I only ever make things worse.
"Who do you know who owns a hearse?"
I once rode to Denny's next to a coffin;
it was empty.

There's this guy at work
who worked at a funeral home before.
He went through a fast food drive-thru with a dead guy in the back.
He'd died from obesity.

I don't know what's worse:
Tragedy or comedies.
I'm always tearing up at the happy scenes,
and laughing inappropriately.
******* ******* irony -
gets me every time.

For everyone who's ever lost the all important parts of themselves,
only to find it decades later on some long forgotten shelf collecting dust.

The thing is, it was the best pasta salad I've ever made.

I can't remember a single thing that I said, except for the really generic stuff like: "I'm going to go find Emily,"
And whatever else I may have said in order to break the silence.

I wish I could remember it though.

You were in my dream last night, which I also can't remember.

Much like the In-Real-Life scab on my arm.

But I can recall throwing up in your front lawn. And wanting to leave immediately after, but not going.

Resting my head against yours on some miraculous bench. Trying to shut myself up and just enjoy the shared silence.

I've been thinking:
Maybe I should get clean
and do things that I've been meaning to do for ages.
Face this wasted use of
faithless self-abuse and try something new
more in tune with truth.
Get fit and quit these substances.
Toss off these over-abundances.
Catch some calm and put a halt to this being wild.
Stop forcing laughs and faking smiles.
Make a path to find some inner-peace.
Get some rest and set this mind at ease.

In a moment like this, do you know what I wish?
For you to still be here
Telling me to get over it

In times so dark, do you know what I want?
Your voice telling me
That I can get back up

In the parallel universe
Where you're still alive
Everything's perfect
And everything's fine
We still hang out and stay up all night
And we never argue
And never fight

But I'm stuck in this one
And in this one, you're gone
And nothing is right
Everything's wrong
And *******, I miss you
You've been gone so long

If it runs in the blood then I feel bad for the one who gets bitten by the bug that's just had its fill of me.

If sadness is a drug then it does well to disguise itself as selfishness masquerading as sympathy.

Drinking brings out the sociopath.
Madness takes flight with an odd number of wings.

Tell me again.
I beg of you, please;
What do you feel when you think of me?

But what does that even mean?
Caught up in definitions
and playing with the meaning of things.
Life seems so real, in fact;
it's like a lucid dream.
The way we deal with that is at the core of all our being.

When two cents become worth more than a dime,
is it a crime to only shell out a nickel?
We're still making some kind of profit.

"My dear friend,
how have you been doing?"

Not so good man - think I'm losing it.
I'm goin' off the deep end.

Relax.
Take a deep breath.

((. . .))

"What are you doing this weekend?"

Your number is
the one most often deleted,
usually after some late night greeting.
Please don't reply.
I don't want this misery to keep on repeating.

It'd be easier if I never had to see you again.
I've never had so much trouble with keeping a friend.
When burning a bridge is no longer an option,
I tend to lose my ****.

You're so ******* lovely -
I can hardly deal with it.

If you're not the saint that I paint you out to be,
then do me the favor of not telling me.

You represent pristine purity.
Don't give me a reason to doubt.
When I looked into your eyes that evening,
I knew what you were about.

I dread the loss of your innocence,
but I know it's bound to be.
They say that if you love something completely then you should set it free.

But *******, I admit, you're the most lovely thing I've ever seen.
I'll always resent the fact that I wasn't the one to give you wings.

You can't rebuild schemas without breaking them first.

Sluiced in the veins through a pinprick,
thick blood spills back with the remnants of disastrous destiny.
Telekinetics pour out through gaps in the brain with a voice that booms,
"You'll never get away from this."

But here's the part where it slips into the space where no one can contain this wholesome emptiness.
Here as one and all together in the void where we'll swim forever.

Splashed at the flesh with a wrath that can't be contained.
Wholesome emptiness sluiced in the veins.
A ripped up fate whose tattered remains blow in the wind
in a secret coded pattern that can't be interpreted without telekinesis.

But here's the part where it's all torn apart,
in irregular rhythms like the beating of your heart that stops and starts,
and starts, and stops, and stops, and stops.

Here as none and all of no one,
a thick void to drown in forever.
A voice that screams in scattered patterns:
"You'll never get away from this."

My brain is awash in budding friendships and cephalopods.

I think at this point it's safe to assume that all of my favorite ones are those who develope intelligence on their own, spineless or not.
Less of a social impetus than one of sheer simple survival.
An adaptation to life-threatening and serious impacts.

And the awkwardness invariably involved tends to tickle me various colors.
And the people who judge might as well be a den full of sharks, bodies going taught at the sense of fresh blood.

They can all **** right off.

I'm not the one to see how you'd warn them off. I'm more interested in seeing how you'd react to fun.

What would happen if one of your many limbs reached out towards one of mine?

Would our color-changes clash,
or would they match?
Would we play off each other until a new spawn was hatched?

It took millions of years for us to find the courage to leave our shells.
Now we're out here constantly shifting/adjusting/conforming by ourselves.

Would it really be so crazy for us to occasionally help each other out?

How could I have thought that there was anything to gain from you?
All you've ever done is remind me of the things I lost.

I'm not saying that I'm not capable of it.
I'm just saying;
I'm not meant for it.

If your face were on the moon,
then the world would be nocturnal,
because you're gorgeous
of the drop-dead variety.

If heaven exists, then it's within seven feet of wherever you are.

You're what people wish for when they see a shooting star.

I want to breathe smoke
I want to dance in the rain
I want to redefine what it means to be insane

I want to tear down the walls
I want to flip the script
I want to rewrite the laws in a way I see fit

I want you to love me
I want not to care
I want to sell you your madness
At a price that's unfair

I want to cure all that's ugly
And purify the soul
I want to build you a maze
Then tell you which way to go

I want to stay young
I want to grow old
I want to disprove all of the lies you've been told

I want to be brilliant
While still being bland
I want to make love to you
I wanna hold your hand
I want to decipher all of the things that you don't understand
I want to reveal to you God's "Grand Master Plan"

I want to say all the right things
I want to control what I think
I want to find your battleship
And make that mother sink

I want another cigarette
I need another drink
I'm having such a hard time
Just trying to fall asleep

I want to inspire
I want to get inside your head
If I'm so tired
Why can't I just go to bed

I don't want to retire
I don't want it to end
I'll keep stoking this fire
I'll sleep when I'm dead

Focus.
Take a step back to take it all in.
Know where you stand
before you begin.

Take a deep breath and realize
we've only got so much time before we die.
Follow your passions and materialize all those dreams floating in your head.
Latch on to one of them,
and see it through until the end.

Sacrifice everything to make it happen.
Even if no one appreciates it,
even if everyone comes to hate it.
There's nothing more admirable
than taking something from your head
and creating it into some sort of event.

Challenge what they've come to know.
Sow your plants in gardens where they're not meant to grow.

Someone, somewhere, will see what it's worth,
to give that meaning to their life that they've been searching for since birth.

They'll take that idea,
and turn it into
a recipe that defines the new flavor of truth.

Progress is a constant contest with traditional norms.
Let's bury that decrepit body and leave it to the worms.
Learn, process, then send it back out.
Erase all doubt.
Let's go and change the world.

To climb is to fall.
In time, the ladder bends.
The hand reaches too far and grabs
a fistful of nothing.

Ever-conscious of the cage,
We take comfort in our cells.
Dreaming of escape,
But making no attempt to free ourselves.

This one's called "Running Under Streetlights on a Treadmill Made of Gravel"
Don't you ever wonder where you'd be without love?
There is no distance I wouldn't travel
to be under the arms of this oak.

This one is called "I Ain't Got All Night to Plot with the Moon,"
and this one's called "I'm Losing my Mind in the Middle of June,"
so give me a light, because this dark's ending soon.

I am a scarecrow lost in a tornado
(this one is called "You Can't Keep All of Your Straw.")
I am a glass figure in the midst of a hail storm.
This one is called "Where's my Umbrella?"

And I've found an answer,
so ask me the question.
This one is called "The Supreme and Holy Power of Suggestion"

Some nights are never ending.
This one's called "That Fruit Ain't Worth Eating if the Garden's Not Worth Tending"

So don't you judge me.
My antennae may be broken,
but my signal still sends,
and my mind is wide open.

I threw an intervention for my self,
and all my friends were there.
We got loaded on alcohol,
then drank a ton of beer.
When the last one was on his way out,
he hugged me at the door.
Lots of people say they care,
but these ones -
they care more.

How'd you get so dark, kid?
Where did that **** start, kid?
What's it like to walk that twisted line between hero and villain?
How'd you come to be so haunted?

Where is this seemingly bottomless well that you draw strength from?
Has it always been there?
How did you find it?

He doesn't feel real.
He doesn't think that the things in his life that are real should be that way.
He wastes his time away wondering about ambiguous things;
a different way of living life that could,
in theory,
lead to happiness.

A pale shadow glows with a light from my mind.
I've seen it every morning since the day I lost mine.
It begs me to stay in this twisted Limbo.
I squirm and shake and fall out of bed.

Plagued by manifestations of the once unknown.
I've bruises on my head.
I wish they would leave me alone.

A spiraling spider descends from the ceiling.
The popcorn texture alludes to my state.
I squirm and shake and fall out of bed.
How many times have I told you to go away?

My skin crawls with phantasms of skittering speed.
I am but a tube sock of molding jelly.
I squirm and shake and fall out of bed.
I try to convince them that I'm still alive.

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I don't want to write tonight.
I'd much rather, like,
read Dostoevksy,
photograph lightning,
and drink a beer -
all at the same time.

Why is it always everything all at once?
I've rejected the world I had, and I've been rejected by the world I want
Nobody seems to like me much lately
I've embraced this "I feel things more deeply than you, and you don't understand" mentality
And yet I'm the one going around calling everyone else pretentious
That too, I noticed I've been saying "I" and "me" a lot more than I ought to
At least a dozen times by this sentence.
The irony always kills me in the end
8,
no wait
9
12
10

Tonight I'm on that metal horse.
Meta-force.
Went to the bar and met some ******.
**** was talked and shots were poured.
Drank 'em up then got real bored.
Lectured til I heard some snores.
Went back to the bar and got some more.

Diseased without a hope of cure.
Your face is like an emery board,
and your hair is like a handful of snakes curling round a Sycamore.

Throw it up! Down on the floor!
Two more steps and I'm out the door.
Don't compare me to your paramour.
I don't want to know the score.

Baited hook, shiny lure.
Fighting thoughts that can't be ignored,
but I'm not sure what I'm fishing for;

All you'll get are metaphors.

I think you might have serious psychological issues.
A combination of PTSD and BDD,
resulting in an extreme form of misandry,
which you compensate for by completely disrespecting your own body.
With masochism as a defense mechanism,
and danger as stress relief;
your personal well-being is so far down on your list that it turns my stomach just thinking about it.
You're some kind of crazy and it makes me feel kind of sick.
How's that for a diagnosis?

She was crying when I got there,
and throwing up when I left.
I hate seeing her like that.
She's always been the strong one.
Well, the second strongest,
anyway.

I practiced guitar and played my keyboard,
and played burn ball with my brother and his (sort of) son,
but I still feel like I did nothing productive today.

My friends were drinking and I brought a bottle.
Beer wasn't going to cut it-
just sayin'
Gave a ride home to the kid who drove me to Tim's.
I didn't bring up the irony of the situation.
Brought Wayne home soon after.
If M.A.D.D. ever got word of me,
I swear, it'd be a disaster.

I killed a turtle yesterday,
on the way home from the hospital.
I didn't mean to.
Thought it was a piece of trash.
Placed it between my two front wheels.
Too tall for his own good.
When it hit, I swear,
I almost had a heart attack.
Went back to see if he'd survived.
An upside-down and ****** broken shell was all I found.
I'm a horrible person.
I swear, the worst.
Kicked him off the road so he wouldn't get run over anymore.
But I'm pretty sure he was already dead.
He was dead, for sure.
**** everything;
I don't care anymore.

So much for breakfast.
Tim locked us out.
I'm half-shocked that I didn't get violent.
I thought that I might get violent.

I love my friends.
I love my sister.
I love that turtle too,
even though I killed it.

I cried inside my car today.
I cried while I thought of the things I would say when the one that I love questions me about the one I made love to.
(I didn't want to do it. I'm crazy about you.)
"You make me feel like a little kid again."
"You make me feel like magic is real."
"It kills me that you have a boyfriend."
It kills me that this isn't real.
None of this is going to happen.
I cried inside my car today.

Aw ****,
I'm gonna get fired for being drunk.

"I can't say," he said.
His whole body shaking.
"I can't. I uh. Oh, ****. Ah,"
while his teeth pulled out of their sockets.
His whole frame dissolving to pieces.
Eyes popping like squeezed grapes.

"Time," said some giant with his hand full of dust,
"is just slipping away," said his echo, as he clutched at what was lost.

"I'm sick of clichés," she said, after reading what he'd written.
"'I'm sorry,' he said, said he, before curling into a ball and weeping,"
which were the last words he ever said to her,
while hers to him were:
"I'm leaving."

Hello house.
Hello TV.
Hello couch, (you lazy ***, I bet you haven't moved an inch since I've been gone.)
Hello dishes. I suppose you're dry by now. Let's get you back to where you belong.

Well hey there toaster. It's about time we cleaned out those crumbs.
(I never thought I'd think this, but even doing menial chores right now is kinda fun.)
Whoa there fridge, what'd you say we take a trip and fill you back up?

Oh bed, how I've missed you so.

It feels good to be back home.

Everything's alright.
I mean, I still act like a **** sometimes
and wake up screaming in the middle of the night,
but that's just a part of life.
Am I right?

Even if I'm wrong.
Even if I act out and commit crimes
just to feel a rush.
We dream of what we might be and do what we must.
I'm just saying,
you've got nothing to do with it.
I've got defense mechanisms to deal with my defense mechanisms.
It's just a part of life.
Am I right?

I'll go to great lengths to avoid a fight.
It's hardly ever worth it.
Justified or not,
punches make for a rough night.
Nothing but bruises to show for it.
Just another part of life.
Kind of silly,
am I right?

Let's forgo the *******.
Been there and done that.
We've both got nothing to show for it,
but regrets and things we wish we could take back.
Just another part of life.
Am I right?
You don't have to agree,
just believe that everything will be alright.

I have no friends,
and all of the ones that I do have
don't like me very much.
Maybe it's because I go around telling all of my friends that I have no friends,
which is probably a **** move.

“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Apparently, you can't put links into poems that you post on HP. I wish I'd known that before I wrote a poem that is almost entirely made up of links. If you're interested in reading it, send me a private message. I'm pretty sure you can still put links into ***.

And I'm going to say it -
real soon.
Just give me a moment.
Give me a momentary stretch of time to collect myself.
You know,
to clear my mind,
so that I may let this thing that I want to say come to the surface;
unobstructed. Without any need for fancy presentation or forced rhyme.
Just give me a second. Okay, I think I'm ready.
Here goes nothing:

*Something.

To think about the same things in a different way.
(To think is to play with meaning.)
And to be struck with a heaviness that makes me sink through the ground,
only to find that there's nothing but air underneath.
Gaps between layers of earth.
I can dig down to another one.
I can run on the surface of one ad infinitum.
Or I could float.
I can fly between two then push off with both legs from the bottom of one to burst through the top of another.
I can clench both fists full of dirt along the way to spread them spinning around me in the empty gap above.
I can watch it all bloom,
surrounded by beauty,
and feel filled up with love.

Time has become much more important
All the numbers now have purpose
And whole fractions are devoted
To a task I have to do, that must be done.

Time has become much more important
Time is such a joke
All the numbers now have purpose
As if some random numbers can determine
With whole sections allocated
What I should be doing, how I'm living
To a task I have to do,
I'd rather cling to every moment, wring each one out for all its got.

Time has become much more important
Time is all but worthless
They say life is short
All the numbers now have purpose
As if some random configuration of hands on a clock
But when it comes down to time consumption
And whole segments are converted
Has anything to do with what I'm feeling
There isn't anything else that even comes close to it,
Into activities that must be done
During any given moment
Life is the longest thing anyone will ever do. . .

Inadvertently avoided through mental thought processes
Subverted into
New shoes in an off white tint
And a new addition to my collection of lint
I'm sick of window tint so dark you can't see inside
I try my best to catch a glimpse of another person's mind
Striving so hard to manifest itself through the body it's been placed in
I step on the gas and pass their *** just so I can think to myself:
I Win.

My friends don't seem to like me much;
at least, not as much as they once did,
so I've been ordering things online, you see;
sending myself these little gifts.
I try to buy them quickly,
and mostly on a whim.
That way, when they get to me,
I'm half-surprised by what's within.
I guess you could say I'm lonely,
or call it some sort of selfishness,
but I'd send gifts to my friends if only
I could remember any of their addresses.

Take me away,
words.
Show me a place where people are more than just what other people have heard.
Where the sound of their souls echo off the ideas that make up their essence;
"Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments,
flabbergasted to be in each other's presence."*

Make me believe it,
but do it quickly,
because if I hear this flawed character's views on what's Wrong and Right one more time,
I think I might lose it.

Blow my mind,
words.
Cure this disease that's become a curse.
Reveal my muse once again in all her awe-inspiring glory.
Tell me a tale.
Share your story.

An idealized version of The Best and The Worst.
Truth may be stranger than fiction,
but real life is starting to feel rehearsed.

Let me get lost between your words,
so that I may believe in the depths of my dreams;
They've such absurd dynamics,
with hints of sibylline profundities.

Take me away again,
words,
but please do it quickly.
My faith is starting to wane,
and I've got work in the morning.