Hello, doctor,
could you take
a
look
inside my mind, please?
I think
there's
something
incorrect,
something
that
does
not belong?
I just can't seem to think
quite
right
anymore.
I cannot
control
my
thoughts
anymore
and my mind
controls
me
more
than it should.
Doctor, please
help me find
the infection
that I
m sure is lodged
somewhere in my head.

Did you see the dolphin with hands?
They grew from fins
and now he flips cakes,
serving them up for dozens of fans.

Did you see the dolphin with hands?
His keepers were shocked
when they saw the fingers,
long and gray with nails on the ends.

Did you see the dolphin with hands?
He can juggle, he can fight,
there is no one that he can’t smite.
Oh, and he makes houses out of sand.

Did you see the dolphin with hands?
Scientists are baffled,
doctors confused, because dolphins
shouldn’t be able to play in hair metal bands.

Did you see the dolphin with hands?
His name is Finn, despite the lack of them,
and he is a mutant fish
who can flip pans.

You force us to step backwards,
degrading who we are meant to be as
humans.

We should be charging forward,
learning,
growing,
and changing
for the better.

Instead,
you seem to wish us to be
nothing more than simple
monkeys,
gobbling the foul feces
that is flung our way.

Don't be sorry for me
when my biggest problem
is anxiety
and a mother
who doesn't want to listen.
Be sorry for the other girls my age
who have to live on the streets
with barely a meal a day
and give up their bodies to survive.

If someone closes a door on you,
do not idle in front of the door
and weep.
Instead, turn around
and find a new door.

I've been fine,
cheerful,
for the past few days,

but now the sickness creeps back in,
my heart grows heavy,
my veins fill with sludge.

My eyes are constantly brimming with tears,
and no one is here
with a shoulder to catch them.

This isn’t where I wanted to be,
hiding in the other room
on New Year’s.

Hunger and exhaustion
struck war with
defeat and depression
over a bowl of noodles.

And suddenly
it’s the
dragon in the room,
breathing down our backs
and burning us deep.

I wanted to be sinking into
warmth and love,
feeling hope and joy.


Here I sit in cold white light
hearing his voice

how sad it is


I hate that sadness.
I hate when he sounds like
the whole universe is crushing him
in an Iron Maiden of molten metal.

I wish
he would just
take the time
to listen.

New year.

Gentle melancholy blankets my heart,
sharing a space with the swell of love -
somehow, they mingle well,
like yin and yang.

Alice, Alice,
little yellow-haired Alice.
falling through the rabbit hole,
drowning in your tears;
take a sip from the golden bottle,
it’ll help you escape your fears.

She is like duct tape -
once she sticks, she stays,
no matter how rough the weather;

and she is so painful to remove

I am the sun,
and you are the shadow.
You could eclipse me,
but I am not afraid.

A trail of shivering sparks is left on my skin.

When the emotional heart is ailing,
or perhaps the mind,
A better cure I cannot find
than music.

The dips and the dives of notes,
sweet and sour, high and low,
The ups and downs of life perfectly shown
Sky to earth, earth to sky.

The beats of the drums and the pounding bass,
thumping their way through the room
Providing more feeling with every boom
Vibrating through the heart and soul.

The voices, the voices, and the words they share,
telling their stories for the world to hear,
Give something to relate, and draw a tear
Or make feet dance and toss away their cares.

The sounds overall, the perfect mix,
combining everything to let us know
That music can make our feelings show
Emotion is the key to music

and music is the key to emotion.

So tell me
Why is the sun falling?
Why has the moon lost its glow?
Why are the stars all fading?
Why has the Earth ceased to turn?
What is the reason
That we've come to see world's end?
What have we done to deserve this
Apocalypse
There is no attack of the undead souls
There is no rampant disease
There is the sky,
It is melting
Coating us in shards in light
And scraps of dreams.
So tell me why
I cannot cry
When I see this, our fate,
so rapidly approaching.

Well, surely by now I’ve run out of words for you?
But a writer never runs out of words,
especially when expressing her love.
She can write a million poems
about your eyes, using the imagery of “melted chocolate” and “mahogany wood”.
She could build a paragraph
about your lips, picking out just the right verbs and adjectives to describe your kiss.
She is able to create an invisible image of you,
she can use words like “swell” and “heart” to describe how she feels when she sees you.
A writer can never run out of words, certainly not when
she is expressing her love.
And even if she has to repeat a phrase,
if she has to reuse an adjective,
she will never stop painting her love on the paper,
never stop shaping a heart out of words.

Can I write?
How can I write
When I feel so empty?
When I feel so empty,
how do I live?
How do I live,
with a brain malfunction?
With a brain malfunction,
can anything really fix me?
Can anything really fix me
if even in love I'm still broken?
If even in love I'm still broken,
how is it working?
How is it working
if I live an unstable life?

*Hope.

I should delete the poems
I wrote for you -
But they’re too beautiful,
too painfully true.

Can I tell you this again,
how much I love you?
It is infinite,
which is why I keep saying it.

You are the sun and the moon,
you are
every breath I take,
every heartbeat that reverberates in my chest

You are my present and my future,
I just wish you could've been in my past, too
But those times are wisps of gray
clinging to the multicolored fabric of my sanity
I don't want that fogging up my brain
I want you illuminating my head

*You are everything.

Silver slices in the sky
Boy, I'd love a moon pie
Silver slices in the sky
Cut off my head and make it fly
Twist my bones into a braid
There's a knight who needs my aid
Twist my bones into a braid
(I hope he doesn't just want to get laid)
Carve your name into my skin
I've always wondered why my heart is so thin
Carve your name into my skin
Maybe you can make me full again
Pump my heart full of fire
I've never been dancing with my sire
Pump my heart up full of fire
Ah, this is a fate most dire
Tear my brain right out of my head
I am crazy, I should be dead
Tear my brain right out of my head
Send me to sleep in a hellfire bed.

I am not one to write
words of love, but
Surely I must make an exception
for you

You pulled me up from the bottom
of the darkest sea
And into my hand you placed
a little candle to help me see

The other hand you took in yours,
Giving it new warmth
A heat that spread through my veins
and sent the fear away

We walked upon the diamond sand
and gazed up at the stars
Whispered secrets, shared stories,
found that we share pain

Now. hold me close
and don't let go
You keep me from falling down
Keep my hand warm inside yours

It's cliche to say that you
brought sunshine back to me
Even when no one else
seemed to truly see

I was lost, and I was alone
but you found me
I hear your voice, I take your hand
and now I am complete

I am not one to write
words of love, but
Now I have made an exception
for you

For you have surely earned these words,
scratched down in pale morning light
You treat my heart so carefully,
you're sure to do what's right

So let me keep
my hand in yours
As we walk
through the night

I would bottle
a little bit of your voice
to hear whenever I wish

To hear I was always
in your eyes, always
visible when I felt unseen.

This warmth
is so safe, and I
never want to leave this space

Where we exist, together,
understanding
and feeling our thoughts.

STOP* STOP *STOP
Get out of me, demon
I don't want you controlling my limbs.

I just don’t want to participate today,
I’d rather disappear
So pull me into a storybook
With sad and worn lyrics soothing my lonely ears.
I am numb,
And that’s okay.

*This girl lies under sky-blue covers,
Eyes closed, ears full of her favorite song
Her face is scarred, but not on the skin

For just a moment, dreaming of her love,
Peace touches her lips

But even then, she is still numb,
No longer participating;
She would rather disappear.

We all hate life so much,
but we're too scared to die
So we turn ourselves into ghosts instead.

Fall from the highest clouds
Back into the chill of reality
Land flat on your back, break your spine
Receive the shock of your life
Wish you didn't have to feel the pain
But know you must accept it when it comes
Bear the burden of life carefully
You must never let it fall
To let it fall would be to let darkness consume you
Pull you into forever sleep
Never let you wake
And if you somehow do wake
You won't be warm ever again
Your heart will be frozen
Skin cold to touch
You will have no thoughts of light
So don't let the weight of life fall
You are not the only one in pain
Seek the sun, but do not fall
Unless you can be sure that you will not fall.

foolishly drawn
into the same trap

it's so easy
to be excited

but suddenly
sink into the cold again

and fall back
on old habits

the silver bite
is too familiar.

I feel it coming back again
That little yearning to draw blood again
Shred my skin,
Tear it off
Let me bleed and feel this pain
Tears are rolling down my cheeks
As I try not to scream
My father sits in the next room,
Blissfully unaware
This is one thing I will not share
This is the moment when I just
Want to tear myself to shreds
Just for the pain, sweet pain
I hate feeling numb
Cold
Empty
Give me real pain
Give me warm blood
Give me something to count on
Why is this suddenly coming back?
Oh, all the terror is coming back
Don’t scream, don’t cry
You don’t want to explain to daddy why
And, a mile away, my soul mate lies
Alseep, and dancing with a nightmare
Or awake, lost in the fiction of a video game
Either way he does not know
That I am suffering
But that’s okay,
I’ll keep it that way
For now,
Just let me suffer in silence, alone
That’s the way it always goes
That is how it will always go
Alone, I cry
Alone, I convince myself not to die
Don’t bleed, don’t cry
Don’t scream, and don’t cry
There will only be more pain
If you let yourself fall back
Can I do this? Can I prevent bloodshed,
Fresh scars on my skin?
I don’t trust myself, I don’t know
I don’t know
**** it all, I just don’t know.

And so we watch everything fall
Explode around us in the air
Bone splinters and shards of glass
The remains of what never truly was

And so we learn to lose it all
The fire glinting off your hair
The spirits watching as we pass
Yearning for the life within us

And so we wish we could stand tall
Seek freedom from the darkest lair
And slay any who dare trespass
To survive we do what we must

And so we watch everything fall
Explode into our hearts and steal our air
Bone white and blood streaks and shards of glass
The remains of what everything was

Sky is crumbling
Falling to the Earth
But it seems that Earth is crumbling, too
The Atmosphere has nowhere to land
And so she falls forever
With Earth still beneath her
Always a short distance away

Hush, my love,
Please don’t cry;
I’m just as scared as you are
To say goodbye.

Dear Chester,
This letter, even though you will never see it, is a thank you letter.
When I saw the news today of your death, my world turned upside down. I was shaking, crying, barely able to breathe. I was so shocked to see your name in a headline alongside the words “Dead” and “Suicide”. I didn’t believe I for a while, because I’d also seen the article about your death being a hoax, but then I saw Mike’s tweet, and the news stories on NY Times and Washington Post, and I realized - it was true. My greatest inspiration was gone.
I can’t really pinpoint when you became such an inspiration to me. I started listening to Linkin Park when I was in seventh or eighth grade, after my mom put the Twilight soundtrack on my iPod shuffle and I heard Leave Out All the Rest. LOATR soon became my favorite song, and it still is six years later. I started listening to LP religiously after Living Things came out. I fell in love with the raw emotions of Meteora, and the clean energy of Living Things; the eager buzz of Hybrid Theory and the simple but true sound of Minutes to Midnight. A Thousand Suns completely blew my mind.
As I started to learn more about the band, I also learned more about you. I found out that you had a rough life growing up, struggling with ****** abuse as a kid, and drugs and alcohol as a teen and young adult. Depression tormented you your whole life. But you drew strength from those experiences, and became this amazing badass with a big heart who would do anything for his friends and family. You didn’t stop shows because of a broken arm, or cancel tours because a spider bit you in the ***, and even when you did have to end a tour because of a broken leg, you came right back as soon as you were able to give us the show we’d been waiting for.
You never failed to show your love for your fans, your family, or your fellow band members and musicians, and we all noticed and loved that.
I admired your dedication to the people around you, and how tough you always were, and how you stayed so strong and kept such a big smile on your face. Your amazing singing voice kept me going through the standard teenage angst phase that is high school.

For a long time, a huge dream of mine has been to see Linkin Park live, to see you and Mike and Brad and Phoenix and Rob and Joe on stage, playing all of my favorite songs. An even bigger but less likely dream was to actually meet you, hug you, and say, “Thank you.”
It breaks my heart to realize that now, that will never happen. You’re gone. Your beautiful voice can now only be heard in recordings, your grin now only seen in videos and photographs.
I still can’t fully believe that you’re gone.
And even though your death was one that seems to leave no hope, you still are and always will be an inspiration to me.

Thank you, Chester.
I know that you will never see this, but thank you.

Rock on forever,
  Sky

The night drags itself across the sky,
weary and slow;
Below, I lie awake, cursed with starlight.

F
E
A
R
is its own phobia.
I am afraid of
F
E
A
R
because it makes my heart
feel like it will explode.
It sends tremors through my body
that seem horrifically devastating.
The aftershock
is much worse.
I vibrate
I want to
Cry
Scream
Curl up
into a ball
Just disappear
Be no more
F
E
A
R
is my enemy.
I must defeat it
or die trying

It consumes you, devours you,
Makes you wonder if you’ll die
But when you are feeling it, oh,
You are never more alive.

There’s a warmth in my heart again,
A hole I hope can be filled -
Will he disappear like everyone else?
Or, this time, is it real?

You think I don't see you avoiding me;
You're pushing me away
You think I don't worry about you
more every single day
Something's wrong with you,
Something is hurting you
I wish I knew,
I wish I knew...

Hey, little star,
you know who you are,
that beacon in the sky that shone for me...
You shot away
Into outer space
You said that you wanted to be free!
So I've let you go,
but I hope you know
I'll never forget the truth that lies
inside my heart, in the warmest part:
You're the most beautiful thing ever seen by these eyes.

Does she make you smile?
Yes, good!
Does she make you laugh?
Yes, well, good!
Does she fill the empty space that you dug into your soul?
I hope it's not so...
I hope it's not so!
Because I know!
I know that you know:
It can't be denied that you're for me...
And that little hole,
that hole in your soul:
That is a spot reserved for me!

I'm sure you're happy
now that you're free,
but I don't think she knows the cure...
There's a sickness inside you,
a darkness that I've seen;
Does she really know you?
Can she really help you,
or is she suppressing a scream?

Don't scare her away,
I know she's trying hard
to keep your demons at bay
How well does she do?
Can she win those battles like I do?
You see, I don't really think
That she knows what she's doing
Yes, she's sick, too,
But not the same as you,
And how can you cure each other
If you don't even know what's wrong?

Maybe I'm calling you a freak,
maybe saying that you're insane
But frankly, I just wish that you
were still all mine...
I know how to cure you,
And I will always adore you
No matter the monster that hides inside.

If she's brave enough to fight your demons,
then keep her, by all means, keep her!
But if there's fear in her eyes,
If she's hiding just behind,
You might want to reconsider who you choose.
The truth, my love, is that she's not quite filling shoes.

The nice thing about being free
is that I can give other hearts
a chance.
Maybe this one will stay.

I'm just so
tired
I want to fall asleep
and wake up with him holding me tightly
Keeping me warm

I'm just so
sad
I want to cry
then look up and close my eyes as
He wipes my tears away

I'm just so lost
I wish he would come
and find me.

it’s baffling,
the way the poetry forms.
one day, there are no words
and you’re left in silence.
the next day, you’re exploding;
firewords streak the sky and stain the clouds with ink

it’s intriguing,
the infinite possibilities of a poem

    d  the words up, then b
   l                                                r
  i                                              e
u                                                  a
b                                                        k   them down

spin the letters
         r    r
     o           o
u     and       u
   n             n
        d    d

it’s magical
how a few simple lines can be made into a work of art
it just depends
on the how the w o r d s
are   a
        r
                   r
     a
               n
          g
   e
                      d.

ah, poetry is its own magic.

Burst of light
A shred of a dream
A dazzling display
Something to captivate me
Make me forget
That the world is cold
That the sky is melting
And the stars have all grown old.
Make my heart explode into
A fireworks burst of color
Innumerable shards of  exquisite things
Impossibilities.

I wanna feel the flames
Feel the fire in my face
I wanna scream so the world can see
that I’m ready to break free and breathe
Let me take back my power
Let me walk across the flames
Test my heart and test my soul
to cleanse me of my regrets
I can see the future
See it dark and clean
I can see what we can be
I can see us all being free
We live in a world of imprisonment
Live in a world that is far from clean
We’ve blinded ourselves to the true meaning
Of living as a human being

Stoke the fires
Build the flames
We will make sure you remember our names
‘Cause I know I’m not the only one who’s tired
Of playing all these stupid games
I know I’m not the only one who’s sick
Of seeing so much pain for no gain
Our scream rise above the flames
Rise into the star-studded sky
To be heard for worlds around
We’re not backing down,
we’re not silent.

Memories flicker in my mind,
fireflies always escaping my grasp.

I try to catch them,
keep them in a jar,

But they escape,
leaving me lost and alone.

She’s drowning.
She won’t believe you,
So don’t bother telling her;
She ‘s drowning
Sinking into the dark water
The cold slowly steals
The warmth of her soul
The darkness slowly devours
Pieces of her heart
Don’t tell her,
Because she won’t believe you
when you tell her that’s she’s drowning
She’ll just keep sinking down
Until she hits the bottom
And gives in.

Rosebud in my chest
It’s been closed for so long
There were times when
I felt like it would open
But it hid from the light
and curled its petals a little closer together.
But this rosebud is open now,
It’s blooming in brilliant shades
Passion-red and love-flushed pink,
hints of purple from inpired inks
An exquisite bloom that continues to grow
with every fresh kiss,
with every new poem
Ah, I’m blooming, blossoming bright and strong
The sun can finally warm my petals
after hidng in cold shadow for so long.

I need to stop
digging up love
And let it grow instead

Flutter
butterfly, flying so far
wings glinting in the sunlight
oh, your wings, they shine so bright
they flutter, flutter, flutter
then suddenly stop
because my heart has stopped
because your kiss, your kiss
oh, the shock of your kiss
stop my heart, start it up again
i can’t breathe because you’ve stolen my breath
kiss me again, leave sparks on my lips
a fire, growing to consume us both
souls forever entwined.

Fly away into
Luminous silver moonbeams
Under the crystal-studded sky
Teardrops drift by my head, I breathe and
Take it all in
Ephemeral, I fly away
Reminiscing under silver moonbeams

Your fingertips
Trailing butterflies along my neck;
Their wings flutter, bright,
Blinding me as I breathe you in.