For love is not a violent thing, nor disparate in its act.
Anger, pain, and solitude
Are the walls of my protection;
With depression and desperation the depthless pit behind.

Break down these walls with gentleness and grit,
And bridge the gap through kindness and understanding.
Unlock the cage made of golden bars;
Release the love and tenderness within.

Wary be those who try to claim for selfishness and spite
For obstacles rebuild again
With rage and vengeance the guardian spears.

Being unemployed is like….

Being stuck in a hole in the ground
with a broken leg and no cell phone,
while surrounded all on sides by people who ignore
your very existence,
or treat you as if you are less than…. well…anything.

Their silhouettes casting quickly passing shadows
on the concrete around you.
No one offering you a hand.
Each time you reach out for help
you are rejected coolly and professionally.

No one wants a failure, but they also don’t
want the responsibility of helping to create a success.

The ones who do reach out for you,
don’t really care about your success or well-being.
They see a quick buck,
easy to replace or move past,
should you realize you are worth more than their
verbal abuse and manipulation.

No one wants a self-valuing person either.

They don’t even want a human,
with thoughts
emotions
and memories.

All hiring businesses want, is a robot to do their every bidding with no complaints,
no questions asked,
even if that person’s health or sanity is on the line.
Or even their life.

In a world created by ourselves, we are unimportant.

An empty house
quiet with the whispered shadows of the past
of memories twisting, jumping, laughing, and screaming in the dark.

Alone.

These loud vacancies in time,
that split and shift as though time had never frozen.
Where ghosts of feelings and happenings forget
that they have past.

Disappeared.

Underneath a thick layer of grime and dust,
unmarked for years to come, and years to pass.

Silence.

The overwhelming loneliness of a time,
a space,
a treasure trove of memories,
lost through abandonment and growing up.

Disturbed.

Briefly, quietly, by soft footsteps hiding in the dark;
taking refuge in the peace that comes with being surrounded
by those just like one’s self.
Where muffled tears may go unnoticed,
and quaking shoulders embraced by a sad feeling of nostalgia.

Sleep.

Falling gently sideways while curled up tightly,
hiding from the world a perceived weakness;
slowly,
gradually,
unwinding in a tear-stained weariness brought
upon by the harshness of our species.

Reluctance.

Stirring awake only to realize the inevitability
of going back into that cruel reality,
and wandering through the dust with a slow
shuffle,
avoiding it to the end.

Reality.

Is merely pretending to be alright,
to be perfect,
sane,
unaffected by one’s past or circumstance.
Lying to yourself until the very last moment,
but by then it’s too late.

Death.

What comes to claim us all,
no matter what we wish or who we are.
The only way to be truly free.

End.

Merely the beginning of a new story.

Why does it hurt so much when you're forgotten completely by someone who used to greet you so cheerfully.
Who showed up in a dream and is someone you, since long ago, haven't seen.
One of the few people you hoped would not so easily let the memory of you slip away.
Everybody falls in love, one way or another.
Friendship, romance, nostalgia, feelings long since past,
glimpses of a memory.
Even in this big wide world full of people, we each are stuck alone in our own realities.
No matter what we may try to change that.

♠ ♠ ♠

Pseudo-Oriental visions
Haiku, Tanka, exotic terms
Vapid New Age vibe-transmissions
proliferating eastern germs…

Anarchistic thought collages
Existential lacerations
Nihilistic heart-massages
Incoherent lamentations,

Communism on a mission,
grievance-mongering, stewed in hate;
pounding Fascist fusion/fission
chanting harshly “ours the state”,

Hymns to Gods who choked on *****
undertaken in overdose;
rocks that never rose to comet
rolling – but ending comatose,

Hipster ironies, tongue in chic
Metro-wimps who feign the normal,
Redneck rantings up the creek
semaphoric,  semi-formal,

matron’s maudlin observations,
motivational hypnosis,
(sentimental medications
offered prior to diagnosis),

coldly abstract neo-nonsense
read (by dullards) as cutting edge,
letters void of correspondence;
well-trimmed words’ linguistic hedge.

Climate whining (tried untrue)
with eco-prophecies warning doom,
Wiccans and tree-sprites trying to
undo the curse and lift the gloom,

Feministic tribal ranting,
Race-complaining, agitation,
GLBT gallivanting –
all are blights upon our nation.

Boring modernist excess,
(no longer daring  –  formulaic)
confounds –  yet never can address
what’s wrong, and so becomes prosaic.

Lists like this are perhaps  the worst;
another symptom of our times:
we who are woefully unversed
in rhythmic complaining that rhymes.

I met with a man today,
although
not so much a man as….
a boyish adult.

He told me he liked me,
or perhaps “loved” would be
a better description.
I was showered with things that most
people would love to hear constantly:

Compliments.

I…..am not one of those people.

Now, that’s just the oversimplified version.
A more detailed explanation would go like this:
I met with a man today,
although
not so much a man as…
a boyish adult.

We went out for lunch,
and left there around five hours later.
For the first three,
we were doing all right.

Managing to have pleasant conversation
we even discussed our views on religion.
The last two hours
however
I am not sure how I managed to endure.

He told me he had "fallen in love with me",
and that every word I spoke had him falling deeper.

I explained that I have absolutely zero interest in any such things
(love, romance, all that jazz other people crave,
you know how it is)
I however, am not capable of feeling those sorts of attractions.
(don't want to be either)

As I spoke, he would reply by saying he was falling harder...
that I was pretty, handsome, cute, beautiful….etc.
Not a word of what I said went into his head.
And I knew it from the expression on his face,
that I was only being viewed as something to conquer.
To…..”fix”.

That made the compliments even worse.

*I hate compliments to begin with,
at least ones in regards to my appearance.
For me, they are one of the worst triggers
on my extremely long list.
So is being treated like I’m broken.

I'm falling apart (again)
and the tight seams of my mentality
are quickly fraying in this silence.
This silence is more than simply just that.
It is built up of sudden unemployment combined with
the empty spaces around me (that once held friends)
and the lack of motivation to do anything (caused by the overwhelming listlessness of my Depression).

The hardest things are really quite simple:
go to sleep
eat at least one meal a day
shower
go outside once in a while
breathe (deeply)
get out of bed
wake up
call someone (to temporarily fill the empty spaces)
feed the cat (which I manage to do during the few moments I'm awake)
clean up a bit
breath (once more).

The Depression has one outlet (that works)
but for once there is not even the urge
to engage in that self destructive action.

The search for a job is needlessly difficult,
for each time I find that the scars on my arms,
all over my body,
make me "ineligible."
The ones that seem not to care about such things
are either paying minimum wage and are part time
(neither of which pays the rent, car insurance, and other bills that always, always add up),
or I do not have the certification or degree to have them
(school is expensive and I will do whatever it takes to never live in the same building as my parents- even being homeless).

And friends?
How can one make and keep or even briefly have even one,
when they themselves don't have even the faintest idea of how
to let others in?
To trust them (any more than one would trust a person holding a gun to the back of their head)?