I really wish this wasn't my most read poem, it was a ****** experiment of mine that doesn't have much behind it. Oh, well...






I,
Not
Too
Pleasant

Every
Sky
Feels
Joyous

In the
Near future, watching
Them
Play

Everyone
See, it's time to
Feel happy and
Just right.

Inside where I stay
Neither happy nor
Thwarted by their accusations of
Perdition.

Everyone else
Smiles but him.
Forget it,
Just forget him.

Interminable are the
Nights
That
Pain brings.

Eternal are the
Scowls
For dark ones like you.
Just forget it, let's play.

Et Cetera.
Interminable.

I'm not sure if anyone
I have ever loved
ever truly
understood or felt
the awful things that I think
and feel.

The sadness
The mania
The nights alone
on the bathroom floor or the ***** carpet
tearing into myself
because the blood kept me sane.
That curious yearning for death
that I've carried with me
for all those years now.

Not sure if anyone I've ever known
has ever seen the emptiness in my eyes
without standing in horror at their reflection
staring back at them

I do not know, maybe they have.
This is quite possible.

But Stay,
or (perhaps) but Soft!
or but any of those other decrees of feeling
from those sad protagonists
whose tragic lives came before me,
saying "What light yonder…"
before falling into the arms
of the only person in the world
who came piece them together.

But Still, my lover,
your hand
in my hand
is the only anchor I can rely on
in this Dread with 5 Acts
and no intermission.

Sauntering the night away
among Suburban streets
with the cars
the light pollution
the concrete
and all those other signs of humanity
that writers before me loathed so much.

True, Thoreau may admire
an alchemical need for walking
every day and every night
in order to stay sane.
Yet he would shun my use of an
mp3 player
as "too technological"
or "too inorganic."

Yet as I make my way
through paved streets
why does the music
fit my steps so well?

And if the Romantics
would hate my headphones,
why does every happy song
remind me, with a smile, of her?

The sun recedes into the horizon.
The moon shines an incandescent sliver.
The stars flicker, briefly.

Oh, so briefly do they flicker.
Eternal beacons existing to remind us of our own insignificance.
Out there, somewhere, is something else;
out there, somewhere, is something new.
Something new in this world composed so wholly
of odds and ends
of what-have-yous...
what-ifs, so many what-ifs.
So many what-ifs.

There is a life to be lived
where the mornings aren't so painful,
and the nights aren't so meaningless.
A life where I try to smile
and I actually smile.
Where holding a hand
or kissing a collarbone
are gestures worth the risk.
Ripe with legitimacy
will I fall in love again.

Beautiful words to be written.
Beautiful women to fall in love with.
Beautiful this and beautiful that
and beautiful everything in between.

So when the stars appear
and try to convince me of my own nothingness,
I shall fly past those nets,
quietly telling Orion
that this is my life

and I do not deserve to feel this way.

I refuse to continue existing
without beauty and purpose
in the marrow of my fragile bones.

I will take you deep inside of myself.
From the tips of my fingers
to the metal in my bones.
From the ends of my unkempt hair
to the most primal facet of my reptilian brain.

You who have seen the world for what it is
and not run away.
You who see the world for what it is
yet smile in the wind and the sun.
Show me the world in which we live
and I will show you the home I forged in hiding;
it is not spectacular or brilliant
but it is a home few have ever known.

I will take you deep inside of myself
and show you everything
so long as you hold my hands and heart
and tell me what it all means.
What it means to be a cynic and a lover,
a stoic and a lion.

Under bedsheets like rabbits do we crawl
with innocent eyes
far away from the words and shadows
of our illuminated world.

Under bedsheets like rabbits do we escape
from the blare and blur of suburban streets.
Streets with blinding light
in which the constellations suffocate
to shine.

The infinite possibilites
of the infinite universes
of the infinite this
and the infinite that.
So much to discover
and revel in,
the moon will never set
but will hover, golden
over the ripe horizon.

Under the rabbithole of bedsheets
do we find a world where the stars smile back.
Where a curleyheaded girl soaks her tired feet
in a slender river
for even just
a few moments of beauty
and passion
in our world composed so wholly
of streetlights and shadows.

I am filth embodied,
spending my time
communing with mold and cockroaches,
spending my time
sitting in filth
because filth is home.

I do not feel *****
I feel just fine.
There's month old dishes in the shower,
rot in the fridge,
toenails on the table.
And it is home.

Filth is not good or bad.
Love is not ***** or pure,
it is two naked figures in front of a grimy mirror
marveling at their comfort.