Silence is my biggest enemy.
Can't you hear my cry?
So many times I have lost my words
Only to find them on a tip of a knife.
Never leave me alone.
I long for death.
Something is confronting
About the forever dark.
My metal friend
Calls me to end it all.
My friends trapped in bottles
Promise me a way out.
Just a little deeper
Just one more pill
They all screaming at once.
My head is foggy
My hands are ******
How much more can I take?  
Never leave me alone
I long for death.

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

We are being put at our limits
No where to turn except to the hate, pain, and suffering.
Because everywhere we go it haunts us.
We can't even be positive if we try,
'Cause behind the happiness
Is where the negativity lies.
We are told "Sometimes you have to go though the darkness of the tunnel to get to the light."
But why have to go through that pain?
Because someone else wanted to hate?
All the pain does is break you down into the littlest of the bread crumbs fed to a pigeon at a local park.
And what if we don't get to the light at all?
'Cause our limits are shattered and broken beyond compare,
Never to be fixed.

long hugs* like anchors to keep me steady out on turbulent seas
2. dance music that beats my heart to basslines injected with adrenaline
3. warm weather that holds me close with gentle breezes and sunshine kisses
4. bright colors like neon signs in dark rooms and old toys and cartoons
5. love songs for strangers with deep smiles across crowded rooms
6. stained glass windows of churches because God gave humans eyes for beauty
7. long drives with good music and good imagination for good thoughts/good talks
8. bath bombs that color me beautiful, perfumes and pinks and blues
9. tomato soup + grilled cheese that melt in mouths and keep cold hands toasty
10. heavy summer rain drenching everything without chilling bones to the marrow
11. reading for hours on end with the steady mantra "one more chapter, one more..."
12. slam poetry that reaches out to souls and empathy, connecting melodies to bodies
13. holding hands, fingers tucked between so skin sticks with affectionate friction
14. purring cats that keep away all the depressive episodes
15. round stones like lost dragon eggs waiting to be furnaced into new life
16. fresh laundry with warm hoodies and the simple motion of folding clothes
17. the moon and her pale smile, a reminder that the sun is still there
18. swing sets in any setting, ghosts of children of memories on worn ropes
19. fresh flowers that sit in grocery stores waiting to be the highlight of a day
20. hot leather car seats that stick to sweaty thighs on sweltering summer days

*21. one-line poems written in the belly of nighttime on too-hot summer nights, counting down the days and counting up the stars, crossing fingers in 'x's over slowly-beating hearts.

The bars and stars and cars and races.
The dates and states and quakes and phases.
The quirks and shakes and guilts that stack like spinning plates.
(Not everybody makes it.)

When they come crashing down, just look for a broom.
If you use your hands you'll get blood all over the floor,
(and we don't bleed over lost causes anymore.)

I am lost.
Trapped in an ocean.
Waves of depression,
Crash against my heart.

There’s a lighthouse,
But she won’t show me the way.
The tide is coming in.
It rushes through me.

I see the coast,
But I can’t reach it.
The salt water stops me.
I am drowning.

- kmh