You think to yourself
“I’m always going to be mad at them”
You hope it’s true, though you secretly know it can’t be
When you’re mad you want to be mad
When you’re sad, a part of you feels alive
So you hold that grudge. Hold it tight
Because tomorrow, you might be happy
—back to square one.

When you go camping,
and the world lifts itself from your shoulders
and the problems back home seem silly and irrelevant
human life, and
what you may have been trying to achieve
in your leather black ergonomic chair
and your dark polished wood desk
seems silly and irrelevant
The world is here, in the wood-pecker’s tap-tap-taping in the trees
the checkered calculated lines of the water being pulled to shore by the wind,
viewed from above
like the birds that push themselves into the tide and float
back to shore then push themselves out again.
the world is here, 
forgotten by the city, and the construction worker’s crack-crack-crack of the hammer
the calculated system of traffic guided by flashing lights, turning signs and abrasive horns
from behind the wheel 
where the man sits in a satin black suit and smooth leather car seat
sipping at his morning coffee, purchased for $2.25 and cradled by spring-loaded cupholders,
until he reaches for the silver handle of his glass office door, and stops
looking down at his brown-leather shoes that cut into the rounded bone on the side of his ankle
and decides,
time to go camping

Her fat arms raised in the air
twisting her lips up, creasing her eyes
“Ha!”
She was loud and boisterous

Through the dull shine of her square frames I could see a dim light flickering in the blackness
A motor, sputtering and rusted into a slow churn
A sailboat, with sail at half mast

When she left this earth,
she would leave nothing but those fat arms.
—The memory of that crooked smile, burned into my memory

Like an ape making faces from inside the cage
She would never get out
So she would stir ***** into her drink, and
like an ape, threw her **** around

She would die in her cage.
Me, smiling at her like a child,
taunting her from the outside.

We all fall in the shadow of something greater
Our father, or brother, and mostly our fear

I sit here in the shade, patient as ever
But I can’t tell what’s killing me faster

The fear makes me drink
the drink drains my blood

I draw it all out with a knife and a shrug

Another form of adrenaline 
to waste my time as I waste away

Another life wasted
By fear it is claimed

Sometimes when you go to bed, you know just the way you’re going to wake up.

It’s best when you’re excited, and it’s difficult to fall asleep.

But what’s more difficult, and most difficult of all

Is when it’s difficult because you’re afraid. 

You don’t want to get into bed

You don’t want to admit defeat.

Crawl under the bedspread and sheets

And know, 

Nothings been fixed

or saved.



it never ends

sometimes it bends,

but never breaches


It’s tattoo’d on 
your pitiful soul. 



So only you can see,

Forever, 

Who you really are



laying awake,

disgusted.

The split personality which exists within us,
constantly battling for the spotlight of your mind,
feeding off your acquiescence to their imposing forces.
Beating like a drum at the sides of your skull.

My cat was afraid to look in the mirror.
I would scoop him up under the belly, and hold him up to his tiny reflection.
He looked away, always with a painstaking look on his face.
Never once, looking into the mirror.
The tiny brain,
unable to perceive the strange and complicated reality which meets it right in the eyes
it’s own eyes
making it all the more terrifying
and real
and therefore
Necessary to neglect.