I create my own jealousy,
       and load my own gun,
I make my own bed,
       I never shoot
and
      I never sleep,
I’m a stagnancy
of
imperfections,

the cement is dry now,
I’m sorry,
but you can't leave

I still live with my parents
and at 2am I walk around
the house with ***
stained boxers and drink
caffeinated drinks,
when I drink, I drink,
when I run out of money
I drink my parents *****,
I smoke and my dad
******* hates it,
I can barely afford it,
I work 3 times a week if I’m lucky,
and buy clothes I dont need,
and food I shouldn’t eat,
I ***** about religion
on social networking
sites, and I dropped out
of going to university,
I want to be a writer,
I still live at home with
my parents,
are the two synonymous?
my sister is 17,
18 in December,
and she’s going to school
for the love of GOD
stick with it
dont be like your brother,
I know I have a kind heart
and cry when my tire eats roadkill
but compassion doesn’t pay the bills,
I can sit here and personify my life
as dragging a worn sock full of pebbles
down the street and giving a sock to myself
as a gift for someone who wanted pebbles

but I’m not,
factuality’s sanded down
into some form of actualities  
that resemble anthology,
I am by no means dumb,
my comprehensive abilities
are above average, I know I could
have gone through school
with ease, for christ’s sake
I was taking english literature,
I sure use a lot of religious expletives
for a sickened nihilist,
regardless of the fact,
my boxers are dry now.

i should really
quit smoking you,
i’m ignorant
no more,
ashtray’s
fill faster
than my lungs,
quietly whispering
tip toes provoke
the screams of
hardwood
every night
at around 1 o’clock,
making way
to attempt quiet
openings of
neglecting doors,
sitting amidst the
tranquility as
the ******
fissure eats
the dancing smoke
while she
paints abstracts
on teeth
tongue
lungs
heart
and the
cognitive inability
to separate
index from middle
comes not from
ignorance
but from how
she holds me
tighter than anyone,
touches my lips
more compliantly  
than any woman,
she will never leave me
even as i take her
top off and
share breaths,
her touch is
recognizable
most nocturnally,
i know the damage
she does to me
she’ll cut my life in half,
she’s the only thing
i will let in that will
**** me,
she moulds
leisure and pleasure
as if i wear them on
my back,
her body is
pale as my fingers
drip down
and feel
as i exhume
her insides
intertwining
with mine,
listening to your
cries as i inhale
provokes me to
do so more
and more
and more
until i leave you
for the night,

i should
indeed quit
smoking cigarettes
as well

Hurt people and feel bad about it
keep hurting people and keep
feeling bad about it,
get hurt and
don’t be resilient,
wallow

make beer your
only companion,
**** a lot,
play the piano
on your thighs
when you’re stressed,
tap your feet,
it’s going to sound terrible
and that’s okay,
you’ll get used to it,
tremors will send
pain to your veins
like broken tea bags

don’t sleep,
eat terribly,
put turkey on
bread and keep
the skin on,
have a beer with
every meal
have whiskey with
every meal,
it doesn’t matter

hurt and feel bad,
know you’ll keep hurting
and keep *******
keep drinking,
read your mistakes
bookmark them,
you’ll keep coming back,

smoke cigarettes and
don't cry,  
fear death only when
you're dead,
and have a thin wallet,
there’s no such thing
as a rich poet,
cause we’re all
broken in some way.

She's claims
she's homeless
and heartless
and lives
under a roof
and her chest
still sings

some of us
think differently

years of negativity
like seeing your
reflection on the other
side of the glass barrier,
I never looked both ways
when crossing the road
because of years
of being blind
to anything that
came close,
waking up
felt like finding
a new strand of
cancer somewhere
every day,
I heard nothing but
voices, I knew I
was hurting myself
but I never stopped to
look both ways,
I realized it wasn’t
just me that I was
impaling with sadness,
sometimes darkness
shines light on life
more than light itself
ever will,
at the bottom of
every bottle my heart
would sit and drown until
I ended up swallowing it
back into my chest,
slowly the whisky
is veering from
being stained red,
every mirror
reflects more than just
a face,
it shows a past
so dark the
background
is the focus,
instead of looking
at the rocks beneath
my feet crumbling
I’ve been taking steps back,
hands like blenders
left on too long
are reaching towards
pulling the plug,
looking both ways
has always been
a problem for me,
but I  finally
caught a glimpse
at what happens
to the left and realized
that change is right.

she told me to write about
the happiest I’ve ever felt;
the happiest moment in my entire life,
and there is never such a circumstance
in it’s singularity that can be defined,
but in a string of circumstances
a definite divinity can be seen
through the cracks;
sobriety, the comfort of sobriety
makes me feel not quite as content
as the comfort of intoxication,
but the fact I can find refuge
in both is enough to make me,
the way the legs of my bedside table
are cut uneven and the way it
dances when I write,
the knuckle of my *******
kissing a hot coffee cup
in weariness, it makes me,
clichés and the cologne of
grass after rain
petrichor and nasal stained
memories make me,
smokers coughs and phlegmy
clearings, mental crosswalks
with hands and I still walk
with my mouth,
that makes me,
the sky,
and the ground,
mailboxes with the flag down,
telephone poles with expired
promotion posters,
faux homelessness
in small towns,
leaves changing,
trees dying and
coming back to life,
how the wind feeds
conservation,
weeds growing in pavement,
dandelion stains on new jeans
or new jeans staining dandelions,
snowfall,
struggling to pick eggshells out of
yolk bowls,
*** and cigarettes and they dont
go well together
for me at least,
abandoned barns,
barns in use,
the sound of tires on
gravel driveways,
the strength
or lack there of
to smoke when I’m sick,
it makes me,
the look of others when
I allow my dog to kiss my mouth,
the top fret of a guitar,
it’s low and reminds me of
a child’s cough,
wearing my fathers
stained white tee’s
under 80 dollar plaid sweaters,
it makes me happy,
all of this and more make me happy,
but I still can’t touch mirrors
and listen to the way I breathe before bed,
and thats why I sleep with a fan on.

I listened as a mouse struggled
to escape a half empty frozen coffee cup,
it took a while for me to understand
where the rustling was coming from,
I stared down the open lid
and saw glossy eyes
squinting up as me, as if I was the sun,
and my first instinct was to bring him outside,
I poured him on the frozen ground
and noticed as his legs were chilled, dead.
I placed him back in the cup,
put the lid on,
and breathed into the lid
giving him all the warmth
I could give,
his chest moving like
metronome trying to break
though his skin,
I could hear the ticking of his
heartbeat like a broken clock,
there was no chance,
his eyes opened and
stayed shut longer,
his legs stayed dead,
so I put the coffee cup
on the frozen grass,
closed my eyes
and stomped
like it was a cockroach,
I sparked a cigarette.

I told her she reminds me
of a bird chirping at 1am
and she never asked why,
strange yet beautiful,
inconsistant and seldom,
appreciative upon scarcity,
a hedonist of silence
has never found serenity
in the blurred lines of infinity,
but the confidence of
clamour will fade
with every night a chirp
goes unheard,
the consistency
of inconstancy is the hand
that feeds and the
bite that bleeds.              MJB

the past isn’t something
to forget about,
she has blonde hair
she complains about it,
always putting it up or down,
she’s indecisive ,
her ex called her
things were
going great,
bringing up the past
like it was yesterday
or a month ago,
they kept to each other
but the tension screamed
and snapped progression,
we weren’t an accident
and this relationship flipped
faster than the gravel gave out
last October,
things moved fast
like last October,
we laid in inhaling
bedsheets,
I never realized
how much perfume
she put on until she left
me and the duvet finally
exhaled,
every time we ******
seemed like
we’ve been doing
it for much longer,
comfortability came with
the amount of time
the cigarettes couldn’t
stop talking and talking
until 8am,
my speech held
tandems with
trust the moment we
saw eye to eye,
retrospected reflections
given with every new kiss
dripped away from her lips
striking a match with new feelings
burning the useless old,
perpetuated post-mortem
glances to discussions of
mind depth lead to understanding,
giving swine wings
and through everything
we’ve gone through
in short time
she still has a
hard time figuring
to wear her hair
up or down.

The aftermath of a finished
cigarette lingers in the air
and I pick at it like a
cobweb in the wind,
floating aimlessly
unable to grasp,
and I’ve never felt so weightless
                                                            MJB

It seems like just yesterday we
were twisting our bodies beneath
the symphony of the moonlight,
singing songs of everlasting
love with no sight of ending.
From the beginning I knew
there would be some halt
of companionship as a result
of a stagnant feeling that I was enough
for how perfect you are.
Theres nothing left of my pride
only the need to subside
from every burden i cause.
Every day I woke up and
rolled over to you
laying there with serenity  
thoughts collapses to emotion
knowing you thought you
were losing me, when
the state of my health
screamed out to me
assuring me I was losing myself.
So an awaited day finally came
where I let you go only to know
that you couldn’t live without me.
Seeing your distress left me
more of a mess than what I was before,
the only hope left within was the feeling
that you’d finally cope with me leaving
and find another soul that wouldn’t
constantly leave a hole
in your heart every time my insecurities
would start.
Mistake after mistake fuelled by
instances I knew i couldn’t take.
As you left after I did,
I knew I couldn’t rid
myself from the way I felt
but the reassurance that
you’d be looked at one day
by eyes that held no despise for
their self.
I now bask in the toxins
in order to mediate my conscience
to be sane,
accompanied by pills the rip the morals
from my brain.
Cigarette's packs are emptying faster than
the bottle, pills to make me happy I swallow
and pills that numb, pull me closer to the edge
as I use my thumb to pop the lid, to push my
consumption of poison to dredge every sense of life
from this already lifeless body.
Step out of your once loved mindset towards
my dredged excuse for a being
and open your expectations to those that
exceed what you once held for me,
there’s a room full of people right for you;
quit pounding on the door,
I’m not on the other side.

1st to 2nd
      sliding
      the saltshaker
      to mom,
      the clutch
      with short breaths
      as RPM’s
      rise through my
      chest,
breath
2nd to 3rd
      tremors grab
      the wheel
      as the tires
      rapidly success
      left to right,
breath
3rd to 4th
      gravel brushed
      tread serenades,
      foot to floor
      spins the handle
      punching heart
      to surface air,
breath
4th to 5th
      a deafening
      flatline
      dwindles will,
      fog rolls thicker,
      headlights are
      painting my vision
      dimmer with each roll,
      i follow a finger
      pulling me in.
breath
5th to stop**
      face kissed windshield
      wrapped around
      nature, glass
      falling from the
      salt shaker,
      crimson
      roadkill glistening
      in accidental 4-ways.

inhabited within a society
by a government who lies to me,
to us, on the grounds of money;
earning and spending more than saved
to enrapture the self and capture the enslaved,
working class citizens
who worry more about paying rent
than being mentally content,
Monday to Friday, nine to five
a chance to earn, yet not to thrive
the worry placed on the gratified at ease,
posing no harm, smoking their own trees,
years in the cage for a simple possession of
a couple bags, subject to unlawful repression
yet barred for being a simplified state,
there’s lesser charges for amplified ****,
a higher power twisting by the fist,
grabbing a free nation and twisting by the wrist
there needs to be a change
within a democratic range
that allows us to be the free country
we announce in our anthem
but the government keeps gnawing
and biting the hand feeds them,
we’ll be ruled, and controlled
until a social monarchist
binds together to bindingly subsist
we the people need to speak up
and repress this social **** up;
the need to always rush,
the need to brush
aside repressions until
obsessions of contraries
conflict with progression,
living each day dead
with no room to grow and
yet the only gift we ever bestow
is sleeping and drifting away
in the unconscious
only to awake again,
a conjure suicide with
your company pen.

I want to meet myself,
as if I’ve never tried to
understand my self,
run into him at a party,
drunk, at 3am hearing what
he's ****** up, and how
misses youth
and hates cancer
and himself,
I want to watch him
writing at coffee shops
and contemplate saying
hello because he looks like
he wants to die,
I want to bump into him
on the subway and apologize,
I want to pick apart his mind,
stand awkwardly beside him
at a crosswalk,
listen to his cross-talk
and how he refuses to capitalize
god’s name when he writes about him,
watch as he writes this piece
and tries to understand why
he wants to understand himself so badly that he wants to  
stand at his own funeral, being his own shoulder,
wishing he could slide out of his own shoes

It is as it is,
and was ere,
again I’m paired to
restroom pantile,
resilient sickness
can redefine docile
to nothing northerly,
o'er the day is
only forgery
to an nightly
mainstay,
this white flag
has been waving
to porcelain for
oft fortnights
shining footlights
on an innocent reflection,
allay this suffocation,
let me breathe again,
foremost is always
surviving tomorrow,
though I'm a swain to
the ***** of today.

I haven’t been
drinking much lately,
I haven’t wrote
anything in a while,
and I always knew
putting the two
hand in hand was never fine,
a healthy vice is trapped
by an unhealthy outlet,
and the curious kid looking
for a spark
had dried his fork,
I do miss the teeth sinking
into my throat
having the pain
run to my hands,
I miss waking up
with cinderblocks
glued to my scalp,
the nightstand used to eat
up the empty bottles
and the stomach pains are
now keeping me up at night,
I remember whiskey stained
chest hair and biting at hangnails,
****** fingers and the
taste was fuel,
I remember writing
and waking up
and erasing
and waking up,
what is a poet?
I’m going to have
a drink and this was
written sober.

she told me that I need
to get some sleep,
she has a child
and works ‘till 12am
most weeknights,
then spends time
with me, until
the bags beneath
her eyes become
enough to
outweigh the need
to be WITH me,
she lays tired
but sleeps awake
until she heres “mommy”
then naps
until 1pm,
and I just get up
hungover,
it may be the
need for common-law
thats making me doubt.

Not sure if people keep
losing interest
or just lie to begin with,
it's hard hiding pain
with noisome eyes,
people will begin
to ask questions,
and I will begin
to answer,
after years of hiding
I find it harder and harder
to tint the truth,
wait..
theres a piece of me
that is starting to realize
that it's me,
maybe interest isn't being lost,
when I let you into my mind
it's as if you coexist with my
mental state and
with correspondence
comes the thought of
reciprocative standpoints,
my hands are calloused
from pushing;
making pulling
insurmountable,
It's my mind
painting caution lines,
all I'm asking for
is a rooftop view,
staring down
with a bird's eye
view on you and I,
I'm not ashamed
of pushing, cause it's led
me to today, but I'm afraid
of continuing, cause I don't
want tomorrow
to be like yesterday,
I'm content,
and my hands
are in my pockets.

I’m starting to come to terms
with hate and insanity,
I drove to her house at 4am
because she wasn’t answering her texts,
and I called her 30 times cause I thought
she got into a car accident,
I hit a skunk just
after leaving my house at 4am
and I never smelt anything,
I’ve been sitting on her shoulders for
as long as we’ve known each other,
and all I’ve become is heavy dust,
I have good intentions,
but they’re transparent,
my heart is consistent
but translucent,
a transient feeling of
reciprocated compassion
sparks immeasurable
inconsistencies in
sane behaviour,
but I have good intentions,
and every day we sit in a vessel
with no holes and I try to patch
them because I feel like I’m drowning,
and eventually she’ll want to swim,
she turns turns amnesia into a theory,
she’s a mirror and I’m seeing
an evolutionary reverse,
before I see clearly
I'll have to wipe the fingerprints.

past relationships
like useless barnboard,
scabs of shaved wood pasted
over each other only to
sit beneath abstracted
paintings of ****-less
cupboards collecting
dented ***** of dripping
varnish cans and
cigarette ashes,
still has a use, though.
I always ***** my hand
on it.

if you put me in a cage
would I be a rat or a petition?

would you sign it or
watch until the screams you
can’t listen to
my cries for help
me save me and
give me the key
to life is fighting
through the
bars and pubs
are nothing but a vice
grip tied tight to the
bricks that can’t wipe
the cement from it’s eyes
tell the stories that eat
at chipped away skin
covered in spiders
digging to the core
of the earth is wrapped in
expectations and relation
ships sailing with no sail
manless and handless
mannequins reaching out for
help confined by my vein
minds and empty hearts
are suppose to carry love,
at least that’s the perception
that I cant pull to conception
built on deception with exception of  
reception’s inception,
a look inside my mind
your own ******* business.

I have to
hide
my drinking
from her
and I
love that,
thank god
for autocorrect.

Thus far I’ve lived a
pretty care-free life,
disregarding consequences
like a bee sting,
I want you to watch
my footsteps,
look at the direction
they went, don’t see if your
foot fits, it’s not a hard
path to mould,
I see potential,
you make 20/20
unequivocal,
transpicuous youth
floats over my skin
like it was yesterday,
your eyes tell stories of
pain, it scares me to
even see a diminutive
of myself in you,
you absorb like
cigarette smoke hugging
couch cushions,
and exhale burdens
to your skin,
you define rarity
your clarity will come soon,
don’t give up,
your road is endless,
dont veer,
in your horizon
the sun never sets unless
you pull it down
and you’ve been in
the dark for so long,
you live and love with
the lights off,
you can’t see the tread
that I’ve learned to
dread with your head in
the sand, open your
blinds and let the sun
trickle in and heal your scars,
it’s waiting for you,
the mirror you look in
is distorted on your
own grounds,
I look in the same
mirror every time
I open up photo albums
looking at your ice cream
stained blouses smiling
with mom,
you might not know
but I look at those
pictures more than
you think,
your millstone eyes
showed as life
grew gray hair,
your despair isn’t
tattooed, but my past is,
look at my footfall
and read my eyes,
my cumbersome  
direction is a
tough pill to swallow
and where I am
theres no water
to wash it down.

she told me that I need
to get some sleep,
she has a child
and works ‘till 12am
most weeknights,
then spends time
with me, until
the bags beneath
her eyes become
enough to
outweigh the need
to be WITH me,
she lays tired
but sleeps awake
until she heres “mommy”
then naps
until 1pm,
and I just get up
hungover,
it may be the
need for common-law
thats making me doubt.

I'm a mosquito trapped
in a clapping hand,
I know that I can be bothersome
but I'm just trying to survive.      
                                                          MJB

bottle caps bouncing on cement floors
played in a constant loop,
cigarette ash fraying the
consistency of the tapping,
tapping and tapping on a window pane  
with only rain reciprocating,
if only any of this was real,
real,
real life is but only a manifestation
of manipulation of the things,
or by the things that make it easier,
a broken clock synchronized
with progression
of this silent
lunged apparition and
mobility has never been
defined by an antonym
until now,
now,
now formalized mistakes
carve themselves
inside the walls
of a crimson tower and shine out
as the falsities of my “finest hour”,
hour,
our lives are controlled by vices,
vice grips and patterned slices
solidify consistency in off-timed
8th notes that tick
tick,
tick like the broken clock.

I’m an ******* when I drink
and the manager of the only
bar in town found that out,
I never was keen of
social drinking anyways,
everyone thinks that
drinking alone is a problem,
I think alone,
and a thought process
like mine is a lot deadlier
than liquor when left in isolation,
prioritize your worries, friends.

for a man who doesn’t believe in god
I’ve been spoken to by the devil more than once,
he sent bullets of whiskey cutting through my throat,
he made me realize that it’s a problem
and then dug me a mote,
and he knows I can’t swim,
he put pins in my skin
and glued me to a bed,
he put demons in my mind
and put happiness at the
end of a frayed thread,
he stands beside me at funerals,
and behind me in line at
forced confessions
in catholic high schools,
he washed my hands clean
of blood after breaking a heart,
he’s points south of finish lines
at the north of where to start,
he puts me in the shoes
of the man in the mirror,
he makes money in my
wallet disappear,
he tells me to control my anger,
then lays hands on my little sister
and puts blinds over my eyes,
he tells me tomorrow will be different,
and laughs when I call him out on lies,
he takes vacations from my brain
and brings rain
when I’m parched,
then sticks his skin peeled
fingers down my throat
and makes me *****
out on to paper, to regret
what I wrote,
I will never prey
because to my self i won’t lie,
after years of mirrors I realize
that in fact the devil is I

(I)

the strength is weary
when you see an old photograph
standing next to mom, dad, and sister
with nothing but a smile
and a tommy shirt
they’re both smiling
kneeled down to our level
dad never screamed
she’s just a baby,
no cuts
just a child
cheeks outward nose as soft
as the ice cream that
falls down it
and I
untainted mind
no anger, knuckles unpainted,
dad’s eyes squinted with a smile
he held no disappointment
in any expression

we’re still a family
but with more screaming
and no tommy shirts anymore

(II)

I saw another picture,
in a theme park I rode
down a log ride with my dad
he had a beige wind jacket
and brown shades
I was wearing a red jacket
and a smile
I remember that day actually
the wind felt chilly on my head
I remember cause mom just shaved it,
I cut my bangs off,
another happy day in remembrance,
we ate ice cream and had lunch
at a dairy queen,
we were in new jersey
the picture
again
brings homage to the good times we had
had
he still has those sunglasses actually,
the log ride couldn’t even get him
to take them off,
now the only shades
he wears
is disappointment

everyone owns
that t-shirt with
a worn hole
that they
neglect to throw out,
you are that t-shirt,
and though
torn and threadbare
a distant dead stare
will bury deeper
and purpose will grow

the things that last
never happen overnight
but tonight seems
to last too long,
this feeling hasn’t left
me since you did,
a gut full of
“what if’s”
consume my
mind into
“why the **** didn’t I’s”
maybe there is someone
better off for you ,
someone who
has his **** together,
who’s ambition
isn’t a closet of
empty hangers,
darkness doesn’t
resolve on it’s own,
this stomach ache
of over-smoked
cigarettes and regret
lingers upon hacks
and coughs,
the smoke consumes my
lungs, reaching from the
ground up,
a house beneath ashes
isn’t rebuilt by the owner
alone.

i’m followed by a shadow
figure within the dark
of who i use to be
and am today,
reflecting in mirrors
are strangers with
crooked teeth,
late at night he
whispers memories
of a twisted body
beneath frayed rope
or sometimes
holds pictures of
walls painted with
repulsive remedies
delivered
by a bullet,
he showers skull
fragments of
D and T
i always try and shake
them off of me
i can’t, it’s tearing holes
in my skin
i try to pick
them off, i ******* can’t,
he never lets me forget,
i’m trying to sleep,
he finds loopholes
in releases and
picks at calloused
hands watching
the dead skin rain
and dampen
rotting fresh,
he’s in my dreams,
he sends faceless
apparitions
applauding something
i’ve done
or haven’t done
i don’t know
he shakes babies
and laughs
waking me in
cold sweats
he tells me to forget how
to breath,
your lungs are useless
your lungs are useless
your lungs are useless

good morning

I’ll never let it show,
but this pain still grows
I’ll keep on wearing this mask
at least in place of a rope
until I’ve gained the strength
to stand on broken bones
because I know that someday,
life again will grow

I'm staring through cigarette smoke,
having a drink of *** and pepsi (I ran out of coke)
listening to an 8 minute Periphery song
an in-depth conversation,
the ticking of typing
patio lights
and staring
into nothing
in between stanzas
I'm humming alone,
and tapping my feet,
It's 1:09am
and I work at 6am,
morning fatigue
can get on it's knees.