The years pass quick
I forget who I was until I remember I wrote it down
I was a man
I am no longer
I was single
I am no longer
I was unhappy
I am no longer
I wasn’t me
I am no longer

I look through photos and barely recognize the face
Because I am no longer the one I once was

What do you do when you confess your soul
When you tell them that for five years
When you see them your mind goes blank
Save the thoughts of holding them
Your eyes focus on their lips as they speak
Wondering what they would be like on yours
For five years you wanted them -warts and all
And they just want to be friends

It’s been a while
How have you been?
Has it really been 5 months since I’ve picked up my pen?
So much has happened in so little time
But the world stands still as I sit here in pain
We live we laugh and all I want is the love
But that’s all I used to write
My life
My laugh
My loves
Now I sit here wondering who the **** I was
Is it too late to go back, and put down the pen I used
Can I go back and stop myself from telling what I’ve been through?

I wasn’t looking until I met you
Looked in your eyes and I was blinded

You fell in love with someone else
You broke it off you joined my group
You joke you cuddle you flirt
You scroll through tinder as you sit on my lap
My heart thumps when you’re near
When I run my hands through your hair
Tell you how great you look when you change your shirt
I want nothing more than to scream

No matter how much I tell myself
“It’s just a crush, you’ll be over it soon”
No matter how many times you joke that
“It’s too bad you aren’t my type”
No matter how many times I see your ex
I want to scream that I love you
I want to hold your head and kiss you
I want to have my love scene

I want to hold you and know
You are mine
And I’m yours
But I’m not your type
So this is all we’ll ever be

I hate growing apart from those you held dear
Watching them fade from real to figures on a screen barely recognizable
You shared your secrets, helped each other through your dark and twisted moments
But none of that matters as their face becomes one you no longer know
Soon all you can do is let them go

The ink of my pen is filled and colored
From the well of my soul
Every stroke for every letter
My soul diminishes
Until nothing but light remains

I don’t write to make you feel pain
I write with hope you may better understand my soul

Don’t waste any time with friends
Before you know it, they’ll be gone
And you’ll wish you had more time

I need something
It’s on the tip of my tongue
But the words can’t form
So I guess I’ll live without

I need someone to hold me in their arms
Until the tears flow down my cheeks
And as I weep they brush my hair
And whisper
“It’s gonna be okay”

I thought I saw you in the park today
Walking with her
Talking with her
Laying in the grass in the shade of the tall trees
I wondered if you ever read what I wrote about you
If you remember the words as clearly as I
If you can hear the crunches of leaves I described
Or did you forget it all?
Would seeing me bring the words back?

Never read through old texts
Memories that linger in those digital words hurt more than they did the first time around
**** from old friends
Discussions about your now alma mater
An awkward conversation that left you on read
All that waits in those buried messages is pain

In the silence of the night I sit and meditate
Let my mind wander through distant thoughts
Explore the chaos of my own mind

Between the whirring of the fan’s blades
I could only think one though
To a poem dark and twisted

“You’re flying now
You see things much more clear than the ground
It’s all okay
Or it would be
Were you not now halfway down”

My mind shuts off
“Erase this from my thoughts” I whisper
But there it stayed, louder, quicker
Until it’s all I could hear

I can’t be your friend
Not anymore
It pains me to greatly to see you wasting your life
You sit on your couch
In an empty room
Save the ashes of your last bowl
You smoke your life away
Begging me for handouts as you lazily play your game
“**** my job”
“I don’t want to work, so I’m quitting”
Well what are you going to do now?
Because I can’t support us both from now until our deaths
I can’t sacrifice myself for someone who won’t wake up to have a meal with me
I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore

To get a piece of paper
That says I know ****
For $30000 a year
Why is it so ******* expensive?
I know why,
Because when the workers know their worth,
When they can teach others how much they are worth,
They demand more
And those making my ******* college expenses a day
Don’t want to pay us a penny more

Every day I’m reminded where I was in years past
Whether it was at the beach
Scouring the sand for full dollar shells
Or simply sitting with a friend
Skipping the class we all hate
But those days are passed, now just memories waiting to be forgotten

Goodbye to a wonderful person
Who’s voice inspired us to learn
A comforting presence in many homes
You will be missed

Everyone says it gets better
But does it?

Laying in a dark room with the faint glow of my phone in my hand
Scroll, taptap
Scroll, taptap
Reading memes on Instagram
Switching between the same three apps
Time crawling forward until it’s 4 am
Two hours left before my alarm
Scroll, taptap
Scroll taptap
Such is the curse of the midnight scroller

Another cute guy I want to walk up to and talk
But what do I say?
I could go over,
Fumble my thoughts around
Leaving him confused on what just happened
Or I could stay here, safe in a little bubble
Quietly kicking myself for not saying something

A flood of thoughts fill my head
Giving me moments of clarity before vanishing again
I want to write but can only think of math,
Want to code but can only find words,
Try to game and all I think of are chores I need to do
Believe me when I say I’m doing my best
Even if you’ve seen me do better
Cause my body is there
But my mind wanders
Seldom do they meet

You can memorize the face of a stranger
After seeing them for six seconds
Six months later they’re in your dream
Making you wonder what if you had talked to them
Your brain creates scenes of lifelong friendship
Another where they’re your nemesis
One where you go out a few times,
But they never call back
Then in a flash
Their face is gone
As if you’d never seen them
And life goes on

I just want to sleep a peaceful slumber
As the rain pitters against my window pane
My bed warm and the lights off
My brain wandering into pleasant dreams
Where flowing fields and whistling birds fly
My friends sitting at a table with pots of never-ending tea
Sweet scones and berry muffins sitting just so
We talk nothings as we drink and laugh
The sun setting next to us filling the skies
Purples, reds, and pinks flowing like water
An eternal party for temporary bliss

Something to count on
Just something that tells me
“It gets better, maybe not much, but enough”
In times so bleak I need something to count on
Someone to say I’ll be okay, WE will be okay
But I look out
A sea of people who want to help
Yet I feel like I’m still drowning
I just need someone to hold me
And provide a little comfort

The world may be falling apart
People turning weapons on those with nothing but their voice
Thousands dying of a disease with no cure
But the cat’s letting me hold him

Once again mistaken for a woman
This time worse than before
She thought I could be her’s but she doesn’t like me
I’m sorry for how far it went
I didn’t realize before then
You thought I was someone else
But perhaps I knew all along and just wanted someone else to talk to

Words claw at the silence of the room

When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags
You are everything that’s wrong with you.
See, we’re not doomed. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past or how we’re remembered. What matters is this moment.
I’m so tired of squinting
Time’s arrow neither stops nor reverses, it merely marches forwards
I have half a mind...
I see you...
A xerox of a xerox
Don’t you see, there is no other side. This is it
Life’s a *****, then you die. But sometimes life’s a *****, and you keep living

Wanna see it again?

“I’m sorry, we have to let you go.”
“It’s fine
I understand”
“When there are no diners, there’s no need for a dishwasher”
“I get it. See you around.”
I want to cry as I walk through the restaurant doors
My glasses fogging as I take a shaky breath
****. What now?

Dark brown dripping into the ***
Plinking on the glass container
Steam streaming into the room
Filling the air with the bitter, delicious scent
Each drip closer to being ready
Drip, drip, drip

I’m tired of the repetition
Of waking up just to feel...
empty
Of going through the meaningless movements
In, out
Step, step,
Scrub, rinse
Type, delete
Because that’s all that life is
****...
I’m sick of it, but I don’t want to move on
I just want something different

Don’t you love being reminded of someone you can’t have
When their pictures pop up
After you’ve done everything to forget them
When you get told you might want to follow their band, then their closest friends
Eventually the algorithm decides you want to follow their girlfriend
It does all it can to keep the pain alive
The pain of wanting someone you can never have

Do you still talk to your old friends?
No
Because I don’t know what to say
We went from seeing each other daily
To once a week, a month, to never
Now they’ve left
So no, I don’t
Because we walked away from one another
And looking back causes me pain

It’s so easy to talk to a screen
To write little poems and complain about ****
Because we don’t know who’s listening
And nobody knows who’s talking

All I want to do is sit and write
Ignore all the other **** in the world
I have a story waiting to be told
But no time to tell it

What does the afterlife hold?
Is it splendors for all
Individualized little worlds for us to live?
Do we get to go back and relive our best days?
Are we reunited with old friends
Waiting to swap life stories like no time had passed?
What does the afterlife hold?
Are we reborn?
Walking the world eternally
Each reincarnation slightly different from the last
Taking the form of our truest love from the last life we lived
Our memories mostly forgotten, but a few hanging on to guide our new body
What does the afterlife hold?
What if there isn’t one?
This is it, and all there ever will be
Short spans of consciousness with nothing before and nothing after
Our bodies and souls dying together
What does the afterlife hold?
A question asked for centuries, but you can only die to know

The night is dark
Lit only by the stars and a single streetlight
A short stout man stumbles down the deserted road
He stops under the light and puts a cigarette to his lips
He takes a long drag, enjoying the silence
“Got a light?”
The man turns to a figure beyond the light’s reach
He steps forward, arm outstretched
The flickering flame reveals a woman
Beautiful, long dark hair shuffling in a light breeze
“You found me,” she says plainly, “so what do you want?”
The man stops to think
“I want... someone” he finally says
Smoke billows from her nose “Someone? You came all this way, for ‘someone?’
You know the cost?”
He nods
The woman sighs, exhaling smoke
When the cloud clears she’s gone
The man goes home
Someone is waiting

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

There’s a war inside me
Between creation and destruction
Chaos and Law
Good and evil
Yin and yang

At any moment one force grabs my mind
Destroying the thoughts in its path
Hatred, fear, gone in a flash
Kindness, humor, love, ran through by recklessness

My mind is the battlefield
Soaking in the leftovers of a never ceasing war
Wanting nothing but piece
But the rain of violence continues

Wishing the weapons to turn to flowers
For trenches of hatred to become flowing rivers
For light to shine on the bleak hellscape
But the battle continues

Chaos beats Law
Good defeats evil
Destruction obliterates creation
But from chaos comes order
From good darkness arises
From nothing comes something
Yin from yang
Yang from yin

The war continues, a shadow of darkness ever encroaching
Until light is snuffed from the sky
The war lost

I’m sorry for—
****. What am I apologizing for?
For being me?
**** that
I’m sorry that you don’t like me
I’m not apologizing for ****
******* for making me feel like it’s my fault for just being me

Stupid *******
Why do you always check
Every ******* day
Reload, reload reload
As if someone liked what you wrote weeks ago
Checking your ******* email as if you get something
Something other than scams and junk mail
You’re a stupid ******* why would anyone want to talk to you
Scrolling through your phone like it’s gonna make **** better
You’re gonna find the ******* perfect thing
******* *******
There’s nothing that will make you better there
Go out and meet people, but you’re too timid
You ******* *******
They’re all talking about you
They all ******* hate you and why shouldn’t they?
You’re a ******* ******* who can’t shut up
That’s why you’re ******* alone
Not because you’re friends wanted to start their lives
Because they wanted to get away from you
******* *******
That’s all you’ll ever be
******* stuck here doing the same ******* thing
“It’s just a year” that’s a ******* lie
You’re not gonna leave
You’re never going to do anything
You are and always will be a ******* *******
Oh and now you think people want to read this?
You think people want to hear the ******* things that go on in your mind?
You’re not ******* important enough for them to care
You’re just a *******
That’s all you’ll ever be

What’s the point of life?
In our broken world it’s to find happiness
Happiness... a rare feeling
But how do you find it
The system we live in
One forced upon us in the name of Order
Makes it near impossible to find
So I ask again, what’s the point of life?
If it’s no longer happiness,
Is it just to survive?
But what is the point of survival if we have nothing to look forward to?
Sure we have moments where we can bear the pain
We look forward to those moments every ******* day
But if there’s no happiness to gain
Why should we keep trying to live?
To give money to a richer *******?
To pay for the right to have our friends and family killed by people who are supposed to protect us?
To make the system that oppresses us last longer?
What’s the point if all I’m doing is marching on
Happiness dangling on a string, just out of reach
Like a donkey chasing a carrot to pull a cart
What’s the point?
Why am I here?
Can anyone tell me?

This post is nothing cute
No poetic devices or drawn out lines
I just need a hug and have nobody to ask but you

I know I’m not writing the great American novel
I’m not a poet who’s words will be sung out for centuries
I know that just a handful out there even hear the words I say
But it’s enough for me to know that I’ve told my story to anyone who decided to listen

I feel lost in a world I’ve known my whole life
Turning in circles
Watching people navigate twisted intertwined paths
Shoved to new places every time I open my eyes

No time to get my bearings
The waters of adulting flood the maze of life
Sink or swim
I can’t make it
My strength is failing
As I slip under the waves I can only hope I can fight my way back up

No strength left I slowly sink lower
The light from the sky above fading
Sobbing muffled and distorted through water
My breath is running out
And I can’t get out of the water
Which way is up?

I’m drowning and nobody notices
Lost in this maze where I can’t even tell up from down

Will anyone save me in time?

What I would give to wake up tomorrow
If tomorrow were back in 2016
The first day of high school
Where I decided who I was going to be
If only I knew what would happen
I would’ve taken more chances
I would’ve done more

What I would give to have a chance to do it again
To sit in those cold plastic chairs at 8 in the morning
It felt like torture
But it really was better than my life now
Cause at least then I had a chance to make myself into something

Honestly I would have done most of it the same
I mean, I would’ve been more social
I would’nt’ve tried so hard to fit in
And I would have been more impulsive
But I would fail in the same classes
Join the same clubs
Go the same places
Because the mistakes made me more than success

What I would give to have a chance to do it again
So that I didn’t become a disappointment

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Is dikejrj just diduuwba a jxjdbej
Mess fijdndidien of ueuqkndigifn randomness
Xijebsuxbenn but dujeb I’m fkdjebxu jxjdb
Told zihehdn someone dndih will xjdjebu make kfifj
It kdkej clearer ifuwhsy euhebek someday
Kfifjejdu until ududbe then
Dyhe jdjdjdii pay dudj no mind furjbwjs to
My jfuby yshsbdram rambling

Smoke is thick in the air
You can’t see to the end of the block
But I still go to work

I stand in the yellowed, dulled sunlight
Trying to to breathe too deeply
Lest the ash fill my lungs
But I still go to work

I miss my connection and walk
Through the empty streets
Passed the old neighborhood
My eyes and throat burning
But I still go to work

Six hours I stand by a window in a hot room
Wishing I could smell anything but fire
Checking over and over
Anxiously reloading the alerts
“Am I evacuated now?”
But I still finish my shift

I’m only a few dozen miles from flames
In a state that’s being razed
City by city
Town by town
We’re disappearing
Returning to ashen shells where homes once stood
But still I finished my shift

The restaurant dead
Air painful to breath
Homes shuttered
Bags packed
Fingers crossed
Prayers muttering from atheist lips
“May our loved ones houses stand through disasters, amen”
And I head home

Everyday I hope I don’t have to leave
Everyday I doubt that everything will be fine
Every single ******* day I pray to the gods that you believe in, even if I’m not sure they’re there

“I’m fine.”
“No you’re not. What’s wrong?”
Said nobody ever

I have a story to tell
But the words don’t sound right in my head
When I think about the story though
Scenes fly by
deep conversations take place
Exploring complex existential ideas
Figuring out who I am through my writing
But there I’m vulnerable
So I tell myself it doesn’t look right
Save myself the pain of finding out who I really am
Of sharing myself with the world
And being rejected by just one person
Because I try my hardest to be liked
Work my personality to the bone
And when people ask me why
I say because I want to be accepted. No. I want to be loved
But I never feel like I’ll get there
So I write those feelings in short little stories
But tell myself they don’t look right
And throw them away
Little parts of myself, discarded like the **** I feel like

...






I really don’t know where to begin
Life *****, I guess
I don’t know
...
...
...
Is there anything left to say?