I.
******* just think if Van Gogh had taken anti-depressants
he might not have painted and *******
if I had said "No" loud enough I might never
have picked up a camera and

II.
******* if I hadn't been the reason my ****** never killed herself -
and ******* if you didn't take a step back when I said "her" -
******* I wouldn't be fighting for **** all and holy
**** if anyone had said something when I started going quiet
and

III.
******* we call ourselves artist's because we create and
******* we create because we were destroyed but
******* I will go to hell before I will call my ******
my muse.

I.
The world dropped away and may have dropped out of existence,
but when the plane landed it was reality as hard and cold as it comes.

II.
Reality, as soft and warm as possible,
blue bottled sakè, gentle hands, the music as loud as a foghorn, the night air -
through the windows, cold as hell but brilliant.
City lights are brighter when you're laughing.

Stop when red lights flash.

Stop lights;
when red flash.

Stop lights.
Stop lights.
Warning lights.

You should have ******* listened.

I.
And I finished the playlist I made for you.
It's lovely, once you listen
seven times.

II.
I appreciated when you told me nothing would change but
may never know if you were lying.

III.
If you believed that,
did you also believe I was the one changing things?

I.
There will be enough breath in you to shout,
and there will be enough people who love you to listen.

I.
You do not have to speak to your ****** again as long as
time lasts,
probably.

II.
You are
legitimately safe now.

III.
You have never felt so jumpy.

I.
You're more than you think you are.

II.
You're discarding me and it's alright.

III.
I must deserve it if you think it's right.

IV.
I will dig my nails into my own skin the way you did.

I.
Wet dreams will be fifty percent nightmare. You do not bleed but there will be blood.
Conceptualizations of the violent as ****** the ****** as violent.
You are the word survivor but you are not thinking about your **** when you put your hands between your legs.

II.
If you handcuff yourself they cannot do it again; your wrists are already occupied.
If you leave bruises dark as night on your own legs the yellow ones they pressed there do not compare and they have become weak.
A candle in a cathedral blown out is not darkness until the wax has cooled.

III.
You will become a protest ground, occupy your own body. It is not empowerment it is defense. The Russians burned cities in the wake of their retreat and it was not brave.
You will stand in your own ashes because you are better than an army (you wish you believed it).
Thus shall be your prayer, an offering of your own entrails lain upon an altar to yourself.

IV.
You have a dream that your childhood house burns down and it’s exciting, there’s a second where you feel wind and the heat and you breathe deep.
Destruction is euphoric. To shrug material is to shrug some semblance of sentiment.
Memories change in retrospect and we are made not by the other but by ourselves. Decontextualization is a falsehood.

V.
You are nothing if not connections between all you have witnessed; therefore, witness yourself.
Become worship to your actions, your body. Expect the things you expect of a deity and when you touch forces powerful enough to hurt you become that force. You are constructed and thusly you may construct yourself by your choosing.
Play god with your own guts. Trust me, you have swallowed stars and you have swallowed ****, the pain it takes to cut them out of your stomach will be well worth it when you lay them across your bedroom floor.

VI.
You are all tenses (past, present, future) but you are not tense (on edge, high strung, stressed).
The only commitment you have made is yourself.
For what do words and kisses mean against occupation of a form?

VII.
You don’t remember a period in which time passed at a constant rate perhaps because it never did and perhaps because memory foregoes time.
Time in waiting rooms is gone from your head.
Doctor’s offices are half your adolescence and they are erased; you are not sad for it.

VIII.
There was a point when you wrote love poetry for your ****** and it said in a million ways “I want your feelings for me,” and then you did not want them.
You stopped wanting them.
You did not stop loving but you do not love with everything because it is an invitation.

IX.
This is not for the masses, for you must hold your own mass. Harmonize against your own hymnals and confess to your bathroom mirror.
You do not drink communion wine and yet you lick your wounds. Drink deep, gorge yourself on yourself. Become giddy with it.
You are red wine, you are power, you are a stimulant and a depressant at the same time. You are the ebb and flow of tidal waves and you are the shore they destroy (later, you will be the shore they create). You are every force of nature and there is no necessity for comparison because you are also every force of man.