If it were easier to be proud,
I might be.
But positivity doesn't often
ring in me.
I have shined for so many years,
making proclamations of my thoughts and fears,
relentlessly opening my heart,
my doors,
my mind.
Only to be crushed a dozen times.
And maybe it is beautiful that I keep trying.
But it doesn't feel that way on the
inside.
It is like
harboring a monster in me,
and hoping one day someone could
love it.
I can smile in so many ******* directions and it has
never
fixed the beast.
And it eats and feasts on
feelings.
I believe my neurons and nerve endings,
and my seratonin and dopamine,
have all been over-
compensating.
For fear of losing it all to this
thing
in me.
It's been there since I was about
13,
and I thought it had stopped
growing.
Long dormant,
but now returning from
submission.
Moving from feelings and making bigger decisions.
I fear he is now eating
me.
Some sickness from the inside out,
beginning with my sense of doubt.
And lack of fulfillment
and stupid ambitions.
And all of the things I have tried to keep hidden.
He is tearing holes in the very foundation
of this ******* facade I've been constantly faking
for something like 5 years
now.
All my best kept secrets are leaking through the cracks,
leaving people feeling like they're
sorry they asked.
He will go for my bones, and then my skin,
after devouring the flesh within
until there's
nothing
left of me.
I have been piles before.
Crumbled, bumbling,
cautiously fumbling for
doors or
floors
or lightswitches.
Chased into beds with sheets
far less than neat,
he's been following me for
some time now.
And I keep thinking I can write him out.
But the feeling never sticks around.
And the words will cease to make me proud.
It comes back.
Like clockwork.
Year after year,
cold after cold,
he is there.
Somewhere in me.
Eating steadily, slowly.
Savoring the taste of my suffering.
Depleting my positivity,
and filling it with other things.
And what I have been wondering
is if I can somehow make it leave
and allow what's left of me to breathe,
one day will it be easy
to be
proud?

I forget to write.
I forget how it feels to let loose,
hit keys,
touch pen to page
I forget the sweet release
of a violent rage,
a swift phase,
I'm quick to **** a thought's stage
as it is in
motion.
I stop my neural locomotion.
it's a new kind of devotion
to be void of all emotion.
I'm forgetting everyday,
all the things you used to say
and all the things I wanted to say back.
I forget how to attack all my
ambitions.
I'm on a mission
to find a new division
of this life I seem to live in.
I forget how to feel it,
I forget how to give in.
I forget how to succumb
to my fingers and thumbs.
And how to give way
to the trails that are made
between my hands and my brain,
and my heart and the same and
lately there is
nothing.  
I forget
how it feels
to really write
something.

If I could climb inside
this great divide.
I'd find some broken place to hide.
Fix it up,
make it right,
wrap the wound,
and shine some light.
Allow us both to have some time,
to breathe, and at the least
decide
what exactly we might find
when we choose to break the ties
we are making.

Day to day, a silence stays  
that's only broken when you sway
enough to give me time away from all the
thoughts that rot my brain.
You show up,
they are dismayed.
They all retreat and run away,
and for a night I might be
safe.
At least 'til morning.

And eventually, then,
a time will come when,
we will part, my friend,
and you will leave again,
and by some offense,
one day you
won't
come
back.
And I will have to hide
in this great divide.
To keep hope alive
that I'll get on
track.
But then again, I've always
lacked a lot of
things.

So you're a poser.
And isn't everyone else?
The way you imagine them all living so authentically,
and honestly,
and in so many ways you never could.
It's *******, don't you know?
Stop discrediting yourself.
There are plenty enough people to do it for you.

So you're a poser?
So you say you do things you maybe don't do.
So you have the tendency to maybe not follow through.
So you can't always be 100% in tune.
So what.
So you're trying?
So you're trying too hard.

So you're a poser.
Stop posing.
Be genuine in closing.
And optimistic in opening.
Stop thinking everyone is better than you,
and stop posing as someone who thinks
they
are better than
everyone else.

And everyone else?
They are posing, too.