The dream last night had seemed so real… But it was just a dream, right? Those shadows, the messages on the mirror, the walls, all the groaning and the shuffling of feet… That was all just a dream, right?
     This is all just a dream, right?
     Fairly ridiculous question to be asking yourself as you’re being chased through the halls by this… this, this thing. Whatever this is. Its neck is limp, head resting on its shoulder. Its grin is huge, its face coated in blood.
     Have you ever heard the children’s rhyme about the Crooked Man?
There was a crooked man,
Who walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together,
In a little crooked house.
     This… thing, you’re being chased by, that you’re fighting off with a fruit knife, that you’re setting on fire and pushing into holes and still won’t die…
    This is the Crooked Man.
     I wonder if this is all the Crooked Man knew?
     His crooked house, his crooked relationships, his crooked… crooked body…
     His body’s only crooked because of the rope, though.
     Maybe he couldn’t handle being crooked anymore? All he knew was a crooked life, all he owned were crooked things.
     I wonder why he’s chasing you.
     It could be to drag you down, to slaughter you, to make you feel his pain… More than you already have… To make you end up like him.
     Your pasts are so similar…
     Or maybe it’s to warn you. To say, “Don’t end up like me.” To make sure that you don’t die the way he died. The way he staggers, his limp neck, head hanging loosely, his unrealistically large grin…
     Why did he make you put that gun to your head, then? Why is he trying to drag you down?
That’s a problem for you to figure out on your own. But you’d better hurry.
     By the way, I noticed earlier… Your neck is a little crooked.

(This one was based off the video game, The Crooked Man. Yaay, video games.)

(October 17th, 2013, I think is when I wrote this.)

There aren’t many things
that I’m good at.
I have bad grades.
I’m aware of this, but they
still insist on shouting as if
three letter F’s
determine my worth
as well as my ability.
I’m not athletic,
never been remotely decent
at sports,
picked last for soccer,
football, basketball,
and everything else,
tried to do parkour once-
however,
that hope quickly dissolved
when I discovered
that it was still nerve-wracking
for me to climb a fence.
(One of the many gifts
that comes with a severe
lack of coordination.)
I’m not a quiet person.
I don’t know
how to hold my tongue
most of the time.
So when my father’s paycheck
is cut shorter and shorter,
when he makes little enough as it is,
my stay-at-home mother
fighting her demons of
the severe depression and anxiety
that she passed down to me
as well as her (auditory) hallucinations,
her BPD,
her physical disabilities,
not making a paycheck at all,
and my school supplies
consist of 50-cent notebooks
that fall apart,
and 75-cent pens,
I get a little… “upset”.
I’ve played guitar for three years.
Sometimes, it’s what I’m best at,
playing strings of notes
and minor chords
that come together to form
beautiful harmonies-
but more often than not,
every note is sour…
Another thing I’m not good at.
But I am a writer.
People don’t pay attention
to teenagers, they say
We’re so full of ourselves,
We think we’re so important,
they say
We need to communicate,
but when we try
all they hear
is whining, and complaining.
Teenagers telling their friends
in passing conversation
that they’re suicidal,
that they hurt themselves,
just to see who will notice-
who will listen-
and of course, no one does.
Nobody notices that
teenagers are the voice
of our generation,
and our generation,
as such,
is royally ******
because nobody pays attention.
There aren’t many things
that I’m good at.
But I am a writer.
And I have
a voice,
a pen…
And paper torn
from a 50-cent notebook.

(I wrote this last winter, I think.)


My bedroom may not be
the most fantastic you’ve ever seen.
There are clothes strewn about,
the linen is crumpled;
Instruments laying around,
Christmas lights on the wall
and a clock that changes colours.
Bedside table
piled with books I’ve yet to read
and 3D glasses
from the 7:30 pm showing of
The 50th Anniversary Doctor Who special.
Griffyndor banner
Zombie Survival poster
pentacle drawing
guitar poster
All Time Low poster,
pictures
album covers
drawings
on the walls.
Simple… but this
is mine.
It’s where I’ve laughed with her,
cried with her,
Gotten annoyed as ****
with her.
Where we snuck out
at 2 in the morning,
to walk up and down the sidewalk
to dance in the street
and sing Nickelback as loud
as we could.
It’s where the nights
that kept me alive
went down, and stayed down,
in more ways
than one
that summer.
It’s where we had our first kiss
and where we had our last.
I feel like my waves
extinguished your flame
that once burned anyone
who tried to ***** it.
And for that, I’m sorry.

So burn bright,
honeybabe,
and show them
what you’re made of.
Burn brighter than me.
And remember.
If you ever need
a place to go…
This bedroom is simple,
but it’s ours.

(I wrote this almost a year ago, and I just found it.)

You tell me
that you love me.
I’m not sure
as to whether I should say,
"I love you too,"
or “I know.”
Because I spent my whole childhood
believing in second chances
but I’ve also spent my life
believing that I never deserved them.
That praise was something
to which I would never be entitled.
That other peoples’
time
effort
company
were things I would never
be truly worthy of,
and even calories
were a foreign substance
that I would never deserve.
I have mastered the art
of filling myself
with relics of isolation
and the hopes that nobody
will get too close,
for I will surely drown them.
Suffocate them.
I can not let myself think
that you might actually care about me,
I can not let myself believe
that I am worth what you say I am,
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry that you got
stuck with me,
and that you allowed yourself
to feel something more for me
than I ever could for myself,
I’m sorry that I dream of you now
and that your name is always
in my thoughts and on my lips,
it is addictive in its toxicity.
For I fear that if I go too long
without saying it,
that it will disappear.
But at the same time
I feel as thought I say it
too often,
but I guess the phrase
"too often"
needs perspective.
I can not let myself believe
that this does not come
with a punchline,
that you do not come with
an ulterior motive,
that the beat my heart skips
and the catch in my breath
are not the product of a joke.
Because my thoughts are screaming
inside of my mind louder than my voice
could ever tell you that I love you too,
and the shrieking and shuddering sobs
that escape my lips
as blood trails like springwater
down my arms
are so quiet, I am amazed the world
cannot hear.
I am amazed that my virtually nonexistent voice
does not ring in the ears
of anybody who stops to listen
but simultaneously,
I am glad.
Glad that nobody can take
the solidity of mental illness in love
away from me.

Dearest Addiction,
Why does this seem like fiction?
Why does nobody listen
to the words that I said?
Forever and always,
I’ll remain by your side,
As you have stood by mine,
When thoughts raced through my head.
Do me a favour,
continue to dream,
You gave me
A whole other world to believe.
You showed me the pain
of a life I could lead,
And all that I ask
is that other people could see
what you mean to me…
Signed,
Yesterday, tomorrow, and forever… They’ll see.

I have a habit of dreaming, screaming, hurling myself into the arms of love-coated guilt and tying a bow around her with smoke, smoke that burns my throat and weakens my lungs; but I will not apologise. I will not apologise for loving what destroys me, and destroying what loves me, because there's no point if an "I'm sorry" falls onto a broken heart and deaf ears.

I dreamed that
I was my own god,
that I had more control over myself
than you, but
2. I must have dreamed that
I was filled with air
and tied to a string
because when I woke up that morning in October
all I wanted was to get high
and hammered as hell, so
3. like Sean Thomas said,
I must have dreamed I was a nail.
4. I must’ve dreamed that I was deathly ill
because I wanted your touch more than anything
but woke up completely isolated from you,
and reacquaintance comes at a great cost;
I really shouldn’t be feeling
as lost as I do when out of the blue
you show up to my house at 1:30 a.m.
5. I’m sorry.
The few hours between kissing another man
and my decision not to tell you,
to leave you instead,
haunts me, but
6. I dreamed that he was the one holding me
for weeks on end
for weeks on end
for weeks on end
I did not say a word.
7. I dreamed I had a crush on him,
but I’m fairly certain I woke up
falling in love.

Every generation
has the leaders and the followers.
The popular kids and the geeks,
the kids who get high on the streets
and the kids who get high on cloud nine.
The artists and the poets,
the skaters, the stoners,
the musicians and the actors,
and we all have the kids
who are all of the above.
We all have the kids
who are none of the above.
Times change, yes
and trends come and go
but don’t tell me that I’m exceptional
not because of what I know
but because of the children
that surround me.
Don’t tell me to speak my dreams
and release my strife in the form of rhyme
because “few others you know do it”.
Passion is limitless,
passion is ageless
and while I’m being raised
in a generation of technology
and dramatic social media,
yolo and swag, pregnant teens
and 55-hour marriages-
I’m growing up
in a generation of artists,
a generation of dreamers,
a generation of doers,
and a generation
of freethinkers.
Freethinkers whose words
drip from their tongues like honey
and stain their pages in the world
like wine.
Students who get bored
with teachers wanting them to think
in 1’s and 0’s,
fit into standards,
speak in slanders
and begin to hyperventilate
because they can’t translate
what they think.
Kids who haven’t forgotten
that breathing in binary isn’t healthy.
Apparently, those that find
enough creative destruction in life to cheat the system
are going against the greater public’s
better judgement,
feeling free to sit and glare
at those who swear that they’re normal,
but I’m not growing up with those kids.
People who sit back and cry crocodile tears
for those who don’t know
what to think of themselves,
sitting back and laughing
at those who shudder and shake
at the thought of being caught in between
different sides of their minds
that they don’t know it’s okay to have…
but I’m not growing up with those people.
I’m growing up in a
group of rebels,
a group that will one day
run the nation-
a nation of tenacious activists,
wearing their minds
more professionally than
politicians wear their suits-
and with better ideas.
Because we have voices,
we have pens,
but most important
we have ideas,
ideas that can change the world,
change the world more
than poker-faced suits
and hate commercials
and picket signs
ever could.

Sit back and over-analyse
the lies that you were serving my mind.
Providing a way to relate
and trying not to overcompensate
for my lack of you,
I should have known you’d
***** and moan enough that
in time,
I could make your whines rhyme.
(Maybe that’s why your speaker points
were always the lowest.)
In this debate,
rate my way and rate of diction,
because truth is stranger than fiction
I sigh
cause I’m lying through my teeth
when I say “I’m okay”.
Sit back and wait for
what you think you have to say
We wager away our
bad experiences,
nearing another night of searing
dreaming
playing make-believe
with a ballpoint pen.
Remember the way all this started
with an oration and the weight
of what came to be a bad break up
make up
break up
wake up
to a world where you two don’t fit together.
Force your cracks into each others’
like broken heirlooms
Shake off the dust,
Can’t shake the thought that you’d be happier
without me.
I can’t see through this cloud of doubt without
an explanation,
an answer to the chance
that I can’t distinguish
the morning dew from her rose petals
that she tried to drown you in
from your tears.
“If this ain’t love
then how do we get out?”
Get out of this mess,
regress back into an obsession
with death,
and destruction,
let me provide some instruction
on obstructing these thoughts
that threaten to consume
what I assume is your last shred
of sanity.

Alright.
So you wanna know how to write
a poem.
Well, before we do anything else
I want you to take your pencil,
and break it against your desk.
You’re not gonna need it.
Go to your kitchen
grab a glass mixing bowl, and
pour as many prompts into that bowl
as you see fit.
Maybe crack open a rhyme or two,
cause trust me,
you’ve got time
to watch this poem come to life
inside your mind.
Next, add two cups
of melted controversy
cause hey, you gotta keep people talkin’
and talkin’ and talkin’
cause if you don’t, they’ll be walkin’ away
from that scoop of insane sifted
alliterations you were stocking up on.
Maybe to give it a little zest,
even if it doesn’t make sense
to anyone but you,
throw some “quotes” around
a song lyric or two,
cause you are in charge of this.
So, carry on my wayward son,
my angel with  shotgun,
mix it up
and let it bake on the tip of your tongue
and then
spit it out.