The pressure pressing against the edges of his teeth,
The dry heat of jealousy pounding against his skull,
in the wake of such sensitive times,
he only wishes he would have gone cold before the wind blew his love in the direction of chance.
The hot needle burrowing through his brow,
searing apart flesh and bone
itching at his thoughts before cauterizing them away with hate he never thought he could feel towards the love he cherished.
The love he once felt so close to his heart he mistook it for his own.
The heart he found so bright and strong, he tried to light his way with the warmth he had found.
But the light only fell on the cold damp cave walls of his memory, reminding him that his path of warmth and comfort ends here and now,
before his journey could ever begin,
he would die here, alone.
In a dark cave, with the flickering light he held in his chest,
dimmer and dimmer.
the flickering finally, flicks  dark.
Cold, silent, black.
Splashing the darkness into every space it could fill.
Every space he thought he had filled with light.
Against his chest his fist pounded, trying so desperately to jump start the pump.
To kick the engine back into gear,
but the spark had left him cold and bare.
Naked in the lightless cavern of his thought,
reminding him that he has always been,
and always will be alone in the dark.

to be a stone worn smooth in the bed of a river rushing to parts unknown, save for the banks and bits of cattail being dragged downstream by a million hungry hands, broken up into the smallest constituent parts by a million groping mouths and spit back out into mother ocean's wide accepting embrace and stirred into a stew of bones and various creatures picking them clean, many of which know not the existence of anything above the surface save for warmth and light, like the embryo turning fetus which also swims in a sea of nourishment, also cradled in mother ocean's loving arms, also perfectly content to feel the light of the outside from a distance until, in time, when the descendants of the same coalition of cells that once made up the body of that fetus breaks back down to atoms, flesh feeding new cattails and a million tenacious sets of teeth, slowly washes back into a rushing river where I sit,
a stone worn smooth,

                                                        ­                       watching it all.

So what is the extent to which you killed yourself today
That minor slight incision - did it carry you away
  And if it’s not the pain that makes your body like a drug
Then what is it that causes you to seek that kind of love
You thought it would be easy to detain what you could see
But something else has happened & your mind is not at ease
  I know you want the answers but they never seem to come
At least that’s what you think with all your patience going numb
And now the only remedy you seek is gone before
your limbs can ever feel it, ’til you’re lying on the floor
  Remember you were someone ‘fore you gave up on yourself
The kind of hope you carry’ll never leave you in your Hell

Foggy, windy, madness,
beauty city.
Anything, and everything but calm,
yet I feel so at ease,
and I'm pleased to announce
that today I felt
happy.

As the fog rolled over the trees, buildings, and all that lay between
so very
effortlessly
and the ferocious wind allow not a thing to be still.
The moisture penetrates my bones,
seeping deep in my pores,
refreshing as anything could be.
The sun setting, a sight to see,
walking home with groceries in hand.
How could such moments not consume me?

Now, give me a moment to recollect
the depths of my perception,
what I'd experienced prior to my momentary consumption.
The wind kicked up,
my skirt blew.
I had flashed a silver fox,
he blushed,
as did I.
Much too soon for goodbyes.
We both continued with our lives.

Onward,
into the grocery store,
the cashier asked me from where do I hail.
Just how is it that easy to tell I'm not from these parts?
I never thought myself to carry tourist vibes.
I don't think that's quite it,
I think it to be this look I possess
of wanderlust and pride.
Perhaps my excitement and wonder,
upon observation of my surroundings,
it's all so vibrant,
so alive.
I don't ever want to lose it,
however long I reside here,
I wish to always see it this way.

However long I stay.
May I always feel this way.

"Don't leave out the graphic details."
Oh, trust me. I won't.
The gruesome, disturbing, intimacies.
The bone-chilling, hair-raising fragments.
It's almost too much to bear.
But not quite.
This vulgarity is just enough to keep them on the edge of their seats.
Every tiny, twisted moral of the story.
In between the cracks, find shining slivers of redemption.
Only to immediately cover them up with rotten deception.
Good, ***** flair. Scummy additions. Sick annotations.
Keep the masses rollin' in.
Complexity, concentration, then chaos when they want more fear.
The blood-curdling, stomach-churning truths.
The disgraceful, distasteful deductions.
We've come to the conclusion they crave this coagulation of ****.
Dark disdain eating away at the corpse of wellness.
Vermin, pests, gnawing, slobbering.
Choking on the bones of prosperity.
The decomposition of this life is what they love.
Flies, gnats, swarm. Maggots clump.
Crack, rip, slurp, gag, choke, ******* die.

Walked down to the river at midnight -
Used to be terrified sneaking through that
Lampless village in the dark,
Could hear villains from a horror story calling,
Over the precipice of each passing garden wall.

But now I'm impervious,
Desensitised by hourly hauntings,
Which whisper that my adult brain itself
Is the spectre and the jangly skeleton,
That once lurked round those corners
And chilled my childish bones.

When the sun rises over the mountains,
the air is still cool,
                   meaning that by the end of the day,
                                          when the sun has crossed
                         the main ridge and gives light to
                                    the other side the air is hot
                                                             ­    and dry.
                   This means that trees growing on the
                                         northeast face of any given
                         mountains flourish, while the southwest face
                                                        is generally left barren-

              there are, however, always a few brave
                                    tufts of foliage
                         who dare to challenge the
                                                       infernal heat
                                        and survive.

                                                       ­                                      so too,
                                                            ­                        with people.

Life.

Life is, at its best and its worst, pure, unadulterated madness. The moments when we laugh and cry or we cry and laugh. The moments when we scream at the top of our lungs. The moments when we smile sadly. The moments when we collapse on the floor because it's all too much.

Love.

Love changes so much. From the first embrace of a warm body, kicking and screaming, to the last. From being loved to loving, yourself, and then loving yourself. And all of them are as different as the colors in the rainbow- gradient shades of warming light. Many things of one kind- or maybe many kinds of one thing.

But here we are. Where else would we be- no, Where else could we be? And here it all is. Just where we left it. Like coming home from vacation to find not a crumb out of place.
We are dynamically static, waves in an ocean, snowflakes in a blizzard, grains of sand in the wind-whipped dunes.

Together we hum a vibrant chord in the key of being, the vibrating thrum of bees busy at work to keep the scaffolding of what is from collapsing.

And here we all are. Here we are and everything is different but nothing has changed.

Where else could we be?

Uninspired,
I lie a vacant, lonesome, callous shell.
When the wind hits, I am crumbled,
crushed,
dust in the breeze.
I am nothing.
I've left no trace,
no mark,
no meaning
in this world,
although still cursed with the audacity to plead remembrance.