Seated on the edge of the riverbank
Watching raindrops fall across the city light's reflection;
A living Monet of color and fluidity and the sutble refractions of life.
The bridge above me is humming with traffic,
The railyard to my left fills the cold night with the timeless bellowing of midnight trains,
Used syringes lay amongst the driftwood here.
A crudely painted ******* adorns the trail head,
Overgrown with brambles bushes and blackberry vines.
A solitary ****** cruises the shallow dregs of shore
On an endless quest to find her mate,
Painfully unawares of his fate,
Fallen victim to a poacher,
Some careless fool with a greedy and discontented heart.
The tents and tarps of Portland's homeless, the lost and forgotten, line these hillsides;
Their many dreams and hopes lie broken amidst the rubble of this everyday existence.
I sit here often, smoking and thinking, and watching the ever changing lights.
Every now and again I take a picture, gather a stone, or fall asleep to the sound of rain
And the smell of earth and leaves and rushing water.

The intangible danceable
Felt but not seen
Frolicking on the edge
Of spaces in between

Peek-a-boo shadows
Spider-web touches
Goosebumped skin
Rosy red blushes

Whispers on wind
Soul unconfined
The curve of the smile
Fits the curve of my mind

A half told anecdote
Unnoticed excellence in the mundane
Quiet anticipation
Jolting epiphanies of keyframe

Emotional nutrients of xeno
Ecstatic shock and sonder
Ambedo and nodus tollens
Forever I wonder and wander

TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!
Please be cautious when reading. If you feel you'll be triggered in any way, please don't read. Thank you.


I'm done.

Done with trying too hard
Done with sleepless nights
Done with disappointment
Done with being a disappointment

Done with hearing their voices in my head
Done with seeing visions of my abuse
Done with being around people
That just don't care

I know they care
But my brain tells me they can't be trusted
They're like everyone else
I avoid "everyone else"

I'm done with my anxiety
Done with my sexuality
Done with my gender
Done with my PTSD

Done trying to pretend I'm happy
When all I've wanted to do is cry
But crying would make others uncomfortable
And doing that in the past led to peer abuse

I'm done with my brain going on tangents
Done with having a constant smile on my face
Even though it's fake
And everyone knows it is

Done with heaving after a panic attack
Done with my abusive visions becoming reality
Done with feeling nothing
Done with being anything

Done with breathing
Done with living
Because at this point
What is there to live for?

I'm going to pour me a drink
and wait for the Dark Night
to lace his boots

That old bushwhacker has 7 wives
2 trucks with good tires
1 with a flatbed for hauling

In the morning I know
I'll find crumbs on my table
and mud on the floor

And that pint by my bed
that's mostly full right now
will be a big swig short

Nothing is going right
these days except that low-
down you know who I mean
and he's moving right fast.

And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah*
a cry you hear at night (my nighttime vocabulary), the same repertoire as the daytime residents, yelps and screeches, groans and screams, bleating whelps and yelps, grunts and curdling silent  low moans and pierced wails, crues du cœur, (cries from the heart)  but at night when these orchestral sounds are released without modification, freed from the governor of self-consciousness, the embarrassment of waking mirrored witnesses, atonalities as raw as a violin string snapping, the terrible sounds, twice as harsh as the scrape roughened roaring sound of the  hoarse word, raw, when spoken out loud but I count them all as friends, these then my nighttime vocabulary companions.

each deed, each sin, committed, lifelong repetition, dances in a chorus line, across my eyelashes, each demanding my punishment with a different matching sound; the reciprocal noises of the lives I shed, the lives I've taken, the forsaken forsakings, the blatant ones done with no excuse, no pretend rationale, these are my very own
songs of the night, conductor, musician, audience, one for all,
all for me, my torment of endless and relentless unforgiving sonality