~
We don't need
Other worlds
We need mirrors

We need thin waists
And a hysteresis curve
To the hips

Let us drink in the sea
And laugh as our number
Comes up

Let us commit
To be noncommittal
And talk nary a word

On age and death
Over afternoon tea
In the bright withered garden

Where the goodness of man
Longed to be more
Than its darkling reflection
~

There were times
that I floated; almost flew.
The wind tasted fresh,
as the clouds hissed by.
My sweat kissed the
hot sidewalk below.
I dunked any
basketball that
I could palm.
Seventeen years old,
and a sanguine grin
the powerful legs,
and a 
skinny frame.
Life was mine, and I
knew it.
I spent more time in
the air than I 
did on the concrete.
The sky and
tree lines were
my home.
I was Icarus and a hawk
soaring above the
common folks.
Now, I never leave
the ground.

The mediocre march into oblivion
while watching Tik Tok videos
and never reading a 
book or writing a
poem.
They don't know 
the difference between
an orchid or an iris.

The mediocre march into
madness sleeping until
noon, while neglecting
Bukowski and Mozart.
They don't know how
to play an instrument.
No idea what a C
major chord is.
But they know all
the emojis.
The sad sheep masses
don't
know the difference
between a Van Gogh or
Monet painting, and a
digital reproduction on
a coffee cup.
Their phones look 
like grotesque growths
attached to their ears.
Everyone should
contribute to the
cosmic dance,
Carpe Diem
*******!

Every word you said about me was beautiful, but it would have been better if they had come from your heart.

Lines on the page are like my personal prison bars;
Where all my arresting thoughts are locked away.
Ink and me, worn and fading
As each calendar day is torn,
Crumpled and forgotten.

Like a black hole, my journal entraps the light;
The turning of a page only paints,
An image of one perpetually falling.
Spiraling endlessly towards a center
I will fall short of reaching.

My lucid sleeping has drawn the gaze
Of these dream demons that scheme against me.
This time of night, even the monsters have slinked away
Back inside their closet.

You have not known fear, rational or otherwise,
Until you lie powerless to the paralysis
That the dream demon wields so elegantly against me.
Like gripped by a vice, my body is held stiff.

My eyes wide open, or so my mind is led to believe
By the amorphous foe playing tricks with my deepest grief.
Contorting memories into the present moment,
A bedroom near identical to my own.

Hospital white walls, and the same clothes strewn about.
A faceless lady lay next to me, curved in shadows. My hand
Reaches out, but hovers just shy, as if set in stone.
Why cant I move? One more attempt proves of little use.

Just then, I am stabbed by six figures seven times and burned
Alive, but yet I do not die. Oh how I struggle to move
An inch or two, but this formless force denies. I demand
The demon speak to me, but before the thought can make its move
The loop repeats. I never die, but I always bleed.

It doesn't matter
if the glass is half empty
or half full
because it's already broken