I am dead.
Why does my heart insist on beating?

red lights
are not near sights.

I am told for color
shows meaning-
blue gleaming,
magenta
beaming
and a hue of orange
reminding me that existence is
okay.
For now.

How do you see color?
Is it that which stops you,
or that which sets you apart?

There are eyes that confront,
but there is no remorse.

Brown carries a negative connotation
and so the story carries on.
There will be eyes of this coloration,
but rarely a tale of happiness.

The theories behind formulas
don't take emotions into consideration.
It's kind of a misappropriation,
if you think about it,

We spend lives following
sequences, patterns, developments.
But we're only becoming dense
as we're hollowing.

I wish to love
as I wish to breathe.

I wish to love
as I want to believe.

This unreachable constellation
is a similar misappropriation.

I am a ball of yarn
hopelessly tangled
and
ignored.

You are a seamstress-
weaving optimism
and pragmatic emotion
for the forlorn.

I'm fueled by
cheap cold cuts
and cracked cans
of beans,
of beers,
and being below
the line of uneven
distribution//////

retribution.

There's a bit of execution
in the way a anti-institution
peels of its mask
and reveals revolution.

I don't know why the prism
is cracked
but
the shattered shards
glimmer & commentate
why we
can only see shades.

There's an anchor.
It's pulling me
closer
and
further away.

There must be a way out.

Because one time,
there was just water.
There were
just molecules.

How they fit together so
anatomically.

And now
how can they divide
so promiscuously?

It's as if the door
has been sealed
with the visions of future.

It's as if
there was never
any way to be sure.

There can't be.

Beg, borrow, and steal.
There's many ways to conceal
the distorted image
life has shone
mystically.

This is all a mystery.
I don't know if audible waves
are what the ocean brings.

There are only things.

There are only those
who sting.

And for those that blindly sing,
there are only things.

wanting everything and
nothing
all together
and
unraveling entire
fabrics
by a single string.

how confusing
it is
to replace
dry, cracking knuckles
with magnifying glasses.

how soothing it is
to lean unseen
behind the masses.

these walls
might as well be mirrors.

there is no escape
from the cells
of the skin.

there's just a hope
that shedding
will provide
a way
to untangle the fabric.

wax-coated tables
sealed with stains of
vinegar, cheese
and questions from my father

what is his story

Behind every story
there is struggle
betwixt highlighted glory.

snowy hills,
mountain peaks,
laughter.

there was a drain
******* it all away
as if today was always
a black and white yesterday.

and so I brought red into the equation.
a knife-
bringing dormant veins
to life.

silence is the loudest
silence is the saddest
alone and dragged
unwillingly
down one-way streets

chemicals misfiring.
They don't understand
development of false wiring.

The blueprints had shined-
there were smiles in between the notes.
The eights were serotonin,
the wholes were adrenaline.

Silence still screamed.
When nothing speaks for years,
the crust rusts eyes
like the underside
of the old Ford
in dad's shop.

Beats,
kisses,
*****.

The rust spread north
as my extremities
fell to the ocean floor.

I fear I cannot float on
any longer.

Somewhere between
pills,
plastic,
a princess,
and polycentric support
was the epicenter.

It tasted like fudge
on a warm winter evening
by the fireplace.

The silence still screams-
I doubt it will ever cease.
But the secret is always knowing
that the sun still shines during sleep.

this is where he lies;
this is his story-
betwixt his struggle
love,
art,
and
invisibly,
blinding glory

alone.
I have no semblance of home.

There is nothing in
thickets
that covers
my disfiguration of a disposition.

I will lie
against the grain
and fight
for feigned love.

Nothing loves me
and I love nothing.

I am filing cabinets
infinitely.

I am faking smiles
ardently.

When the end comes
there will be teeth
separated from lips
genuinely.

I am bound by
two brick strings
and a
receipt
of red ink.

There is nothing
about the future that presents this.
Only that which has occurred
to a stomached stirred
preventing any glimpse of bliss.

I'm only calling
the names in the distance.

There's a shift of relevance
and it's delicate.

Those who can't record
the revolution
are too busy
lighting the rooftops
ablaze.

Who are you
to tell me the verdict
of a case
held within a suitcase
enclosed by vines
and repression?

I suppose it's somewhat
of an obsession,
if one can be so apathetic.

It's not pathetic.
I understand a panic,
but when the sirens sound,
would you even care?
Would you sit me down
on a slab of cracked concrete
and be able to caulk and sew
anything that would seep?

Or would I be left at sea?

I suppose one without emotion
cannot feel empathy.

So with my lowly, unholy,
hollowed-out chest,
I lie on the melting asphalt
pooling
and
always becoming warmer
to sweat through
another fever.

There was a beginning.

I was stringing.
There were threads,
but there was something simply dead.
I can't say I had any idea
of its permanent location.

What are we to say of any deceased?
Is there something to observe
about those whom have failed at living?

But it's the ultimate goal.
If a pearl exists within the oyster,
it breathes nonexistent
persistently.

The difference between fear and sadness
is some blurry line.

If happiness is there,
why do I not cognisize
what it takes to epitomize?

The oyster sits.
I will wait.
Life will hate
at altruistic bait.

I dont' know.

There's so little difference between
frowns and freckles now,

It's like stepping on aluminum
cans ripped opened
by cigarette smoke
and my attempted assimilation
have manifested
some profound sadness.

There are no butterflies in the field.
There is no text on the line.
There is a coyote
working the lines
until dawn breaks,
shaking my world yet again.

If only the power would give.
If only the can had no bottom.
If only there was never a romance
of egg and *****
forcing this ringworm
of a human being.

I have dropped my value.
I have lost my voice.
I have lost my fingerprints.
I have boiled too soon.

I have taken a heart
and I have chewed it
dry.

Even the wounds die.

there's no instruction manual
for the day that cotton and
broken ceramic sentimentality
both lose their argument
and the bedsheets bleed
a blood better resembling magenta
than a dream-filled agenda.

there's no escape when
night time travels
come to an end.

there's nothing to knit.
Enough of the yarn
has covered cortexes,
capitalized on insomnia,
and nullified touch-
the only common sense.

it's common sense
that bruises don't heal
by applying pressure.

and brown eyes
and blue.
formerly, there is
underrated hue.

(If underrated could ever encapsulate oceans and the stars giving us light abundantly and concurrently from millions of years away.)

i unravel years as I lie
not sleeping,
reading up on different methods
to stop the bleeding.

of all of these shades of vibrant blue,
I choose the one that is brown,
but true.

i see these shades in unison
and when they inexplicably combine,
they are you.

Life is tough but death creeps
on you like a spattered image of
your yesterday's self
on the concrete
mixed with paste and oil
and buried under six feet of cemented soil.

And when we can we are able.
And we assure apathy
is a right and not psychopathy.

We are able to identify with those
who do not feel.

All of my voices have told me to shy away.
They don't truthfully know what to say
when dying leads to something far more gratifying
than any euphoric rush of ephemeral dopamine.

We are unseen.
We live in dreams.
We touch with enough distance
to transform an absence of rust
into decay and indifference.

The path ahead is limited.
Lying six feet underground
is not adequate recreation,
nor daily transportation.

And so you ask my preference,
I'd choose my comfy bed.
But for repercussions rampant,
I continue to walk while dead.

My gums hurt-
the toothache is hard to swallow
when we
mend the broken bones
with the loose change in the couch
and the buttons from
worn out cargo shorts.

Take standard biology,
an ideal economy,
and authentic authonomy
with a grain of salt.

We can't find or feed
while we bleed.
It seeps from cortexes
into yesterday,
into today,
into some
puddle
huddled around the fire
for warmth.

We melt just as the ice cubes
in your lemonade
on days
where
nostalgia has no
tranquil, oaky shade.

Stand at the length of lions.
Its breath is about as tolerable
as greed is swallowable.

While these dreams go hungry,
we feast.

While wolves
eat our spines as meat,
we are sheep
turning yellow from the heat.

There is rain
and it is Saturday.
But that's no excuse for shame.
Nor is it more of an excuse
to watch self-inflicted wound
run loose.

I think of the sweet
crackling of
a summer treat-
branches burning,
newspaper receding.
THC,
butane
and stems of
a neglected yesterday
meeting.

But today is what's to be missed.
There are floods-
even on the weekends.

I am a floating hoax;

I will always be
a box of half-peeled jokes.

To flourish within this exposed state
is to self-paralyze and re-create.

But the nerves just don't want to listen-
that's the biggest part of the condition.

This explains rain on Saturdays,
absence within summer's crackling,
and hollow bones
floating like stones.

With luck
my torn skin will reach the ocean floor.

The echo of such a collision
will resemble my
inconceivably
indifferent
indecision.

What a florescent, evanescent adolescence.
If only I could see.

I'm not taken aback by the beauty of the sun or moon.

But that's okay, at least I've learned in time that there are very little differences between objects labeled mine and days considered wasted time. Entitlement is a false concept paralleling a religious purgatory.

That's not the point anyways. I'm left with unbearable heat and a pool of thoughts best resembling some sort of molten pudding left out in the sun for weeks of stifling inattention.

Let it just be known that the smell was not my intention.

Regardless of what fills your nostrils ephemerally, keep in mind that this stench haunts me perpetually. It's apathy towards my sensitive skull stifles me. It's as if I was able to just shake off these shadow-inducing invaders like a bad habit. But no matter how much you try to **** a shadow, it's always there following you. Breathing on you. Casting oxygen upon your neck until there's nothing but sweat and fear left to expose.

With such an affinity to what darkness lies behind me, there are few words to authentically compose.

How can I continue? How can the beat stay in rhythm and my words stay in tune when I'm a butterfly stuck in a cocoon? If these hollowed walls could speak I bet they'd entertain the idea on meaningless entrapment.

Go now. My words for this horrid state of mind have run dry. They do nothing but mask themselves and then exponentially multiply.

So leave me for the beauty of the sun and the moon. I'll never wish anything more than a simple, concurrent release of everyone from his or her respective cocoon.

They say that she will be.
And as far as I can see,
I'm sheltered
by some rugged,
broken
skeleton of a
body containing skin.

So how can love be released?
Every day of absorption
but nothing
but self-bullying
blown miles
out of proportion.

Soft skin can
pass love and passion;
but it's the thick,
rugged
flesh
your subconscious
seems to remember.

I am a fingernail
covered in cayenne
bitten to the core.

I am a neuron
running into walls
in a room with no door.

I am
the feeling in your gut
the last time you felt sick.

I am
the feeling in your heart
when it does not tick.

I am a broken tea ***
boiling cold water.

I haven't seen July in years
and yesterday was no different.

The same birds
loving
and
resting before migration
violently pecked
at my skin.

The flesh never breaks,
and the engine never takes.

I never look at the sky.
I've been told there is beauty
in flight
and feathers
and people.

But I would rather stay inside.
Walls contain the chirping
from the caring
and I can sleep
forever.

My skin is worn and torn
like a coniferous seed
waiting to grow
into
a towering pine
and then into
a ream of paper
that mostly just
becomes crumpled
individually
and thrown out
like a heart
bleeding far too frequently,
forcefully gushing itself
onto innocent polypropylene
white as purgatory.

My new soft shell
is slowly reborn.

I can't provide comfort
with bulging ****** knuckles
and fingertips burnt,
scarred,
and eyesight that
is mediocre at best.

My hands have seen enough days
to bandage abrasion
and let go of hate.

My detachment never ceases;
but to pick up the slack
of a nervous system gone bad
is to live a deciduous life
perpetually changing seasons.

there are two ways to breathe.

one is through the splinters.
the carved out,
thickly bleeding
respiratory tract
receding.

a futile attempt to enjoy the air
blown over like
a house with
no foundation.

the other is to
close your eyes.
and hope
that the hurricane
does not
cut off oxygen.

because
nirvana
is not a choice.

it is an island
somewhere deep in the ocean
waiting to be discovered.

black ties
don't absorb sunlight
like their counterparts.
There are
instead
bullet holes.
and a man that can't breathe.

But this isn't simply
business casual.
It's a boost in morale
for hollow hearts
and the whipped counterparts.

My hands are free, my hands are free
Keep open eyes and remember me
And rage against this machine
that makes me seem
like I'm everything
they want me to be.

Apathy
is not
pathetic.

Apathetic
is
nothing less than pandemic.
But
nothing less common
than soles wearing out
between hot, molten asphalt
and the swellling skin.

you've been begging to just cave in.

But I can't live and not care.
Fiction is nothing to compare-
except all of the scenery that matters.

A horizon is subjective.
So the billboards
and the spider chords
have still taught me nothing.

I am opening my eyes to the green.
I am shaking like a lantern unseen.
I am a seed
planted on top of a building
waiting for sunlight.

I don't seem to belong.
To the beating hearts, the
worn out, dirt-stained,
wry,
perpetually filthy
bluejeans.
I just am.
And how can that be enough?
I am a sheep in a flock
without such a heart.
For if wool covered potential,
any of my skin would be detrimental.
How can such a beast feel
stuck between an
immovable slab of concrete
and what is actually real.

Listen to life unapologetically.
For if there is no response,
remorse may go unmuted,
but unheard.
The only problem
worth deeming absurd
is that I was given this
flesh-filled, ruddy red *****
with a broken bridge
leading a trite path
to spoken word.

I'm not too inclined to write.
Because my roots lie deep in soil
unmended
and highly offended by such
apathetic precipitation. Approximating that
any hint of hope
was barren.

So a love life-
one, call her wife.
She austerely abided by permanency
despite omnipresent strife.
There was simply no life.
Nothing.
Not an attempt to stick it out
past
imaginary doubt.
All when you were
all my life was about?

Days of
ferris wheels
and
tickled squeals
bring on such sweet strength.
But I can't say anything
blunted the light
more than your shadow.

I digress.

It's always been a battle
My blind past,
they say,
shows only decay.

If green is still visible,
on a day chemically dismal
remember
that still
I'm not inclined to write.

and the sun
will only be seen in dreams

there's no light under trees,
but my eyelids have been pinned open
by a selfish seamstress
and scarce serotonin.

My arm first seen on shoulder
Kevin and Jason,
colored suitcases,
and two leaves
visible on a broken clover.

A molten cluster of
grotesque villains
inside the head
of the woman
who claimed to breathe in mountains,
but lived in photo albums instead.

She's always arbitrarily weeping.
Maybe that's why I'm never sleeping.

It's when the eyes of the world are closed
when the tornadoes of altriusm emerge.
While conscious kindness does exist,
its appreciation sounds more like a dirge.

A soul tirelessly torn to pieces
will erase widespread fear
and bring the dormant soul
alive and aware
of every changing season.

the sun
only exists in dreams

but the stars
will illuminate
everything your eyes will ever see.

There are
daisies in fields
and
two lips
that won't align.

As honeybees,
how can we predict the right fit?
Pollination
is so much more
than a one-night stand.

There are supernovas in indecision.
There are apathetic nights awake.
that end
muddy
and wrapped around telephone poles.

The hand that will pick,
nurse
and water
will be
a hand slaughtered.

A new flower only blossoms with water
and rigorous concentration.
Good intentions just aren't enough these days.

You're in bloom,
your pistil rises and grabs the sun
like a new promotion.

Mine lies on the top shelf of my closet.
And sharp mahogany corners
don't bring me closer to any answers.

My kindred, my barren love
some meaningless God,
voided by logic and chemicals-
I have been told to plant my roots
within their soil.

They have been told to reach for me
just outside of arms length.

Absence doesn't make use weary-
it reveals to us the vast pastures
within mahogany boxes-
it manifests the bittersweet drought
I have swallowed like a jagged pill.

I watch you bloom in violent meadows.
I concentrate by daydreaming.
This way,
when blood fills all the small spaces,
the guilt won't **** the minerals
from vibrant, naïve roots.

I can't say
my voice has been stolen.
Only frozen.

Somewhere between
the solidification
and the crystallization
was a frigid realization.

Sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
at the 32 degrees.

Sometimes sciences takes a back seat
to  the once-broken, since mended knees.

The mind will fight
but the pen still scribbles a right,
or a wrong,
or something recyclable taken away yesterday.

Now-parallel incomprehensible darkness.
with a voice once frozen.

The light will relentlessly hide
as the rain will inevitably fall.
The frostbite will blacken,
but
you
will
stand
tall.

She stared at me and said "it's all right"
but she was not right.

She told me about the haze.
She told me about darker days.
She told me about my terrible self-esteem.

She doesn't know.
Push and flow
and gregariously go.

She doesn't know
Push comes to shove
and I infinitely disappear.

We all long for a disappearance.
So a companion will exit,
but I will self-medicate.

We all long for a disappearance
So I'll keep the safety on
and remind myself to wait.

Green eyes
and velvet pastures
just weren't enough.

My greatest surmise
is that faucets
just didn't emit the right temperature.

The puzzle pieces
were just some false expenditure-
some meaningless adventure.

I don't know why roses sting.
There's just always a reason
to ignore the sun.

You are a bird flying near.
A simple graze of my arm
a feather kept, a loss of fear.
And this is not temporary.

You are a parade.
Your trumpets, your drums
reinventing the copyrighted charade.
It's not a trick-it's rudimentary.

You are fresh squeezed lemonade.
When the sweat cannot be quelled,
you forge trees for shade.
But speaking of you is just supplementary.

You are the long drive back.
Every worm in the miles of dirt
can hear this counterattack-
especially those four days of January.

You are my trustworthy veins,
our frivolously necessary games,
and the smell of relentless rains.

These senses, put blunt yet gently,
manifest nothing less than your infinite trajectory.

What shapes do you think of
when you sit under trees?
Blunt corners, forgiving curves-
a fluctuation that never seems to ease.

Do we circle in repetition?
Or is self defeat
a mirage of an inhibition?

The lines sometimes will never touch.
But this lack of closure
does not discount your right
to an ameliorative crutch.

I wasn't born ready
for a faulty diagnosis
or bare shoulders.

My hand was born unsteady-
sweating like a prisoner tortured,
and always forgetting left from right.

Just like you
I was placed here.

You with a broken spine,
an affinity to wine
or a love lost too soon.

For me,
it was less.

A spine mended,
some superstition suspended,
but wires that have never connected.

I don't know
if we'll ever be ready.
But that won't ever stop me
from attempting to keep my hand steady.

A hero is,
someone who uses four letter words.
And her sundress
requested far more than
four measly words.

Her answer was not my question.
but what if I never wanted to ask?
Could I have shriveled up my eyes
into a spirit hiding in my flask?

(Join us in tragedy,
and end us in comedy.
Leave us
in such ambivalent irony.)

But we had our times
and our guts were spilled.
I (don't remember any pollen)
that Spring) don't often remember Spring.

I can't discredit
how crooked you bent me.
But you played the most crucial part
in folding my fingers and toes
into the shapes that should be.

A horizon and a half to see-
he's putting mind over matter,
and I think it might matter.
But how is one to find out?

Does the Jellyfish not sting,
or the caged bird sing?

My answers are not confident,
despite some marvelous attempt.
I'm still held in contempt
over a crime drowned below the surface.

She raised the platform, fortunately.
And unfortunately,
she was only there hypothetically.

(She still has no idea

…

okay, I ate the last chocolate.
***** me.)

Next time,
I'll catch you if you fall.
And cage you if you sing.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A
bone
slowly
woke
just
in
time
to
become
br­ok(en).
Once spoken,
there's no point
of lending an ear.
There'll be a violent
jerking of the wheel,
deceptive *** appeal,
and an unrequited (love).
Now, unwillingly,  it's open.
The rhyme is deliberately late,
but it's not tardy enough to satiate
Swelling lungs-we're just getting started.
Both for respiratory and broken-hearted.
Here, we speak of energy-specifically kinetic
Because you can't live in love and good faith
with right hemisphere real, and left prosthetic.
AND THAT'S WHERE THIS BEAUTIFULLY KICKS IN.
Picking up faster and quicker and clearer
and headlights have never come nearer.
But I'll be somewhat content lying at rest.
While lively and enthusiastic is best,
unemployed potential is all I can be.
It's something to unwillingly see.
You'll watch the clean breaks
as the marrow escapes.
As I steadily gush
onto pavement
you'll see
how
idle
I
can
really
be.
As
I

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I've been evanescent:
an irrelevant adolescent.
I've felt this for years,
through tardive tears,
rusted shears,
and too much time ducking in the shade.

Sometimes,
I just don't know if it's worth it.
My bed holds me closer than anyone,
and she can't repair the cuts on my fingertips.
(Nor can she silence the creeks or the drips.)

In memory and in reflection,
we hide from present affection.
But I'll invite the bullet,
and accept your kiss.
(For it is all I've wanted
for as long as the recent past recalls.)
For there's an electric hue in your cheeks:
a cunning current vibrating my days into weeks.

You complain of certain self-distortion,
and blow mindless fault out of proportion.
But as the facts would have it,
you are the brightest sun on record.

I am relevant.
I can and will scream loud enough to be heard.
But I will mute beautifully for you.
I will absorb every cell of your existence
with each auspiciously soothing word.

Close the curtains.

It's not that I'm not ready to see the crowd yet, it's that they've paid their hard earned money to stare straight through me. This facade doesn't have to be; the curtain call is nothing to see, and the shadows have always provided such well-articulated shade.

A facade. A facade.

A charade. We are all poor players, but do we symbolize the dreams of the wealthy?

Or does it signify nothing?

There's no applause, and suddenly I'm no longer there. The senseless tension doesn't deserve determined attention. Besides, there hardly ever seems to be retention or a momentum that carries us easily into the next sunrise. At least, that's my most honest surmise.

And I can't say it's a surprise.

So visualize-there's a hole in your heart and it slowly gets patched by white marble from the dam. ****, what a thought-so much calcium carbonate and still so much relentless nausea accompanying dendral rot. I've had just about all I can hear on the subject of everything not falling apart.

Are our hearts so ephemerally wilted or permanently jilted?

I understand that I've had no filter. But you need to understand how sick I am of winter.

I hear you had an affinity to ink.
As I did
to whatever laid below
the creaky kitchen sink.

The first words
filled with the highest crescendos,
the blurriest jokes,
and an indifference
that connected archipelagos.

Your open pastures came sooner than fit
and all the cows were shocked by it.
The foundations your tendons
helped meticulously construct
were but a marvelous crack
in his narrow-minded speck of dust.
(And how it pained me every day to see the rust.)

But there was always a chrome polish
waiting patiently where you least expected.
And the kindling revealed your shine.
And your sentences naturally rhymed.
Your shores,
full of plastic bags and
oil-stained rags
had found miles of red rubies.

I would freeze for her infinite summer,
but I stand here motionless-
oozing self-doubt
miles away from her.

Am I nothing more than a plateau?
Rising in exuberant expectation,
gliding with excessive perspiration,
and then decaying like past-due precipitation.

Let's return to where I was when my tongue wasn't so hollow. Where the pills weren't nearly as hard to swallow. To think so deeply is both a curse and a blessing, and there's no wound dressing for nostalgia in negative space. But when I scrape my knee again can you lend an ear? I think I feel it coming. I feel the past flowing through my veins like a sharp shot of dope under a dimly-lit causeway. The grass of the lawn that I used to play on is starting to grow on my back and seep into my scarce serotonin, and I really need someone to regularly attend to it. Mow it on an altruistic sunny day with the kids running around you and laughing. Pull the weeds out when I end up staying past midnight working on the file reports for all the others that can't seem to find their authentic reflection either.

I'm back there in the woods. There was something about the fragile, half-broken branches lying on the ground that made me feel understood. I don't know if it was the demeanor or the distance. I couldn't hear the angry screech of an eighteen pack or decipher the blue from the black. It was the furthest thing from my favorite noose or the truth of the love around me cut loose.

It was the days that my brother and I would congruently comply. We'd go into the backyard and have no foreshadowing of tissues scarred. We'd run and we'd laugh and we never looked back. We'd continue into the night because we didn't care that we couldn't see the grass stains anymore. The obscurity of the look on my face could perhaps explain why I have always blended into the background with such effective camouflage. When mom did call us in to shower of the dirt, there wasn't yet blood on her shirt. She smiled, and I remember her smile so well. So little to say and so much to tell.

The funny thing is that he wasn't around back then either. He was trapped in a time long before the doctors detected my first pulse. Somewhere in this streak of gray hair and emotional despair was a feeling so strong that it was drinking itself to death to reveal its true colors and stillborn brothers. But oh God, how I loved Christmas morning. Under the array of strings of lights and the daytime not seeming as lonely as the nights, there was not a hostile bone in the human body. There was simply a long forgotten innocence filled with cinnamon buns, coffee that stayed a little warmer than usual in the Kureg, and the cats rolling around in the piles of wrapping paper like they were the ball-pits at the McDonald's both ways down the street. It was the clack of a controller. My favorite friends beating games in one night and sleeping over. It was wiffleball  games right after the nights where I'd two whole boxes of Mac and Cheese. It was sledding down the tallest hill in town on the days where the ice held your head up high and didn't need any praise, or even a reply. It cared nothing for the size of the nails on my feet, my favorite band on repeat, or the broken wooden bridge between my amygdala and frontal cortex. r

But then I remembered that those days exists only in two places: my memory and my dreams. Was I in a hopeless daze in the middle of the street or did I have my favorite fleece blanket for heat? As the crust in my eyes slowly broke away at the seams, I received my answer. It was a fate that seemed equal to a vicious and malignant cancer.

I was awake for another day. The humidity of my dorm room danced across my skin like a bead of sweat anxiously running down the back of my neck and spine. I remembered the concrete line drawn between this world and the one in my head, turned my body so that the morbid did not seem fully dead, and connected my foot with the frigid ground and didn't make a sound. I had two grocery carts and a porcelain tub full of responsibility, yet I found myself frozen and void of mental mobility.

I didn't know what to say when I started my days anymore. So I brushed my teeth, remained mute, and walked out the door.

She marches to no beat-
a purpose seemingly incomplete.
If she challenges her every breath,
is she not obsolete?

I can't say that I don't understand.
Weaving  bruised patches on a quilt
with a jagged stone in each hand
is enough to fill a riverbed with blood.

With such an affinity to this bed of rocks,
who am I to judge?

But you.
There is nothing more to hate
in agreeing that you hold such a fate.
If a smile is the only emotional currency,
how can you not shine brighter than gold?

She marches on against the current.
She wades in the winter wanderlust.
She is a beacon of cerulean light,
and a cup of warm coffee
on a red eye flight.

The ice sheet that covers your bones
is the warmest blanket
on a winter night.
If the gate is ever open,
I'll never cease to highlight
your tranquilizing, infinite light.

If you asked me what I missed,
could I say anything at all?

Homework
and lost words.
Homeward.
and Route 12,
northbound.
Your smile poking its way through.
The tight black skirt,
more cleavage than tee shirt.
A walk or two,
and a view, straight through.
A meticulous routine to undress;
the wood-pellet stove keeping it hot.
The butterfly that was never caught.
Every box of Mike & Ikes bought.
An arbitrary laugh, a foreshadowing sunset-
a neck full of bruises and sweat.
The mocha-chip Thursday Nights at eight.
All the way back to a single Ferris wheel-
an ironically fatal first date.

If you asked me what I miss,
would I say anything at all?

I know a girl or two.

There's the girl that will dance.
She will mend your withering bones,
and deduct the sticks from the stones
But the teal and black
will always bring memories back.

There's the girl that will lie.
Your adolescent hand
held tighter by a broken rubber band.
The queen of "would-be"
indifferently using your insecurity
as a blunt tool of jealousy.

There's a girl who will give you hope.
Indirectly teaching you everything
while transforming your dreams
into bits of meaningless string.
The apathy with every rainy night,
the cracked fingernails and
every hollowed-out fight.

There's a girl who will actually care.
She'll  waltz and she'll swing
and her open wounds will sing.
A hand to help open the cocoon-
the glowsticks that lit up
the unyielding light of the moon.

There's a girl that will tease.
Opening her scabby heart,
taking a hit,
and a forgetting the broken part.
She won't care if you're there;
she'll show her bruises anywhere.

But most importantly,
there's a girl you haven't met yet.
She's tethered in between
your adolescent regret
and everything unseen.
Your journey towards finding her light
is only slightly out of sight.

I know a girl or two.
But the one I haven't meant yet
is the one who will give my life
it's dormant, yet effervescent hue.

I still wonder how to calm my thoughts.
They sprint the tightrope with closed eyes,
remind me of every note screamed,
and bring me back to size.

Her passive-aggressive nerve.
How did I never swerve
and fill the forest
with my blood and good intentions?

I'd come home with a red rose,
or maybe a few.
The only sentence she could compose
was how my hands smelt
of feta and bleach.
There was no closure,
but I had no composure.
The secret is that I still don't.

I have no regrets.
But I still wonder pensively
why I haven't wrapped myself
around that alluring oak tree.

It's around 2:30 now
and a few years have passed,
but I still reek of feta and bleach.

I am thankful for media chips,
and memories of lips;
of still mornings,
and warm warnings.

I am thankful for lightning,
for every bit of string,
a feeling of self-autonomy,
and the stars I see.

I am thankful for the hope,
college and all its dope;
for your hand there,
and the wear and tear.

I am thankful for this noose,
and my ability to tie it loose.

Depression? Sure, that's tough.
But honestly,
all I ever wanted was to be enough.

Each moment recalled.
Each late night, computer-installed,
with stunning fireworks,
and a missed train, stalled.
She was just always so
appalled.

And when I do recall,
some stupid trip to the mall
or the seventieth missed call,
I just can't think
of anything else
but how I hate
your vicious attempt to assimilate,
your inevitable success,
and that honeybee yellow dress.

How I lost all of those years
wiping away all of her livid tears.

A knife,
or just another unwashed dish.
The leftover fish
had her looking more
like a side dish.

And watching me
slowly disappear
with a conscious clear.

Even the malicious robins will find rest
as the kindest worms hope for the best.
But to be eaten up and tossed back down,
leaves any earthworm broken,
anxiously wishing to drown.

I'll take mind and matter
to erase the glass that will shatter.
It's not about what he or she said,
or the dollar sign on your forehead.

It’s care.
It's in there.
Somewhere.

It's somewhere in between
my best friends
and our fifty inch flat screen.
It's Always Sunny or Halo?

It's somewhere right beneath
this broken layer of myelin sheath.
You are enough. Never forget that.

It's somewhere above, up there
where your pensive graze
meets her passionate stare.
Don't ever change. I love you for who you are.

And well, it's somewhere in here,
when the blisters on my fingers
match the ringing in my ear.
I am not the imaginary enemy.

Before you close your eyes,
remember that what you see
is not what actually appears.
This is not solipsistic;
this is the passion
that will illuminate your years.