There must be a word
for the bleak realization
of the systematic inhumanity
on which our world operates—
which carries the
self-directed disgust
of how desensitized we’ve
been— up until the moment
the thought shakes us
that our ending point
is a corpse—
like a child distraught to realize
his body is a separate entity
than the womb who
created him,
How he curses an indifferent god
who has left him naked,
How as a race we suffer
by the cruelty of a creator
to give us the concept
of eternity, yet
the tantalizing confines
of mortality.

His gaze veiled in a layer of clouds, he looks down upon us with such contempt
A perfect being, driven by such flawed emotions
A jovial comic, or an angry father
A split-personality sadist with a hell of a sense of humor

We gathered any words that he might have said
And transcribed them into our own human jumble
Every syllable uttered, down to a trace of a sigh
Molded to yield to our instincts
Dominance and glory, all in the name of “love”

His favorite son walks on water, did you know?
But the naughty children have a special place to go
If they dare disobey their strict father

It’s in every breath within us, shining in every ray of light
The human will to be, spawned from hands not our own?
It pillages towns, and takes innocent lives
Of those who chose against
The word of the “wise”

It sews our eyes shut from the ugly world of enlightenment
And guides the sheep away from the forbidden trail
The heathens reside on the other side of the river
And only the sinners dare to build a boat

Charlie crumpled up the script
that his mother left him as a note on the banister;
an ode to matronly passive-aggression
scrawled in haphazard cursive
on the back of a Meijer receipt when she was drunk.

While conducting a routine bedroom sweep
for any arbitrary evidence
to convict her son, yet again,
as the eternal family scapegoat,
Marilyn was far from pleased
to find his final disregard
of her bankrupt maternal instinct
clouded by inherited alcoholism
wadded up in his wastebasket.

Jaded by plot conventions, dodging foreshadow,
we scrapped our narratives and hopped in his car.
Untethered by destination, we drove through the rain
in the last hours to waste of a Sunday night.
Stopped at an intersection in an unfamiliar town,
he turned to me with an expectant smile:

“Where to now?”

With no surrounding traffic to rush our decision,
I glanced in both directions.

“Let’s turn left.”
“Where’s that lead?”

I squinted in the dark.
*“Wherever the hell we’re going.”

Adulthood is never initiated
on a birthday,
the obligation to pay the bills,
or even the freedom
to eat those two desserts,
but rather when you realize that childhood
has been terminated—the stage
where you sigh and suppose
that magic was just an illusion
when you finally see how
the real world operates.

The whole concept
of adulthood
is one that seems to
trespass
from the ever-anticipated world
of the theoretical,
just to barge into your life
one night
like an uninvited drunken friend.

It will never really “hit you,”
but it’ll come **** close
the first time your aunt
offers you a glass of wine
as she and your mother
gossip frankly about
your father’s mistress—
you sip on cheap Chardonnay
and pretend to be used to the taste,
as they talk with
a middle-aged bitterness
of the man you were raised
to believe was too virtuous
to be in debt for some glitzy
engagement ring that he
bought to restart his life
with a woman he left your mother for
shortly after the pandemonium
of a guiltless affair.
The man
whose brutishness
you were told to overlook, cradling
the sparse memories
of when he’d tuck you
too tightly into bed, or
when he’d tell you that he loved you
even though half the time
you really didn’t believe him—
The man whose love confused you,
whose clumsy attempts
of fatherhood
kept the heart of a young girl
perpetually guarded
by a cautious skepticism—
The man who brought you into
a world he found absurd
as carelessly
as he raised you to face it,
torn apart
like every illusion that makes a child,
the ashes of which
that slip through your fingers
inevitably declare you
another bitter adult.

More wine will reveal
that your beloved father
is a controlling ******
and his relationship
with that *****
the whole family hates
only appears to be functioning
because she lets him have
all the control
he couldn’t exert on your mother,
even though you’ve had dinner
with the two of them a couple of times
and if you had met her
under any other circumstance (though
you’d feel like a traitor
if you said it aloud)
you wouldn’t think
she was all that bad.

In red, declarative letters
I want to write to any children I may ever bear
into this bittersweet game of *******
we play that we’ve since called ‘life,’
that when they first gaze with awe
at the unattainable grace
with which every grown-up seems to navigate
the world they created,
with all the pain of tax-paying and womanhood,
I want to scream
that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing either
and if at any point I try to convince you otherwise
you should tell your mother
that she’s full of ****.

I stand here
Open, with every thread of security within me unwound
The bitter words upon my tongue have been swallowed
Rendering a vacant mouth dry
With all the world ready to spill from me
With every tear contained within
I gaze at you in silence

(So is that alright?
Take it from me, rip it from my feeble fingers
Don't steal it, don't take it for yourself
You've "lived a charmed life,"
haven't you?
Don't lie to me, don't uproot the little truth
that I seem to know
Skirt chaser, *******, womanizer
Great to know that I was only points to score
in the game you play
     So is that alright?)

I don’t see the same curiosity
in those once intent and happy
eyes, youthful spirit drained
by the aging of disappointment.

The boy who once took me
into the vast and curious night
Has adjusted to the daytime notion
That no one can live forever.

I still recall who you were
Before I thought you disappeared,
You journeyed long into what you thought
would be your inspiration—
You returned with vague reluctance
wearing a disheartened gaze;
the stare of the boy who sought his ways
in the life he prepares to live,
how in his disillusionment he cursed
the world in the core—yet he says
that all is well.

I think you once told me, that no one
is born a cynic.
Bitterness to the world
Is all but an empire
of crushed ideals
you once held dear,
my misanthropic friend.

From the inception of our lives,
once sheltered in the warmth of the womb,
we wake to bright hospital lights
and our groaning mothers.

From the inception of our days
cocooned in the comfort of the blankets,
we rise to the nakedness
the frigid morning air.

Alarm clocks routinely ending
comfort we were never aware of
until we knew the bitterness
of being exposed to the world.

From the inception of our lives,
once sheltered
by the innocent warmth of the womb,
we wake to bright hospital lights
and our groaning mothers.

From the inception every day,
out from our hazy world of dreams
cocooned in the comfort of a familiar bed,
we rise with reluctance
to the frigid morning air.

Alarm clocks routinely ending
comfort we were never aware of
until we knew the bitterness
of being exposed to the world.

I wrote you a letter addressed to nowhere
(Wherever you may be)
And waited in my solitary room.
Foolish that I would expect a reply,
As it sat in a thickening sheet of dust
In a rusting mailbox.
(As I sat stupidly in idleness)

I came home one day, my faith dissolved
(Never once did I think your face)
To find a note tacked on the door.
Collecting my sinking heart, I stared into the ink
vacantly, before they became words.

“Every apology,” it read, “Could never define
my guilt.”
A cynical sigh left my lips, but my eyes kept reading…
“And I understand if you want to hear of me no more,
but read these words before you crumple this in your fist.
I remember this house, engraved into my mind.
I know you’re sitting in that lonely room.
I’ll tell you what happened, all those years
and maybe things could be the same again.
But first, could you please unlock your door?
                                        From, Nowhere.”

Soft summer evening light
Warm potent silence in dimming air
A backyard bonfire warms my hands and
caresses my face,
Its smell intoxicating.
A strange emptiness stings when I know
that every serenity of life is worthless
without the warmth of your skin
radiating into me.

I love you
irrationally, without reason,
And no matter how I try to cure myself
of you,
My eye stays drawn to the outline
Of your worn face and dissonant mind,
Your flaws that remind me that
We are all human—

I shouldn’t love you with this
hemmed up heart
I’ve let you destroy,
then sew back
so carelessly together
So that every stich, every oozing
Drop of messy adhesive keeping me
was by you.

And there is no rational reason
I should still love you,
and not the man who has not the heart
to ever intend the slightest of sin…
The pale angel who never deserved
some dysfunctional adulterer ,
who remains drawn to the dark and hateful
lust, of her favorite demon.

And perhaps us sinners deserve eachother;
I’ve grown to watch you live off of ***** by the
bottle and your abused old guitar—
And never could I pull myself together to fit
my shattered edges of disarray
into the blunt puzzle of their world.

They decry us in the absurdity
of our very existence,
A drunk and a misfit, children of a lesser
creation, as we stand against the bitter winds of hate.

You finally roll over,
after downing the remainder
of the wine you said you’d share with me
and lay the bottle to rest
beside the bed, in a graveyard of clutter
I periodically nag you to tidy up

so now
I can finally assure myself
with more than tenuous trust
that you will not confirm
your gazing over my shoulder
at my laptop screen
with that irritating ******* chuckle
when you see whatever I’m
privately trying to enjoy for myself

because
now it would make more sense
that I’m doing anything
other than typing, typing
furiously about how I can’t articulate
why I’ve admitted you
into my bed. Why
we mutually burn through seasons
of wasted time on Netflix, and
instinctively, someone’s head
falls within the soft hollow
of another’s shoulder, yet I cringe
the moment you reach over
to make the embrace
intentional

and why
when the remnants
of the drunken, desperate stumbling
to my then celibate bed
that spawned
what we can’t seem to finish
have long dissipated, do we
insist on carrying our dead within us

and why
once you turn back and see me,
do you retreat to the living room
to strum hopelessly on the
Les Paul you spent too much money on
and had shipped to my apartment
because you barely spend any time at yours,
as I type this
groggy and reaching
for what’s as reachable as mist

with only a room
between us, separately
we decode the repercussions
of being haphazard nomads
somehow assigned
to civilization.

It seethes and it cries
This animal contained inside

Gnawing so rabidly at raw, scathing wounds
Howling so desparatley to the unattainable full moon
Snarling, screaming-- dying, dreaming
The beast snarles from out its cage
Clawing away its tears of rage

Hidden fragments of a feeble human mind
Buried in the morals left so far behind
Condemned to fury, a degenerate of its race
Manifested into the form of a calm human face

I’ve spent time I’d rather not count
hoping fruitlessly,
by an impenetrable sense of obligation
that can only belong to the delusional,
with the last specimen of hope
whose blood I have drained dry,
just waiting
for a disappointment
that I now expect.

I wake up every morning with
hopes of you,
and rush out of bed as though I haven’t waited months
just to hear you say something,
     just something
          only once…

I come home every night with
erased expectations
that dutifully regenerate
in stubbornly constant dreams
haunted by your face

Wake up.
It’s a new day
Just like yesterday
and every day before that
were meant to be.

The winds have retired
to stagnant air—a stillness
restrained by tension.
One that can only signify
a gnawing anticipation
of the unpredictable.

Anything that can be said
shouldn’t be, but the words
shunned to our minds
burn at our tongues—
and it only takes
one forlorn look
to remind you
that the storm will not
dissipate if you only
shut your window.

What have we become?
We died at the pinnacle
with the ruthless anticipation
of a stillborn infant—
a corpse before a body,
decimated by the arbitrary brutality
of nature.

I pray to a god I shouldn’t believe in
for some eventual day
of enlightenment—
where the dilemma lies, however,
isn’t whether this day
should occur,
but rather when we’ll strip out of
dignity, and stand in the nakedness
of how dearly we love
to torment ourselves.

So, I suppose that you are gone now, such a shame
And upon this plane of stone, I can scarcely trace your name

Surrounding you amongst the placid sea
A decrepit grave, for a love that used to be

The soft brown earth clings beneath my feet
A whistling wind around to lull me to sleep

And amongst the vague, serene blur of sound
Broken, is our last piece of common ground

I moved out in a backpack
of crumpled clothes
stuffed hastily in tears—resorting
to the bomb shelter of cowardice
so I won’t see us
collapse into eachother.

Maybe it was a better idea—I breathe
my own air, you breathe yours.
It’s calmer here, but I still
can’t stop hearing the silence
of that empty house
I know you hear right now.
I left with five pounds of baggage
on my shoulders, you shackled
two tons more to my ankle.
You know I had to leave,
I couldn’t bear the silence—
the last trace of himself
he left for you.

Dad showed me his new apartment;
we stared silently into off-white walls.
When he asked me
why I was so quiet, I muttered
“No reason.”
All I could think about
was why the absolute hell
would that ******* exchange his family
for some barren apartment
with nothing
to his name but a mattress without sheets
and weeks-untouched guitars
scattered across a hideous tan carpet,
accompanied only by silence.

I peeked in your medicine cabinet, too—
and painfully I read the labels.
Anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, anti-psychotic,
anti-everything they found wrong with you.

Mom still didn’t give you
your pocket knife collection back
that she locked up when you were
under suicide watch.
And I couldn’t dismiss the irony.
Dad, of all people you’d be the one
to end your life
with a hand-crafted Italian switchblade
previously under neat display
behind an immaculate glass door,
only to act in violence
no one could have anticipated.

I still don’t want to go home,
and I’ll give you any excuse
that sounds half-way rational.
But what I dread more than anything
is to hear that bitter silence—
ghosts of ugly words
we’ll never say to eachother.

How humanity suppresses its own nature
As people do what they feel they must,
Overlook their senses
As they resist the sharp pains of suffering,
As they forge a vile mimicry of happiness
to the next destination
Oh, how they forget
Or neglect to acknowledge
That at one point in time,
They wanted to drown the world
In a sea of their own tears

If everything were to crumble to pieces
And civilization would no longer be
I think I’d still be fine
Right here,
In the absence of you
With the world all before me

I couldn’t help but notice the difference
between the smile worn before a camera,
and how one’s face upturns
much more beautifully
in that split second of joy,
before vanity adjusts the angle.

You know I’ve been
far too scatterbrained
to write anything
reasonably coherent.
But frankly,
the word “coherence”
has no place
if I were to truthfully describe
anything that’s happened
between you and I.

I could sit here
and type fruitlessly
until I conceived
the perfect
soul-wrenching metaphor
to illustrate every
painful nuance
of our struggle.
But, unfortunately
there is nothing
terribly poetic
about absolute
*******.

I suppose
I could say that
we were “the dream
that eventually got
its rude awakening” but
that’s stupidly cliché,
and all I want to do
is fall back asleep.

We were the senseless
death of potential—
where the shadow fell
between every beautiful thing
that could have been,
and all the reasons why
we could not have them.

He hides you from the world
and guides you by the hand
He speaks to you in softness
as you forget everything
outside his house near the river

We have our special crawlspace,
where the world forgets where we are
He smiles gently as you speak
without even thinking.

With your soul in the palm of his hand
he shows you to the water
the evening sun highlights your faces,
his skin glows in the light like honey
As the faded winter sun smiles upon
the young rosebuds waiting to bloom
In the springtime.

When the old man of the night
Dwindles into newborn dawn,
The conjoined soul feels a sigh
When the river must be crossed.
As he, still guiding your hand,
Navigating your soul
kisses you goodnight.
With a reluctant wave,
You watch him disappear;
Engulfed by the mists
On the other side of the river

You uproot me from my convictions
and expose my skin to air,
dusting away
with saintly tenderness
the accumulated crumbs of earth
with which I have buried myself.
I breathe
as an organism full of blood;
with the vigor of life
and the comfort of purpose.

I wanted to thank someone
for you;
as though, just maybe,
there could be something
beyond us, cognizant
of my microscopic existence,
sending me with grace
a signal of hope, blooming
out of the impossible soil of chaos.

I think I could be a theist
if I spent enough time with you—
a perfect and strange little blessing
to an imperfect and strange little life.
Sometimes I wonder
if someone put you here,
but it’s simply too human
to think the world beautiful
and believe it was there for me
to find it that way.

He stands against the wind and smiles—
a boy of intuition against the harsh world
of concrete.

You might find him waiting, standing alone
along the sidewalks
with his trusted old guitar
Unjudging eyes merely wander—
watching fellow lives simply be.
His sing-song voice
speaks joy into the world,
never telling anyone
how they ought to live.

He says he knows nothing of the world, but
I’ve never met one more wise, than one
who denies his ego, just letting
the world go by.

New snow scattered
upon this old, tired street
We start the cycle again.
New hope planted
into the still, frozen ground
We wait.
Perhaps come springtime,
like the exception to a truth,
sprouting between
receding islands of snow,
its flower may bloom again.

I found you leaning over the balcony,
gazing into a world that was becoming
an illusion to you, smoking a shrinking
cigarette.
I never knew you as one to smoke,
But I suppose that everyone
Has their surprises to the world.

Your eyes burnt like coals, staring until
everything before you smoldered to dullness,
the intensity
of your gaze could burn
down any hopeful living thing
to an ashen pile of decay.

Your disillusionment brought you here,
guided by
the optimistic notion, that the other side
of the garden bears riper fruit.
You traveled here with weary eyes, your hope
diminished to find the same dust
of your native dystopia
lingering on the bottom of your shoe.

I could feel you burning from here,
Your sweat glistening face lit
by the cigarette flame and moonlight,
Your shoulder tensed by the touch of my hand,
As you said to me,
How the stars seemed so close,
glowing together,
seeming inches apart in the sky,
But they were oblivious of eachother,
as they burnt unmindfully
billions of miles away.

I stood by you feeling the refreshing bitterness
of the cooling Autumn air,
oh, how we stood inches apart, you and I,
and had since grown billions of miles
away…

Only as they lie
flat with defeat
on a rain-slicked sidewalk
will we remember how dearly
we loved the autumn leaves.

The trees stand half-naked,
sparsely adorned with
red and orange emblems
of mortality, dropping like
the gradual sands
of an hourglass. They
stare down desperately
at the passersby,
warning us
of the impending winter.

“Remember me,” they plea,
branches gesturing
toward a greying sky—
resisting entropy
like every creature
who finally realized
his impermanence.

“Nature wins eventually,” mused my uncle David
as we drove past an overgrown lot
on a barren street, where a struggling Motel 6
had long crumbled under the weight of entropy.

Defying the ghosts of a business
drowned in the unforgiving current
of Dayton’s economy, among
the leasing sign marking their graves,
patternless flora prevailed
effortlessly.

Hello again, my dearest friend
I’ve come to talk with you once more
Shivering still from the stormy cold
Chaos that resides from beyond your door

I wiped my feet on your humble mat
Hung my hat upon the coat tree
To find your smile so ever warm
Seated beyond the door

I returned what I could of your glowing charm
(Oh! How could I ever reflect that light?)
Withholding impending words
within my grinning lips, I sat myself down
And looked you in the eye
I could have told you anything
but I was content with silence

You pretty little thing
Sprouting yellow from the grass,
so delicately…
Staring into the sun
Rooted from the soil,
Declaring to the world that spring has come.
Careless feet trample you over;
The fate of all innocence,
bent and limp against the dirt.
They call you a ****, but it doesn’t stop you
from spreading your graceful seeds,
the wind as your messenger.
Hoping your words of hope wander
to the vicinity of fertile ground
As you wither back into the grass.

I want to write a letter to everyone
who ever made me question anything, from
the nature of the universe to
what tastes best on toast, because
this is the only way I know how
to say thank you—thank you for not letting me
stay the person I was at
any moment when I thought
I had come to any conclusions.

And even though
I spend most of my thoughts
creating answers that are only to terminate
curiosities too abstract
to even be a question, I’ll admit
that I try to tie things together that
don’t even have strings— and I sulk
in frustration that I can’t even find them,
things that don’t even know
that they should exist. So I take my
pencil of imagination and draw
lines between everything and end up
with a blueprint
of some hypothetical reality—because
we say that we discover the world
but what we so stupidly, so humanly
overlook is that the world bears herself
to us with no inhibitions, and even though
we can’t see everything immediately,
it’s all there; she has
nothing to prove to us. Yet the mystery
is that even though the earth bares her skin
unashamed, we find her ****** absurd and
clothe her blatant body
in preconception, tragically dedicating
the decoding our existence
to finding out
what truly lies beneath.

I want to thank everyone
who has ever ****** me off, or negated
any idea I’ve held too dear, because
you get me closer to realizing
that there is no parallel
between my finite questions
and the eternal answer, and the very fact
I even formed a sentence
is punctuated
by my mortality.

And all before you I stood uncertain
Descended between us, an iron curtain
With lips sewn silent, thoughts rendered null
With doused animosities in smoldering ashes

I forced you a smile, transparent deceit
You returned the favor with akin reluctance
Where were you, when these thoughts were ripe?
Our fruit has decayed and shed new seeds

I repress my childish curiosity,
And donned the indifference of maturity
But who are you? I know your name and face
Who are you, the stranger staring you down?
With eyes beneath a guarded glaze
In oblivion to every memory,
We stare at eachother in silence

We thought we’d declared it dead
The words we bury in the soil of time
Eroded by broken silences
In the most unexpected of times

The words that stung my tongue seem to flow numbly
Desensitized and dehumanized,
We wrap ourselves within a world of plastic
Where the external disturbances are kept at bay
Where no one may tap on the window and see within the soul

If we seethe in the residue of our animosity
We’re as good as snarling animals quarreling for the final prize
Before we draw the line between harm and benefit
We must draw the line between man and beast

You’re beautiful in the skin
But ugly down in your bones
(And for that I despise you.)
You flash a rehearsed smile
And let them think you otherwise…
Foolish men love a crazy girl,
And off the glares of jealous women,
you feed.
I anticipate the day you’re wrinkled and ugly
(Though I will be too.)
But perhaps I could relish in the fact
That you no longer can hide behind
your ugliness
in pretty skin.

I gild myself
in a sheet of
plastic, thick enough
so that no one
can see through…

Like an Easter egg shell;
I let them hollow out
the sloppy insides,
and paint my delicate skin.

I am no individual, I am
cultivated, harvested,
like the simple product I am.
Protect me: my flesh is delicate,
They’ll throw me away
at the first sight of a crack.

You consume my comrades,
But I am lucky—
I am now but a pretty little shell,
Painted pink and lush to conceal the sallowness
of my frail and immaculate skin.

I wish
I could fill this
space, with something
more meaningful
than this ringing in my ears—
echoes of lost sentiments
that were never written down.

She clutches a toothless baby,
posing stiffly before a tacky blue backdrop,
standing faithfully
beside my indifferent father—
a dormant madness
written subtly into
the lines of his face,
smothered
by suburban stoicism.

But her impeccably tailored grin,
which beams predictably
from the outstretched lips
of every frustrated housewife,
screams the words
forever condemned to silence:
“******* it, Andy,
for the good of our family,
couldn’t you at least pretend
to be happy about something?”

But what she didn’t realize
is that for far too long,
he did.

Those of us who release the stiches binding our lips
And taste the first rush of crisp, cool air against our tongues
Once the first note breaks, the sound that permeates the air
stuns us.
The liberated cry bursting from our lips
feeling so foreign to our muted tongues
Forces us to pause
And listen…
The familiar buzz of silence is all amongst us
and it isn’t too long before we realize
That our ancient silence has been broken
And the grey air once again is filled with
the aura that beams
The glow that brightens the world
When you sing until your lungs bleed
about how you feel

The magic of the first
leaves our ****** hearts a flutter
The second pushes the residue away
Sweet words sour to a distant mutter
Keeps the wishes of our cooling hearts at bay

The taste of fear burns my tongue
Flesh to flesh, I am for you
Ravished to ruin, abused by masochism
You stare at me with a face glazed in sweat

Tell me what you're thinking: I'm a ***** little *****
See the words pass through a mind rendered hollow
Spread my legs and let the insects crawl in further

I've been used before, so why do you want me?
I've been claimed and pillaged by prior barbarians
Show me the devil behind your mask of virtue!
I've seen it all before

(You can kiss me all you want
but the memory will never erase
Pushed flat on my stomach by pure testosterone
A hell of a way to lose your innocence)

Among the depths of the deepest sea
Beyond the realms of vicinity
Every breath of air sighed through delicate lips
Every sensation in curious fingertips

Young hearts afire in the midnight air
What more to desire than flesh so fair?
Shrouded in secret and always discreet
Who knew forbidden fruit could taste so sweet?

I thought I was being saved
by Peter Pan
until they evicted us
from Neverland.
We thought we could outrun
debts higher than numbers
we could count—
the bills we must pay
to Foreverland,
when childhood became some distant
part of space-time
that mocks your
hilariously brief existence,
Where life is a fluorescent-lit
doctor’s waiting room
where you twiddle your thumbs
waiting for death to get around to you.

And then there’s the fear of death,
that an optimistically counted eighty years
of ******* are annulled by the
billions of years surrounding the beginning and end
of everything in existence you will ever possibly know—
ensuring that a Nobel Prize winner and a drunk on the
street, have essentially accomplished the same ******* thing:
existence.
And so goes the life of Foreverland…

(I buried my optimism
to see what it would do—
I’ve grown no fruit
and should I be surprised
the ground’s as barren as my faith in you?
I sold it up and gave it a price—
my ignorance, my security,
And you can have the sacrifice
I make to exist in a world
I’m sure I lost everything to.
So what is it now?
What’s a mortal like me to do?)

I dreamt I found you in the meadow—nestled
happily in the forgiving arms
of mother earth.
You had since grown accustomed
To a life of wilderness – of hummingbirds
and weeping trees, the dirt
and sunshine, and
on your knees
you prayed, to your newfound god
of the soil.

I beckoned you near, and you froze
Unsure of the language of the verbose
world you came from
and had forgotten.

I once walked carefully, step by step
Avoiding the savage mud,
yet instead
I ran toward you, and let
my garments
of civilization tatter.

Please tell me why I stand here, for I
have forgotten,
And perhaps, if You’ll forgive me,
it’s better that I stay here…

I have learned several
things I wish I never had to
know, from you.
Your bitterest lesson
being that only one side
of any outcome
can go about their lives
believing that fate is
deliberate enough
for any event to be
intended.

To drown out the murmurs
of doubt you’d rather dismiss
as unfounded paranoia,
you may say to yourself
that even though
you’ve recklessly left behind
a path of ruin
for everyone outside
of the delusion
to joylessly sweep up,
everything will eventually play out
in some sick game
of destiny—
naively overlooking
all the precious things
you’ve carelessly destroyed
to get yourself there.

No words will reach you. I’ve
reduced my one feeble wish
to hoping that one day
you’ll feel that same powerless rage
gut out every delicate tissue of your body
when you’re selfish enough to tell me
that there is any force in the universe
who manipulated the fabric of time
to give you one thing you want
that has thus far made
everyone else around you
needlessly miserable.

I want to write about *******.
I want to write about everything I’ve
ever been forbidden
from thinking—I want to ****
everyone, I want to be everyone.
I want to lick up the salt
of your sweat, and bite the supple skin
of your beautiful neck,
and I don’t give a ****
who the ‘you’ is in question.
‘You’ can be anybody, any soul
throbbing with the grit of
humanity, who’ll rip their decency
wide open and stand naked and
unrestrained by the starched collared
shirts of everything that civilization
has taught you about how
people should be.

I want to write
about something that terrifies me, and paint
it in permanent ink across my chest.
I don’t want to find clothes that fit, and ****
finding a moral tailor,
I want to be naked and free and feel the wind
sting my winter-chapped lips and
whip my hair against my face,
and I’ll burn every metaphorical rulebook
containing anything I’ve ever believed
while dancing around the fire.

And I realize this poem (if
you can call it a poem)
doesn’t make any *******
sense, but neither
do you and neither do I.
We’re all confused and ***** and tragically
beautiful little ******-up creatures crawling
this earth knowing only
our ridiculous little ******-up lives.
And I can’t really tell you anything
you should always take seriously, because
one day you’ll die and **** yourself afterward, and
so will everyone who ever knew you—so you might as well
not care about being naked because we’re all pretty ******* ridiculous
running around in suits we’ve purposely designed
to never fit.

My little flower,
still a seed
planted gently in the ground.
Soaking up the water
Basking in soft, most soil
waiting.
Sprouting surely, you only teethe
through the dirt.
You’re no flower yet,
But I know your bud will bloom.

Your petals will be bright and lush;
your stem so green and strong.
You only peek through the soil,
but there are careless feet and snarling animals
to take you away.
But never worry, I’ll stand near
and keep the weeds at bay.

A jaded mind clogged
with empty thoughts
on an hour I should be sleeping
With sleep-heavy eyelids,
and an uneasy buzzing silence.

Life so fragile annihilated
Before we have time to double-take,
Or those who leave claw marks
As death drags them by the toes
(Clawing away the face of fate,
How did you survive?)

Shivers tiptoe through my bones
And all the faces
of the overlooked seem to surface…

The perils of a ghost's existence,
Staring upon the same cycle
of human foolishness.
Seeing your mistakes and trials
re-enacted for you to never forget.
(wandering, observing in
the shadows of man)

Human tears and stomach aches
to distract you from your fears
when they stare you in the face,
as you lower your eyes and weep.
What are we as humans,
crippled from birth, crawling
with innate self-importance
annihilated by chance?

They sing their songs to console themselves
Looming in their lonely rooms;
Transparent, feared by man
Watching them meet their fate.

Such a grave silence
that's come between you and I,
growing like cancer.