And so, what now?
The room lingers
waiting for something
(anything)
to happen.

A silent echo
endlessly reverberating.
A sound left to linger
like that particular snap
of a bone cracking in two.

....But this is so much more painful.
There's a scar on my arm
from when they drilled a titanium plate
into that broken bone.

You let the silence speak for you
(as it tends to do)
Quiet tears convene on the bedsheets.

Oh, please say something.
Say that you will be okay.
Tell me that you are not broken.

I do not think that I am worth breaking from.
I do not think that I am worth crying over.
I do not think that I am a monster
but that is up for you to decide.

Oh, love, please say something.
Say something.
(Anything.)

That silent echo
that endless reverberation.
... I can feel your heart
snapping in two.

But I am no surgeon.

No, I am that dying oak tree
in your front yard.
You climbed it higher and higher
unaware of my emptiness under the bark.
You climbed me higher and higher
happier and happier.

But I snapped under the increasing weight of your love
and watched as you fell from me.
You snapped in two and landed
on these bedsheets
where you can't stop crying.

Love, say something.
(Anything.)

I had a dream
I guess you could call it a nightmare
You were there

I don't remember what we were doing
I was distracted by my leg
The bad leg that never stops hurting
It turned bright red
Swelled up
Hurt so bad I writhed around until
I finally decide to saw it off
To stop the pain

I don't remember what you were doing
Just watching i think
Or maybe you didn't notice
But I was glad that
you were there.

Why is it
that only after the bottle is empty
and you won't remember anything
and you won't regret anything,
that the world is worth destroying?

I know that you are my father,
forgive me if I don't sound empathetic.

But I can't wait for the day
when I pick up the phone
and am solemnly informed
that you choked on ***** in your sleep
and finally left your family
alone.

Another day, another bottle.
You've killed your family,
it's time for you to die.

A naked body next to yours
won't make you feel
less alone.

A kiss as soft as moss
won't quell
the shadow's voice.

A clean escape
won't ease your steps
as you walk away.

But those things don't matter much,
because it's dark outside
and cold inside
and you can't sleep
and the phone won't ring.

We have endured these cold days
with tired eyes,
the sun rose behind ominious clouds
only to set in slow motion
as an interminable specter.
Just when you prayed for night
you found yourself colder than ever
and alone.

Under inadequate shelter
from your cold thoughts you tried
to forget those things
that made you feel this way
in the first place.

You tried to feel your heart
but it was as cold as stone.
Impossible to forget
all the reasons and the people
and the sadness and the pain
that brought you and I to these dark corners
in the first place.

It was too cold to go outside
and ask the stars.

But now, the sun is out
and my head has cleared.
A cool breeze under a warm sun
was all it took
to blow those terrible thoughts away.

How nice, to wake up with sunlight in my eyes.
To wake up without dreaming of you,
to step outside without resentment,
to feel the grass on my feet
and to know that I am starting to heal.

That was all I needed:
a day in the sun
to relish what I can't comprehend
and shed the sadness
you tried to give me.

Your polycystic heart bleeds through the dim lit window
of a low-income apartment building
just a few blocks away.

I sit alone on the bathroom floor and
it takes me **** near twenty minutes to take apart the razor blade.
You have to take care not to pry too hard,
otherwise the blades will cut up your fingers.

And no, that irony is not lost on me.

The present tense is past,
time and time slip and intertwine
alone along this barren stretch of
burning nothing that was
our Summer.

Brief laughter echoes weakly
but the smiles stopped singing
long ago.
Winter won't keep us warm
because we'll never forget.

It was not in the eyes that one
fell for the other
but in the silence that our love
grew and died
like a **** in the paraquat.

I hold your hand despite your heart
being held by another.
I kiss you with care knowing that
I am but a brief distraction
to a much greater
much more devastating love
than mine.

I take this burden in quiet contempt,
what am I to do?

You’ve marked me as yours
but you are not mine.
I’d tell you that you are beautiful
but you’re looking away from me,
at him.

I do not lament the clouds:
days like these don't deserve the sunlight;
skin so raw doesn't deserve to blister and blight.
A day that is built
for us to sit and watch the flowers wilt.

You let the silence speak for you
(as it tends to do.)
Love is a word that is hard to define
try hard enough and maybe you'll see that line
between the synapse and the feeling
between the prayer and the kneeling.
The difference between a spasm and desire,
a flashlight and a fire.
The difference between poetic words and idle chatter.
Yet all in all, none of this matters.

None of it matters when the moon looms over me
and no one is here to watch me bleed.
You can pluck the plant our sadness grew:
we fell in love, that much is true.
But things run so much deeper than this
and losing my kiss
won't fix any of this.

Since I know these words will be lost in the abyss
not to be read or cared for by your or by them,
I write without fear of infamy, and without any wish
of your hand in my hand ever again.

I am proud to say that you were once my lover:
we need lots of things, but we don't need each other.

I think this is what it feels like
to be even somewhat a normal person?

Is that what it feels like
to be stable?
Not sad?
Not manic?
No some god-awful mixture
of both at the same time?

I don't have much to say.
I only write poems when I'm sad.
Or manic.
Or mixed.
And I'm not.

I'm really not.

Hope isn't a smiling face
among a dismal crowd.
Hope isn't the light at the end
of the tunnel.
It is not that thing with feathers
for there is no soul for it to perch on.

No, that is not hope.
Hope is when the crows
grow full from the carrion of
a dead lamb, and rest.
Hope is when an old man
dies in his sleep, and stops feeling
those years and years of pain.

Hope is not in your heart:
hope is the time after the noose tightens
and before you fade away.

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.

Awake begging for sleep
like Romeo in the tomb.

I just realized
that I forgot the color of her eyes.

I feel sleepier already.

athought interrupted is lost
ohwell it lacked anything compelling
anyways.

but it's them not us
andusnotwe
and him not i

but it's summer not spring
and the earth is too
hot
because too many tears
and too many screams
heat the earthforwhat it is and notwhat we need it to be

...And so the sun sets again,
the thoughts come creeping in.
Stars, stars... how dim they seem
on nights like these.

When the breaths cloud the air
and my feet step bare
on the cold streets.
I've never felt so weak.
Never felt so bleak.

Out of gas with nowhere to go.
Out of hope on a frigid road.

Perhaps there's another world out there,
where the steps don't seem so futile
and the words are less painful.
Perhaps there's another world out there.

And though these thoughts
are as painful
to me
as a thousand snapping bones
shattering on concrete.

Though these thoughts
are as interminable
to me
as the burning stars
which supersede time itself.

Though these thoughts
are as constant
to me
as the setting of the sun
and the rising of the moon.

Though these thoughts are all of these things
to me.
I can't help but stand in wonder
as to how, why,
and for what reason
I am so sad, always.

Perhaps there is another world out there
where life is worth living.
Perhaps there is another world out there.

Perhaps...

I know that you are alone,
quiet, and without a hope for tomorrow.
You've heard the same songs over
and over and over again.
You've had these same thoughts
over and over and over again.
Pain takes its toll with repetition.

I know that you are alone, tonight.
Your friends and lovers are not here.
(Where are they? I do not know,
but they are not here.)
Silence is overwhelming,
the crickets and lilies are your only friends, tonight.

I know that you are alone, tomorrow.
I know this because it never ends,
you pray for hope but hope never comes.
Time will not fix you tomorrow...
...or to-morrow or to-morrow...

I know that you are alone, every day and every night.
You are alone in the crowd
You are alone on the sidewalk
You are alone in the smoke.

Yet, in some strange fashion,
you are not alone.
While you sit alone in your quiet room,
while you lay alone in your cold bed,
while you cry alone on the bathroom floor:
others are dying alone
too.

And thus:
we are not alone because we are alone:
a mountain of bleeding corpses all bleeding together.

Poisoned memories rot through
my veins.
These dreams are incomprehensible,
a shaky bloodbath. I am the antagonist,
committing atrocities I'll instantly forget
and forever regret.

There are horrible thoughts welded into my bones,
I am forced to carry them in
infinite tire.

And even though these plagues
are as inexorable
to me
as my abyss-jade eyes
(which will love until
they fade forever)

today, I cannot help
but stand in the sun

and thank myself
for remaining alive to live this day.

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.

There are beautiful words in my mind
aching to inform you
of my admiration towards your heart,
my longing for your lips
of the beauty in the fragile lines of your palm.

So many things to be said
about you and about us.

But if my mind is a pen
and you are the ink
I suppose that
there isn't much to be said
after all.
Because your silence is
beyond-noticeable
and my weariness is
growinggreater.

And those words are fading
with every quiet night
when you aren't here
and the phone won't ring.

Just like the dark blue bottle
you shattered when you were drunk
yes drunk, far too drunk.
Claiming to be sober and failing
like a bird with a broken wing
pretending to fly.
Yes, just like that bottle
with the shards scattered about the floor,
I stepped on a small piece
and watched the blood drip out
as a part of you became embedded in me;
I was disappointed when the bleeding stopped.

Just like that ******* dark blue
incandescent bottle
that broke on the kitchen tile.

You've made us blue with fear,
blood dripping on the floor, red
red like the anger and the blood and the bruises
of everyone around you.

Just like the color sadness that is blue
is you
drunk along alive alone
surrounded by the blue shards of bleeding glass
that used to be the ones who loved you.

And they say it'll all get better
(eventually!)
That all these things will vanish
with time.
I am far too young to know of pain,
far too proud to ask for help
far too tired to leave my bed
far too ****** to care.

No one warned me that life was this long
or that every second of sadness
is a lifetime
compared to those fleeting months of happiness
that disappear like thunder in the storm.

No one likes poetry about being sad
written by pretentious college students
read by strangers on the internet.

But I've once been told to write what's in my heart
and writing about sadness
is better than writing about nothing.

There is no way around it:
you are going to hurt me.
I can feel it in my bones the way
birds know of a coming storm.

I do not know if this will end
in love in the end.
I do not see a happy ending
(but I hope I'm wrong)

....And as the sun rises onto
another glorious day
where we two are alone, together
I will take the pain when it comes,
and cherish every smile you give me
until that solemn day.

You wouldn't want me anymore.
I've changed
much for the worse.
Same old sadness
but much worse.

Same handsome face,
teeth worn down deeper,
eyes grown darker.

I don't laugh as much.
I don't talk as much.
I don't smile as much.
I smoke cigarettes now,
I've seen the inside
of the county jail.

Even if you think you want to see me,
I promise you that you don't.

I am well aware that my lines lack an audience,
that the words of others are more beautiful
eloquent, passionate?
than mine: I have accepted that.

It is within my capacity to write about how
lost love, flowers, sunsets and cigarettes
evoke deep emotions within me.
I can write
that Great God will guide me through darkness
and I will find happiness in the end.
I can do that. More people would read that.
Perhaps I could get an audience
that way.

I'll keep my ambiguity
And I'll keep my countenance.

Disregard these words (as I know you will)

No one hears the cry of beating hearts,
No one sees the nightmourner,
desolate and quiet in its misery.
I have not read a poem written by a Shadow,
I know that they haunt us all the same.

Do not read these words I fear you'll read more.

You,
We do not talk anymore
and I know that you don't want to talk
anymore.
And I understand, I guess.
I can't really blame you,
can I?

After all, I left you with nothing
but unanswerable questions
and seemingly infinite tears.
So I can see why
you do not want to hear my voice
anymore.

But, you, do you remember?
The laughs?
The quiet nights alone
needing nothing but each other?
I was only happy when you were happy,
you could only fall asleep in my arms
or wishing you were in my arms.

What about the parks?
And the late nights?
And the whispers?
The skin, so much skin.
Passion rang through us
and we reverberated a tireless song
of contentment and ease.

And the fights weren't that bad,
the nights alone weren't terrible.
I didn't make you that unhappy
until I made you miserable
as I walked away forever.

You, do you remember those halcyon days?
I wrote you poems,
you made me a crown of flowers
that wilted hanging from my rear-view mirror.

And as the days go by in which you
resent and yet again resent me down to my soul.
I will hold no bitterness towards your name,
and hope that, eventually, you can do me the same.

i fall in love
every month or two
i never turn down
a fresh heart
to consume

it's not enough to have your love
you have to have my pain
because love is fickle
one day it will fade
but you'll still have my sorrow
happily long
forever after
I forget your name

Leaves dying not dead burning orange and
burning red
only fall to freeze soon instead
not even the sun and the cirrus painting gold
a sky too tired hold
much anything but of black or blue
can free my mind from thoughts of you

cars grumble home fences rust a little
stray cat sleeps alone we laugh and giggle

but every Sunday has to end
and Saturn's people wonder
if they'll ever love again
for them night is only 5 days away
before the drinks are poured
and the people come out to play.

silence sounds like something
and the darkness never cries
they believe in everything
but the tedium never dies.

No one heard the voices and shrieks that night
And no one knew and no one cared to know.
Yet it happened still the atrocity.

Her echoes are in the air still,
No one can feel what she felt.
You wouldn't want to.

It is sad to see
how many people I
can love
without coming any closer
to loving myself.

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

Love is only as beautiful as it is depraved
Shadows are only as dark
as the light that casts them.
Life is only as happy and sad
as you need it to be.

Hope doesn't perch.
Hope isn't a smiling face
among a dismal crowd.
Hope isn't the light at the end
of the tunnel.

Hope is when the crows
grow full from the carrion of
a dead lamb and rest.
Hope is when the old man
having forgotten himself years ago
falls asleep one last time.

Hope is everything you've needed
after you didn't need it anymore.
Hope is the time after the noose tightens
and before you fade away.

And yet I always come back
Asking for more

We sat close, huddled for warmth
in my freezing abode, a lone candle
lighting the room. Hands
with a mind of their own move
and caress
and cannot help but hold you.

We shared our worlds
and painted our faces
and laughed like children.

No one saw us and we were happier
that way.

I remember your voice as you read me
your favorite poem:

"...Of human love,—renounce for these, I say,
The Singing Mountain’s memory..."

And your brow furrowed as you
listened to mine, looking for some
hidden message in the words that were not mine:

"...Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves..."

We smiled like we used to
(before we forgot how.)
We told secrets we didn't know we had.
And nothing felt wrong
or ill-at-ease.

We slept most of the night as one,
holding each other like we couldn't let go.
So close that my skin was your skin
So close that we smile, and kiss, and smile, and kiss...

...And I woke up with sweat on my skin
and a tremble in my spirit.
Reluctantly knowing that it was too perfect for reality.

You are gone and never were.
Today is ruined without you to wake up to.

A path lined with shards of glass
from crystalline tears
and secret glances
the brief encounters
the blank stares
the nights spent searching for what is gone
or forcing breaths into flattened lungs

the pain of stepping on all those hearts
that I have shattered.

True: tall, handsome, writes poems
and makes them smile, even when he can't.
Ultimately left alone to walk
this path of shattered glass.

I would shatter them all again,
if it meant I could feel anything at all from their love,
if only just the feeling
of glass in my steps
and regret in their souls.

All the bravest people
have already killed themselves.

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

I feel so helpless in the backseat
Speed-complacent
car crash risk
Apparently, obviously,
worth taking.

Orange warm highway street lamps
Somniferous strobelights
melodic-hypnotic
through the blackred veil of my
Stubborn eyelids.

Highway streelights Like when I was twelve
and
Every Tuesday/Thursday
Mom picked me up from school
And drove me straight to
ACTS Acting Academy
In Northwest OKC.

How simple it was back then,
The only problem or
So it seemed
was
the 49 minute drive to and
Especially from.

...

Yet strangely so peaceful.


I had actual friends in acting class,
I waited all week to see them.

I practiced my monologue fifteen minutes everyday
Just to prove to dad
That I cared enough to justify the time and the money (mostly the money)
That mom had to spend
To drive me  tothe city twice a week
To see my friends
To see my friends from acting class.

How was I supposed to know
That those highway drives homes
9:15pm
Would be the most peaceful memory
I would ever remember to forget?
The last refuge of contentment
I would ever
to feel?

How was I supposed to know
How much worse it'd get?

Yet even then, age twelve,
Even then
all we thought of it was a burden.
Driving there and back
There and back
There and back

...

And of course mom felt that way, too.
Tired from long days of home health.
Most of that job was just driving somewhere
And somewhere else.
Yet eventually
Tacitly
Under the subtle strobeof orange warn highway street lights
She found herself more at home in that car
Than anywhere else in her limited bounds.

Slowly she found herself
speaking candidly
for once
To finally someone who would listen
Even if sadly it had to be
Her twelve year old son
Driving to the city.

Equal parts proud and deeply disturbed
At the realization that I was her best friend
She became mine, too.

Sometimes she spent that whole drive there
Having the same time ten minute conversation
Five times over
To Meema in the nursing home
(How sad vascular dementia must be)

And then there was driving home.

I was tired.
I fell asleep with
my iPod headphones
Blaring awful screamo melodrama.

Driving home she had only her thoughts.
How strange I now imagine she must have felt.
Orange warm streetlamp hypnosis
Freedom.

How many decades had she gone without those thoughts?
How many years had she gone to the grocery store after work?
How long had that credit card debt been compounding?
How long had she been asleep? -- Ambien sleep--years without a dream?

How many loops to that class
That pre-teen California pilot season prep class
Did she have to make
Until she
Finally
Had a thought
of her own?

I feel so helpless in the backseat.
All those lessons I learned
And forgot
And remembered
And tried so hard to forget again
In that Oklahoma City acting class
At twelve years old
Before it all got worse
Before it eventually got comparatively better again

Helpless even more now that I realize
That I've spent the last decade plus
Trying so hard to forget
How peacefully pretragic
Those Tuesday, Thursday twelve year old nights
Actually were.

Orange warm highway street lights
tracing by
Driving home tired.

I was twelve
learning how to be kind of happy

She was 45
Also learning
How to be kind of happy

As the highway street lights traced by
And we were both so desperate to be home
Yet also happy not
To be home yet.

Who among us has not?
Well...
Well, what?

Specificities fall to the floor:
we are what we are.
Nothing more.
Nothing more.

Tears refuse to fall
Or cannot help but remain.
Tears or notears, poison all the same.

The walking Shadow:
relentless in its crawling means.
What of Sound?
What of Fury?

I hope
I hope
I hope....
I hope your eyes bleed until the light pours out.

"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.

That final moment
where the lights flicker
and the stars fall.
That final moment
where the world ends
leaving us
hand-in-hand
withering away.
That final moment
where love is not enough,
oblivion creeps
ever-closer.

Was it worth it in the end?
For one final moment
together before we
fell apart, bleeding?

That final moment
where my voice bursts
trying to call you back
but, with blood on my hands
and heart,
fails.

That other form of self mutilation.

Because at least empty stomachs don't get infected
And at least the high lasts longer than a few minutes
And at least skinny is in vogue
And at least I have something to focus on
And at least it keeps me from talking too much

ill-conceived pet project
some sort of point to prove

slow things down in my brain
until I have only one principle concern
and at least it's something I can control
there is no shame here
rot from the inside
crater down implode
collapse
but that's my choice
or at least I can tell myself that it is

and what was I getting at?
sorry
i forgot what I was saying
just a little lightheaded
my thoughts escape me these days
i wonder why

You wanted the world and I complied.
Crafting a globe out of paper and wilted Daffodils;
you were under the distorted vision of Love
and could not see the fault lines and inconsistencies
that make it both real and unreal.

I apologize for when it crumbles --
as I know it will.
I know your smile will fade --
there's nothing I can do.
Nothing.
Nothing in the pseudo-world that will permit
you to remain happy.
Because I am no Atlas and I am trembling
under the increasing weight of a fabricated world.
I know not what to do and you cannot see.

I am sorry:
The world is falling apart
and I will be a casualty in the wreckage.

It is April and we are frozen:
stuck in a world we never knew
in a love we thought we felt
a life we never lived.

So you feel this way
but you don't know why.
And they feel that way
but won't say how.

Your brain whispers secrets
that they don't hear.
Your eyes see figures
with intentions unclear.

The smiles don't come
but their laughter looks true
and on the sidewalk there's a sad statue
with the same face as you.

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

Your mind and you are
to me
the songs that heaven wrote
but could not sing.

We used to be twenty
sitting around complaining
and smoking
like twenty year olds do.

Now we're thirty
sitting around complaining
and vaping
like twenty years olds do.

And for the record,
I don't need any help realizing
That I am a hypocrite.

I've got a solid grasp
on everything that's slipping
out of my fingers.

I don't act like anyone but myself
It's not a role I'd recommend
but at least I'm not tortured
by what people don't see

I embrace the patterns I generate
In my downward spiral
and I don't blame anyone
but myself

I awake from night terrors
and scrape through the day
i'm failing that's fine
can you say the same?

When I see you in dreams
you are just as miserable
as I remember you to be.

When I see you in dreams
you still carry your desperation
your unadulterated shame
proudly impure upon your shoulders

When I see you in dreams
I find myself undone
by the same intense shock of
love and fear
that brought me to this point
to begin with:

where I can only see you in dreams
and we are both just as sad
as I remember us
to have been.

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