Not sleeping.
Got a full day tomorrow,
whatever,
**** it.
Awake.
Everything is cold
and sore.
My head is a rocket
that explodes in the air,
but it's just sizzling and
sparks for now.

We face the new cliches;
Hell is on earth and we keep it here,
we stand in it’s way.
Obstruct it’s path.

I am certain of very few things now

,but if anybody thinks a blank page makes
“4′33″ [John Cage],
they’re a ******* idiot,
because

If you’ve sat in silence in love
and sat in silence with demons,
and sat in silence in the rain,
or just outside it

You learn a little bit about silence.

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.

Dive kicked off the aspirin,
overdosed on vitamin D.
Up all night, celebrating,
properly sober;
properly hydrated,
properly fed.

Stomach ache from experimenting foods,
sriracha on salad and chocolate and eggs
threw it all over everything like "HADOUKEN!",
there's information floating on the wind everywhere
and most of it is ***** and cats,
people saying, "hey" and "yo" and "whats up?"

And I'm addicted to Tom Waits,
and probably ***, and probably the internet,
and probably video games and thinking,
but thinking about offing myself.
Genesis does what nintendon't
and lately every modern gaming console
simply just www.WillNot.
I guess we're all fantasizing till we stop.

Also, punk and jazz will not mix well,
my grandfather wrote me from the grave
just to say so.
He says the rent isn't so bad,
but the landlord is the ******* devil,
although there's a room for me to move in.
I just might if I don't get medicated,
for right now I'm whimsical
and singing up and off key.

All these zombies are feeling my vibe
with their teeth and fingernails,
and affection never felt so good
from such a friendly crowd.
I don't get out much anymore,
I'm slipping into old habits
more often because I'm lonely
and melancholic and bored.

It's all right or whatever.

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.

You craft your own sins.
Do anything; whatever
your heart desires, babe.

Three days later and
I decided I'm wasted
through stranger methods.

***, coffee, cheap food,
sleep deprivation, music
[loud to keep **** out].

Dark sunglasses, or
general debauchery.
Keeping it simple.

Keeping it stupid,
no reason for the format.
Meaningless to me.

I exist in their
sins, held responsible by
association.

They are crafting me
out of their foolish mistakes.
Eager accidents.

I drown in their filth
and come back completely whole.
The resurrection.

"The Lovely *******;
innocent to innocence/
No stranger to loss."
~
On resurrection;
Die once and live forever?
That's not sacrifice.

Christians are insane,
but I am too in their eyes.
It gives me comfort.

That's no martyrdom,
nothing selfless in the flesh.
They still consume it.

Ex-Girlfriend calls me up on a friends phone,
says to meet her at quicken loans.
I get there and she tells me her and her friends
are "getting food", except they're not.
******* Caucasian zombies rotting away in
get rich doing nothing schemes,
"Peel and orange, beat a coconut"
tell me what class of poor sap you're trying
to pry from a months rent in the name of an
"investment".
I thought I would at least have a conversation
with an old friend, but instead I got forty minutes
of some ******* belly-aching
about being a teenage dirt-dad to
try and get me into "the Elite".

It was a waste of a ******* night.

Took the train home with some loud ******* white people,
and got lost in my own reflection.
The look, that look,
like an animal getting beat by it's owner,
the pain and confusion,
love and betrayal.
I don't want your money, or they're money,
or Donald Trumps money, or easy money.
God, I want to ******* die on a bus
reeking of **** and penniless.

What a ******* waste.

Got money for *** and gambling,
but you're leaving your bills
on someone else's tab.
People are telling me to jump ship.
It's getting harder not to oblige.
I live in multiple states
of anxiety and depression,
ain't it grand?
No "God" here, no "God's will",
quit chittering your religion like
it's a ******* verb; wallowing
in filth, and next is misery.
I'm steadfast on sinking
in this **** already.
I'm still here.

It is winter inside my home.
I lay under a black cloud, starved,
naked, half-cocked to explode,
basking in the white rays of
computer light,
alone.

I am an islander.

I try to reach you.
All I want is you.
You whisper my desperate wrists
away from yourself and escape me.
I am a necromancer; My corpse is
Alive
among the living;
I am a ghost. I am seven dollars spent
on B-vitamins, and a well-pitied man.

I cut deep into my own mind with
words that sink blue, like the stem of
thyme sings through my gums and
stays until the next morning,
I am crying in the bathroom at work,
I am listening to my mother go insane,
I am crying all day,
all day in bed,
running

back and forth, back and forth,
heart beats like;
doki-doki-doki-dokidokd...
I am a comedian laughing till his own demise,
trying to finish the punchline but

I am an islander.

You don't get back to me.
You don't make time for me.
You're not here for me,
I ask you to just tell me why you love me,
and you
tell me annoyed,
it's time for sleep.

It's always time fo

I am an Islander.

I cry so much these days. I cry cry cry,
and I promise I'll get better, I'll be happy,
I promise, just get back to me, okay?
I'm so sick of crying. I promise.
I can smile see?
The sun is out, but
it's ******* winter,

it's always ******* winter,
and I can't
I don't

I am an islander.
I am an islander.
I am an islander.
I am an islander.

I'm alone.

I'm just really anxious right now, I guess.

It was 2:47pm;
text: "If they could just look between the cracks,
they'd see I'm really ******* trying."

Trying to sleep,
couldn't.
Wanted to be
strong for everyone.

Then it was 2:58pm;
"I'm just so tired of trying to
prove myself to everyone."
Walking to my old job,

but it was 10:46am;
"I just found out I'm one of 3
being interviewed for the position."
Inner panic and smothering
all the voices in your head
with

"received 11:44am;
Fingers crossed"

I'm not a great enough
or terrible enough person
to be a great writer,
and neither one
for lack of trying.

The days just
barely even
inhale
&
the stains begin
where the night
may
exhale.

Wrapped around an
overdeveloped
finger.
Possesed, yet
wholly worthless.

Next to me, you are nothing.

Sin as something
gorgeous to death.
Crafted from curses,
lizard tongues and
snakeskin.

Soft as satin.

You never thought to ask what was wrong with everyone else.

People are horrible, and we will tear you out of the sky,
just because you're above us.
We will push your face in the dirt, boots on your neck,
just to ensure you're beneath us.

You are perfect, and beautiful,
and when you were born all that was missin'
was a pair of wings so you could
fly above us all.

All the bums and shitbags and
silver tongued ******* with hearts like copper,
yet so close to gold.
We haven't got an idea what's up there where you are,
but you have every idea where we've been.

We weren't born with wings.
We had to make due.
We don't hate you,
we just learned to hate the sky.

Clouds are like thoughts passing by,
and so many are beautiful,
and so many hide lightning and rain,
and they **** all over us,
and they strike down on us without mercy.

I'm pretty sure I've killed a lot of things now;
Just shooting into the sky,
and picking up what fell down.
Pretending I'd saved something beautiful.

She has cigarettes
in place of **** to be said.
She does not say much.

I don’t think I have
people happy to see me
and all these “artists”

are impressionists,
somehow living alone has
become a statement.

I consume myself,
and am neither satisfied
or disappointed.

A cardboard box to place all your hearts into.
Squander the pretty things.
Cut everything into small shapes and pray
for grey clouds, rain clouds, secondhand smoke.
Something has to be destroyed again.
It is a season not for harvest,
but to gaze at something empty, cold,
and left in waste, helpless.

The side of the head collapses inward.
Bone snaps and the breath is so short
it would make you wonder if it happened at all.
It would amaze you how you have hurt others.
Like a pyramid in selfishness;
the Niagara Falls made in barbed wire
and infested with small biting insects.

You had to teach yourself, and it wasn't hard.
You taught yourself how to hate, but more so;
How to hate everything you know, to-
find flaw?- in everything you hold close to-
Hallelujah.
Angels with eyes eyes sewn shut, monsters,
monsters with white wings, feathered.

Flying. ****, I want more dreams of flying,
or even another dream of falling.
Always awake. Circles nourished by your
happiness are well fed under your eyes.
You are not.
You are not
falling or flying,
&
never in my life have they felt so similar.
So much the same.

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 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

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?

Spent 4 dollars on the light gun game
in the Barcade, and beat it,
and there are no high scores,
just 2am and sore eyes and
lactic acid in the elbow.

We're all rats chewing holes in
the ship we stow away on.
Sinking in a desperate hunger.

You don't know me, and, so...
don't pretend to anymore.

You don't talk much,
I don't talk much.
So, we don't talk much.
Yet, somehow, everything
is "fine". [citation needed]

Singing in the passenger side this time,
sitting on the vocals for the perfect song,
waiting to make you cry.

I am your doll, full of needles;
We fight by cuddling in armor
padded with barbed wire and thorns.

Mutilated "lovers". [citation needed]
Cold wars and cold tongues and shoulders,
and tired of all the *******, but whatever.
Everything's ******* now.
Nothing is fine, or good,
or okay...

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.

Can't remember much of what I wanted to say.
Cracked on the porch staring a stray kitten
in the eyes. It wouldn't approach me,
I didn't wanna go near it,
so we just stared.

To make this contract informal;
I'm sick of this planet.
****, it's hard to pity or feel sorry
for people who are just as weak
and pathetic as yourself.
It gets difficult to not just hate them
like you may glare at your reflection
with some type of spite.

They're all diseased and petty,
creatures too smart for their own bodies,
but trapped inside them, caged.
Arrogant, then desperate at their
squishy and feeble vessels,
trying to make meaning where there's vacancy.
Their own holes are full of tar
and dead things.
Their voids hold no "humanity".
Pure rot.

When I die I don't want to leave
a god ****** thing behind.
Not a smile, a foot print,
a handshake, or idea.
No fond memories.
I want this planet to
disassociate
with me as I have it.
The citizens of planet earth
can forget about me.
Should forget about me.

We can't just stare forever.

Lets not lie then;
you’re out there somewhere having a
fine & dandy time, a fish in shallow waters,
meanwhile I’m a shoe-in
for the biggest *******
this side of town and god and country.
And where the **** are you?
What the **** is your excuse?

I’m homeless without you and
I’m a degenerate when I’m with you,
and I’m ****** enough in this
sleepless state to see it’s not fair.
I can’t ******* swim out here…
You can fuss about me not being
next to you some nights, but
I don’t give a **** about
the *** we’re not having,
the touch you’re demanding,
so just shut down the charade.


And you don’t want to know
what’s * *wrong ** with me.


"I don’t give a ****.", yeah,
tattoo it on my lips and kiss them
till they bleed. Don’t care.
Maaaaaybe I’m too tired to think clearly,
but ******* right now I see so much
and it’s so petty and privileged and ******
and when you think you see the lines,
you can’t even see the light of day.
I’d know because it’s here right now.
I’d know because I lost the words to say,
but the lyric would be so ******* gritty.

Lalalala, lalalala, lalalala;

The weight is so **** heavy.

Lalalala, lalalala, lalala;

The escape is too passe.

Lalalalalalalala, and where
the **** are you?

Everyone else is drunk and I’m
a hallucinogenic and a landmine.

Ghosts sitting on the trunk of
a sea foam green car
smoking Marlboro golds,
their teeth gnashing at
carcinogenic tips.

Discussing tastes.
Aesthetic pleasure.

The past can't haunt you anymore.

She said, "we all wish to take a scalpel to
our past.
It's like a sore muscle and you need to
stretch it out."

This repressed everything, and
enforced amnesia; more complex
than conspiracy or tacit reality,
because

you're not supposed to hold on
to something that hurts you.

This house in on fire,
not home, house,
and I'm leaving,
and I've taken what I want.
I'm escaping.

She asks if I'd want to know.

I wake up missing something,
and missing a past.
I don't mind
the weightlessness.
This is how I will live now.

A woman on the
Street told me about how her
Boyfriends probably

******* a drag queen,
And they stole fifty dollars
From her. Wants advice.

"Remember you have
Yourself", I say; a rehearsed
Piece of half fiction.

She lights up something,
mysterious and inhales,
Then exhales and sighs.

Think for a second,
What would my mom say right now?
I try to start fire.

I can't tell you why
He holds your hand in public,
Ignores you at home

Helps his drag queen friend,
But leaves you in bed alone.
I don't know that much.

But these things tend to
Work themselves out in the end.
I have faith in that.

Not god, religion,
Choice, free will, karma, and such.
Just this natural

Push for balance and
The results I've seen so far.
I believe in this.

This story is headed downwards.
Down a spiral, down a staircase.
Backwards.
Trying to walk while hammering
your own toes, aren't you?
Slowly strangling the narrative?
We can see your fingers in the picture.
So you're convinced it was supposed
to be this way? You're ******* it up kid.
Just be honest for a second or lie, lie, lie.
Lie about where you are.
Lie about what you're doing.
Lie about how you feel.
You wish you could just **** it yourself,
but instead you lie and it lives another day.
Where are your new tricks kid?
Where are you taking us next?
Where is the end?

He had a twilight in his eyes
that made that smile seem sincere.
Sincere in a way that some people
can say, "Go **** yourself"
and sound legitimately concerned
for your well being at the same time.
No, no, no, he was a beggar's child,
and grew up in a broken home
where pride spat in the face of
a legitimate source of income.
Couldn't lose a purpose if one was
never attained, but, you know,
still purposeless. Some people though,
they can be *******, ******,
they can be a lot of things,
but you'll still love them for being
honest. You see, when people see
brilliance in someone, it can just
******* ruin the whole ***.
It's better this way.
Just being honest. Just yourself.
I want that dream again;
the one where I feel like I'm breathing
instead of learning how.

You tasteless morons;
Gnawing at whatever is
pandering to you.

Swallow your morals.
You eat art alive and you
consume artists whole.

******* cannibals,
devouring the message to
feel accomplishment.

Satisfied by trend
and over indulged by your
ideology.

This hole is a farm.
It's where we cut out our hearts
to feed our egos.

Make it about the
desperation and ego
of the modern man.

Disappear into
something thinner than thin air.
From the sides, inward.

"Contemporary"
is too nostalgic for the
days of typewriters.

Serve me my meals cold;
I could have expected this,
but didn't from you.

I'm a modern man,
as lonely and scummy as
the last modern man.

Got money, but I spent too much.
I have to pawn something,
something worth pawning.
Can't sell a guitar,
they gotta be firewood.
Sell what? Blood?
Maybe a ******* kidney?
Have to stay calm,
can't pressure cook it.
Have to form a plan,
stretch it out over a few weeks.
Can't breathe too fast.
Been calm. Head on.
Better make it last.

Home should be the only place

you don’t have to worry about

an ordinary ****** taking place.

****, home or hell if you believe in it.

We’re supposed to believe we’re in

the hands of saints,

with how carelessly we’re handled.

Home should be like hell,

yet better.

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.

Got that sinking feeling,
like a man taking off in an elevator.
Going up but somehow left behind.
I got that, "your time is up" aura
drowning me from all around,
inside and out.
Like being eaten by ants.
The hand that twitches
at high noon.
The ex-fastest.
The wick at it's end.
Wax running off the table.
Dying in a fever dream,
cold towel on my head.
Obsolete technology in a dump
next to banana peels and
soggy pornographic materials.
Yesterday's news being shredded
into todays toilet paper.
From a greasy grumpy retail worker
all the way
to a corpse in a crash test simulation.
Being fed your own organs,
genitals first.
Standing in a hail of glass
without an umbrella.
Standing at the edge of the world
with an Antagonist behind you
in steel toe boots. Glaring.
Possibly upset.
That just flunked bronze sensation.
A sinking feeling.

Low voltage and the battery
is glowing like some hippie on drugs,
man **** the hippies but they are
radiant.
I can't respect people anymore,
I step on toes and curtsy sarcastically
and if I'm being kind it's somehow ironic
and everyone is fair game and an easy target,
I see in targets and blink like a ******
and bat my eyes like dragons breathe fire.

Be anything you want to be except a doormat
a pet, an iron chest, a superstar, a sucker or lollipop,
a lawyer or boy in blue soaked in red.

Run for your ******* life,
and die in the process.
Stop trying to make treaties with the modern world,
boring idiots with their noses buried in their ******* phones
and I'm not even close to old fashioned, just spiteful.
Spiteful because I'm lazy.

When the bass kicks the speakers out
my head is always between them,
so you know I don't always
listen to music
to listen to music.

Deep royal purple bags under my eyes.
Hair that carelessly does exactly what I want it to.
To look perfectly exhausted.
Eyes that are overdriven
and burnt out.
A terrible demeanor
that idiots find charming.
A necessity to break something,
or a pent up anger that combusts
an engine of ill intentions;
Not just for me,
yes, for all of us.
Death howl
porcelain fingers
wooden spine
slightly violet.
Glass heart.
To kiss *** when pressed
and beg yourself you'll
give it hell later.
Pull the curtains off
and still see nothing.
Somehow useless like
a god or angel of death
or mercy.
Fantasy realized in the mind
that refuses to become reality.
A promise no one keeps.
Words spoken yet empty,
feeble, and without presence.
No sleep.
Trying to find the conscience.
Seeking the moral compass.
Where were you supposed to be?
Where's the wall and am
I against it? Buried in art,
"criticism of art", failing to hear
your laundry list of shortcomings.
Reading to yourself out loud
to see how ******* awful it is.
Pinching yourself.
Chewing your fingertips to stumps.
Seeing things.
Hearing things.
Dreaming things.
Wanting things.
Hoping for things.
Wishing for things.
Begging for things.
Waiting for things.
Getting nothing.

Sworn in secrecy,
a language that only we
could read, understand.

A promise we wrote
with our lips on our bodies;
The world would be ours.

We'd start at the stars
and work our way back inside
one sun at a time.

We'd lie other nights,
and we'd never get downstairs.
We'd make our own dreams,

and we'd fall asleep,
full of dreams and promises.
Gone when morning comes.

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.

Blah blah blah blah blah;
My name is Armageddon,
weak arms, and nuclear thoughts-
spring box cyclops, unwashed dreadlocks,
lost the the keys and came in through a window,
and no one called the police because
this is such a safe
neighborhood.

Lock your doors or not,
we are coming in now.

The nectar shoots down the roots,
and sweeps sweet fruits from the dirt
to the doorstep, a forced laugh,
footprints all the way to the last
body.

Bury us or not,
we're coming home now.

Tacit compliance as an unspoken alliance,
and where we're going we don't need
the secrecy of prisons,
we need radio silence and people
too distracted to listen.

Well, listen or not,
we're going to scream now.

Gods and kings and their sons and daughters,
and it means nothing if the kingdom burns
like people rot; from the inside, out.
Doing nothing got nothing done,
and if our dictators own the world
we'll destroy that too.

Like it or not,
we're going to riot now.

Shade is much less banal than shadows.
It says, "I want to be in the sun."
The shade of your sun is chalk full
of miserable creatures.

One;
Me.

Crashing on multiple couches and
all the cats are black,
and all the people
need you out soon. ****.
Breaking lines to fit more text in;
dumping your head out everywhere,

talking to yourself in public for extended periods of time.

Smile just because you're so *******
sick of being sad all the time.
Wait, that's me. *******;
Got to claim my labors,
but can't show the weight.

A deep resentment for everything.
It's like math for some people,
and it's an art for others.
It's like math sometimes,
and it's an art the other half.
It's like math, but it's art.
It's like art, but it's mathematical.

White lies, breaking apart while
gluing the cracks back together,
while holding the better portions
and trying to figure out
if you're allowed
to cry
or not.
****.

I remember when I told you that
being with you made me feel like
I was at the center of everything,
but when you're gone,
and when you don't talk,
and when I think
about it for too long;

I'm lost.

Burned in all the right places.
No help, no hands;
I console you to the
"tune" of my depression.
Silence on your end.
A buzz held down
on sheets of static.

"We've had this
conversation before",
you say.
Nothing has changed
between then and now?
Burned? Burned?
I opened all my books when
you asked, I *******
showed you all my hands.
I can't even bluff.
You know who can?

It makes it hard to sleep.
Your archives are locked
and the key is on a string
and dancing in front of me.
Taunting. Semi-humiliating.
Mocking.

Between doors.
Between "lives",
towards death.
Between beds,
between homes.
Between smiles,
but never tears.
"Between jobs."
Between doses of
caffeine.
Between waking and
sleeping.

If you're still lost, well,
you know where to find me.

My weight is obscure yet light;

my meaninglessness slowly reassured

and I feel

incredible. My death is forever imminent.

Failure is only in my head,

morality is only in my head,

and if this idea sounds insane it’s because

you’re not in my ******* head.

Poisoned by light, irradiated in darkness,

ugly by consent, malnourished in virtue.

I stand on a pedestal and mock myself,

savagely and without regret.

Return to a nameless kingdom!

Return to manic chaos!

Tear yourself in half!

Enter the jaws of this monster

and seek yourself in it’s waste;

or cease to seek at all!

You didn't say much and I said nothing till it was too late;
a synonym for everything we do. Focused in, and
why the hell would I ever want to play tourist?
I'm an unpatriot and uno American;
this means I'm burdened by a tragic history
and not pretentious enough to believe
old buildings house anything more than
more ****. Older ****. Don't let anyone fool you,
those old white people were real savages.
**** it,
I don't need to see the pope or president,
my love is in my arms.
I don't have to walk this **** planet over,
the world is in my backyard.

Something disgusting
like a mutual friend,
or the feeling of
drinking
dishwater.

Aspirin like breath mints,
the blood feels liberated
inside the vein.

What the head puts to waste
sleep feeds on like a starving cannibal.
Everything that matters is
lost in the minutia.

We invented god, and fear
ourselves
and our
own creations.

Torn in flesh, worn in faces,
I like it when I walk somewhere
and the sidewalks are suspiciously
empty of strangers.

Thumps like clockwork,
and speeds up for all the same reasons.

Listening to Miles Davis,
******* a stranger in the bathroom,
falling in love again,
screaming and crying
and banging your head against the wall.

The clouds dissolve and when they
almost see you face to face,
you burn down your bridges
and make them start from
square one.

I hear her wake up
and begin mooing in pain
until she’s crying.

I’m incapable/
entirely useless to help.
So I’m listening.

I grip my bedsheets
and ponder how blood ecapes
the white of my fist.

Everything I’d ****
is somehow intangible.
Magically and

Invisibly, it
drifts about these halls, crying;
Hate turning to fear.

Grip something solid,
and wish it were the throat of
that **** ghost, haunting...

My dreams are empty,
my greatest fears are realized,
my sleep is disturbed.

I am alone now,
listening to cries of pain.
My knuckles are white.

Everyone wants to know what
you're doing these days.
No, they just want to know
if you're disappointing them.
You will. That's me.
I want nothing but to be free.
Strings attached to everything.

Saw a statue, a memorial for
Christopher Columbus.
Reminded me I despise people,
and the rampant white supremacy
that everyone ignores or chuckles at
while keeping in place in their
own small and insincere ways.
I despise most strangers.

Need to paint it red with blood,
tear it down, cut off the hands,
set it on fire.
Want to make it hurt.
Tired of most things.
Why do the days take so long?
I feel like I'm not doing this
nihilism thing correctly.

Can't gain steady foot space
and I'm already trying to dance.

I was fired from [sandwich shop X] for
"insubordination" and "attitude".
******* cowards, the whole lot.
What hurts the most is that I tried,
because someone vouched for me,
but they still stepped all over me
and then threw me away.
**** jobs.

Checked my horoscope for *****;

"If it's true that you reap what you sow, Libra, you're in for a great harvest in the coming months. Your hard work and focus will start to pay off handsomely with promotions and raises just when you may have given up on being acknowledged for all you do. Hang on to your great energy, passion, and enthusiasm. Doors are about to open for you. Get ready to walk through them."


Found a stone in the graveyard with my name
and told it how much I wanted to **** myself
and how much I hate everything.
From here, hell looks reasonable;
like at least there'd be a reason for everyone
to be so ******* useless and miserable,
but heaven?
Heaven looks like a ******* insult.

But what the **** do you know?
I got no job, no home, a mother in a women's shelter,
failed applications for food stamps, college debt,
no old friends, what?
What the **** have I got?
Why the **** does everyone treat suicide
like it's so ******* morally reprehensible?
I never win.
NEVER.
Even my victories are
offshoot chances to lose more
than I had before.

I'm tired, and I hate all of you.

They asked us to write a poem about death,
or something that summed up life. I don’t know.
I wasn’t running on all cylinders.
We had just crashed a wedding,
with Christmas lights and ukelele music,
and cupcakes. We even joined the circle that formed
around the bride and groom’s dance.
Fell into a group hug.
A gentleman with one eye and a yellow shirt waved us in.
I hope to someday be just as gracious to strangers.
So when we went upstairs and they asked me
to write a death poem, you have to believe I tried.
~
"****.
I hope there’s nothing out there.”
-“Zen Death Poem”by Austin Heath.

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.

My reflection can't bear to look me in the eye.
Dirt bag.
They called me **** bag because they
couldn't see a sack of ****.
Thoughtlessly counter-intuitive.
Rhyming is worse than mediocre,
and beyond being forced into the sublime.
Blind folded and arms tied,
with salvation on it's lips;
Maniacally insane.
A campaign for liars, killers,
and something divine.
I never had a beautiful dream, or
a nightmare that wasn't in color.
I'm unprepared for everything,
especially whatever comes next.

I grew up in the furnace, halfway towards homeless
with scars on my feet to show where running took place,
and feeble lies were told to strangers for
a laugh back when people used to
use people for comedy instead of
text and image and text...

Maybe I'm still lying.

Everyone knew that black and yellow
means "danger"; from
caution tape to wasps.
Smiley faces.
etc.

Held their teeth to the curb,
and their hands outstretched
far above their heads;
Never prayed for anything.
We were taught to stop wanting
what we couldn't get.
We learned.

Whatever was whatever
and was the war chant for
Afghanistan,
and when Bush Sr. decided
he could name wars as he saw fit
[As a friend calls it,
"Operation Desert Storm™"].

Devalued friendship
in case we had to run away.
Adapted, really.
Ran away.

Prayed for death.
Fell in love constantly.
Desperately tried to have a home.
Wanted a home.
Wanted something quiet.

Out of the furnace.

Pink noise in place of somber thought.
White noise in place of shelter.
Noise instead of feeling.
Noise,
and heat.