It follows me
Meandering behind me like a lost hungry dog
I turn around and it lowers its head slightly
I keep walking, feeling it's stare
I go into a bakery, it waits outside
It looks lonely and hungry yet I'm afraid
Afraid of it hurting me
It looks gnarled and rough, grey around the edges
It won't leave me, it simply trails behind me
I ponder who it's owner is
I walk a few more blocks
Maybe it will leave
I turn around its still there
I wonder again who the owner is
I decide to find out
I feed it a piece of bread, all while feeling frightened that I might lose a finger
While it is occupied I peer at his collar
And what I see makes sense
Misery
My phone number

How do I make you understand.
The feelings that I struggle,
These battles, I hesitate.
My words, I don’t annunciate.
You feel my push and pull
And yet I feeling nothing at all.
Unfortunately....
To lie,
But for what reason do I have to cry.
I slam a door
The hell was that for.
One day I’m shy
Tomorrow I’m saying goodbye
Then I beg for your caress
While I scream that I imagine my carcass.
How do I make you understand
That this is how I hesitate
And forever may not be our fate
Because I laugh, then cry
And who wants a mutter nearby
Sometimes I’m sweet like blue sky
But I swear the devil sweats beneath these eye

Mania. Everything was good when you were with me.

I felt normal. The chains bolted to my eyelids where magically gone, like the money in your bank account after a heavy, drunken, stupor & forthright gambling spree.

The spear in my side that your twin brother, depression, threw inside me was no longer twisting up my insides. Thank you.

This feels like a goodbye letter but I'm actually trying to hold on to you. You give me life. Your twin takes it away and he rash-burns my face in it.

I was accomplishing all the things; skipping from one stone to the next without feat. "Flutter your wings and dance," is your motto.

But like all good things, you drive me away, knowing that I'll see you again.

Try as I might, I remain faithful to you, but you commit adultery every week.

Sometimes you demand my time, even when I'm low. I cry for hours with your natural dichotomy, not because I can't decide--I can--but because you and your twin rip me apart in twain, changing my reality as sure as the rain falls in the Amazon.

The demons call out to me, whispering evil into my mind. I believe every evil thing when I am not armed with your brilliance. I lose that perspective, every time, and sometimes immediately.

Your twin brother and cousin visit me early in the morning right before bed time. If my doubts and fears are real, then my mind's eye is experiencing a real reality, and thus I am as I feel, like a plastic bag tumbling in the wind.

Yet, everyone reminds me that I am but a joke and a comic, one which not even you can trust.

The biggest asset I lose when you choose to cheat on me is your energy--that precious flow that bears my creative passion.

But now I am barren, an unfit conduit that is incapable of maintaining that flow. The demon upon me powerfully weaves its tapestry of sludge that encases my mind.

My mind, it's the only thing I have left. And yet, I can never trust it.

You've lied to me before and you'll lie to me in the future.

But for now, I'll have to make do with your half-truths.

Until next time.

A new year is come and you're still not gone.

I can feel you creeping up on me. You feed on my energy, yet, I cannot see you. I'm glad I can't see your face.

You smell like an old forgotten rot underneath a seam of doors hiding the old death of forgotten men. Your cousin looms, taunting me to acknowledge your presence.

You climb on my back--you've caught up to me.

I've tried running, it doesn't help. You live under my shadow; you're quiet like him too.

I can hear the smack of your lips graze across my consciousness, your breath--icy. You touch my eyes and they freeze without freezing. The hairs on the back of my head hurt because they stand on end amidst your frozen breath. You make your move and whisper icily into my ear,

. . . . You're nothing.

I almost agree.

. . . . No one loves you.

My wife does! And my daughter too!

. . . . No one wants to hear you speak.

Fine, I'll shut up. I look into a mirror to see my reflection staring back at me. My icy stare sends chills to my bones. Is that really me?

. . . . Yes, you're dead.

Sometimes I feel like it, yeah.

. . . . Nothing matters.

Finally, we agree on something.

. . . . It would be better if you just weren't here.

I begin to cry.

. . . . Remember your daughter, here's a picture.

She's so beautiful. I cry some more.

. . . . You will fail her.

. . . . You have failed her.

. . . . I will consume her.

. . . . You perpetuated this all on your own.

. . . . You're a fraud, seeking pity.

. . . . You're a sorry person, aren't you?

. . . . Feel that burning inside you? This is what happens when you let in the dark passenger.

. . . . I shall consume you, too.



. . . . --AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.



Yes, it is my fault. Like the fault line in the earth's crust, my mind splits in twain.

The excitement ends when I've become drunk with madness, not seeing the light around me. I sleep a little, contemplating all that I convinced myself.

In the morning the sun is out, shining through the window. You're still sleeping though, dear dark passenger. I try not to wake you. I seek the sun hoping you will disappear and take your darkness with you, but you persevere, keeping your hands at the ready until I am vulnerable again, waiting to make my dance to the tune of hopelessness--always just, "one more time."

I have a question burning:

. . . . What's the point of living?

My heart is pounding
I'm heavy breathing
My blood is boiling
My face is melting
My hair is pulling
My skin is itching
My nails are hurting
My eyes are clouding
My mouth is drying
My mind is waning
My voice is wailing
My hands are cracking
My stomach is churning
My strength is failing
My care is mortifying
My existence is joking
My work is freezing
My delusions are multiplying
My thoughts are racing
My life is dying
My hopes are groaning
My dreams are poaching
My will power is cooking
My mind's eye is glossing
My mood's-a-changing
No cylinders are firing
My desire is diving
The cycle is beginning
My peace is nuking
Beauty is crumbling
Life's code is encrypting
. . . . No key for decrypting
The way out is blinding
And I'm feeling
. . . . The top of the ceiling
. . . . No more flooring
. . . . Left falling, none for catching
I'm wasting
I'm choking
I'm running
The demons are searching
Me they're consuming
Me they're chewing
Me they're spitting
Me they're crushing
. . . . Causing
. . . . A raining
. . . . Hellfire reckoning
They want me deadening
Me they're taunting
Poking me, torturing
My debt not paying
. . . . It's me they're charging
No recourse, left standing
Consciousness is maddening
My enemies looming
. . . . Gleaning my soul, they're feeding
They're biting
I'm left crying
Hope is fleeting
Friends are fleeing
. . . . This nutcase entertaining
I'm stopping
Left looking
No one is caring
. . . . To grace my being
They see me fading
Cast into the void, they're jeering
Strangers are laughing
There's more I could be saying

But I'm still left wondering:

. . . . What's the point of living?

You think that one day
Your heart might stop
Sometimes you can be scared
And sometimes you’re not

Sometimes you want to die
Sometimes you don’t
It depends on who you’re with
And what’s going on

Being depressed
Or bipolar isn’t easy
It isn’t fun either
Always ruining moments

You want to know why
You’re life’s upside down
But you can never find out
Because you can’t slow down

Know you’re not alone
There are others like you
Who want to be happy
But have no reason to

Endless ropes tangle and grab
each individual omnipotent thought
of pleasure, denied gravity.
Slowed down, brought to frivolous
thoughts of relapse.
Speeding through the flimsy nature
of the ropes final stance.
A noose of the future.
A pivotal moment in comprehending,
all of this temporary fixation of
tragic dead-weight.
I am nothing but god’s will, contrary
to the greater good.
The ropes rip through themselves and idealize
Mistakes.
Pleasures.
Fixations themselves, alone and without
a viewable malice.
Distance is a deliberate blemish.
I don’t need to view myself.
I am falling through the ground and reaching
a turning point. Again. And again.
Faces and voices alike mean nothing until
I beg for forgiveness of myself.
Drifting between pressure tantamount to
torture in solitude.
Anyway, anytime,
I am succeeding in being alone.
Where is the recognition?
This pleasure, is it faux?
Grandiose indeed, a desperate attempt
at reaching a point where days
that exist and have existed are
superficial.
This recovery is relapse.
I will fall back, the ropes
still begging to hold me.
They speak my name.
My name is everything to them.
They are in abundance, but
I am obsequious.
It is all fake.
It is a testament to the reality of it all.
I will grab myself,
pulling as hard as I can until the ropes
snap and I return to a brooding state.
I ruminate.
The rumination expands and breaks my body.
Will I ever return to bliss?
Or was I never there?
Blemished and weak,
always there. I bloom.
Grandiosity returns,
the ropes rekindle their romance in twos.
It all ends.
I have failed my reckoning.
This is reality.
A twist of fate that can only be seen,
by god himself.
Whomever he may be.
I would like to meet him.
He sounds like I would like him.
I love him.
He is eternity, is he not?
The journey is dreadful,
but the return is remorse.
Nothing is right and nothing is wrong.
Either way, I am hanged by ropes I
have obliterated in a haste.