My ego is intact, I stole **** from work and my mom isn’t disappointed in me.

I got papers, I got coffee, I got a lot of sleep, I read about that boxer got shot in the head [incidentally] and they said;

“You can’t keep a good man down for long.”

So I’m trying to find out what is “a good man”? Was it the hit and run I saw, or the fathers pushing their kids as products for their success? My high school class, or pretentious friends, or my managers cozy in jobs supported by nepotism calling me lazy, maybe my half dead beat father who kicked me out when I was 18 and convinced me I’d be an alcoholic if I ever drank.

Now your cleaning my ***** out of your sink and holding me and telling me I’m so good.

Maybe it’s my landlords who I never see, trying to evict me, or all the police officers who put like a hundred bullets in those folks car, or every guy who dished out a backhanded compliment to a girl who already cuts, or maybe, I know, it’s the president of the United States.

I paint my face red with lipstick and wait for the chatter of a crowd to turn into a riot of bodies. I sparkle in the light. I scream.

Pretend to me, like a clown/actor, to be strong and violent. You fight like mothers ease their children into sleep, begging and praying. The fight in you is a cartoon predator selling candy to stoners. I never considered myself someone to contemplate the legitimacy of strangers, but I don't know you or your motives.

I don't know you.

I love like a hawk tears into a sparrow.
Viscerally, yet naturally.
Savagely.

I've been imagining a niche of people who take me seriously as a writer. People who see some beauty and legitimacy in the way I float through paychecks, late on rent and holding my breath as I sink in independence. I see the waterlogged corpse of an old man in the mirror, sunken in and sullen, melting like wax off a candle.

I thought these were just waves of depression, but I feel an entire ocean lurks and churns inside me, begging to pour out.

My ribs are bending under the pressure, my lungs are folded flat against my chest, my breath is short and cold.
Thoughts are the moon that stirs the tide.

And I carry this weight on a foundation of ******* sticks.

I'm sorry if I came on too hard, or came off too melodramatic.
Although honestly I'm sorry for too much, far too apologetic to be a legitimate writer anymore.

I remember telling you about that ******* Louis Keys and his three stage names, and slapping each other at a party earlier bc we couldn't feel a thing, and I said something to you in the bathroom and you looked at me like you were really happy.*

I remember making you curry that was too spicy, and you took me to Akron to see the 1975 and I held you tight that night and you thanked me for coming and I thought how strange it was.

I don't know how to mend a broken heart,
especially a heart I'm probably breaking.
I just want to hold you together.
I just want to not be afraid for a while longer,
but I want to be awake for it.

God, I want to believe in my love.

I met Helen on tinder, and we kinda just had a standoff with words for a day. Then we followed each other on Tumblr and found our mutual love of 90's anime.
So tonight she's coming over to use my bathtub for a bath bomb, since she doesn't have her own, and in turn I'm getting two tickets to the Cleveland Orchestra.

Last night my room mate threw up drunk and I passed out after drinking a whole bottle of Irish Cream while cleaning the bathroom and trying to do the first verse of "Encore" over any song I could find.
She came home and just gasped at all the hair and dust moved out from the room.

Now she's smoking in it. ****.

I'm numb in the fingers and hands and just trying to not throw up. I'm having bouts of depression and anxiety and this ***** Caitlyn Sessor, Cessor, I don't even know, won't show me any mercy, or give me a break at work. She wants my ******* head.

I just want to sleep for two weeks straight and have money again.

Tomorrow is so uncertain that I'm convinced
if I can make today just a little brighter
I've succeeded. I've won.

I can't beat them.
You bob and weave without precision , swaying to a tune played poorly. Piercing eyes, and heavy hands, yet all the power behind those ten fingers
can't pay the rent on time, can't keep food in the cupboards, can't keep them out of your home. You are so much I cannot even imagine.

They come in like a storm, shuffling through the cracks in the doors and windows, a shiver up your spine, I can feel their breath on your neck. Cold.

Tomorrow is so, so very close, yet I'm convinced if I can sleep in my own bed tonight, they'll never find me. They'll have to wait like I do, till tomorrow, and till another tomorrow.

Dangerous times nearing midnight. Every day opens with fresh blood or ink drying down our throats, "...and I Must Scream.", Harlan Ellison [1967]

Honeycombs of humanity sink into themselves and form a thick syrup they claim will cure our ailments, but still tastes like Third *****™ nationalism.  They burn our shelters and chant, "Home."

Resistance looks strange. People aren't choking on gag orders, they're going around the wall, but hundreds are behind bars for protest, or still getting killed on the streets, or getting hosed down in the cold for advocating clean water. They're putting bounties on antifascists.

We beat that ***** Richard Spencer, but we're yet to strike the one in the White House.

Rattlesnakes under our heels, we've grown into something fiercer.
Something deadlier.