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.

Carry on soldiers, and we'll pretend we don't notice you; the hollow shell/carcass of a wasp rotten black inside the window. Forgotten.

I'm sick to my stomach thinking of the rotten disappointment I'll become.

I feel the ties that bind us tighten, and bound our hands together as we crash into each other, and my love is the anchor that held this ship, and now pulls it down, churning, groaning, and bending in the middle. My hands on you go from desired to expected to pushed away, like a child treats their steamed vegetables.

I empty out, becoming the shell of what is a full man.
I empty out, becoming the shell of what was a full man.

Either that or I don't think much, anymore.

“Wanna break into Case?”, she smiles as she says it, “I’ve done it before.”

I doubt nothing that comes from her, and I shake like a leaf on a tree climbing up the children’s rock wall because she doesn’t know I’m afraid of heights yet.

We sneak into church and listen to their choir off key and someone walks in right as I’m about to ****** Christ’s abs right on the cross.
We’re young and we’re loud and we’re unstoppable and we’re fearless, unless our strangers are louder than us.

A heavy fog is rolling in.

We wake up early and soaked in affection. You leave and come back with coffee. We are desperate to stay here, in this bed, in this moment. The rain outside, our warm bodies next to each other, kissing and laughing at Reddit memes.

I’m not a crook, but I stole you and I’d do it again, and I’d do it every chance I could or had to. Closer to home here then where I struggle to pay rent.

Approaching nuclear winter, and I can't wait for apocalypse wine soaked Bukowski to crawl out his grave and slug it out with the man in black.
I hope they buried Bukowski in that ill fitting t shirt with his beer gut trying to escape from the bottom, and we should feel ***** for making ******* legends.

We don't.

I'm collecting bottles of alcohol on my window sill;

1 Bottle of Vanilla Smirnoff to cap off poorly cooked rice dishes and sleep dizzy at night. I killed it with a screwdriver some time after New Year's Eve, I guess.

1 Bottle of Kamora, to make a white russian, but we put most of it in egg nog and then watched Neil Breen speak out loud what he should have kept to himself, and we ****** on my couch to see if my room mate would walk in on us, and we fell asleep like that and woke up with sore necks. I stuck that flower you stole inside the bottle, and now it's plastic neck wilts a little more in the sunlight and radiator every day.

1 Bottle of Espolon, but it was filled with more *****. She brought it last time we saw each other and we watched some anime and I made everybody smell the ***** that smelled like pure sugar. I don't know what you see in me, but I hope you stop.

1 Bottle of Copa De Oro to round out more nights with the only drink I can fix well, walking through feet of snow to sleep early and wake up late. I'd play with your hair and skin and watch you fall asleep and wake up at all times of the night, and I'd wake up just to do it again, because this is my dream.

A single can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, stolen from my room mate. I thought I was clever without trying too hard, I keep washing all her dishes and she repays me with a messy living room and a sink full of dishes. Living like this is **** and we get along just fine.

I hope someone gets that ******* Alex Jones with a bat to the side of the head, and buries him in a rose garden, as long as we're still fighting fascists and not trying to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya".
I think, I hope, we're all tired of holding our breath.

I'm too poor for the alcohol + it's too late. Getting drunk to fill the empty feeling seems like a pipe dream. You came and I felt lonelier with you here. I still feel lonelier with you gone. I'm filling my window sill with bottles, to see how much damage I cause alone.
1 - Copa De Oro
1 - Kamora
1 - Smirnoff
1 - Espolon
1 - Can of Pabst Blue Ribbon

I'm not selfish, but still heartbroken and wishing you were mine.
I have to rationalize this in the future too.

I have to remember that a mistake is not an accident; it is calculated and weighted. I can't let them convince me a choice is a slip of the tongue. Might steal my room mate's beer, might buy my own, and who the **** knows?

All this skin to save my heart, and I'm still made of glass.
Trying to get some type of high like everyone else.
Trying to waste health like everyone.
Wasting youth.

I sank my heart just to be with you.

You put towels under the door to hide the stench of cigarettes.
Put your hands on your head and your head in your lap.
You bled from your thighs and I kissed the back of your neck.
You cried in the bathtub while I tried to stop the bleeding.

I wish it wasn't you.
I wish I never saw you open  up your arms in front of me.
I wish I never even met you, or learned your name just so I could forget it.

I sank my heart.

You are not as helpless to love as you think.

You watch him so closely, the alcohol on his breath can be smelled through his 2am text messages. You admire him anyways.

You are not as helpless to love as you feel.

You left me after weeks of not even trying. You made me feel disgusting. I get over it reminding myself that the *** was awful. You told me you failed me, and I believe you.

You are not as helpless to love as you want to be.

You will lose everyone if you keep choosing to be stapled to someone who feels no remorse over telling others to **** themselves. Stop acting like history is a precedent for dragging that sack of **** around. A lot of girls cut themselves, you just met one who deserves to.

You are not as helpless to love as it seems.

I can't believe my parents got along for long enough to have two kids. My father started texting her to say happy birthday, happy holidays, etc. "He must be lonely", I tell her, knowing fully well he's pushed everyone out of his life. He's insufferable to even his insufferable friends [which he now lacks].
I aspire that those who love me may recognize their lust and admiration, but leave me in a heartbeat for my shortcomings. I would pray that nobody lets me hurt them if they have the chance. I fear myself for them. It's only a little ****** up.

When you leave and you don't appear again? I've normalized the behavior. I imagine that death's ferry travels through this room and takes the lust from you. You leave with nothing but the mediocrity of reality. At least you leave.

I feel your shame in me as a dance;
navigating with words to meander past tables hosting hungry bodies, silently. Your vocabulary crops me out of pictures. Your language erases me from the past as it is happening. You speak through me as I stand in front of you.

"Are you ashamed of me?", I'd ask, weeks later when
we haven't talked still.
We haven't talked more.
We haven't talked anymore.

[I'm in a bad way thinking about
pretty girls
&
red lips that say "good bye",
if they say anything at all.]

So some nights we lay on our sides,
and other nights we lay on our backs,
and all the other nights we sleep anxiously.
****.
No, I sleep anxiously

I think we were in high school, a little more than children when you said you love me.

We're almost real men here, we're "sentimental boys."

I promised I wouldn't let myself be the victim, but when your eyes sparkle in Christmas lights, and you don't eat for days, and you live recklessly in a cruel world, you will experience pity

a little more than sorrow.

Someone said you were sincere and I didn't argue,
because even though you lied to them, you were real to me,
and if I poison that now it kills the nostalgia
for a time I was looked after and not for.
Cared and not sought.

Slightly more than children.

2016 saw a year of structure and measure,
a year of coun-ting syl-a-bles.

Now is a return to form.
Shapeless but congealing.

I'm just like you;
trying to find the right words,
in the right places
&
at the right times

to make art worth the air I waste
and the space I steal.

I grow tired of you hurting yourself with me.
You learn to hate me.
We don’t talk anymore.

My nightmares become fatal.

I stop responding because I don’t know how to answer, and I spend Christmas alone passing out wine-drunk to Naruto. I’m not sorry. My mother calls and I don’t know what to say, and neither does she. Then New Years Eve approaches like a dark cloud to water our crop, and wash away our debts,

but

my acquaintances want to have a fistfight, and I’m asked to be a witness in the police report [but I clearly remember nothing happening, through shades of alcohol].

I clearly remember at the beginning of the night I told you I don’t **** with cops.

Yet, now you’re surprised it makes me uncomfortable.

My daydreams grow immersive. My gameplay grows sloppy.
My reactions grow dull. My body grows weak.
This stranger tastes like cigarettes.
I don’t clearly remember the rest.

I don't dare to watch you dance;
I drink a little bit more, and a little bit more.

I'm asking someone to make me a drink;
I say too much, I stand too close.

My lovers go to art school, and then go home for the holidays,
but I live here, like the indigenous left behind after the tourists left,
after the army came.

It's strange how they come here to be artists, and I live like this.

I thought I'd start the year fresh.
I thought I'd be carefree, ******* and happy.
A stereotype, or a cliché.

I'm still black like my brother, and white like my neighbor.
I'm still a princess to my lovers, and some strange man to my coworkers.
I drink a little bit more, and I'm drunk again.

A painting of men,
tangled in a web of flesh.
Drifting into hell.

Drifting into sleep,
I put on your mix CD
to rinse my eyes clean.

I would pray for you.
Writing it gives me chills and
I might wash my hands.

I yearn for your arms,
and exhale daydreams of love.
Pretending to breathe.

I want you to breathe.
I choke you as we **** and
say something nasty.

You know, John Cage said,
"In the dark, all cats are black."
Maybe that's why we

close our eyes to kiss,
or sleep in each others arms;
We don't fear our night.

I wake up like this;
toothache, slowly, sweating and
over the covers.

Speak lowly of me
if you think I did you wrong.
I change names often.

Though I'm not hiding,
my movement mimics prey and
gives thanks to hunters.

Seasonal regards.
I can't get it off my mind
so I sleep like this.

I could be sunshine.
People tell me that I'm sweet.
I'm glad they think so.

They ignore my hate,
turning blind eyes to the sun.
I am not so kind.

There's no risk in you.
I think it's what separates
us from each other.

I've been here too long,
I have "go" in my blood but
"stop" in both my hands.

I'm a boiling man,
and moving too fast for you.
Oil in my veins.

The world is spinning
way too fast to be insane,
I'm just keeping up.

If you saw me in
the eyes of a starving man,
would you turn away?

This commitment that's
ordinary to many
catches up to me

and it walks with me.
Our eyes focused on pavement,
hands in our pockets.

Looking for the words
to feed strangers where our hearts
leave people hungry.

She made me dinner,
****** me, made me laugh, and then
told me she loved me.

I once doubted this,
but where everyone turned black
my soul is yellow.

I live wide open,
and my consequences yield
to my momentum;

The speed of whispers,
I lead by debauchery
as an example.

Some worship the dead
and some sit next to the ghosts,
elbow to elbow.

The duality
of the swarm is that it's both
nameless and legend.

I wake up to you
and I am happy again.
I'm yellow again.

You worship yourself,
and pander this as loving,
not narcissism.

Your America;
Ghost of Andrew Jackson, or
genocide elect.

I wonder if they
hear freedom ring in Iraq,
or Afghanistan?

Unlike how you can
cover your eyes and still see
a beautiful world.

Covering your ears,
and nodding, "I can hear the
bells of liberty!"

You do not love them.
You love them like a dog you
neglect, then put down.

To me, it's a joke;
Your love of people is a
bastardization.

There is an answer
to why every privileged
******* can't write;

They talk of heaven,
they preach about angels and
how they might sing, yeah,

but haven't seen one.
They haven't listened to them
and cannot hear them.

***** rhetoric
applauding their enclosure
as the door closes.

Brain dead featherweights
tethered by their bibles and
white supremacy.

"Ideology"
cult of the soul without a
purple beating heart.

***** rhetoric;
repeat Frances Scott Key and
emphasize landscape.

We've all seen the fields,
we know how green the grass is,
and how blue the sea.

Biblical visions;
worship "democracy" and
call your leader "king".

"ideology"
a mask for supremacy.
***** rhetoric.

You're going to choke
and you can't have the angels
after you **** them.

There was a river
sixteen miles north the highway
where we lost our sins

and sent them downstream,
where they wash their hoods with them.
White like oppression.

When we hang our heads,
they're behind us with the rope.
The same as ever.

Dry your eyes children,
the fight for bread has ended.
We fight to survive.

Dance flower dance and
When it rains you might drown but
“freedom” has shades now.

To the mower you’re
just taller now. Just taller.
I had dreams last night,

took ill by morning,
I was on a bus headed
somewhere new to me.

I didn’t know where,
I just knew I was scared and
wanted to go home.

I hate this so much,
and I can’t even give up.
I haven’t earned it.

So dance flower dance,
tear your roots out, die trying
to impress us all.

"Try to shoot me down?
You wish you were as fearless
as I am right now,

and if that heart beats
I'll **** it into pieces.
I'd throw it away.

I'm not an artist,
I am death incarnate but
warmer than you thought.

Aim for my bad side,
you make it look cliche and
I make it easy.

No one could stop me;
remind me who ***** with me?",
Princess Sleepyhead.

I’ve been here before,
But somehow I was wiser
Back then, and lost now.

Doors open loudly,
Mysteries pouring out like
A broken faucet.

Hands reaching to me,
Pulling me to mouths eager
To devour me whole.

They take me apart,
Curious like a child with
A shiny new toy.

Then they put me back
Pieces missing, out of place,
Or just plain broken.

Eager to taste me,
Touch me into pieces though
I’ve been here before.

Should I think of my
father as young, immature,
maybe arrogant?

My mother was a
girl who laughed with all her heart,
once upon a time.

I'm a second child,
and I wonder if I was
conceived out of love.

I try to see them
as people who didn't know
they'd hate each other.

Just a couple who'd
slow dance and share arms, bodies.
I don't think they knew.

I wanted a home
inside of this violence and
begging for fresh air.

You seek forgiveness
but without any effort;
You want religion.

Slept next to lions,
and only woke up alone.
Meat still on the bone.

Woke under covers,
my whole skin bleeding warnings.
I took ill in dreams.

My nightmares grew worse;
fortunes withered before me.
Food on the table.

They'll recognize me
by the sound of thunder in
my reputation.

I am no hero,
and I'm no antagonist.
I'm common at least.

Somehow I touch you
and you are changed, and it means
nothing about me.

They will know me by
a storm of fates, bent centers,
violent in the wind.

I didn’t know it’s
unfashionable to wear
Your heart on your sleeve.

I didn’t catch that
lying was part of a game
that we’ve been playing.

It’s just a story
we tell with our bodies and
wash with our bedsheets.

Weather your gold crown
Rotten down to copper, your
Hail of sustenance.

Despite your new crown
You’re light as a feather, you
Try to get better.

Halo represents
A mirage of purity,
Hemorrhage of love.

Bitter and toxic,
Alchemy of illusions.
You don’t try so hard.

I’m a woe bearer
Posing as a sunflower,
Reaching for the sun.

They’re looking for me,
But they don’t know that yet, or
How I slept last night.

Forgot about me;
People tell me I'm great then
make me feel like ****.

The world feels bigger,
and I feel two inches tall.
You look over me.

I am lonely and
sad and I want to die but
life has it's boots on.

[Remember that pic
of the soldier dragging a
child's lifeless body?]

I'd need to be worse
to cry just a pound of this
out of my system

and there are still tons
waiting to claw their way in
and eat their way out.

I never got a
scar from something dangerous,
only accidents.

I'm not an angel,
I'm the ******* you warn your
friends about *******.

I'm the guy you look
over your shoulder at while
walking home at night.

I'm the person you
wish you could come home to, but
processed by traumas.

Your frail fingerbones
against the palm of my hands.
Impossibly soft.

I dream in color,
watching myself receive a
just, violent abuse.

In my dreams I’m strong,
but not now. I’m helpless now.
Then I’m waking up.

Distortion season,
a heavy fog awaits you.
Early sunglasses.

I’m helpless here too,
just graceful under pressure.
I handle it well.

Boats rarely moving,
just gently bobbing in place.
Shifting on a plane.

I'm waiting for you;
to show me heartbreak or love,
to reveal your hand.

I wonder if you
get trashed and think of me or
forget til morning.

I try not to think.
Sometimes I just ramble, rant,
and laugh for too long.

I could imagine,
me, reaching out, but is it
inappropriate?

Digging for hatchets.
You found me lost and hungry
for blood sacrifice.

Your tongue salts my wounds.
Your words slice through my stitches.
Your love chills my heart.

I live on my own,
selfish, absent of conscience.
A gentle rage. Blind.

My lover tells me,
“whatever you want, baby.”
and I’m still melting.

I’m still dreaming and
the pressure inside these veins
cooks a short story.

Pressure of my veins/
the bottom of the ocean,
with all it’s monsters.

“We make it happen.”,
I’m interrupted later,
weeks, or maybe days.

Sick of platitudes,
emotional contusions,
and little white lies.

I’m tired of the ghost;
this minefield of keywords and
it’s all just a game.

I’ve never had a
birthday party and now I’m
too old for magic

Light candles for me,
put a girl inside my cake.
Sing a song for me.

It’s just a party.
I’m just another sad boy.
Just another night.

Less than a question,
stuck playing all the old games;
a face carved from wood.

Stuck playing midnight,
quoting Castro on hunger;
Loss of appetite crucial

to understand
the feeling of having none,
but this is just greed.

I eviscerate
and consume nothing, woeful.
Flesh does not have me.

Ticking Casio,
breathing time into nonsense.
Digital. Solid.

Johnny told you that
he didn't trust you as I
was saying, "leave him."

He wants you obsessed
with him while he's looking for
a new hole to fill.

I tried to tell you
this was going to happen,
and I'm still sorry.

I expect the worst
and prepare a bit further;
hope is alien.

You're full of the stuff,
and I don't know how to speak
to someone like that.

My heart is warm, yet
rock ******* the inside and
colder than oceans.

It's as gorgeous to see the first stick with a sharp rock at the tip, as well as the last mirror polished heavily ornamented spear someone used to try and ****** another human in the name of that quest for greatness, and remember that somewhere in between Jesus Christ was nailed to a flagpole and stuck with the same instrument.
      "Lives Forever."
      To some rate we stopped making weapons to **** mankind, and started building weapons with the destructive power to **** entire branches of thought, philosophy, ideas, and religions. We committed to Hiroshima to tell the world, "Your future is ours." We committed to Iraq and Afghanistan to say, "Thou shalt not interfere with the moral ambiguity of the nuclear superpowers." We fight the idea of terror abroad with real weapons to unrighteously protect the idea of freedom here, dead black men and children in the streets, and in their own homes.
      
      I'm no longer surprised what little effort it took me to stay alive.

      A friend comes to me lovingly and spitefully because they are depressed. Life is hard. People are cold. Nearly every lover requires a stroke to the ego that tells them they are special or great. We build God in the people we ****, and we're baptized in our ******, not the draining of fluids, but the soft verse that "reminds" us we are "objectively good."

       "Pillowtalk; the prayer for forgiveness."
       She comes to me for forgiveness twice and disappears forever. Jacob calls it, "ghosting". It's casual, really.
       They say the universe is comprised of strings sometimes and it sounds like an idea writers can ******* into dust, but I think they do well connecting human bodies without; part metaphor, part science.
      I attend a party and flirt with a stranger. She says we met before. I make out with her friend. She appears out of nowhere. I flirt with her again. I make out with her friend again. Her friend rubs her hand over my pants around the outline of my steel hard **** and hangs her mouth open to girlishly illustrate shock at her own action. We don't ****.
      I finish twelve hours later into the mouth of an amateur **** artist/cam girl and kindergarten teacher for the second time. Her uber driver told her how ****** took the life of his wife and best friend. We laugh at this. We fall in love to some extent.
      I had a dream I saw my father in a hospital bed and told him I forgave him despite my actions. I wake up fully comprehending that he will die without a son.
     I write haiku for a year because everything else lacks structure.

The depravity
of instinct might repulse you;
inhuman impulse.

The gods they create,
yet it's godless how they pray.
Prey upon the weak;

Those conscious angels
ugly by purity and
lust of good virtue.

We rot like they do;
with our eyes being closed as
our pulse cracks the night.

Ashes pushed in tight
against the pressure of us;
Our loose breath and words.

We are purveyors,
headcutters, jazzists, brawlers,
writers and killers.

We meet here to live.
We scream and bang instruments.
We come here to die.

Cutting our hair and
writing on the walls, dressing
immaculately.

Trying to keep our
chins above our sweat, rising
an inch a minute.

We come here to be
baptized in this river of
sin, made unholy

before the weekday
pulls us out of tantrum, to
mediocrity.

You've got convictions,
mumble poems to yourself,
lost at your front door.

You sip cigarettes
just like how your ex used to,
long and ferocious.

Still wearing his clothes,
but wearing the next guys shirt,
your heart on your sleeve.

It's all for non-sense,
we're all nihilists these days.
We all lack beliefs.

You have convictions;
a speech only you can hear.
Foot steps on concrete.

Your words grow heavy
the sparser they become, and
slippery as well.

I'm wandering still,
looking for a pain that feels
closer to the "soul".

I'm desperate now,
I can taste his sweat on you
but I say nothing.

Everyone's alone,
but it's a human concept
to be so lonely.

Everyone's dying
without any dignity,
soulless and divine.

Everyone's silent
under the deafening sound
of thought in practice.

Everyone's losing,
and we've only learned how to
fetishize the pain.