a day’s work,
collecting gunk that sidles up
to calcium companions,
crunching down on things
that become
so bland in the end.
doubt is offbeat,
monstrous footsteps hidden deep
off beaten paths,
its thudding is clammy and hurried,
aligned to the discordant jazz of
your alarmed body.
it tastes like
coppery heartbeats,
rising bile,
salt and mucus in the back of your throat.
it is a truly uncomfortable thing.
it stacks sweetly like buttercream pancakes
but crumbles you
with such a sour taste on your tongue.
imagine an agony that loves you.
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 7:09 PM UTC
There is something painfully wrong about
a mother’s cry.
In those seizing moments,
while her nose twitches
and her eyes bleed red
and she lets tears smear
jaggedly about her face-
there is something so unsettling,
so
out of place.
You perceived her once invulnerable,
but now you find
that behind her divinity are familiar fears
that overwhelm her omniscient mind.
When your own Goddess
can’t be free from corruption,
that even the holy
have weak heels and poisoned matrimonies;
that is
agonizing acrimony.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 3:55 PM UTC
Sunshine!
Sickly yellow
slow-light colored streaks
slithering worse than sweat
down my body.
That golden ball stares down at me
like a haughty goddess,
her duality shallow and hot.
She cares not for the freedoms of humans.
She's a two-faced coin,
purgatory masked by the promise
of freedom from pained brains
and scholarly shackles.
The sun laughs at her own trickery, gargling through melting teeth
as she collects suppressed confessions
from weakened teens.
When her crescent counterpart
offers solace from her torment,
the moonlit darkness
only serves to drown us
and we splutter in our own
self-taught
year-round
lies.
And the sun
rears her tattered, flaming mane
at daybreak,
belly-laughing at idle minds now unrefined,
gleefully adding her own scorch
to already inflamed brains.
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 8:24 PM UTC