It controls her
She can't stop it
It's a constant battle
She can't drop it

It has become a habit
She can't quit
It's taking over her body
Bit by bit

The scars fade
But the memories don't
She wants them to leave
But they refuse.. They won't

It's an on going battle.
It's a fight she never wins
It's a constant struggle
It's a war that never ends

It's her sweet escape
It gets her lost in her own place
She gets to control the pain
As her adrenaline starts to race

She grabs it off the dresser
As a tear falls from her cheek
She presses even harder
Reminding herself not to shriek

No one understands
No one ever will
This habit now controls her
As the world around her stands still

But now the room is spinning
Her head is getting light
She falls back in her bed
Refusing to put up a fight

She takes one last breath as she turns out the lights
Then she closes her eyes as she calls it a night

Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t just been the backseat of your car,
Intoxicated. My first drunk hook up. My first. Period.
I picture myself being champagne on Valentine’s Day.
I picture myself being you, nervous in the car, holding Starbucks
because you know I love coffee. Sometimes, I picture myself as her,
calling you a stalker and ignoring your calls,
but then I see myself. I call you beautiful,
turn you into poetry, laugh at your bad jokes,
I see myself as I become your drunk Wednesday night
when you’re sad. I see myself as I say no,
I become a “this is not a good idea”
and you a “we’ll deal with the consequences in the morning.”
We laugh because this hurts too much.
You take her out for dinner and I burrow money
for Plan B because you forgot you don’t like condoms
and clearly have no idea how children are made.
I have already named him. He has your curls and
my anxiety. He is smart. Except, I never wanted kids and
you would be a great father. Instead, you tell her
the beach reminds you of her and I cry in a McDonald’s
bathroom with my friend as relief floods through me that
the test comes negative. I stop talking to you,
move forward, meet someone new and before long
see myself becoming you. Because isn’t that the cycle?
Bad men turn good women into bad women who turn
good men into bad men. I’ll set him free so he can hurt
someone like me, and I drink red wine as I read her
poems about him and me.

Sometimes, the words don’t come.

The consistent stream of consciousness, ceases.

I am left with nothing to say.

There is a beauty in the broken mind.

Like an abandoned building taken by nature.

It is not that my mind does not work.

It is that it works too fast,

And I am left behind,

Scrabbling in the dust,

Desperately seeking a connection,

In the discarded fragments of thought.

I am fighting a losing battle.

I fear the white flag will soon arise.

And signal the end.

There used to be a bottle on the wall.
It was very green.
I'm sure it was the loneliest green bottle
that I had ever seen
It used to sit on the wall
all day and all night
And every day, when I looked out of the window,
it was always in my line of sight
Then one day, a cat came along.
Something was going to happen; I could tell
The cat then accidentally nudged it
and off the wall, it fell
When it had fallen off the wall
it had dropped with a very loud sound.
There were all these little pieces of the green bottle
all over the ground
Then the cat yelped
and I knew it had gotten hurt
I could quite obviously see its paws were caked in
blood and dirt
The bottle wasn't harmful in the beginning
it did not look the slightest bit treacherous
but after a nudge in the wrong direction
it became very dangerous
Now I look back at you smiling
next to me on the big armchair
Your fingers running through your soft locks of hair.
You remind me a lot
of that green bottle.
In the beginning, you were harmless
you were all sorts of fun.
Now you hurt me.
Could you tell me why
as I don't quite know what I've done

I really dont know
How i feel at all, but i
Want to feel loved please.

The bane of my existence
As a HePo writer
Every time I go to read
I get this stupid blighter!

Don't know what is up
What is going wrong
I have a reading backlog
10,000 miles long!

I'm really beside myself!
This is the last straw!
I want to read your poetry
Not test Murphy's Law!

Just be patient please
I'm under the gun
A LOT of folks
are out there

*And I will read everyone!

Tonight
I will not be sleeping
till I write the words
that are keeping
me awake

Tonight
I’ll make the most
of a late night evening
and by the morning
waiting
for you to wake

Tonight
Who’d have thought
I’ll be weeping
while you’re dreaming
words too late

Tonight
while gone
I keep writing
alone and grieving
words I wish I wrote
and now reaping
your fate

the doctors dithered for days
whether to amputate the patient’s leg
it was a bone of contention