Trains riding past the sun,
it hurts to be dull-
you never know what day it is.

Rain drops down on heads,
they look out the balcony at
me, and I am alone.

My own little black box,
four walls, a floor, and a roof.
No water, dried lips and a sore
throat. I'll never escape this,
you'll never hear me play the
violin. I doubt I'll be as good as you expect me to be.

But wouldn't it be pretty to think so?
Guitarist, turned musician, turned
pianist and back, just to reel again onto a new distraction.

Well, I can't distract myself forever,
or can I? I think they'll know it when
they see it. I think they see it now.

I'm a leech, I dig into the skin of the
people around me-     I **** the blood
from the strongest people.

And I'm alone.

In this cabin in the woods,
in this moment in time,
in every heartbeat.
Feeling every heartache.

It's more a forest fire than a candle now, isn't it?

She was a model, but now she's terrified.
She looks in the mirror, scratches all the imperfections.
A day rolls by, and she looks again.
She doesn't see herself, doesn't see Lisanne Falk.
She scratches all the imperfections, like her face is
a guitar's fret board and she is soloing. Like her face
is a test where she got every answer wrong.

A day rolls by, like the hills past her parent's car on those old
recordings she keeps in 35mm.
You can see reflections of the 70's in the grainy film, an odd beauty to the young girl in them, and the long days at the beach.
There's this one where her and her mother are walking along a
narrow bay, with rocks everywhere. They're looking for shells.
She picks one up, holding it to her ear. Her mother stops her, and
she mockingly says "Lisanne, the ocean's right there!".
For a brief moment, as she turns around to look back at the camera with the softest, most soulful smile a child could muster, Lisanne stares at the screen in the dark. For a little while, a fraction of a second maybe, Lisanne is back in 1972, with her mother and her father picking sea shells off the beach and listening to the waves crash against the shore.

he is lying on the grandest marble floor,
in between two pillars as he cries out.
Yet none hear him, the door is locked.
He looks for a way, he was told about
by his older brother years ago, do
you want to know how he found it at all?
He stood, his hands were stuck like glue.
He cried out, tried to show the world his call.
His voice like a used marker,
his nose could not smell, he couldn't taste.
His bright thoughts and mind sadly grew darker.
His bones growing weaker, a waste.
And not one reached down to pluck him
up, none extended their arm to him.

To the four that may or may not see
the words, read the whole texts; digest my
poems. Where are you?
I really hope your lives are swell,
that you've found happiness,
and no longer feel the need to write.

If I was to drive away now, and find
my own inside the world, what
would I look like in ten years? Twenty?
I'm curious to see what I would become.
But then what if I stayed? Would I finally meet
the world, or will I lose out as she walks away?

What if she died in 2003?

Where would the heartsick go to find peace if
their soulmate's had died years before they had a chance
to meet? We'll surely be alone forever, but not used to the thought.
Will we fall to heaven when we discover them so far below the dirt? Or no, if Hell is up instead of down, and Heaven lapses under the Earth; where do the feeble go if they are afraid of church

I can neither jump off the edge, nor summon the courage to climb the ladder.

I will leave it,
it was never worth fighting
for at all, ever.

I evoke my
freedom, I never wanted
it much anyway.

Sometimes it's hard to walk.
Like I've tied both laces together,
with my shuffling steps echoing
down the hall.

There was a time-   the echo
was in four, not two. Bravely
together, I remember fighting
back the feeling.

Then the preacher came,
told us words; shoved them
down our throats. Dragged
you into fake lights.

I resisted, I knew what they
could do to us; would do to
us. But you never listened
to me. You were a loner-  a
rebel like your Mother.

It's a weird, weird world; passion
means nothing in the mire. When you
think you've flown out, into auburn lit
skies and towards better days; the rope
reaches as far as it can extend, and you must watch
yourself hang above the streetlights, and below the stars.

You can scream, "But I love her" as loud
as lungs can carry. You could give a final
death throw, like a horse that has been shot
twitching in the dirt. But it would be so much
easier, so much better to numb the pain.

You can scream, "And I love her" as loud
as a semi barreling past; but you know, like
fire it comes to flicker until it burns low. It
would be so much easier, so much less chaotic to
extinguish the candle.

But then you wouldn't be a rebel, like your Mother.

Bright fluorescent lights,
they are now
shining down from above.

The line is long, the wait is on,
it's taken so long and I am
only there
for sugar
and milk.

There is a woman
in front of me,
and we look at each other.

She seems to see it
deep inside me,
she seems so
worried
and
understanding.

Like she, like I, has been there before.
The place where eyes don't shine.
The darkest places that exist in our minds.

She seems to be sad
as I ask her where
she
gets her
hair
dyed.

Then I see the stamps
she passes to the clerk.
A blue, and a white paper.

"Oh, you have kids?"
the clerk asks; she
replies with
a casual
and polite
"Yes."

She is young, barely
older than me,
and I feel the weight
of the room fall
down onto all
the people in line.

I haven't seen her since,
I just hope she's doing fine.

how cruel it is,
to see beauty, but not make it.
It's like looking in the mirror and only
sadly seeing cracked teeth and matted hair.
I guess it's the days I falter and don't pay attention
to the things around me I fall the hardest,
and leave the biggest trails of aggression and
sadness in my waking despair. If only I could trace my fingers
across it, like the model cars on my grandpa's shelf, I could wipe the dust from the window and see the meticulously callous
bright colors peeking out of the evening; hoping to string
together the proverbial tie of the clouds to the blue, awfully blue
sky. It seems a decade has passed since I've seen it. and I fear I have
nowhere left to go, nowhere left to turn to paint out my thoughts. I
miss it all.

but no worth is it to fret,
even red and white clouds
flicker away to someplace better,
more serene or calming.
Like crowd surfing the
line between life and death.
Leaning one way for too long will result in your fall, but at the in-between, where does life start? Where does death begin?

Could the clouds tell us, warn us of it?

Do they feel me slipping through the crowd and sinking into
the cold dirt?

Maybe it's better here, the world is certainly colder when you dare to dream.

the grass is tall again,
and towering green, with Spring.

I never expected to fall in love with it;
but it became my lighthouse in the darkest times,
and the coldest seas. The most hidden of sanctuaries.

The earth is moving again,
and I can see every little person make some progress.

I never expected to fall in love with it;
but the people around me are like carrier birds,
transmitting my few happy thoughts to the world.
And I couldn't be more joyful, when
you became a doctor,
and you became an engineer,
and you became a real chef.

It all falls like an apple down to me, and I
wonder now, what will I become?

That is what gives me heartache,
that is what makes me feel alone, far more
than when I can't write, and I feel disposed.
They say an ocean sits beneath every thought.

So why aren't mine as well constructed as they were?
Thinking about it makes me uncomfortable, but-

I am barely seventeen and I am not the writer I used to be.
I coldly snap at everything I create, because it is never perfect,
and I am never perfect.
Nothing is ever perfect.

So I've adjusted lies to make them fit my story,
and I have become less honest in the past year.

I became so fed up with fame, and finding my way through the
commercial successes of myself, when I should have been trying to find my way to the lighthouse above the sea.  Because now I am lost in an increasing wind, and it only blows harder the more I resist.

Who is the crazy mountain man?
He sits on his wooden stool,
smoking his withered pipe.
The air around them cool.
The air around them cool.

Next to him lies his son,
bitter and to confuse,
pretending to catch grasshoppers,
father never had much to lose.
Father never had much to lose.

Why?

Was it something they said? Was it something I did?
Telling signs let flowers die, flowers bloom; to mask the dead.
Like you can't realize you're already beautiful.
Please, tell me why.

Three years.
Straight, no arguments. No fighting.
Sometimes tears,
following laughter.

The quiet moments you break down; like I would never understand. Like I'm a puppet in a house; blindly famous and largely small.
Why. Why. Why. Again? This is a feeling.

Will I ever get you back?
I hate it.

The covering, the hiding, the sadness I can only see but
can't imagine; yet am so cursed to understand.

My only hope is fake friendliness, when I'm worried,
and God I'm worried.

God. It is you. It is you who I see, you who I care so deeply for,
you who I have spent three years knowing. And it is you still that
I can see, read, when you're falling apart.

little moments in your words-
where you cut yourself off.
like what you said was dull,
when it was anything but.

little moments in your writing-
I can read between the letters,
to see to the very bottom of
you, the very core. the horror.

and in those places, where I
love to sit, where I'm neither seen
nor heard, I watch the ocean slowly
drain from you; watch you give up.

but for what i will never know

was it a combination of your pretty friends, and isolation; or a feeling that drives you to that point. Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?

Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?

You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.

look in a mirror.

But this pain is anaphoric,
I know it so well,
sadness repeating.
Woman (reading).

it repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats,
you wake up and it repeats, and sings in your head.

Today is the day!
You've finally met fate,
so why are you so low?
Succumb to the pains!

Today is a felling tree!
It was never meant to be.
Anaphoric. Woman reading.
Collapsing. Repeating.

and days will turn into years,
years to a decade,
a decade to two.
And you will never even see it leave.

get it out,
please.

On my own island; dark clouds all around me.
Living forever away, awash from other people.

I have to do it; I know I have to make the jump.
I am standing on childhood and teetering to adulthood.

But it's like life is a rough pine tree,
distanced as it is from the sun beneath a canopy.

Of other's that have reached the surface and spread,
the same that feel the sun. That know not the ground.

The dirt, the worms and insects crawling all around; the
pinnacle of wellness from which they stand their back's upon.

Squirrel sits on the edge of the forest,
conflicted where the trees have gone.
Unknowing that the world is culling.

Somewhere often it knows the forest grows,
and sometimes, teetering the edge of the village it goes.

The light balance of the shrubs all around
does not correspond to his homeward ground.


Squirrel wanders a vacant field,
listening for the bird's songs.

He does not hear, or look, or react,
he walks until he stops to relax.

Then in the light of the field he sees
something that he can't believe.

A great and roaring star, falling from the heavens
to the world underneath him that cries and writhes.

He wonders what the light means, as it disperses across
the field, hearing the screech and the tumbling on the asphalt.

The ground collapses in several places as it flips into the field.

He walks over to the metal body in the dirt, stretching his
legs along the way to be ready to run.

But there is no danger, just suspicious little bumps of dirt,
and big metal pieces he doesn't understand.

His eyes carry on, peaceful and serene; examining everything.
Just trying to make sense of the wonder before him.

Community gone- to the life after, it
crinkles all the flowers in the darkness.

The bright red and orange lights flicker down the street.
The bipeds hustle to the husk before the heat consumes it.

Flipped on an axis, as squirrel looks on
a loud piercing call comes from the ground,
so away the squirrel rolls into the brush in fear.

Could you ever-
drown yourself in the river of life,
have you ever been lost?

It's quite an experience for
one with anxiety, to be lost
and feel so useless.

Stupid, worthless, thankless.
There is no home for the dull,
there is no passion in idiocy.

You care about only a few things.
The odd specific details in our
encounters with one another,
how you become so entranced
by the wind; how I'm sometimes insane.

Is my insanity worth the few moments
you spend happy with who I am?
Are the lapsing courses of impending
schizoaffective illness scary to only me?

It seems you're a different type of crazy.
Not a starving artist- not unlike one either
though. I wonder if it may be inside your head
as you watch me, watching you.

I'll break the poetic rambling, poetic romancing
and tie myself to the tree that is the wind flickering
across your hair, beveling your face in the morning
light as we walk, and you talk about your dreams.

Do you know anything about the nightly terror?
The slow and collapsing waves of the mind as
they reflect on horrid dilapidation, horrid existence?
I wonder as you wonder if I wonder too.

Oh! The saint has called upon the regal
battleground of Illinois to deliver me
a message of utmost sincerity and
inner-beauty. A quaint "I love you."

You ask me if I could ever be less
complicated, non complacent. And
you also ask me a million other things
I dare not answer, I would never answer.

You entertain the idea that inside my irreverence
there is some hidden truth or holy gospel undelivered
by your poetry books and your indie rock bands.
I can't see past the orange highlights in your hair.

How beautiful! What marvelous features on your
face, what exquisite traipsing lust! Sometimes
I disgust even myself with the utter health
of my persistent reeling comments on vanity.

And I suppose it seems quite blank and dim.
I mean to never have a single fear.
I see that you have become kind of slim;
the way you hurt yourself is what I leer.
Would you ever be kind enough to stop?
I don't think that you understand my plea.
You stand in the center of my dad's shop.
But I can see that you are just a flea.
A passing wave on my own separate sea.
I was writing a sonnet until you-
lost my train of thought by
cutting yourself. Can't you see?
Can't you see?

Nothing matters so why believe-
in someone who you'll barely see?
Maybe twice a week I'll entertain you.
Maybe twice a week a shaded hue
will fall to stop my clue-
less heart as it bursts.
I am cursed.
I am cursed.

So, I'll bear the weight as I watch the way the
red scar, jagged runs along your pale neck
as you undress, your v neck dress.

I'll see your perfect figure in every glass
and every reflected tabletop, my dear.
Chicago has killed you.

And every party-
every piece of sanity
is useless, hopeless.
As every man-
every other lover
is just as mindless.

I wish that-
with you I
could complete-
a thought-
maybe without
the stutter-

but with beauty
comes a sincere-
scarily closing
portion of my
chest.
A lapsing
wave as I-
proclaim
to never
breath again.

I am thinking. and there is a pain.
Like a large wooden door, metal hinges and all, sitting locked in front of me. But I can't open the thing. I pull and tug, and twist and try so hard. But I can't open the door. No I can't get in.

So I back up and trip over some barbed wire, out on the concrete courtyard. Large red and black flags swing all down the large hall, with buildings as it's walls. The sky today is so blue and sweet, but I can feel eyes search me for a reason to pull me, berate me, hurt me.

I need to look within myself  they say, and fix the demon
that has been released to devour the man living there. But I couldn't bear to **** the thing, it's eyes look just like mine!
And his hands are the same dry, cracked ones of mine.

Do you remember when you were young? It asks me.
Do you remember when you were young? It asks me.

I don't. I can't. I only see bits and pieces.
It's finished it's daily checkup, now it will eat some more.

You know how, in those old quiet movies
the hopeless romantic would die in the end.
Or those faces, like a walk in the park would one
day end as well.

You know how in those silent films, without the
lively piano you would watch a completely different movie.
Like the actors are puppets being controlled, and you
can see the oldness in their eyes through grainy film.

You know, there's a beauty in watching the degraded old movies in my attic, on that reel. You can feel the artist's burst of creativity.
Really see the practical effects, the struggles to capture the same
world we can capture so easily now.

It makes me feel like I'm worth it; like one day someone might come across my poems and feel what people now can't. Like maybe in the future someone might understand my own bursts of happiness, and sadness, and recognize my attempts at capturing my world.

Beautiful girls,
fast cars,
a home,
a family,
a life...

I wish that I,
in all my selfish glory,
could get used to the
thought of loneliness
in a world filled with opposites...

I have been working,
or rather waiting on myself,
trying to be the beautiful people
I see on TV. But now I'm getting used to the
thought, I'm going to be alone forever...

Shattered ties,
lying on the floor.

Like little birds,
that sing in the sky,
their necks wrung,
they sing no more.

Famous lies that we all sell like:
Life is swell,
love is good,
the world is blue,
the cross is stood.

They all rectify the appearance of a beautiful world
that has been hidden behind a maze of deep and
unsettling clouds.

A writer's mind, should be fine
if he takes the time to go outside,
but what difference is there,
in sitting in here to listen to
the world cry?

I think that I should look in a mirror,
longer than I have been,
and see myself as the liar, the cheat, the *******, that
I know I am.

Maybe then those famous lies will start to show a bit of truth.

I am not a good singer,
I am not a good artist,
I did this for fame for so long,
I've become a martyr,
and now life is even harder.

I found a foreign love,
under the covers
of a scarlet moon,

she asked me how I was,
and I replied, good, you?
She then began to walk away.

And I was left,
and I felt sick
and ill
and desperate.

For I just want to be in love, not to worry of the morning light.

I just want to lay down,
wash my skin away.

Their hoses, wet,
houses, painted,
lawns mowed.

I hate it.

I just want to exercise,
ride my bike, leave this plight.

I'll pedal fast, run hard, do so
many push ups my arms feel
like snapping.

Behind me though, I'm being watched.

Look around, you'll see nothing,
my head is a maze that creates apparitions.

Sometimes I can see them plain as day,
other days, some days, they fade away.
Those are the happiest-

when I am normal. When I can hold a conversation.

God! I can feel my whole world crumble.
I'll probably fall ill, sad, diseased.
I'll surely watch my body tumble,
from outer space, my mind appeased.

But my body! Oh my body still lies,
down in the mire; the sick land below.
And in time maybe I'll do my cries,
write the same lines in the snow.

I'll surely show them my screeching writ!
I'll end the facade somewhere.
Even just for a quiet spacing bit.
Distract myself, get myself out there.

lo, in the darkest stairways I will climb,
****, one day I'll make it rhyme.

On your bike,
down the street,
six or seven times.

I wonder if you felt the same pull
to talk. I wonder if I'm just jaded,
or the sign of you coming down the same
little street so many times was a signal.

I wonder if we're both drowning in the same sea.

I guess I would know if I'd just talked to you.

I'm so sorry, if I could've helped you.
I'm so mad at myself for not approaching you.
I'm so scared that I'll never love anyone as beautiful as you.
Most of all though, I'm terrified I was just "that" creepy guy.

I wonder if we'd be good friends.
I wonder if we'd drift apart.
I wonder if I would've been cool enough for you.

Is it you again?
Outside the bar,
smoking. Your hair *******.

I swear I see you
everywhere. Like
the passing phase of the moon at night.

Are you still cold?
Do you still think I was pretty?
Questions I swear I've asked, but can't remember.

Kohl ash sings in the wind, I can see fire.
It's all rising around, jubilantly consuming faces and buildings.
I run down the street, I push a man over, I hit a car door as I try to escape it, the rising smoke. But it covers me from head to toe.

I slowly walk in the ash, the darkness, feel grains of it
run down my throat and matte in my hair,
I want water. I want to take a shower.
But nothing is in sight, I'm gone.

I run now, but it is quiet and I know I've been caught.
I listen to the wind, I listen to my heart beating.
I Listen to the clock tick away, yet I can't find it.
I run towards a building's wall, for what seems like hours.

I am never getting out.

I sit down, open my mouth, and let the ash cover me.

depression comes
like a roaring wave
to wash me away.

It comes like an electrical fire,
slow and creeping; slowly building up.

But it reigns down like memories of childhood,
and laughter underneath the sun.

Like the loudest chanting choir,
or a reasonable markup-
everything screams "would
you ever have fun"

Do you sit like fire before rain,
calmly in the wind crackling along,
with a vinyl static hiss?

My face did not smile today,
as I looked at it in the mirror.
Something is always wrong.
And my lips can never summon the courage.
My face did not smile today,
as I took a shower; could not bring
myself to tears.
Stuck in the middle; claustrophobic,
like my skull was an oakwood box.

I did not eat today,
as I prepared for the day.
I couldn't believe my gray,
withered eyes would see
all across the table and it's
countless useless objects.
Signs of folded clothes, and
cups abandoned from the night
before; all evidence weighs down on me.

I am the beast that I run from.
Like a sharp knife rapping in my chest, I feel
plants tangle my ankles, trip me as I scream.
I smell their acid breath as they crunch through
bone. Just like books of old; the young die in
pointless wars of self. The young are caught in the
self perpetuating stream of grief and anger.

So I am mad, so very mad.
And to the people I love I unleash it,
like the plants inside covering the skyscrapers
and industrial highways of my mind, or a dog broken free
of it's chains; I destroy everything I touch.

Heightened, above it, the crane strikes down on water.
Eerie fog splits down the path of the creature.
Lore speaks that the crane caught the trout.
Lightly carrying it in it's mouth to drop it on the shore.

The more I think about the girl,
the more she becomes everything,
yet also,
the more I'm reminded she may
think of me too.

I really hope she remembers the same moments,
like her car at night, all the windows down with the red and white dash flickering across her pretty face.
Or the time we stopped at Walmart at near midnight to buy food we never even ate, just to have an excuse to talk more to each other.

Oh, so dearly close I hold those memories to my heart, but how long until I will forget them?

How long it will be before I forget her, and the silent moments where all was loud for everyone but me, where time would stop and I would see, just beautiful, everything about her, the quant passion and quiet pain.

But the more I wander, the more I realize my love for her is like a broken lighthouse on an island at sea.

Half Life 2,
I remember you.
Gordon Freeman in all your glory,
shining down so effortlessly, so sorely.

It breaks my heart Gordon,
that I remember you, but you don't remember me.

Well, sometimes I remember things you wouldn't believe.

Where did you go Trevor?
I miss you, and every endeavor.
It breaks my heart to see you lost,
or rather, I guess, less than betrothed.

I hope you know I'll miss you man,
as I often missed you when I was young.

I hope you realize your impact while you're out having fun.

I am not like my Mother.
A liar, a cheat, who steals from my Father.

Yet I am not like my Father.
A manipulator, an angry man who enables my Mother.

But still I catch myself doing the same little things they do.
The lying, the anger, it all builds up. And now I can't come clean.

I love the thought of being selfless, but my every motive no matter what screams "what may I receive?"

I love the thought of being loved, especially.
But who would love a liar? A cheat? An angry man?

Well, I would.
I love myself and all my flaws because I know
one day I will drain them from me and I will
be at peace with the world and all these words; like forgotten
notes on a sheet of paper stuffed far out of reach.

I've realized in the last year:
My problems are nothing compared to the world's.
My heartache is nothing compared to the world's.
And lastly, my kindness and sincerity is what makes me feel complete. I couldn't bear to live in a world where everyone was as big an ******* as me.

Or rather, the ******* I used to be.

I am the Christopher Marlowe of Illinois,
forever in the shadow of my Shakespeare.
I swear if I could resist it I would,
coincidentally though I cannot.
Over the hedge I see dead mice,
underneath me, or above me in their own labyrinths.
Little hints tell me soon I will be stuck in a maze of my own,
dull and discouraged like the beaten souls of the crayon makers.
Crying won't do me any good though, I'm already hopeless,
at one point I wasn't though. I had confidence.
Really I did, if you could believe it,
rhythm was in my blood.
Yours truly had a girlfriend, some sociality, and life was looking
young and exciting. I had a world in front of me ready to see me.
Or at least I thought the world would want me, out from
under the rubble of the small town I had been born.
Really I thought-      there was a small chance I could've been
loved, and respected and recognized as a person.
Over the feeling was in just a few months however,
vivid depressive episodes followed me through a dark tunnel.
Every corner was a face that I had abandoned, a person who
enveloped me in their love that I had destroyed, that I had lost.
Viciously abandoned like a newspaper after a quick skim,
energy drained from every action, every feeling.
Really, did you know I played the violin,
yes, I still have it in my room. I also played the dulcimer.
Where would I be able to play the dulcimer though, or the
hellishly repaired violin from my Grandfather?
Every string is in tune, it's a sad sight when the musician
refuses to play their instruments. It's always damaged pride.
Except in my case it was depression, anxiety, and scapegoating.
I was a chicken surrounded by foxes who I thought were my
wayward friends and fellow artists.
Overall the point of writing for me was to convey my thoughts,
unlike what I began at first though; I mostly enjoy confusing now.
Liam is my name. I'm also sometimes called Patrick, or William,
did you know that I'm Irish? Wow, you couldn't tell?
Before I was Irish I was an *******,
envious, from two doors down like a snake.
Quaint. I've lost my mind now, I can barely spell, it's
unbelievable how many times I misspelled "Quaint".
I almost think I'm attracted to misery, like it is the
tower at which I can extend my thoughts at the top.
Entry into my creativity is painful, it's
horrible I would say that every morsel of my mind is bored.
At least I'll die nonchalantly? I guess none of us are really worth
poem-ing on about. If you couldn't tell I'm running out the timer.
Poems need a rigid structure, a sound layout, and smart execution.
You should really read this acrostically now. See the irony of
                                                                                 post-modernsim.

If I could feel no pain,
maybe I would comb my hair,
run my fingers through it like curtains.

If I could feel no pain,
I would be unstoppable.
No story unwritten, no person unnoticed.

But if I could feel no pain,
I would not be me.
I am a refraction of my feelings.

Sometimes the fragments--    of myself
like shattered glass reappear.
My old glasses, my weight, my memories.

They all pour like dark rainwater down
to the waves, when I am alone and I am
teetering on who I am and who I see.

And in that darkness, in that cacophony
that screams "Worthless! Nameless!"--
I can see someone else behind the haze.

A little kid, no more than ten or eleven,
with his backpack on and a smile on
his face. Innocent annoyance in his eyes.

I can hear him too, hear his sense of humor
as his mother loads him into the van. The
sun just rising on the horizon behind the house.

The early summer air is like a fresh bouquet
of roses, but then I look slowly around.
Notice the other people surrounding him.

Remembering the late nights, the slow declines.
Remembering; but every thought slipping away,
like a nightmare where the hall is eternally long.

And I see my fingers, their callouses, taking my
eyes from the broken things around my feet to
the messy counter; the room I've grown inside.

The lock was shut, always. My hands always
dry and cracked, the mirror fogged and the
lighting as poor as the terrifying feelings inside.

And it yells again, "Worthless! Nameless!"--
and I am still sitting and watching paint
dry on my mirror. Watching me decay.

Seeing now, my cheek bones as they sink,
as my face begins to turn ever paler,
as my hair begins to fall out.

If I could leave this pain I would throw it all out.

If I could feel no pain, I would be a jester; sitting
high in my palace, no bitterness, no faults.
I would be a fool in a hat and suit with money.

If I could feel no pain, I would still be afraid of
everything. The siren sounds coming from my
own mind at night; the horror that I left locked in.

The buzzing of the locusts' wings on my window
flicker through my ringing ears, my destroyed,
ruined atmosphere. My meditative chamber/pile of ruins.

I listen to them tap on the glass, their wings turning from
buzzing, to fingers scratching, to accusations of my lies.
They tell me I'm unsure, that the world is as I see it.

But why would I listen? What insanity in the dead of night!
Isn't it pretty to think so? Isn't it pretty to think so?
I can see the drilled abscesses in their skin.

I crawl beneath my bed, escaping them. But I feel
their talons all over my skin, trying to pull me into
the world that I can't see, that I can't reason with.

They scream "Worthless! Nameless!" and I crumble
like overly baked bread. I am the crust of the loaf
in the sink after it is cut, I am the vessels' thoughts.

They are all within my mind, they are all within my
own delusional world; where I can see or not see whatever
I want. Where I can forget about the people I've loved.

And where I am in my little place, my mindless thinkless
chamber above the clouds, I don't have to think of the
beautiful people I've destroyed, consumed, manipulated.

And they yell "Worthless! Nameless!" until--
I can't bear to hear them all scream out loud--
Their teeth and eyes glaring, the torn twill--
I feel it around my fingers bowed--
like a great ship, the edge phased--
Sinking beneath sodden roaring waves--
I can't hear myself think, I'm amazed--
I will end up in the same graves--
SO WHERE DOES THE OCEAN MEET THE END?
OR HAS IT BEEN MASKED ETERNALLY?
I CAN FEEL MY THOUGHTS WHILE THEY TWIST, BEND--
IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL INTERNALLY.
But in the real mental insurgency,
I am losing my mind in urgency.

So if I could feel no pain at all,
I would be the same.
Bitterly, utterly similar.

Boring, worthless, nameless.

I left. I'm back,
as a different person,
and a cooler cat.

Won't you come?
I mean, to sing along
with me!

I know you all despise
my poetry.

To the one person that ever read-
to this day my heart is still in dread-
and my thoughts just as thoughtless!
There's not much to be in a world
filled with coffins..

In the time we last spoke-- I mean--
my fingers with the page,
my gpa was higher- a 3.5--
and my heart was aglow.

But no- I have become what I
feared I would,
manipulative, *****, bummed
out and bitter, and
I barely noticed it.

I barely noticed it.

But thanks to coming back,
and reading through my
old catalogue--

I have found a reason
to carry on.

I am a kite,
soaring through the sky,
no thunder, lightning, or obstacles in my path.
I am a staircase unwavering in an abandoned building.

Like the one's we used to climb.

But half is missing, corroded and fallen to
the basement, what a shame it would have been to
fall with it. For a while I'll be honest I thought I did. Like I
was a goner, alone and confused and scared. Like the world is.

But then something changed.

I realized the pieces of my staircase that have slipped,
wavered and crashed to the basement in plumes of dust
were necessary to be me. To be or not to be the person I want
to be. It's sort of convoluted I know. But it is true nonetheless.

So I am a laughing lynx,
sitting on my wavered
old fence, waiting and crying
for the sun to shine down
on whatever I will be.

Does love ever die? That's a question I would've asked a year ago.
The feeling sticks after I receive the answer.
Like a faulty receiver, the trigger bent and twisted; or a node for an AI that doesn't have a behavior tree to attach to, it sticks but nothing becomes. There is no takeaway.

The yellow, simple walls of my room wrap chaotically around my throat.

Like sandpaper, my tongue flicks across dry lips,

desperate to feel something, anything. Even a taste of blood on the chapped skin.



I've been picking my lips again, thinking about dancing to music when I was young,

and falling in love so pointlessly and obsessively over the smallest things,

like a bright gaze and a soft smile in my direction. It makes me so bitterly happy.



Do you remember when you fell in love? Do you recall

their eyes, their skin, their slow and crushing presence?



I remember when I fell in love. She was taken,

although that never stopped me from thinking about her.



I would sit on the same hill we sat that far away, perfect night; Just

to dream about the things I would never have.



Like the moonlit field in front of me, with all it's tall grass and gentle

whispering, I could feel the coldness on my skin.



The warm summer sun has been so far away, for so long, I'm afraid

when it returns, I will have to feel it forever.



At least in the end I have the memories

of your laugh, of your eyes in the dark.



I remember when I fell in love.

I also remember the year after.

It's Thursday, the 28th.
Time flies through the window
like the breeze, and I can't remember what day it is most days.

there is a house among the shallow plains,
where wheat and field waltz hand in bitter hand,
And in the closed off floor beneath the frames,
there lies a fire dancing in the sand.
It's name is not important to the plot,
but it's been hiding there for quite some time.
it lives and cries beneath the fabled lot,
it sits and tries to find another rhyme,
But there are none here, there are none inside;
if there was a glimmer of consciousness,
it was massacred by life's closet teiid,
and destroyed by their own self consciousness.
So in the house among the shallow plains,
the ******* son of dumb and dumb remains.

Walking over the ash,
teetering the line between love and death.
There comes a crying from a stack,
hands and feet and heads staring up,
reflecting on the murky water.

Smoke is still spilling in the air, tumbling and
turning like a bride and groom dancing. But there
are no people here. You can see their eyes, without
the same refraction of light that made them human.
You can hear cries from the debris as your father leads you away.

Don't worry, he tells us all. It will be over soon.
The bombs will stop soon.
The sun will shine soon.
But soon was so far away; he had lied to his children.
Not in the way you would lie randomly though, pathologically.

He lied to them because he loved them. Because the bombs brought
back memories from his own childhood, where he already knew
from a young age they would never stop falling like glass shattered
from a bottle. Like the towels thrown over the bodies, flickering in the wind every which way.

I scour over the memories- pictures on the floor.
Some 35mm, some 600, a few digital printed on paper;
all languages I have known.

I take my time writing them out for myself,
the dates, as I rip them and throw them away. I think I used
to be someone else.

Like, the kind of person that would laugh at other's struggles
with humanity. Saying all the while, "Your problems are nothing compared to mine!" while I became increasingly bitter.

I don't like riding this blurred line,
I hope you never cried.
But I would never say it out loud.

No, I'll keep that to myself.
And all these moments afterwards,
where I see the speckled clouds behind my
screen; reflections of a time I remember a year ago.

So loud is the thundering,
though the clouds are white.

I am a hymn, in a hidden drawer.
I'm just waiting to be found,
like my grandfather,
and his father
and the father
before
him.

But what if-    I am the broken shower rod,
the abandoned one?
the less-than important one?
I ask because I'm terrified
of losing more than just
myself .

Self commentary aside, are we not all
two halves of the same loaf of bread?
Destined to grow mold, or become hard and
bitter? Can we not see our own mortality until we
are truly and utterly faced with it?
I know it's just a maze.

And like my Father's son, I am a mouse looking
for cheese in the farthest corners, the deepest
pieces of my own existence.
But like cheese,
and like mice,
one day I will grow old, and wither away.

So brush the dust and burn the fur,
watch my skeleton grey.
Don't mind the mess
from the "accident."
I was never meant to stay.
No, I was never meant to stay at all.

I'm so used to being drowned out
in the sound that has become deafening,
I can't stand it, I can't stand it,
but still I stop in place, so often.

What's stopping me from stopping?
I don't know. Like I've taken a brick to
my skull I can't recall why I would just-   stop.

Maybe it's the breakups, of friendships;
few so rarely understand.
Or maybe it is the weight of the world
on my slowly arthritic hands.

I'm going to be alone forever,
and I think I'm getting used to the thought.

I'm going to be alone forever.

and so
                                     beautiful
                         was the
                                     tree
                         of which
                                    hidden
                         love could
                                    reign,

if I
       could ever
name the
        feeling
of being
         nailed
to a
         wooden
board and
        thrown
into the
        sea.

Similar a Saturno, cuando se comió a sus hijos para no perder su palacio.

Hay una chica tan aterradora, hermosa y divertida que vive en mi mente.

Ella es suave como las flores, y áspera como un arbusto de espinas afiladas. Pero aún así, tan hermosa como una rosa.

Se llama Maga.

Y por alguna razón, ella todavía se ocupa de mi mierda.

I want to lay down in a ditch,
with my balloon and my gun,
wait until the morning comes,
just to watch the sun.

Then I will put it slowly
to my temple, aiming the barrel
like a confetti tube to a birthday long ago.
And in those little hearts was innocence.
We used to play war in the yard.

They never told me how real it would be,
how much it would scar.
God, we used to play war in the yard.