i'll tuck this into all my darker nooks
crevices where i hide the deeper thoughts
brought on by years of worthless prying
and scrapes left by the hounds at my feet
i'll let this sit until it putrefies and flies gather
and the sun declares moldy death on its corners
so much will change and warp
and hopefully i won't recognize my own pain after this
i'll feed this to my ugly dying cat
watch vicariously as he chokes on my guilt for me
laugh as wooden conveniences scrape my throat
and my eyes begin to well up with hysterical tears

this is better than the ulterior;
oozing over with muddy emotion.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i have seen it in those accidental urges, those
presupposed just-one-more-go purges,
in that cold apathetic glow you're cultivating
through the pathological kiss of cancer our
culture is motivating,
in the eyes of girls who gave their sickness
one more sorry shot because they believed
the reason boys couldn't seem to please them
was on account of the uneven legs and knees that
they pleaded on,
and i have seen it in the insomniac pressure of
my own suicidal thoughts and depression,
pressing me into obsession, making a
profession out of my pain without my discretion.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i observe it in the edges of my best friend's
beat-up sense of self-preservation, saying
she has no place in a society that constantly
emphasizes why we need to be something
pretty for others to see,
and in the all-consuming hallucinogenic glitch
that we call home, our social media niche,
humming at an unendurable pitch that pierces
our sanity with every flick of its virtual switch,
and i watched it wrangle my friends in a
wrestling match between giving up
and grappling with the godless reality of
never really being enough.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i have stumbled upon it in alleyway girls and boys,
always sickly sidewalk prophets, society's toys
bruised by the persistent palm of poverty;
in thin hair and the thick of female skin
restless against a visible ribcage,
girls chancing a preference of death to
being unworthy of personal praise,
treating a wrongly angled glance
as if it somehow equates.
in the abuse brought on by our *******
personality binary, boasting about being
more consistent than the lies we
believe regularly, like 'our worth is set
in wealth and accomplishments' and
'benevolence feels good but believe me, you'd
look better with superficial confidence'.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i have witnessed it in this professional
sadness, carried like a coat on the
shoulders of those certainly undeserving
of a misery akin to madness,
and in the worried and calloused hands
of those who work to ensure their bloodshed
outnumbers the seconds they have left,
just to find their clock stopped going around
the moment they made a choice to stop counting,
and in the sickening shine of blades on innocent
skin, pleading for this persistent sin to take place
in place of the regrettable face of a sadist's grin.

what is this adolescent sickness
and how do we get rid of it?

not that the ness
is gone she's found
herself carrying a
burden of pure
boredom. the dusk
falls and she all
but grimaces at it,
rips out more hair,
waits for the sun
to **** her new skin,
she is *******,
she is the unbearable
weight of standing
still while falling.
her eyes are not
blind, but she
keeps them shut
in fear that one
day they will be.
she is years of
sixteen, of sundays.
her hair is dark
but it reflects every
light she passes.
she will keep pounding
this pencil, examining
her fate, shifting blocks
around in hopes of
forming a circle. the
only thing enough
for her lies on
the other side of
the canyon, where
interstitial a
great danger looms.
she has been
falling
falling
falling
forever,
and one cannot
help but wonder
when her dear
havoc will end.

you know my secrets. tell me yours.

gory truth fizzles on your tongue, and i'm watching your eyes
for some becoming hint of understanding. you taste winter
on your breath. i wait, have waited, and will continue to wait
until the sun is bleeding like oxygen from your pores. please
find happiness. please find happiness.

you know my secrets. tell me yours.

gory truth hums in your veins, but you refuse to meet my eyes.
drumbeats like hearts pumping all in the air around us. we spare
a quiet moment for our mutual sickness, our shared desperate
sadness. i am interested to see you cry.

you know my secrets. tell me yours.

i hold this minor truth inside my head: either i hold onto hope or i mope till i'm dead.
this is where i frequently find myself, fearing the truth in the frequent lies i tell,
with my anxiety like wanderlust, searching, seemingly unworthy of a holy luck
i'm leering over all-too-cautious fears unspoken,
thinking that if my brain is a train then my emergency brake is broken.

but i don't know yet
whether or not my pupils are snow-capped
because every waking minute i spend wishing my life was finished i find another dead friend's decision to begin this deadly reminiscence -
and i am finished.
finished with the act of letting go
everything i guiltily promised God and swore i'd always know,
finished with feeling like my constant state of trembling and shaking is simply doing nothing more than taking time out of another worthless day of the week,
and i am finished picking up after depression, even when swears he's definitely learned his lesson, "this time i'll be better, this time i'll feel less or you can check out of life's queue just like i taught you to do."

this, all so unfortunately, is where i have found myself.
frightened, paranoid, depressed. stewing in my own personal hell.
so convinced i've done this all on my own that i can't even fathom the idea of self-help,
since surely i can't seek solace from the same demons that oppress my conscience for no good reason.
and even when i'm friends with them, it's a matter of time before they turn fiendish again, and i am left
rotting my own brain away with unrighteous distractions, risking my own life just so i can feel real again, realizing that this feeling will never really truly end.
so here we are, still, gazing at hope with frozen-over eyes, counting down every torturous second till i finally die - this isn't right. this isn't right.

maybe you can make this better. maybe you can help me.
but you should know that no amount of attitude suppressants can medicate the trauma left by past eras of depression,
and there will be days when i wake up thinking i'm dead, shaking when i remember there's another dreadful day ahead,
and you should know those tantalizing voices i talk about will still tell me to count every step you take, so don't doubt that i am just as loyal and true to them as i am to you.
it's just that there are some parts of the darkness i can't stumble through.
not without you.
so tell me that you can make this better. tell me that you can help me.
because with every passing second i am grinding down my teeth, romanticizing death, letting these vicious thoughts rule my head. this is all that i have left, this jest - this forged facade, covering the blemishes made by all that i've become,
so maybe we can **** it together, whether or not our bond is a strong enough tether to the strangled bits of happiness in me i know are there.
we can do this together.
so now i hold this minor truth inside my head: either i hold onto hope or i mope till i'm dead.
just please understand that it's either this or a self-imposed death, just please understand -
you are all that i have left.

time to write a long poem i don't have it. i've buried my head in so many dark corners and the words are faun and fowl. i made my bed in her mind. who needs semblance when you have dust and pots and blackened paper. i like these tired eyes they make me pretty. good music and shots of adrenaline. it's all good here. a stream of thoughts that don't stem from the apparatus of my true honest brain. beautiful girls in my head. they dance and i do nothing. worst case scenario you leave forever. worst case scenario i forget about it all. very confused about the meaning of this song. i can't hold her up but i want to try. gotta hurt help everyone. promise those are words written on my thighs, they love for loving. want for nothing. words not my own, afraid to use them in a personal context because they're soaked and air-dried in the breath of another human brain. ouch. nothing more to say in these walls. her solicited words, i miss them selfishly. it's okay to miss the dark parts but don't let them handle you like rough calloused lumberjack hands on sore useless wood. i've been writing for a while now and my mind is circling the girl who was my poetry material. see my life drawls and grays when i'm not looking and i can't see it through the lens that i see her through. she's gone i guess i don't know entirely where i'm headed without all that purpose.

holding those
machines in my hands,
cogs and hidden
and black knowledge,
waiting
waiting
waiting.
these stupid
dumb
ridiculous notions.
you've found it finally
and the knowing
is light in your eyes,
lost but verbatim.

i feel like i've kind of
exhausted every emotion possible
and my ribcage can't hold it all in anymore
i'm a striped kite with a lack of destination
i'm a ******* ripped up ****** kite
begging you to let go of my string
when you say my choosing to exist is not up to me

i like to turn inside out sometimes
i like to pinch the shoulders of the demons i fight
a harmlessly masochistic life
living just to let myself die
like to think that counts as trying

shoving against the plans you made
half-blind and trembling every time i wake
there's so much more
than what i'm willing to speak towards
so much less i'm letting them see
yet somehow my death is not up to me
dying would break His consistency

i like to turn inside out sometimes
i like to pinch the shoulders of the demons i fight
a harmlessly masochistic life
living just to let myself die
like to think that counts as trying

i say to God why don't you just let me throw myself away
i doubt i'll make it another day, anyway
i could disappear and no one would know
considering i destroyed myself all on my own
but my roots are planted in concrete
you made sure of that
why are you letting this just happen
it's like you don't want me to understand

and it's sometimes just the
twisted spires of trees. homework.
view out my bedroom window.
no smiles and always neighbors.
the sun is having an affair
with the dusky clouds this
season. bracelets soaked from
the bath. weekdays and weekdays.
medication to help me sleep.
my own voice is so loud.
invisible pattering of rain. watch tv
with me. delete, delete, delete.
t-shirts don't fit on my awkward
spine. everything tinted blue.
sound machine breathing. never
seen a car go down that road.
she doesn't use that quilt
anymore. the stories in my head
keep me going. get dressed for
dinner. pressing my face into
the comforter. everything turning
blue.

i remember my fingers in sweaty yours
breath against the glass of separate existences, our bubble of dark air, knowing all that is for us to keep and nothing more
and the way it felt to trap myself in the curves and tapers of your brain
if just for a few moments
just to be aware of your awarenesses
validity eschewing my darkness for that short sip of ticking and tocking
you called it 'time' but i called it 'existing'
and we were shouldered into the corner that day
tongues split and bowed under the slow texture of obedience
and for once my ****** sea was calm,
for once my sea was calm.

baths are good mourning.
thinking. i'm slowly
realizing where my words
fit in this world, but i don't
want to be defined by the
limits other people put on
me. i want the ness. i
want the barless free.
rebellion isn't what i'm
looking for.
it's the open space,
not the empty space.
it's the having,
not the wanting.
it's the magma,
not the fireplace.

everything forms hazily in my head, enters through a complicated set of arrays & processes, switch on a light so we can see, oh, but the bulb is out and our store is so far away, sing me to sleep, talk me to death, licking dust off the windows and scouring mold from the dead fruits, all is well when I'm chewing the pale white crust off my lips.

telling me to find
my way out of
the dark, like
cold hands on my
neck, like blankets
on my spine, like
a distraction in the
form of thoughts about
her. the all-encompassing
fact haunts me that
i am important,
and that that alone
is my burden to
bear.
like sleepy sweet
eyes and the jagged
edge of his canines,
i'm wrought to accept
that the validity of
my very real purpose
can be found in the
eyes of my Father.
i am so scared.
the night weans and
wears, but somehow
the lights are on and
the falsified bright burns
red through my eyelids.

nights like these when my
brain is really on full
pitch,
the words churning out of
me like
someone shaking
the caramelized crust out of
a sun-drenched
coke bottle.

today i cut off some of my hair with a pink razor

and now i keep finding half-inch strands

all in my shirt
and on my wrists
and even once on this page

and ever since i've been
waiting
for that new freeing
feeling

the one you're supposed
to get
when you're listening to soft
music

and you're not sure what your
hair will look like
when it dries

and that sun ––

that sun is peeling through the
leaves just to meet your gaze

then blind you.

i've been waiting,
and waiting,
and waiting.

yet all i feel is this
silly complacence and a
slight mourning for all the
time i've wasted.

and through these former pages
i can see the indentions
of the pressure
my hands have pressed
into these former pages

and i wonder what it was
that caused me to apply
so much force

to a 5cent yellow mechanical
pencil

that can do no more than
breathe sentience into my
thoughts,

my drawling thoughts,

and remind me that i've been
wearing gym shorts and a
grey t-shirt with the logo of
a bar i've never even been
to before

for about three days now.

i guess

i'm expecting the wrong things
to fill me up.

all wooden, all repetitive nature, all shadow-burnt eyelids
me and myself and everything else that makes up sadness
obsessions and repercussions and empty rhymes
nothing that should make you want to plant your feet on the floor
and demand some sort of compromise
dust swirls around this poetic frame, hugging it taut, embracing it cruel,
and i am the picture of polished apathy that glitters under the glass
lifting heavy breaths
and demanding a compromise
between me and my self-taught accusations.

I’m not so sure if my life is mine.
And for all these piteous things we strive
to make rip and burst and come alive,
I’m dying to find
a sentence contrived
from acrid delusions
and purpose divine.
And though these proportions may seem out of line,
my beliefs will not wither with the passing of time.
I’m not so sure if my life is mine.

I told this a stranger and got a tepid reply,
“This is my hand, and that is the sky.
Any other perception, dear girl, is a lie.”
And with that said, he passed me by,
leaving me thinking,
who even was that guy?
What does he know of water and wine
and plagues of flies
and besides,
my inquisition remains trite:
I’m not so sure if my life is mine.

The preacher says ‘by and by,
those who are sinners are those who will die.’
But through logic I don’t see why
we can’t seek out the lost and show them the light.
Because why should I feel obligated to ostracize
someone who wears a mask that has more cracks than mine?
Why should I feel fine
telling someone their life could be valid if only they would try
saying hi
to a group that’s been transmuted to shapes with shifty eyes
saying, ‘oh, I’m fine,
and you could be, too, just step in line,
with the rest of the people whose sin has been declined
in the little list of repairable offenses we made up in our minds.’
And at this point, I should resign,
for into these words fallacy grinds,
since now there are not so many minds that align
with the kind that I described.
Likewise, here begs the question why
I can’t seem to decide if my life is mine.

My thoughts are often unkind in the dead of night
when my body swears I’m fine but there’s no denying
my mind is still circumscribing these lies
that I’m tempted to break the binds that I have tied
around the faith that reminded me for a time
that my life
wasn’t meant to be lived in spite.
And I recognize that not everything the world says is right,
that pushing myself to defy the lines that define my inner mind
would not be an easy fight,
but it’s recently come to light
that though I’m not the perfect kind
and my hazy eyes might as well be blind,
I’m learning to serve a guy who is disinclined
to turn from those who turn from the light.
And I’ve come to realize, that though my answer is not so concise,
I might never really properly define
whether or not my life is mine,
But at least I know what I’m living for.

don't know what it is about this time of year,
but the neighborhood can never sleep.
the moon is nigh and space is too wide and our thoughts are invading like wandering sheep.
there's a lurch in my gut, i'm praying, begging for luck,
i need less than what is stirring and reluctantly killing my brain.

sometimes i stand up too fast, and the world becomes a vortex around me;

BUT GOD IS GRAVITY
AND SPACE IS HELL.

i can hear their downstairs laughter,
their pattering feet,
i wouldn't say it aloud but
this is the first time i've felt
something in weeks.