my skin feels tight
my eyes not my own
familiarity is a distant memory
I cannot remember when my body was content with belonging to me
I run my numb fingertips through my unwashed hair, searching for any type of reassurance
my room is cluttered and my body unclean
nothing here is mine
if identity is supposed to evolve, and change as you do,
then why did I wake up this morning in someone else's skin?
today, I would rather diminish completely then continue in a body reinvented

There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.

In this house,
we mark the passing of
the newly dead
with hard liquor.
Working
shoulder to shoulder
with the Reaper,
I have to
keep a
bottle
in
at all times.

The ocean looks safer
than your eyes
Though we both know
which I would rather drown in.

Do not allow your voice
to be heard only in
the lullabies of sad songs.
You create the world you see.
Take it in your hands
and squeeze.