“You have a lot of pride,” my sister said,
Like always, she cannot tell what’s missing.
My sister, college-fled and parent-led,
You never saw the discomfort lurking.
I ache for the dawn and pray for the end,
Because it’s times like these where I can’t think.
Solitude taught (with me I can’t contend)
That night waits for me, in darkness I sink.
I’m weak and sorry to those I befriend –
Dear God!  I pray for blissful rest and peace,
And something for my worried heart to mend.
I’d take a quiet mind, even for lease.
                Hush my tense thoughts and please banish my fright,
                I just want to make it all through the night.

There is a fever burning in my brain.
My thoughts awhirl, they fly too fast for me;
Ill-kept madness that I cannot contain,
Locked in mine skull, I keep hearing its pleas.
I can’t sit still, see my mind’s yet in flight,
Scorning earthly tethers it will be free.
In moody hatred and with petty spite,
It will the world condemn with fire and glee.
No regrets – Bring them, I will fight them all.
I don’t have an explanation for this,
My hate, once free, rises like bitter gall.
Laughter cries in the crannies of this bliss.
          For morning’s tender kiss my madness begs
          With sleep to scrape aside the addled dregs.

It’s late at night, and I should be doing
Something else – look and see, dawn creeps closer.
Oh, but who knows what the morning will bring?
I pray only that we do not bicker.
This isn’t the first night I’ve needed sleep,
Nor the last evening I’ve spent worrying.
My uncertainty sure knows how to creep.
Retrospect takes my memories to wring,
And I cannot stop – please, please stop – thinking.
When I speak I wish I could be silent;
Confined in my head, I want to take wing.
Yet I know I deserve it – I warrant.
       Sleep calls me to her and tells me to shush –
       My apologies, for I cannot hush.

Retrospect tells me that this is the year
Where my mind must ponder anew it all:
All these things I held true, my darling dear.
I go on a journey (if you must call)
Through disposition and natural born
Instincts and beliefs till myself I find.
Locked in confusion I grow so forlorn,
And though it’s you I hurt, you act so kind.
You must find someone else to hold your soul;
Love names me defender but it’s not I –
Faithless and worn, I should not be your goal,
Yet death ‘lone could leech my final goodbye.
    I figured out after so many tries:
    My feelings are fickle and my heart lies.

I am not stupid or incapable
Although my mind’s daily deviations
Attest to errors and tricks in mine skull
Of delusions – and every day tension
Within the crannied pockets of my brain
Watch the undeniable enmity
Between the bird and the compelléd reign
Of darling overlords and tricksome she
But I will pretend, though it be in vain,
That the chainéd bird does not wish to fly
But instead hand to them the keys – my bane –
And never dare yearn beyond the fake sky
  Goodbye to heart, to soul, to winsome dreams
  For I, instead, will do what they do deem.

Tomorrow I and all the world condemn
That I am only, of a person, half.
I might’ve had a life tho’ I’ve missed them,
My maze of memories’ crannies worsens:
The afternoons that should be clear and strong,
A distant haze, forgotten roads - but soft!
Is there a place I have not gotten wrong?
Remembrance catches me so badly oft …
To keep a journal, to keep a diary,
To try and lock the day within my brain -
Will I lose it all?  Yes, no past for me.
Watch all my yesterdays down gutter drain.
             Worthless, my poetry I write today
             In hopes that it will yield a better way.

Listen, do you hear them whisper and speak?
Foul minded heirs and hearts of purest black –
I fear only of my sins will they preach –
When they cry, “Lord!” it is me they push back.
Afright, this demon-child stalks ‘bout the night:
Her lips bleed lies and her eyes do bewitch,
She will waylay your soul with deadly rites.
Corruption and tricks make the devil – rich.
Hatred and pain have her trapped in the mir'r –
I am a nightmare dressed as a daydream –
Where, teary-eyed, we stare at each other
I sew up the cracks with tightly held seams
            Please, if you would accept me presently,
            I need someone to hold me tenderly.