You sit on your back deck, staring out across the frozen lake. The stars slowly move across the sky. It's 12:50 AM. You realize that even though you have friends and family that love you, the only thing you need is someone to care for, someone to love.

So you sit on your deck. You might grab a blanket or two, but you know they won't stop you getting cold. You know it's too late for that. You listen to the ice creack, it's almost spring time so the ice weakened during the day. You listen to the wind play across the field, scared of your life and what's happening.

You might have had a girl in your life once, but you were dumb and things didn't work out. It might have been your fault, but odds are it wasn't. Odds are she just couldn't take being around you anymore, saying you made her depressed. Then you realize that you just lost a great chance to change your life around.

So you sit out on the deck.

You watch the stars glide across the sky.

You might shed a few tears, but this goes beyond any physical depression.

This is a bleak, lifelong, emotional abyss kind of sadness. And you are scared and alone, and all you want is someone to look at you and say:

"Everything will be okay. Come with me."

Instead, you sit on your deck.

You watch the stars move.

And you die inside.

Goodnight.

I guess this really never was worth it
And in the end
I was a fool for thinking I was anything greater
Than the dirt we came from

Look at the endless path of mirrors you walk down, stuffing your gluttony with the fabricated dreams you were told would always be achievable. Look in the mirror below you, and see the starving children clasping their hands at you, begging for just a scrap of a dream, so that they might sleep peacefully for once. You look above you, and see golden skinned gods with dreams that are so heavy, so tangible, that you think the mirror will shatter in any moment. You look ahead of you, seeing you, clasped hand in hand with a blurry faced figure, walking away from you, not listening to you shout as you want to know who you are. You don't want to look behind you. You saw something in that mirror staring at you from up front. Your eyes, so completely devoid of color, black pits of onyx that tore a hole through your heart just by seeing what might be. Behind you, a grayer version of you. Thinner. Looking down. He has none of the dreams you do now. Nothing floating above his head, no froth spilling down over his chin, no colors, no noise, nothing to show that he is alive. You turn away and cry out in the pitiful sobs that are the only thing you are capable of producing anymore, the first real emotion you've shown since you were in the mirror. The grey skinned monster that you were but never were, the dead ghost of the futures past, the bland, dry, **** flavor of the image, was wearing the biggest smile that you had ever remembered seeing.

So many different things flutter through my mind
New people every moment
New games and fun every single day
New forms of depression crashing over me
oh god
Oh God!
Is that what trying to be popular is like?
The constant nagging feeling of doing everything wrong
oh god oh god
Does she like me?
Do I like her?
What about her?
Or anyone else?

Breath
Breath
Awwwwww
Relax
Let the feeling wash over you
Listen to the beat of the planet
Feel the ice flow into your head
God I hate myself for doing this
Slow down and live
Slow down and breath

Beating each other to the punch
one bottle down after another
this is a challenge right
this is what you wanted?
drink and drink and drink
swallow faster than you thought possible
drink and drink and drink
who cares about tomorrow
the future was yesterday
you failed to do the only thing you ever tried to do
the only thing you ever did right
wash away the bile with the hose outside
try and wash away the shame you feel
this is you now
you won in everyones eyes but your own
your reflection whispers at you
from the mirror you threw across the room
horrible things about what could have been
if you won any more than you did

Every word sends me into a panic attack
To many interpretations
To many coy smiles
To many partially disguised words
Im playing a game
That I have no idea how to win
Im not quite sure what is going on
All i know
is that when you laugh
i want to see it more
And when you don't
i want to stop altogether

Back and forth
between the library and the pharmacy
heres this book to memorize
here is this pill to make you happy
running myself ragged
I wonder if me from a while ago would recognize me know
God I was so happy back then
Still had my bouts mind you
But there was always a childlike joy
But we all grew up didn't we?
Our hearts become shattered remnants
Our faces full of hair
Our stomachs full of laughing air
and our lungs full of a constant sickness
I turned into an old man before I had the chance to be young
And I made it that way
It was never her fault
It was never this city
It was always me
It was always me

utter some ***** words
when no one else can
feel the wind blow against your skin
say your sorry for everything
even though nothing went wrong
because right now
its almost too late
too late
to start walking again
too late
to look into your eyes
too late
too fall asleep
its too late
for us

what can i say to you
i ask myself that everyday
what can i say to you
anything to make you laugh
what can i say to you
i think im falling for you
what can i say to you
i hate myself for doing this
what can i say to you
to make you hate me
what can i say to you
to make this all go away

the yin days last forever
And the yang days are here to stay
Both sides of the coin
capatilism at its finest
The diners of America
Are filled with a sickened meal
That America will stuff
Their empty faces with
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
America is dead
And replaced with the living
And the new living
Think they are the old dead
And the artist generation
Has no artist
And dreams
Are no longer dreams
and liquor is never enough anymore
For the few
For the few
(Not that you are special)

I've had a voice in my head
telling me
To **** myself
All day

grow to be old
and feel dust in your beard
long enough to regret your choices
and then realize that you can still be happy
listen to the ways of the wise
locked away in little workshops
screaming they are happy
that even though the world burns to them
they can still be happy
as who among the sane
can imagine being happy at anything
that is normal

I think that at some point
in every artist career
(i suppose im an artist now)
they create the truest work they ever will
and everything feels not as right to them
those works were what they always strived for
i remember writing them
how could i not?
riding into new york
a bus full of strangers
in the pitch blackness of midnight
i took the last free breath of my life
and i staggered my way
across any paper i had
writing the only things
id ever be proud of

as the clock hands rolled
in time with the buses wheels
i looked at the strangers around me
some of which i knew since childhood
and i knew
that as long as i had this piece
everything would work out
and i could go on with my life
and never have to write another word

if only it was bright enough on that bus
to actually wright anything
other than abstract lines
representing the structures
of dead words epitaphs

so i write
trying to get a glimpse
of what i saw
that horribly seductive night
in a new york spring

Slowly falling out of sync
The hands are no longer aligned
We lie awake at night
Asking why we did the things we did
We look into each others eyes
And recognize only the memories of the person
Drifting all alone in the universe
We thought we were lucky to find someone else
And we were for the longest time
Until your eyes stopped reflecting the stars
And the gravity of the situation tore us away

No one remembers the kid who bore his soul to you
No one cares enough to remember what I said to you
No one dares to bring up the problems
No one dares to let the world continue bye
No one dares to look you in the eye
And say the words that you desperately need to hear
No one ever thought to listen to the poet
Instead of his words

never enough time
constantly running out of the one thing we want
I want to live
lyric of a species
float on
into the blackness
knowing that
better than anyone else
was the one who truly
kept on keeping on
no one dies and wants to admit that they didn't secretly think they were the best
even if you are humble out the ***
you'd think you were the most humble
always something
7 billion right?
seven billion things to be the best at
no one knows this though
this is something the lepers whisper to the kings
as they throw some scraps of food onto them
we are all equal in the eyes of nothing
and the kings guard will take care of the *****
and the king will dismiss it immediately
one night he will wake up
filled with an inexplicable feeling
and see into the eyes of the all mighty nothing

I'm afraid I might be
One of those constantly sad people
If always been sad
Because I never had a reason to be happy
Now, I have reasons to be happy
And I'm still sad
What's a man to do when he is dying of thirst
And can't drink the water right in front of him
Please, someone tell me
I didn't think I needed help
But these days are getting longer than they should
These moments of clarity are getting shorter
And I can feel myself slipping into the darkness
Day after day

I'd like to think
I thought about something
other than the radio station
in your funeral procession
I'd like to think
I was more worried about
the family you left behind
than my own **** problems
I'd like to think
That we can see you again
But I think its a bit to late
To say goodbye

Muscles twitch in a ******* meandering
You are skirting the edge again
Fibrotic restriction of failing lungs
Punch the muscle the size of a fist
Keep on keeping on **** you
Build me a box of screens
Let me put my head in it
Drown me in fluid entertainment
Fill my head with anything other than me
**** and ******
Reality and macabre
The world is ending
The people who get paid to do so
Will say
The Amazon is on fire
The ice is on fire
Honk Kong is on fire
Lebanon is on fire
What the hell
Did polar bears do wrong
To get set on fire?

This wasn't how it was supposed to be
These feelings of sadness and wrongness
Deep down inside
Constantly persisting on my waking moments
I wish there was something I could do to help
But I don't think we will talk about what happened
I don't think that we will for a while
And now I'm going away
And I already miss you
And I already wish I had stayed

Words are lodged into the murky water of my mind
Pearls of meaning in the sandy beaches of the pineal gland
Like warm court proceedings
Is this fair? Right?
Did you know that some people
Aren’t groovily depressed
They can leave their rooms
Be real toothed cogs in society
I’m a toothless gear
Spinning with nothing to grip
Spinning my tires in black ice
Freezing in the fields
All I hope for
Is that next years crops use this dead meat
To make something beautiful
Something that can grow
Merry
Something that can live up live up live up
To the things it wants to say
My motif is a sown mouth
With spiders thread

Back from the dream we lived
back into the city
concrete walls rose to meet me
these are my friends
they were that before the dream
weren't they?
back into a world I can no longer recognize
I'm tired already
tired like I was before I slept
I just want to dream again

Leaves falling to the ground
Papers falling into the void
I can't remember what they all say
Stories of a life long forgotten
and a future just beginning
shreds of a person
scattered in the wind
sometimes a few of the pieces touch
creating a new story
little bits of an incomplete story
constantly searching for the final pages
The writer just wants the story to end
its gone on to long
far, far to long

I wonder why you are the only one
all the other houses are filled with little chirps
but yours, oddly empty
Oh! Of course!
you must be watching the house while she is away
no doubt gathering food
or Oh! Of course!
you must be guarding some young
it is the season after all
lets both try and ignore
your desperate warbling
crying out into the lake for her
and let's both try and ignore
how nakedly exposed
the inside of the house is

The humorous filter of the eye
Must be what creates a pattern
In the way a person you'll never see again
Walks away
A pattern you get to know
When you start to let the days catch up
A lot of them, I won't miss
But a few I'll never forget

I never really had much luck with relationships
I think that stunted my growth
I only ever wrote find you
so that I could stop writing
every girl who looks at me is you
and I get so happy
I finally found you
but things always go south
and I realize i so wanted you to be the you I want
and that you aren't anything close to making me happy
all because I went to fast
all because I went to slow
all because I wanted to see you smile

I'm not quite sure how to feel
I miss you I suppose
I guess this is the part
Where I usually explain what's wrong
All the new friends
The ones I never asked for
All huddled around
I even gave them the blanket
But that's not important
What is?
Right right
This reminds me of home
That night a few weeks
Christ a few weeks
All the old friends i made
The ones I never thought I'd miss
It's always the same situation isn't it?
Sitting in the crowd
Wishing I wasn't
A victim of circumstance
I'll scream from the roof
I hate that term
I need a drink
I hate drinking
I need you back
I think you hate me
Can I have anything?
Other than the grave I dug myself of course
I'll always have that

I'm still not sure what color your eyes are
I never could bring myself to look a pretty girl in the eye
something about the fear of what I'd find
but eventually i always would
look them in the eye
and i'd see what i wanted
another person i didn't want to waste energy on
and thats a bad way to view people
I've done worse
ill do worse
but i'm afraid to look into your eyes
because you are different than them
you might be more of a sun than i am
thats the problems with small towns
they only need one sun
there is too many here
to many lights

Oh my
I haven't been here in quite a while
Hiding sobbing in a crowd
Oh god  
I never thought I'd be here again
I tried so hard to connect
I'm a physcopath that wants to fit in
I've written more this last week
Than I have in my lifetime
I ******* hate this
Trying doesn't even matter

There was a girl
A sad girl
With hair like untamed ebony
And eyes like tombstones and the universe
The type of girl that looks at you from under her untamed coal field
And smiles a beautiful thing
A ceramic smile
Soon to be stained by to much coffee
To much rot gut *****
The type of girl that sits naked in the dark
In a bathtub full of scalding water
The type of girl that fills subway cars full of poetry and lavender
Sitting bundled up in too many layers of clothing for this hot hot summer
The type of girl that works the nightshirt at a Walmart stocking shelves
And spends her breaks writing down story ideas in her journal
Stories about a funny girl
With clipped brown hair

One day while filling the shelves with organic caged beef
She remembers she left the journal out in the break room
And she rushes back to grab it
And stops dead in the doorway
Because someone is reading her words
And she begins to panic
And she begins to panic because the  person who is reading the worlds she has spent months scrawling
is a normal boy
The type of boy who smiles awkwardly at the red eyes she wears like a bandage leaving the bathroom
A boy whose smile is clean and whose eyes are clear
Like a watering hole fed by mountain water in the early early spring
The type of boy that knows she’s a freak and she wants so
so desperately for him to tell her that
So that he stops flashing that sliver of a monochrome crescent moon
So that he stops giving her hope that she can be anything other than that sad sad girl writing stories in the break room

One night she is cutting boxes
Her sleeves rolled up, in one of those phasic moods where she doesn’t care who sees the angry red lines crossing her arms
A scarred ladder leading to unsteady hands
She puts a new blade in and jabs it into the clean side of a box
But the blade doesn’t glide through the smooth brown skin
But the blade gets caught in the gnarled fibers
But the blade is new and the feeling of gliding through the perfect side is taken from her
And she pulls her arms hard while thinking about the girl with chestnut hair
The girl who had shared a box of wine with her last night
She looks down on the floor and sees a growing pile of red wine
And she falls
And people are screaming
And she looks down and sees the blade sticking out of her wrist
And she’s speaking calmly that it was an accident, she didn’t mean it this time
Her manager is on the phone with the ambulance and the janitor is glaring in the doorway
Forever trying to figure out how to get blood stains out from the stockroom floor
And the last thing she sees in the cacophony of chaos is the normal boy
And the grimace of fear forever plastered on his face in her fading memory

She wakes up in the hospital where people visit her like a sandstorm
And doctors come and speak to their clipboards
One day the girl with chestnut hair comes
And no words are said
Just feelings screamed into the oblivion between them
And she knew that was the last time the funny girl would ever visit
Weeks pass, and one day the doctor comes in and says to his clipboard
Insurance ran out, so you are all better now
Even though she doesn’t feel better

It starts with a fifth of ***** after you come back to your empty two-person apartment
Then a handful of pills
Than more cigarettes than your lungs can handle
This slow self destruction culminates when she goes out on her balcony
And sees her neighbor smoking a cigarette next door to her
And he just smiles and says
It never gets easier kid
He flicks the end of his cigarette after taking a deep breath
And the girl with eyes like tombstones and the universe
Watched the cherry red spark fall
As smoke filled the stars in front of her
The man chuckled
But it’ll all be alright
And the girl that with hair blacker than a crow
Nodded into the starry sky

Living is staring at the spinning walls every night
Love is thinking about texting someone and forgetting
Happiness is driving for hours at a time with no end

Living is waking up with your liver hurting
Love is the daily phone call where you say everything is going just fine
Happiness is being able to watch hours of YouTube at night

Living is driving through the hills, windows down with some upbeat music
Love is recording my voice saying “I love you” and spending hours to change it so it’s not me but still sounds real
Happiness is a quilt my great grandmother gave me

Living is curling yourself up so tight that it hurts
Love is reading the same books multiple times because your heart hurts so much it makes you sick with how much you love the characters
Happiness is waking up and never getting out of bed

Living is the hand tremors
Love is the acid reflux
Happiness is from the bottom of the bottle

Living is dancing to songs early in the morning
Love is a warm bath with lavender
Happiness is the smell of spring cleaning

Whatever this is though
Doesn’t make me feel alive

The snow swirls around a cold room
Iron in my stomach
I'm burning up from the rotgut
Open a door to invite the flurries inside
Embrace my shivering limbs
Cool my throbbing stomach

Words come to me like spirits spilled across an ouija board
subliminally controlled and full of promises
we both know I can't keep
Whispers into the crimson contents of upturned bottles
Screamed into a porcelain bowl soon after
My body is dying
my organs are organizing a union against me
they demand water
less *****
maybe a walk around outside every once in a while
I find myself wrapped in a comforter of my own *******
I'm letting down my body
and so many other things
handed so many things
and failing to do anything with them
I'm a shell
I can't seriously think about anything
I can't seriously do anything
I have nothing left

Words flow through this point like it was being fed by a vein
Each pump of this mechanical failure spilling them out
I use the finest tipped pens
to create such delicate lines
I am writing this on a legal pad
Sitting in the nurse's station
I write whatever I can
Wherever I can
This is written on the back of some notes I took on a patient
Who twist his words without even realizing
Just how caught up in himself he is
I see so much of myself in him
So much of a life I've been fighting to end
So obsessed with myself while hating the very idea of narcissism
Humble to show those I could be
I was nice, I was there, I was
Different
That was before though
Before college
Before friends
Before my liver became harder than I ever could after starting Prozac
I am so different than him now
But I have to wonder
Will I say the same thing about myself now
After a few years
Will I be writing this
Again?

Snow falls for the first time this year
The cyclic rhythm, haphazard flurries on a windless night
I look out over the parking lot
My dark room behind me
A dark world ahead
A hundred ivory beetles
Descended from the ebony sky
All but one rest, one giving off a firefly’s staccato
Some music is playing
In a room eons ago
It’s so soft outside
Muffle me with your frozen embrace
The remnants of journeys cross the otherwise perfect concrete
Bare feet running running running
If you stomp down hard enough
Do you think your soul will be crushed
Freeze-dried and shipped across America?
I want this so badly to be a perfect image
But the cell phone tower
The highway
The golden arches
Things can be ignored
If you tell yourself they can be

There's a bluebird in me
He drowns in my left ventricle
Shots of liquor and stories
After I shout at him to be quiet for one more evening
Let my hands dance across what they may
The paper, the keys, the strings, the body
I hush him when he whimpers
Telling him tomorrow he can breath
He wants to get out

I talk to him when he flutters
I ask if he wants this to end
Sure things are bad
He can’t sleep as the frogs croak in my throat
And the violinist plays my intestine strings
But I glare at him
Telling him he wants to give up the good times
Accusing him
What about the smiles on our friend's faces?
What about being real to us?
What about the success we’ve made soaked with our whiskey-stained tears?
He wants to get out

When it's late, I let him out
There is no shortage of alone time with him
He never feels lonely in our tango
I let him fly around my room as I toss and turn
We watch the lights of the parking lot fly across the walls
Looking at the designs our blindness gives us
Can we find a story on those walls?
A phrase, an idea
We often go to bed tired and wake up so
With the lights giving us nothing
He wants to get out

I whisper to him that he is right
Neither of us believes me
But he will always be trapped in my heart
And he can’t ****** me to change
The lights are telling us a story of a bird
Trapped in a cage.
We won’t talk about who it is
But they want to get out

My tinny laugh fills rooms my lungs could only hope to achieve
Merriment and the soul of old Bachus
fills this weary frame
I'm told I'm so full of life
The life of the party
So happy that I exhale living
I'm living
I am alone in my room
I'm living
Haggard blonde hair and purple eyes look at me in the mirror
my face is red, my marbles are bleeding
Thoughts of stories and characters I love with all my heart
emesis on pages that used to be blank
I talk to myself almost constantly
words and phrases repeated in a Tourettic staccato
Blinking away the inner rain as I walk into stores
"Sometimes I just get hit with an intense sadness
Where I want to curl into myself
Light the forge of my heart
Warm these dying limbs"
I am told I look so happy
And I wonder if I perhaps should have gone into acting
I feel so often like the cliche
asking myself in between podcast and music and ****
"It's...never going to get better is it?"
and I've spent so many years fighting to answer that question
I've spent many years fighting for the answers
in questions that I don't want to ask
I'm struck by fits of inexorable sadness
and two decades of reflection has given me nothing but these words
written in dark rooms
with my smiling face

lithe heat strikes this insipid core
a corpse beyond any defintion
my heart is failing
my brain is failing soon
my liver
pancreas
are odes to grecian God's
ambrosia is the **** of the grecian urn
Mary Percy Shelly shelled
Why do I feel like Frankestien
the monster, not the creator
the tag line i need to say
to show i am me,  i am smart
that i am not Dr. Frankentien
wasting away with a prompt
that i am real
i am real
I am real
please
please God
I am real

blue and gold words float about my head
cherubs for a cause that is lost to the whispers into the night
REM sleep is the flavor of the day
I take too many spoonfuls
tired tired, REM is the opposite of tired
I learned
from a neurologist
who I never met
gluttonous cravings
I want to be so full
when I feel so empty
fathers pride, sisters admonishment
everyone loves a successful doc
except what they leave behind in the suicide doc
waterfalls crash down
my shoulder ache more than a tooth
wound up like an old Calvin and Hobbes
my body is failing me
muscle synapses fire to a random
staccato beat
I have to wonder
am I alive anymore"
or is this part of the play
of me

The words in my head are buzzing between themselves
so angry
they want me to do something more, something different
like they have a mind of their own
they want to be me so bad
flesh and ***** instead of words and synapses;
I'm so sorry
I try so hard to say its not my fault
I curl into the bath with them
they whisper to me
taunt me
tell me I'll never be 'the show'
I try and numb myself but their words cut into me like a knife
heated to spread butter
their words fill my brains folds
and I walk around with my brain smoothed into my skull
I go into my moods
throwing, creating, drinking
forcing ideas into the wall
the miserable sound stings as the slide down
my skull;
the first whispers down my spine
making my feet hurt
after standing all day in dress shoes;
the second whispers along the walls
teasing what others have said;
the third sits inside me
telling me what I really need to hear from myself;
I **** and moan and rage
as they talk among themselves
they tell me most don't have a voice
that controls them
they say they control the voice
I call *******;
There's a voice inside me that doesn't want others to know he exist
and tries to stop me from knowing him;
these insects plague me;
the voices can't be played with
trapped in my head
but they become flies
trying to suffocate me in sleep
I swipe at them
my hands joining them in the air symphony
I fold in on myself
it hurts
it hurts a lot
my body is telling me to go
my mind is screaming stop
I hug them both in bed at night.
Trying to convince one to take the blame

There’s a 4 chamber loaded gun in my chest
And with each two tone squeeze
It threatens to paint the town me
Beat after beat
It ends in an impotent whimper
A muzzled dog
Never catching the rabbit
It’s the fear we love
Hands clasped around our throats
Each thump a muscle twitch tighter
A race of air versus pleasure
Nooses of arteries and veins
Hanging from our own lifeblood
Swaying in the wind of each chambers misfire
Snub nose barrel chest
Each strike of the hammers on blanks
A beat against an ensnared drum
Fire clots through your spider web
Fulfill the destiny as the ticking time bomb
Be the weapon you were meant to be
A thousand gun salute
For the fallen soldier firing squad
Send your crimson rage deep into your host
Burst floods into your dependence
Fire blanks of misfortune
It only takes one to hit