Maybe it’s just me.
But our talks feel one sided.
I truly believe that conversation is what keeps bridges strong.
But bridges take two people to hold up.

I saw you cry, you told me later you lost a friend to suicide
and when we sat there in that pizza joint,
the whole world was you and I,
you looked at me through mist and told me
"I swear to god this **** gets better,
and every person in this building feels this pain some way or another"
And I saw the funeral and the poems and the piece torn from your heart,
your sadness justified by loss, and that loss tore your soul apart,
and I knew that in that moment you were picturing it with me,
and how you can't afford more heartbreak,
how you can't stand to watch me leave,


You said "I love you"

and it echoed in my mind

My world stopped burning

I'll think of joy from time to time



"So sing for every buried moment that you'd thought would never end.
And sing your fears about the future; and a dirge for faded friends.
For all the love that you had held to, why it somehow failed to keep.
And sing each minute you've been frightened; every hour that you've lost sleep.
And sing for all your friends and family; sing for those who didn't survive.
But sing not for their final outcome; sing a song of how they tried.
We live amidst a violent storm; leaves us unsatisfied at best,
So fill your heart with what's important, and be done with all the rest."

Im sitting here like it was yesterday.
It wasn't.
Duh.
My nails weren't black yesterday
I wasn't as insecure yesterday.
But even though I got new habits.
And new records.
And a new reason to feel sad.
I feel like nothing has changed.
He is still complaining.
She is still annoying.
And I am unamused.
So I ask myself why.
Why is the past so prominent.
Why is the present so dull.
Why can't I change it.
But I give up.
Like I always do.
And I complain about it.
And I call it poetry.

Watch as the stream of melancholy spills from my bruised and blackened heart and flows through the veins of the ones I call friends. The ones who I need to call me friend.
And look closely at the seams that run along my chest from the cuts I made when I gave you my love. The scars, the reminders of my naive actions that keep me awake at night,
And it's okay to feel fear when you look into the portrait of macabre that I paint of myself. Will I ever be okay? Will I ever be whole? If I write poems crying for help will I ever get a ******* answer?
So now I stare at unfinished letters. Thoughts of recovery left behind. And the echos of a heartbreak never sounded so ******* pathetic. I can't seem to cope with hatred, I can't seem to cope with grief, I can't seem to find comfort in the "safety" of my memories.

I'm getting better, but it's in little steps. Steps that travel the petty distances between us.
And as long as my little steps keep bringing me closer to you, my love,
I know I will be okay.

Does it ever bother you that pictures can be lies,
how a smile can be faked and nobody will ever realize.
The photos of you that I hang on my walls are starting to feel distant,
I hear a pain in your voice, as if you could break in an instant.

And it's a whole lot easier to burn a picture than it is to burn a memory,
And I was kinda hoping that we would never reach this treachery,
And you're falling under quickly and I can't do a ******* thing,
And I'm writing songs to cope but I don't have the guts to sing.

I think you're better off away from me.
I think you're better off alone.

No one actually likes my writings.
They just want me to take off the mask.
Im sick of the lies behind smiles.
And I know they’ll just keep coming back.

So take your scummy words cloaked in compliments, and walk the other way. I want to be liked for my art, not the person you know face to face.

Honest to God I tried to keep my demons on a leash.
I tried to hold the rope tight and keep it from wrapping around my neck.
But, somewhere between late night dinners and goodbyes to friends,
it slipped.
Choking me slowly.
Tightening bit by bit, day by day.
I can feel it now.
Making my head throb in a numbing and rhythmic way.
Making an exhale seem like a rarity in this dull trance of pain.
I wonder when my last breath will be.
I wonder when-

‘till death do us part or the flames of our home, a split or a distance has always been present.
     Dad started sleeping in the basement around 4th grade.
I think.
      I can’t remember when it started but I know it became normal.
      Now he works and complains and he never finds joy
       I wonder how long it will take before I end up like him.
        So I put verbal miles between us and hope that I end up okay.
      I collect records and CDs to distract me from the secrets behind closed doors
    But Kurt and Billie were only distracting to an extent.
     So I saved up all of my money, from pocketing moms dollar bills to mowing the lawn.
      And I bought a blue electric guitar with all two hundred and thirty of my dollars.
           It was storming the day I got it, and I have a fear of thunder, so I named it after my fear because it was loud as hell.
Cheesy, I know.
    I spent hours on end, day after day, cutting my fingers on the six nickle wound strings.
     And I got good.
I could play the **** out of that ******.
        I wrote a song called “he said” and I showed it to all of my friends.
I never liked the title but the song was okay.
       It was about a boy who ran from home because his family was broken.
       The first line was “I can only see out of one eye after I cut myself loose”
      I would change it every time I played it depending on the story I wanted to tell.
       Sometimes I would sing “after YOU cut me loose”
     I followed this with “ I packed my bags, left my ambitions on a noose.
I changed my hair, don’t want to know my reflection,
and you can’t gat lost without having direction.”
     It was edgy and it was catchy and marissa said she liked it.
         That made me happy.
       Since then my songs have been a good distraction from the fighting.
                    But they never helped me cope.
       And my friend daniel told me to never limit my art,
       He told me to branch out my creativity and he showed me his poems
   They were the depictions of a twenty five year old nobody
And I thought they were really good.
        I still read them and try to learn from them because I idolize his art.
      So I began writing poems in November because November makes me sad
     And I wrote consistently because I knew my friends would read them
    My friends wrote too, and they were always better than me
       I loved reading their art because we all struggle with honest expression
                               But lately I have stopped.
The distractions have stopped.
     The flames of my home are catching up and I don’t have the motivation to stop them with my art.
        So I’m sitting In my room listening to a nirvana record that my favorite person gave me.
     And I’m writing the odyssey of the teenage ghost
                         And I’m getting no answers.
                        And I’m getting nowhere far.
     And If you are reading this it means you can help.
       I don’t know how to end this.
I don’t know what to say.
     I'll try to keep writing, but these secrets are catching up.
      I don’t know how to end this, so I guess I just won’t.
    Just remember that I always thought-

Summer slits throats so sit up straight while I sing songs of sadness to suffering souls and saints of speaking minds.


Alliteration is consistency, and I need that in my life right now.

It's been one year since I admitted that missed you.
And I know I ****** up.
And I know it wasn't just me.
And I know so much has changed,
And I want to keep you close.
It's been so perfect with you by my side.
We can do this.
I know we can.

don’t you understand that this is bigger than you see.
Now that I know, I’m just as bad as you.
This isn’t about anger or fear of being a snitch.
This is about saving a life and helping a friend out of hell.
You’re clouded by the weightlessness that the world puts on the topic,
but depression is a disease that’s looked over often.
So please stop talking about you getting in trouble.
there are much worse consequences down the path you want to follow.

The worst part of when I upset you is you telling me that I never hurt you.

I have a book full of letters that I know you'll never read
I have a symphony of songs that I know you'll never hear
I have a sea full of tears that I know I'll never shed
I have a heart full of love that I know I'll never share

I caved in the drywall because you let me cave in.
And ****** knuckles seem painless when all I can see is red.
I wrote you songs so you would know how I feel.
I think I'm just afraid.
I know I'm just afraid.

I taste your name on my lips when I talk of happiness.
Its not just you though. Mom says that joy comes from within.
I realized that it wasn't so much about finding joy as it is killing sadness.

Words of negativity are scraping and clawing against the inside of my skull.
Hoping to leap off my pessimistic tongue and plant seeds of sadness in the minds of others.

But I hold my tongue.
Like I hold onto hope.
Because I know it’s still there.
I just have to repress the haunting thoughts.

My brain is the strongest muscle in my body,
only because it works so hard to repress my tongue.
My heart is in the right place,
but my fists are always balled.

But I hold my punches.
Like I hold onto smiles.
Because I know that people care.
I just have to repress my anger.

Rage and depression go hand in hand.
But i’m fine with that because they help me write.

I **** at dancing. I look dumb as ****.
Big crowds of people make me really nervous. And the music always *****.

But I could never turn a dance down with you. You’re way too cute.

I can turn a friend into an arch enemy in the timespan of a heartbeat
and I defend this broken promise with the bullets between my teeth,
I can bury all your secrets under lost and frozen ground,
and I will stitch my lips closed while keeping memories safe and sound.
I can strangle all the monsters that hide behind closed doors,
and I can be your demon hunter, I can make your ghosts sore.

I can be what you want, and I don’t care,
Just so long as you like me, so long as you’re there.

I'm loosing sleep to runways, and following signs, as my head is split open by bright florescent lights,
and these long linear hallways filled with leather on chairs provide shelter to all of the wolves in suits and ties.

I try to call you but nothing is there
I try to call you because I'm getting scared.

My hands start to shake and strangers start to pass but I act like I'm fine just to make it home,
my feet become more heavy and your texts become shorter while I wait to fly home to feel just as alone.

Airports are lonely, but it's better than home.

I know what you are thinking.

"Oh, look at this, another cry for help disguised as a poem"

I wish I could say you were wrong.
But I wouldn't continue to write if my cry was answered.

This is for the people who leave me on the floor and judge my judgment as if theirs is any better.
This is for the people who can't see things from my eyes but see with their own that I am in pain.
This is for the people who ask the three dreaded words and believe the lie that I tell them
This is for the people who tell me I won't make it as an artist or a revolutionary but instead become the nothing that I have always feared.

But mostly, this is for me.

I judge these people just as hard as they judge me
I see these people through my eyes but fail to look through theirs
I beg these people to ask and I get mad when they don't have faith in my answer
I push these people away and then blame them for not helping.

I know what you are thinking,
but I don't want to say it.
This poem is brutally truthful enough,
I don't want any more pain.

So tell me all your fears, I want to memorize your scars. Car rides and goodbyes always seem to break me most. So ask me if I'm okay, and I swear that I wont lie, but the crossed fingers in my smile will argue otherwise. I forget when this started, I forget when I stopped loving, but I remember every bitter lie I told and it only gave me nothing. I keep my letters by my bed so I can fall asleep at night, but I still feel the insomnia, I'm still haunted by fear. I wanted to be a better friend. I wanted to be a better brother. I wanted to at least be something but I keep ******* up.

I keep ******* up.

We were so focused with ending the world that we forgot how pretty the flowers were

There are ghosts in the walls of this place so you should keep your distance.
There are pains that never leave the heart and I fear that you may catch some.
There is beauty deep within my bones, and I fear that nobody will ever see it.
There is a part of me that wants to never get up after falling over my failures.

These rooms with high ceilings are beginning to **** me off.
And the echos that amplify as I get weaker sound a little too close to the voice inside my head.
Finding a reason to smile was so much easier than choking out my fears. That's probably why I stopped my strangling.
And the flowers you planted in the palms of my hand look so ******* pretty.
They're the only reason I haven't balled my fists in rage yet.

But it's getting harder.
And I'm getting worse
And I can only say 'I'm sorry' so many times.

I was fine yesterday.
I'll be fine tomorrow.
It's only today that gets me

It just pains me to think that tomorrow will just be another "today"

The cavity left in my chest when I stopped believing in love has become haunted by the feeling of being alone. I've been dressing like a funeral and I've been thinking of you often and the bed that I've been sleeping in is feeling smaller every night. I've been filing voids with a fascination in the pain of my friends, but it just adds on to mine, it just keeps me afraid. I want to test the boundaries of humanity, I want to memorize your scars, I want to know that I'm not the only one who owns a haunted frame, who has a pressure on their skull and thinks of death often. I think I'm going crazy, but I don't hear any voices, I just love seeing others hurt and knowing I'm not alone. I just love seeing scars and knowing they're okay to wear. Or at least they seem okay. Or at least they seem expected. I want to know all of your fears, what you think of at night, I want to keep you safe from yourself, hide you closely in my arms, I think that if you clear out all of the smoke and you look with sore eyes, everyone's fears are the same. Because nobody wants to die. At least not inherently, at least not at first, because we both know there was a time, a moment where everything stopped being all right, and you kept distance from mirrors, you stopped flashing a smile, and you started thinking, maybe, "I'm not strong enough to fight". So you can divide the world in two. You can narrow fear down, because there are people afraid of death, and there are people afraid to live. And I'm fascinated by the moment, or maybe the collapse over time, when the human mind switches from smiling to "I'm fine".  I wonder often if I'm the only one who finds beauty in sadness, and if I am, I'm sorry for calling you pretty when you cry.

And if I am, I'm sorry for wasting your life living time.

You are so ******* perfect.