don't mind my jesting
it's just a little fun
playing with fire to keep you guessing
the dancing flames have a delightful burn

it's just a little fun
you see, i'm crying on the cold kitchen floor
the dancing flames have a delightful burn
until you're numb and bored and they can do something you can't

you see, i'm crying on the cold kitchen floor
i think it's just the afterparty's effects
until you're bored and they can do something you can't
we elect new people to look down on us

i think it's just the afterparty's effects
nothing's a big deal when you've been out all night
we elect new people to look down on us
thinking they'll be better and just maybe we'll be alright

i'd like to believe i can do it all
bear the weight of my world on my shoulders and still stand tall
I hate that I fall amidst the weight
I think "my problems are all too simple, why do I struggle with the weight"
Forgetting i'm human, i judge myself like an alien
Giving myself one strike because I think three is too much

But then I have a bad day and the thought comes back again
"I can't do this on my own and I need a friend"
But I hate it and i hate myself for it
Because I hate needing help
But to be strong is to be weak at times
To fall but always get back up

do you pick dandelions every day?
say "today i should be nice, today i should be cold"
never mind, caring grays my mood
how bold of you
to forget i stand on my own two feet every single day i've been alive
so ***** your flowers, your behavior has gotten old

I thought ardour would make me an artist
Needing something to snap me awake, I was optimistic
Now im grieving and narcissistic
Because i'm angry at other people's tricks
That I didn't care about because I wasn't realistic
Too apathetic to feel the sting

Now I'm without a Beatrice to pine over
Embraced the idea that I'm not a loverboy
I'm just an average boy covering up
For many things, but among them that all my days feel the same

With all the stress on me
To people-please and to pick who I wanna be
Just a wannabe human that's falling on his face
Too straight-laced to get up
And happily skip around today

So I doom scrolled in bed
even though lights hurt my head
Because I feel too much
Trudging through the sludge of all I refused to feel

Reeling from my unhappiness
I turned to my poetry to cure my sadness
But without an object there's nobody or body to draw
Only the same thing: I hate myself, just throw the tomatoes as I talk!

Audience, I know you're bored
The tally marks show the score
That i've lost to myself a million times
So please, just give me a subject and I'll rhyme

I need something to let me stop being myself
I've projected for so long that I am greatly unwell

we were together
running outside in the recess yard
sneaking out for warmer weather
to escape the crowd
if you want to stay lovers
i don't mind, it's whatever

i'm not your type
too temporary and young is our love
but i would bear any strife if i could
breaking my bones to be tall enough
sacrificing the familiarity of my hometown to be seen with you

i thought we could be forever
you would brush my hand in public
but you think to be close friends is better
than, for my love only, to risk it

i will embrace your casual embraces
call your name
with the tenderness of my disapproving parents calling my own
leaving you without a disgraced paramour
to go to them who do not know of the mere story of us

that you have broken me
so delicately
that i do not fault you for my cracks

but would you please chip down my walls again?
it is a welcome pain
that i yearn to want to sway with someone

but the only desire i have is to crumple into your arms like paper
my ardour left for only songs to understand
i cannot bid goodbye to the memories
as i bid you farewell too early

My love letters went down the drain yesterday
Flushed down the toilet I used to ***** in
Because now that im no longer lovesick
The thickness of steel enveloping my heart has softened

I cried when I wrote them
As I etched letters with my eyes
And scribbled in my thoughts
But the eraser of the truth brought me clarity
That no one could read what I was saying

I wish I could write another
I wish I could be blind enough to bother
To keep to my pride
And believe any of the compliments were real
I think I imagined them all
Just as I imagined I was short when I've really grown uncomfortable tall

So my words are gone
The paper has long melted in my mind
And I can't find the words to say whats wrong anymore
I can hardly even speak

The barbarism of a tongue held
Chained in silence
The words weld
The heart shut to everything but the mind
Trapped behind bars as no man shall ever cross the line
A line for fools
Engraved from their tears in the grey ground
Who were not scared enough to speak their mind
When they appeared giddy as a clown
But the adversary of man sits on every man's shoulder
Deceptively gentle, with long legs dangling over
Whispering seductive, only more relentless as man gets older
That mistakes can be served colder or hotter, and neither choice matters in the end
(Omitting both are gobbled up by the mind in late night regrets)
Bending the resolve of the so-called ethical
Lending a motive to the mouth's means to complete the puzzle of crime
To have an excuse for the lips rebellion against the divine

I grew up thinking drama was a way of life
Sustainable and expected to experience strife
I had no role models but nonetheless
I was so short I had to look up at the television

The tough boys had hearts of butter
But needed the heat of lovers to soften them
So I grew up with a big heart hidden behind a locked mouth

Somewhere along the line I forgot how to speak
I began looking for something, someone I could leak
My feelings I thought were forbidden
Although I was much taller, I looked up at the TV

I realized people loved me everyday at the toss of a dime
To make the unstable more consistent, I passed the time
Making my own episodes, divine exaggerations of the people who I thought condemned me to hell
Daydreaming through life, as no real love was there to give me obligations

But I woke up one day with nothing and everything
I was sitting in a chair, but without a presence it was empty
So I gave up on dreams and smashed that TV
That told me I would be happy with fictions of reality
And took my first shaking step under the force of gravity
Painful but needed to give me room to grieve
A life lost in daydreaming
But to take back my mind

And intertwine it with my friends
And family that are one of a kind

Every morning
There's almost nothing I can count on but you
As life changes and I do
But my love for caffeine has stayed the same
And the gentle drift of those flavored chemicals to my stomach seems to soothe me
I must admit I'm kind of an addict
But honestly, just one cup and i'm happy
So every morning I wake up
And I wake counting on you

My heart used to be a rabbit
Leaping to the simple things
Happy with just carrots
But then one day it leaped too far out of my chest
And I looked round and around me
Spinning on the merry go round of my surroundings
But when I stopped it was lying on the ground
With legs broken
And its pulse lost

I took it to the doctor
And the doctor looked and shocked
But it hasn't quite jumped again

And doesn't a rabbit jump for all of its days?
I think one of its circuits is frayed
But i can't find a way to solder it
So frayed it stays

need a new addiction
to replace this influence
so intuitive to numb it all
instead of waking up
sinking deeper into death
a fatal coma

the neon is captivating
but only at night can you see its glow
otherwise it's agitating
invisible buried under snow

i think to hurt myself
not bothering to consider
there might be wellness
just around the scary corner up ahead

i fear what is foreign to me
because it might hurt me in a better way I do not know
craving to stay the same chasing after ghosts

i hate saying goodbye to the melancholy
it disturbs me in a blessed way
and i fear i won't be picasso or kahli
if there is no sickness or injury to taint me

i would like to bleach my eyes
although they are a mature umber
the darkness in them has not come from slumber

rather from bittersweet tales not obliged
and far too mature for my young mind
penetrating my innocence
in favor of creating unnecessary indifference

to sacred matters of ***
belonging behind formal doors

as someone who is blunt
i wish people would say what they mean
instead of the flirty front of double entendres
but let the people say what they want
i have already been corrupted to be crude

i was born wanted but for the wrong reasons
with a mind marked to be ill
thrown into the wilderness of a foreign country
with not even a common language to call home
i am loved but i am placed in the wrong season
built in the summer but living in the cold
by happenstance the unwilling champion
but only of the loser's side
the air i breathe is borrowed but bound for oblivion
it is a consolation that at least to the earth i am a reward
even if i die in my treason of life

Am I suitable for you vultures
Craving for a new delight?
Or am I too boring to lighten up your night

I hate your small talk it's torture
I'm going to lose my mind
As I care about people too much
To talk to someone just so I can whine
About them when we've just met

*******, i need a cigarette
To make you go away
And let me put your slanderous narrative to bed
No wonder you're a wretch
You spend your sleeping hours babbling
And not living a better life
Perhaps one more genuine
Would cure your strife of insomnia

I miss when I thought you cared
With every little gesture
Every sympathetic stare
But that was just conjecture
Now a desiccated air
Barbaric to my beautiful glass fixtures
The colored windows I saw you through
That made everything nostalgic
Even if it was shrouded in blue
It all shatters when you say I'm not even close to churlish
But i've never been an ingenue
My mind goes to places of dark hues
As they are beautiful, they are ruby red

I am being tugged by invincible hands
This way and that
Fingers in my hair to tie it up with rubber bands
But I might break before the bands do
Tasting sour so often on my tongue my palette has gone numb
Unable to taste the flavors that crooned to remind me of my humanity
Traveling in circles but can't find my center
Bending every which way, never left upright for long

I've embraced the idea that you don't care
You opened the door and a dog barked, i was there
I wondered if it was mad at me
But there I was, walking not on the street but sniffly on the sidewalk
I didn't see the car pass
It was if i had jumped forward in time and blacked out
And jumped with my feet but they never left that gravel
And as I stumbled along the doldrums
The silence was deafening
But the boat was not sinking
And neither was my resolve to pedal through
Looking for a warm wind
To catch my drift and lift me into a bend
I think my empty gaze scared that lady
But she evidently won't be scared tomorrow
Certainly not of a schoolboy like me
Which leaves my feet to be clumsy
Walking one over the other in a death march to-be

need of my soul
to be somewhere else
but i can't let go
so i'm numb and pretending to be somebody else
in a huge trench-coat sneaking into the movie theater
showing up
in hopes of finding light
that dissuades me from the anger that is binding me
that tells me my suffering is all a dream

there's a ghost waiting for me at the dinner table
it tells me stories as I make black coffee
of how adult sadness awaits
how the acrid isn't enough to wash my sins away
i've grown close to this ghost as it tells me more truth
than the people who pretend they don't hear when i'm rude
the silence filling up the space of needed rebuke
embarrassment to rehabilitate my crimes
but i wonder
will it ever leave me?
my closest friend
but it often deceives
lying for survival
selling my heart for free
so on this rainy day perhaps i'll put milk in
to soften my grown-up gaze
to let the ghost slip away
find happiness in the fog so gray
and stop haunting my repeating days

I'm a person ready and able
And not for sale
to live a life worth living
pursuing contribution to the world
to unfurl the flower that is my soul
and to know it's intricate petals well
I will shout from the hilltops
my voice carries the waves of individuals not gone
legacies hidden in my dimple's folds
and I love with bold fire
just as many else have told
I have a story to tell
and am a character in many to come
just as anyone else I care in a pining matter
leaving judgement of other souls to those more refined
(in other words, not you or anyone else!)
don't you dare put me in a box
***** you politicians who say those nothing words matter more than my four:
my right to privacy!
I will sneak like a fox
out through corridors of creativity
Out of spite, breaking the lock
While you shiver as to how impossibly I'm right:labels and life have a too short clock

Gently I bubble
Expel emotion quicker
Tick-tock normal now

"dont cry over spilled milk" she said
Darling I'll cry over you, tears burying me even when im dead
I hate how you were sick, well loved, and well fed
And I had no part in it, banging my head
I don't think you want me, I wont blame you with my breath
The last one I take will be surely well-spent

I was caught missing home
With no one to need me I was all alone
Surrounded by people but never felt warm
Cozy or bubbly like a memory of bath foam
From when I was a child, without the bitter of love-lorn
Looking forward to imagery, never told it was just corny
Made up for stressed out adults, but I was never given a warning

So now I'm here
Trapped in my fear
Fighting for a future of someone not so near
And it's all unclear
Where am I going
Because I can't feel happy and it's honestly foreboding

Goodbye to what's familiar
I need to venture
Outside of the tapestry
Grow not so stagnantly
But I'll admit i'll miss you
Even though you won't miss me
But you'll still make it into my poetry

I wish to dance upon people's tongues like wasabi
To bite, to anger, to be somebody
But I'm so horribly normal
How ******* boring!
Stumbling at tango
I bump many ankles
I hate the style of dance, my nature is to prance
But I fall to preen for praise, same old routine
Being the "good boy"
That studies and does well, the perfect little toy
Picked up, put down
Terribly reliable, but not without the cost of a perpetual frown
As sadness is my default
I dont know who to call
To change my settings
Rewire whatever ******-up meddling
Told me to hide myself
And endanger my health
For people who don't care
To wander a ghost rather than to merit a stare

I'm attending a funeral
I see a grave but only the hole
I know bugs are crawling all over my soul
But I feel so ashamed, what to do?
I simply do not know
Corrupted by everything
Chasing meaning in the form of "goals"
Yearning to get out of my comfort zone
To be known
But nothing works so I'm trapped in fantasy
I need someone else to do the work for me
As its too much to even be alive
Telling myself lies constantly
To cut off my desire for death
So I don't go too early
The grave is for me, you see
And everyday I try to flee
But it's in front of me
And it threatens to pull me in
Snaking smoky arms out with a grin
To die a sinner
To live in scorn
To try to love
But fail and be love lorn
Lost in daydreams
Past memories
Wasting my time
In the grime of my world

In need of space i'm in a slump
Cleaning up the garbage, quenching the fire of the dump
I smear delicacy on a skin too familiar to coarse, salty tears
And tell the mirror to go to sleep, that rest will soothe its fears
I don't care to question if it deserves love
The answer lies in the future, determined up above
I fight for a future that continues to move
That shakes the red in an unstable groove
If I stumble all won't break
I dance atop the tightrope of fate
As I have seen the abyss, it knows me well
All too familiar is that alluring smell
I've grown to know better perfumes
I chase better things rather than the drama of threat or self sabotaging doom

My heart aches for change
But in my web of dullness im stuck just the same
I look for someone else to occupy the space of me
Ignoring my own responsibility
In favor of forgetfulness, self pity
I need to take a walk
Because the fresh air talks
It whistles "i love you"
As it caresses my cheeks
Making me cold but making me feel
I try to stimulate gratitude
It's all artificial like the self I refuse to give latitude
Fake is better when it's more real
Than the emptiness of everything I feel
I don't think i've been human for years
Maybe I was cursed from the moment I was reared
By parents who wanted their eldest to have company
Of someone who was funny
I was an accident who's hardly happy
But is not life made of disrupted repetitions
Are all characters bound to tradition
Of fickle meanings I think not
In the end of my nonsense I hope my words continue to talk

I hope you know, hidden in my formal banter
Is a love letter begging to be answered
But you don't know how your laughter affects me so

I thought we were alike
I thought that I could try
To creep a little closer
But I need my distance because when I'm older
I'll feel better and far more sober
About the fact I was a lover of your sillouette

I don't understand your language
I only feel hatred leaping off the page
But your gaze is so gentle
Even though it's not meant for me
It's a drug that could put an insomniac to sleep

I looked for you when it was weeks
Would trudge through the snowstorm,whiten my cheeks
I don't make you happy because you're free
To walk away at any time

So I guess I waste my breath
Nostalgic 'cause theres nothing left
For me to give you but this weight is hefty
I'd bear it all for you just like I always have

Amalgamation of missed information
I have to resist the temptation
To rename myself a "bad result of experimentation"
Is to love someone to control their mood?
To turn them upside down when you're feeling rude
I tried for weeks to be astute
But in just one minute you made it all a fluke
Can I get better please?
Heal from this illness, cure my disease
Due to my hysteria I would take any pill
To not let you affect me, get back my free will
Its painful to be alone
But I feel better when im not owned
Branded to be a slave to your polarity
Leaving my creativity
And all I love to your bad proclivities

I was in court talking with a lawyer who was analyzing my case
Sitting in the witness box, in my lap my hands were laid
I stood up after his reassurance
And proclaimed "your honor, theres been a mistake"
The judge said no mistake was made
Didnt I remember how the opening played out?
With no memory made
I stood in front of the audience
Without the truth, not even a promise
And to be honest, I woke up from the dream shivering

I crave for a lot
Is it so wrong for a boy to lust
For the loud
An escape
A scary change of pace
To run from the dull
The drab
The nonspontaneous stuff
The blah and blab
But I need satiation
To accept the realization
You lit up with yellow
While I exist in dark blue
My blood may turn red
But is that its true hue?
The times may change
But my being remains the same
I refuse to be mischaracterized
As a damsel in chains
Waiting for a saviour
It would be more natural to burst into flame
My words are my armour
I will die with my sword
A poet and a knight
As ritually
To myself I have sworn

Theres a hole in my head
The numbing agent fills it up with you
It reminds me of my dreams again and makes me feel blue
And my eyes are now puffy like a ******* balloon
And my week of good progress has been ruined
I miss you terribly
Is what my father always said to me
I never understood it until you were standing there in front of me
Because now I know the pain of missing something I never had
So dont you dare say another word and make me feel bad
For thinking you and I were similar and swelling my deflated heart up to be glad
Nothing can fix me
Not even you who fooled me
Into thinking that fig tree ever held a chance
For telling me its safe to sit down while you sawed off the branch
And I hate that I said im sorry
You thought it was just funny
That I was concerned
That I could be aware someone else was hurt
Dont go smiling at me because i wont realize its pity
Im far too naive
So ends this one reprieve

Im coming down and the headache is infectious
I have to think just way too much and im restless
Maybe fresh air would help but im depressed
And it took too much energy to eat avocado toast

I hate to say I miss someone cuz Im alone and thats not true
I miss me, i miss that he before middle school
Maybe if I knew what I knew now I would be better
Maybe if we moved to colorado id wear a different sweater

No matter what, im stuck in cycles and habits
Need to deal with myself and not just say that im just tragic
Thank you to everyone for loving me even those i cant have it

Shut up
I know you like the phrase
In your impractical brigades and diatribes
I see it in your face that I'm not someone you like
Shut up
I must say
To my thoughts when im trying to sway
To dance you out of the bay of my sorry mind
Shut up
I must remember
Because ever since september
I havent been the same, have been quite too tender
Shut up
Is my punishment, my own cure to the pain I cannot pour into one cup
The oil I grease upon my arms so I can wriggle out, get unstuck
Shut up
Is what I wish I could say to you
To get you out of my head
To end this stupid blue

Snapping out of it
Feels so tragic
Leaving the comfort that was for my eyes only magic
Im sorry sorrowful me
Left you to escape reality
But now im back and im working on being cheerfully
Me without having to sink into darkness or escape into fantasy
Yes I miss it a little bit
Thinking I was wanted or some corny love *******
But yes I am however I have to accept it
Im flawed but I deserve to be loved
And it doesnt mean im less than for simply livin

Everything hurts more
When you think you're nothing, not on the level of being a bore
I truthfully apologize to everyone i've ever met
Because my existence feels like nothing but a crime
My demise is slow
A cool fire burns me alive in my ill inferno
But on the outside oh!
What a show!
Is the smart boy still comedic when hes sharing his woes
Prose could not convey my stupid heart
It cannot trace the dark of my soul and dare call it art

You answered me honestly
It caught me off guard
The starting gun for logical fallacies and demented poetry
From an awful head looking for an escape
A break from the drama
Someone to fix me
Not to puncture my self esteem like a grape
So when you said you felt awful i felt a breath
Of similarity but not clarity
Just fantasy in a room full of mirrors
Romanticized with white lights
But the air is filled with smoke and my tears
This is not a maze but a trial by fire
Threatening to rip me limb from limb
In pursuit of happiness but from a place not merely dim
But you'll never understand it all
I took quite care to make sure you never saw my pitfalls
The veins in the eyes that fluorescently lit up
And the laugh that really was the sound of destruction
Pain
So dont tell me you need me to put less space
Between you and my ailing hidden brain
Because you dont want to see the truth im trying to erase