With my head held high,
Feeling light.
I jaunt down the avenue.

The heels of my feet unsteady,
“This sailor still has his sea legs!”
I gargle as my body stumbles,
Tumbles,
Face bloodied on asphalt and rubble.

Even though my mug is mangled,
My bottle is intact.
And that is what truly matters.

The glass cannot break;
Shred my being to tatters!
Before I part from my everlasting bond
Of neck in hand.

One last swig!
Before I head out to sea.
I may drown…
But there’s no drink in the deep.

Change starts
With the formation of habit.
The simplest action
Will flip that switch in your frontal lobe.

The reason we call
What we do on a regular basis
A habit,
Is because we live in the decisions we make everyday.

I ponder what my parents told me,
“The light in your eyes is back.”
Not because I am happy,
(or sober…)

Its because I stare at the dimly lit skyline
In the City of Brotherly Love,
In a melancholy manner.

While I could make some cliché allegory
Of a cigarette being another source of faint luminescence.

But I am a college student,
A speck of a presence drowning in dimwits,
With such bright futures ahead!
(Along with a large sum of debt.)

So while I sit and stare
At the city lights,
Soaking in suicidal thoughts at the SEPTA station.

Remember the light in my eyes
Is a reflection of those city lights.
Dimly lit,
Not aflame.
I have no one but myself to blame.

The grip on my disposable razor
Is tighter than the grip of my own reality.
Reflection distorted by the humid condensation,
I still see my hands trembling as I shave.
I still see the designer bags under my eyes.

The familiar aroma of shaving cream,
Paired with the sobering twinge
Of the nicks from my razor.
The haphazardly spilled pills,
Horizontal bottles in the medicine cabinet.

White-knuckling the porcelain sink,
Decorated with dried toothpaste and the blood of my gums.
I reflect to my reflection
Distorted by drip drops of tap water,

“Am I still myself?
Or simply a prospect of my own delusion?”

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?”

I can tell you where,
Drive to the church off of the gray gravel road.

There you will be greeted
By dim witted deacons and the dead.
Parades of pink lily slippers
Masquerades this melancholy sensation.

Surrounded by galleries of gravestones
Belonging to both babies and Baby Boomers.

You can visit.
Surrender your problems to the dirt,
The decaying.

They are dead,
Forever.
They cannot hear what you are saying.

The tension
The tugging
I quarrel with
Myself again.

Perturbed neurotransmitters buzz about
My subarachnoid space,
Leaving a void where
My voice of reason once was.

What was once my cortex,
Is now a coliseum.
Gladiators donned in the Armor of God
Clash with abhorrent avatars of psychedelic malevolence.

This battle ending,
In the stalest of stalemates.
Leaving myself as the only casualty,
The lone survivor.

Parts of me, now gone forever more
I mourn the corporals of my conscience
By carrying on with my day,
As I drag my feet into the horizon.

She stares at the stars,
Her eyes nibble the Milky Way
Like that of a candy bar.

I have yet to see eyes that compare
To hers.
Aglow with lunar light.
Her gaze aided with crescent moon contact lenses.

And then I could see what she saw.
Her eyes…
They were infinite,
Just like the space she stared at.

No concerto of cosmic colors
Could tear me from her tranquil gaze.

I get lost in her eyes,
Just as she gets lost in the skies.

You are
What the world
Sees you as.

Your posture is poor
Neck stooped,
With shoulders hunched.

You are too morose
To see the world
Explode in color behind you

You could be a prince,
Donned in pastel garments,
Yet, you see yourself as a peasant.

Filthy,
Lowly,
And especially lonely.

Whether it was learning long division,
Or naming all fifty states.
Nothing seemed to matter.
It all seemed so trivial.

The phantom that haunted me
Never left,
Not even in elementary.
I could not cope, nor concentrate.

Cafeteria feasts
Made of concentrate.
Paired with my inner confusion,
I tended to lose my lunch.

I tried to hold
Myself to a means
Of normalcy.
It wound up as ***** on my shoes.

Been riding this catastrophic carousel
For too many years.

I remember I was once happy,
Eager.
Mother said she loved me,
I never believed her.

Here,
Crystal **** smells like cotton candy.
Here,
Balloon animals are filled with nitrous.

Everyone seems content here,
The horse on the carousel provides
A surplus of serotonin.

Crazed clowns cashing in
On their crooked version of capitalism.
Their ferris wheel of fear and loathing
Never stops spinning.

I used to berate the carnies,
Now the carnival is a part of me.

I turned ten two days ago.
You were born today,
Yet you will never draw your first breath.

Your lips,
Inherited the reddest hue of cardinal feathers.
Your skin,
Pale and soft like fresh Pennsylvania snow.

I never knew what your eyes looked like,
They never opened.
Infinite iris colors
That will never be discovered.

When I held you in my arms,
The guiding hand of God drifted away.
I gave the coldest of shoulders I suppose,
Dust drifting in the air conditioned delivery room.

I looked outside the hospital window.
The dead leaves fluttered in the bitter wind,
Time stood still that day,
For me, just a little kid.

I subject myself,
My will
Unto your caring hands.

My spinal cord
Is simply a
Pedestal for your patella.

Let the grains of sand
Slip between your fingers,
My time runs on your own accord.

How can I be of assistance,
All I want is to be yours.

Guarding an abundance of ages past and to come;
Outside an ethereal arboretum of
rustling sugar maples, green ash leaves dancing in the wind,
scarlet berries burst from the hawthorn branches.
Were two golems, anchored to their post.

Long green blades grazed their shins,
Discipline echoed off their clay skin.
A path submitted between them
As if the dirt beneath them was at their whim.

The constant breeze caused their skin
To crack, the pressure of perennial purpose
Created small canyons on their skull.
The scent of honeysuckles escaped their open crania.

No matter what approached their garden
Gargantuan locusts, pillagers in the shadows,
Nothing was stronger than the grip of
their hands melding into one another.