She said
the closest thing to joy that
she’s capable of feeling is
a fleeting acknowledgment that
things could be worse.
But in truth she used different words.

I said
that she of all people
deserved every ounce of joy
this world has to offer.
But in truth I said nothing.

At the post office
Waiting in line

A woman walks in
goes to the corner
Sets her trash bag down
and mumbles to herself for a while

As she leaves she opens
The door
And says ‘it’s okay sweetie, come on
come on now baby
let’s go’

And I can’t tell if she’s talking to an
invisible dog
or
an invisible child

I become aware of a profound, atavistic
sadness lingering in the air
that I can somehow sense
but cannot feel.

I drop off my package
And quietly resolve to not spend
too much time
trying to figure out why
all of this is

*** shoulder
*** leg
*** wrist
*** head

Torn knees
Broke teeth
Weak hips
Slipped discs

Limp forever
Ankle pain
Cry forever
Melts your brain

Slip and fall
Snap in half
Out of socket
Dirt bike crash

Barely living
Stuck in bed
Unforgiving
Filled with dread

*** shoulder
*** leg
*** life
*** dead

you will learn to shift your weight around
You will learn to lean against things
To always clutch handrails

You will learn to rate things from one to ten ten being the worst you’ve ever felt

You will learn loss
You will lose functionality
You will lose what you used to love doing
You will learn not to partake in barbecue games, bowling nights
You will learn to politely decline invitations
You will lose friends
Hobbies
Muscle memory

You will learn to accept it
You will learn that it is unacceptable

You will lose sympathy for others
You will lose track of things
You will learn that there is always something more to lose
You will learn to hold just a few things sacred
to cling only to that which you cannot lose
You will learn that those things too can be lost

You will learn to hate god

You will learn how unobservant most people are
You will learn not to disclose
You will learn what not to say to avoid their suggestions and advice

You will learn to be alone

You will learn the difference between NSAIDs and acetaminophen
between hydro and oxy
the difference between SSI and SSDI
between deductibles and out of pocket maximums
You will learn to cry in hospital parking garages
You will learn the limits of modern medicine for the working and middle classes
You will learn to lower your expectations
You will learn the definition of the word palliative

You will learn to live with it
You will learn to smile for pictures
You will learn to claim a seat early
You will learn to summarize
You will learn good days and bad days
You will learn sorry I know this is last minute but I have to cancel

You will learn to love deeply
You will learn to apologize profusely

You will learn how successful other people will become

You will learn what it means to be a body

You will learn so much
You will learn so so much

I think I bought
a bad
elf bar

It
has
a strange mouth feel
and tastes exactly
like
And I mean exactly
like

shaving cream

You do to me what winter does to garden geraniums.
Frost does not exist on purpose.
It does not intend to puncture cell walls.
It just does. It just is.
As do I. As are you.

You do to me what oxycontin does to the heart.
Oh, my zenith of euphoria, the unbearable absence of your pleasure
haunts me until nothing remains to be haunted.
You caress me raw with your fingertips.
Your warmth burns hot as ice on my soul.

You do to me what chefs do to onions.
What farmland does to streams.
What sunshine does to skin.
What wealth does to man.
What maggots do to rotting wounds.

You do to me what pictures do to moments.
You do to me what rats in glue traps do to themselves.

I wish you could have my body for a day
I wish you could borrow my brain
I don’t think that
you
Would think of me the same
if you could know my Pain

I wish you could have my
Dreams for one night
I wish you could know what
Night Terrors truly a felt like

The only reason that I’m still alive
Is because you’d be so *******
Sad
if I died.


The o my eeason

When I was in kindergarten we had a party and
I ate too much candy.
My stomach ached and
I didn’t know why.
It ruined the party for me.
I remember crouching in the corner confused,
Closing my eyes, imagining that I could
Peer deep inside of myself.
It was then that I came to the childish conclusion that there was a ghost inside of me.
That’s what was causing the pain.
I focused my mind on wishing the ghost away.
I might have even prayed.
Until eventually the pain subsided and the ghost went away

I grew older, eventually, and realized that none of that was real.

Then I grew older still, slowly, and realized that it was all true after all.
That the ghost inside of me was real.
That it never left.

She had no mirrors in her house when I met her so
Ourselves we never could see.
But I knew that I loved her.
And she knew that she loved me.

I’ve finally realized
what it is to be an American,
I think.

To gaze upon all this progress,
to live within the midst of all this cleverness
and wealth,
and without a dollar
in your pocket
to finally start asking yourself those overwhelmingly obvious questions:

what was all this for?
To what greater purpose did I suffer so much?
…and why?

That man
Bipolar type 1

with all those countless
razor blade scars
turned out to be not very well
emotionally adjusted?
Kind of a self-involved *******?

Who could have ******* guessed!?
Meanwhile,
how’s your psychology PhD going?

I’m not a monster
just because
I broke your heart.

You broke mine too.

I don’t need friends
I’ve got myself.
But god I wish
I was someone else.

Alcohol antipathy
OxyContin apathy
Razor blades on bathroom floors
Xanax bars and so much more

Screaming cursing down the hall
Bodies slammed into the walls
******* kid just **** yourself
Never said that go to hell

A broken man with nightmare sleep
Love and trust and shattered dreams
There’s your ******* legacy:
All the ways you ruined me

Hang that **** on your hat
Say it’s ******* important.

Set yourself up for success
Fake it til you make it
Make sure you’re on speaker phone
Say you’re a revolutionary and believe it
Who
The ****
Gives a ****
You stupid ******* artist yuppie ****

It is a nice night
people are over
A fire pit was started
I am connected to to the Bluetooth speaker
And all the agreeable party people enjoy my
Home
Cat
Dog terrier mutt

I’m not anxious
I’m having a good time it feels like
This is the kind of stuff I want
more of
in my life.

I wish they all were gone
So I could slash deep into my subcutaneous fat cells
without any risk of someone noticing.
Upside down face emoji **** *******

Everything is for sale
Including
You

Is it just me
or is it hot in here?
Do your neurons dull down with age
or is my both-ends candle finally burning out?
Is the plastic methane corporate despair why we never do **** for ****
or is that just a convenient excuse for our valleity?

Did you even love me
or just how I made you feel so much less alone?
Did I really love you
or just how you made me feel like life was still worth living for?
And while we're asking questions...
what's the difference?

smile now act like you're
happy
"You are happy"
That is a lie

Snile now act like it's not so bad
"It's not so bad"
That's so ******* hollow, dude.

I am overcome by nostalgia for experiences that occured years and decades before I was born.
I ******* hate grunge music.
I should have been a cis white male privilege zshielded ignorant beatnik
I should be tripping ***** on mescaline with Kerouac and  Cassady at this very moment.
I am overcome by many things.
By many feelings  .
Many bottles of whiskey.
Many capsules of vyvanse
Many failed put option bets
Many failed courtships
Many fleeting pursuits of soulmates and joy innate.

I choose to live.
I want to die.
Thos does jot not matter.
This may be resurrected respected from the archives one day
One day will likely statiaically probably not occur

What's going on Bunker Club?
I could make there for a rojnd or two before last call

I want to die i choose to live

I suppose there are no .ore beatniks by thos point

I wonder what Cassady Kerouac or the one dude whome I love but am too fu ked up to remember his name the ine that wrote Howl yeah that one all of th

I qonder would they qould have done given these modern soma tools
Given these fentanyl laced uppers
Given this rising tide of fascism and plasti. Refuse

I wonder...

No one cares
N o on e matter
S
Nothing is or has ever been anyth
Ing

I wonder an db I wish
And I must have lost track of the substance here

I wonder was Ginsberg, yeah that was his name, I wonder what Ginsberh would haave done hiven all that's going on.
Given all that I have amd most. Ertainly don't have.
I wonder what he would have to say about all of this then

I wonxer if he qould still Ginsberg that genius ****** HOWL as hard now as he did in rhe fu ki.g 50s.

I wonder if she ever loved me.
I wonder if I ever loved.
I woncer if any of this was genous
And I wonder if this was all jist the alcohol drug addled  futile selfindilgent ******* that it seems to neeee

Maybe it's art
Maybe it is

Maybe you should go outside
Maybe I sbould eat a meal

Maybe everyone shod just
At the very least
Ask themselves how the personally define the concept of happiness
Maybe theyvand we and i should think about tha

Maybe wr should be happy
Maybe i should be happy

Maybe this is art
Maybe this is nothing
Maybe this is sibstance abuse
Maybe when I doe they'll gind this a ccount 20 years latet and study it in text books
Maybeayyne you sho)uld go outside amd
Maybe
Maybaybe
You should ask yourself what the definition of happiness really
Is

I'm losing money by the second
I'm losing my mind most every day
I lost my car keys twice this morning
I lost your love just yesterday

I found myself alone again
I found myself drunk at 5 am
I found myself how I find me best
I found myself in another mess

So maybe a burned down church
adorned with graffiti words of love and satan
with light shimmering off broken glass
from windows you broke in times of turmoil past
a broken camera slung from my shoulder
and a confused terrier cradled in my arm
might have been an imperfect place for our first kiss.
But we are imperfect people.
So maybe it was perfectly imperfect
for us.

Maybe we are imperfectly perfect
for each other.

I finally found God.
He told me His name was Nothing.
And Nothing is in my heart
wherever I go.

My family and friends can see
that Nothing is inside of me.
They ask what's going on in my life.

I tell them the very good news.
That Nothing is inside of them too!
I try and explain my new found religion:

Nothing is sacred
because Nothing will greet you when you die
and Nothing will love you forever
and Nothing will save you from yourself.

I found my god.
I named him Nothing.
And Nothing helps me sleep at night.
And Nothing takes my pain away.

"Despite' is such a romantic word
and
I am not feeling particularly
romantic this evening.
Daytime scotch whiskey
and Chopin
living out the stereotype
of myself
That I am.


Nothing in life is "despite the pain'
so i will  instead say
sinply:

It would have been a beautiful life
were it not
For all the pain.

The only thing keeping me alive is the
fact that my life has been utterly unremarkable.

Be dark but not
too dark.

Be tortured but not
so tortured
that it tortures me.

The thick of it all
is wearing me thin.
I know that you're broken,
but where have you been?

Be everything I want.
Be everything I need.
I love what's in your blood.
I can't stand how much you bleed.

Be dark but not
too dark.

I don't know where to begin
I don't care how this ends
I lost my mind a million years ago

And you can't act like you're surprised
When I tell you yet another lie
It's what I said I'd do right from the start

And while you cry yourself to sleep
I sleep so well I forget to breathe
It's why we both look so tired all the time.

I ain't that much older than you
And you're smarter than me
So
You should understand this
Sudden detachment
And you shouldn't believe me
When I say that
I am sorry
Even though
I truly am.

And I understand what T.S. Eliot meant when he wrote that poem....
Because I feel so hollowed out.
And I want to scream and end my life
but all I do is
whimper.

And perhaps all those traits of myself that I always thought were ugly were really just the physical manifestations of my pain.

---

The

Self harm scars rob you of the luxury of being dishonest to yourself.

---

I had such a loving vision of you in my mind. Why did you have to go and ruin that? You. You with your childlike cruelty.

---

I feel no connection to that of my generation.
And I take no joy in being an outsider...

---

I can't do this alone
And I don't want to be alive.

---

L

Whatever curiosity I had for the world has been replaced by either total detachment or quiet despair.

Nor have my best efforts helped,
Perhaps I never wanted them to.

I hope that the world treats you
with
the very same
childlike cruelty
that you
treat the world
with.

Take away me
to the Sargasso Sea
Sail away us
From the nostalgia of our ended love.

Free us both from the night that
maybe someday
turned into
never again.

I hope you figure
out
What it is
that you're looking for
And

i hope you *******
Find it

Kurt Vonnegut said
To write poems that no one will ever read
then throw them away
In order To be a better writer

Joke's on him.
No one reads my poems anyways
Nor would I want them
to

You do to me what winter does to garden geraniums.
Frost does not exist on purpose.
It does not intend to puncture cell walls.
It just is. As do I. As do you.

You do to me what oxycontin does to the heart.
Oh, my zenith of euphoria, the unbearable absence of your pleasure
haunts me until nothing remains to be haunted.
You caress me raw with your fingertips.
Your warmth burns hot as ice on my soul.

You do to me what chefs do to onions.
What farmland does to streams.
What sunshine does to skin.
What wealth does to man.
What maggots do to rotting wounds.

You do to me what pictures do to moments.
You do to me what rats in glue traps do to themselves.

Everyone's afraid of growing up.
Losing that unique edge.
becoming
One of those adults spouting off the platitudes they used to so self-assuredly mock.
Those healthy boring folk with their
sleep schedules and
multiple bank accounts with
commas and
**** like that.

But as I sit here on the couch that my roommate
brought home
after his parents bought a new one
reflecting on who I should be; who I want to be
and who I really am ;
an adult, apparently....
I'm right at the cusp of thirty, after all.
Yet
my biggest disappointment
is the simple realization that I still have far too much in common
With my eighteen year old self and his
panic attacks and
substance abuse issues and
Three month heartbreak affairs and
Chronic feelings of being misunderstood and
the ****** poems he writes to try and
come to terms with
all of that.

I love you almost
as much
as I hate myself and
I
don't
want
to hate myself anymore.

I'm not sure if
I miss you
or if I just miss
being
your favorite person.

It's not
the fascists with their guns.
Or the Democrats with their bumper stickers.
Or the boomers with their Facebook.
Or the leftists with their Twitter.
Or the toddlers with their iPads.

It's not
the billionaires with their minimum wage.
Or the landlords with their land.
Or the hospitals with their bills.

It's not
the ocean with its plastic.
Or the forest with its fires;
no....

The worst part of living in this boring
post-modern nightmare dystopia
is that even the ******* drugs
are poisoned now.

All the bravest people
have already killed themselves.

I wonder what
they'd
Have to say about
all of this now.

I understand myself quite well.
It's everybody else that baffles
me.

We did more singing than talking
More drinking than thinking
More touching than blinking

I don't even know you yet
But I think that you're like me
and I think that I like you

Notions and concepts like
affection
and gut feelings and
mistakes are mostly ethereal, and

I've been trying to dwell less
on epistemology anyway
Trying to overthink less
Trying to ask less unanswerable questions like
is this the beginning of something?
Or merely
is this the beginning of what has already ended?
Or
do I even feel these words in my heart or soul
or
do they simply sound poetic on paper?
Or
am i even capable of feeling anything anymore?
I don't know.

I felt your soft lips with my fingertips
That much is true.
I feel a need to feel them again
That is also true.

They say you shouldn't try to save
a drowning person.

they're in such a panic
that they will
without consciously trying
take you down
with them.

I was drowning
when we fell in love.
But then again
so were you.

When you texted saying that
you had
started sleeping with your ex again
shrug emoji

I pictured in my mind
a razor blade cocktail sliding
down my throat
capillaries

I had only met you once
You told me things were messy
I knew all of this from the very very start

I kept my countenance
Texted back a few glib things
Already knowing they'd end up that most awful thing
left on read

I resumed my laughter night with close friends
Chatted with the uber driver on my way back to the city
Then got home and
cut myself repeatedly
as i am wont to do.

None of this was really about you.

You were just a concept to me.
I think the doc might have been right
when she told me
*you have BPD

Maybe I cry too much.
Maybe I lie a lot.

Maybe I drink too much.
Maybe I don't eat enough.

Maybe I learned the wrong things.
Maybe I care the wrong way.
Maybe I love the wrong people.

Maybe I broke too many bones.
Maybe I had too many surgeries.
Maybe I should have had pain medicine.
Maybe I grew up with drug addicts.

Maybe I can't think straight.
Maybe I hit my head too hard.
Maybe I should have seen a doctor about it.
Maybe I should should see one now.

Maybe I'm sick.
Maybe I'm depressed.

Maybe I shouldn't own a gun.
Maybe I shouldn't keep it loaded.
Maybe I shouldn't keep it in my nightstand.

Maybe I'm just being dramatic.

Maybe I'm just tired.
Maybe I'm just tired of being so self-aware.

.....)
I will oscillate without rhyme
purpose pattern
or reason
between jagged velvet nihilism
and hedonism soft toothed
until I eventually maybe
improbably possibly
discover something worth living for or drown in numbful lustness
unconcernedly disturbed
disturbedly unconcerned
that I never found it
(.....

I should have seen this coming
You warned me you were cold.
But the silence doesn't hurt much less
Just because it was foretold.

I try to find
the beauty
in every living
thing
and you once
told me
that wildflowers were
weeds.

Smoke yourself silly.
Drink yourself drunk.
Cut yourself repeatedly.
Insist that nothing's wrong.
Hope they don't believe you.
They always seem to.
Are you that good of a liar?
Or do they just not want to know?
Would it matter if they did?
It's no matter now:
You've long accepted your own soft, sorrowful implosion.

Asterisks
because the search engines
and social media software algorithms
block out anything containing the ******* keyword
because god forbid we have some safe place
to talk about it
share our scars
joke around
wallow
ask for advice about how to
best debride
necrotic tissue
without furthering the infection
without being preached to
or told that
it gets better.

Because we can't go to doctors
and we can't go to friends
or family
or anyone.

And because people who have never done it before
or maybe once or twice in high school
with those banal ******* symbolic wrist tattoos
ask us just the stupidest questions
and tell us that we shouldn't display
our scars out in public
because they might trigger some hypothetical person.

My addiction is not a keyword.
My body is not a trigger warning.

****.
****.
****.
*******.

I finally nicked an artery.
Blood pulsing out with every heartbeat.

Going deeper
gets easier
everytime
and now
I can't go
much deeper
without dying.

And I don't want to stop.
I don't think I can.
I wasn't supposed to live this long anyways.
Such a shame.

This isn't a poem.
I just have nowhere else to put this.