Your rules are wallpaper
Over the bars, the cage
Scratch a circle:
Sandpaper on the edges of a page
Your world is full
Of emptiness
Your world is a desert
With cacti blooming
In the meanwhile.

I don't blame anyone or anything for all the hurt I have suffered from because I know I am the one who allowed all of that pain into my life. As years passed by I became adjusted to the comfort of pain. I made this mistake where I made myself a home to toxic people and situations in my life. After much disappointment I tried to figure out why I was the one who would always end up crying myself to sleep, but all along it wasn't rocket science to see that the only one who was hurting me was simply me. It took awhile to see that there was no knife in my back because I already planted it in my heart. I learned and came up with the result that I am the only one who can control how I live my life, so if I wanted to see a change then I had to be my own change. Own your mistakes, but don't be your mistakes. Be the result of what your mistakes have taught you. It's normal to see the light in the darkest people but as long as you learn that you are the sun, you'll never let a dark cloud block your rays again.

⁃ Analysa Marie

They've stopped burning churches and
Ramming knives into one another.

Now they visit the woods without corpse
Paint and disposable cameras,

Eating Norwegian mushrooms around
Fires, boomblasters blasting

'De Mysteriis dom Sathanas' out into
Pinetree forests.

Media turned Black Metal into "satanism".
Inspired the weak.

One scratched the back of the other as newspapers
Sold more than ever, and

Small egos acted beyond their sizes, trying and
Dying for coverage.

Sometimes I feel the remains of vikings,
Battle worn and anti-christian still, after death,

Moaning: No. It was never just for
Show.

They've stopped burning churches now.
Perform with unpainted faces.

One final
Protest.

The devil is ink on cheap paper.
Money and newspapers are barely wood.

Some say they burn like old Norwegian churches.
Others just like their music raw and real.

Seventeen years old and troubled, I took walks in the woods to sort out my mind.  There were miles of it behind the old neighborhood.
I could meditate on thoughts and walk down paths, off paths, for miles if I wished.  My forest grew in semi-rural suburbia of my hometown, just a thirty minute drive east from Atlanta.
I'd like to think it grows there still...  

   One could walk a mile or two through untamed, mostly coniferous, forest but suddenly step out onto a clearing of uninterrupted rock, desolate and pocked like the surface of the moon.  A moonscape bounded by trees.  An anomalous break in the journey of green.  A massive plane of granite lies, apparently, beneath much of our state.  The woods in my area had this unique feature...  Patches where the granite was exposed to the surface.  Some were the size of a small city park.  Others were the size of multiple football fields.  Those accessible by bicycle were especially fun.  They would be explored thoroughly as I jostled and bounced my mountain-bike over the irregular surfaces.  Others lay deep in the woods.  I would walk as much as I could or just lie on the solidness of that ground and look at clouds.

   As pressures in my heart and mind increased, I would come to these woods angry and frustrated.  Pent-up emotions had few outlets.  Poetry was there, a kind of constant companion of the day,  but sometimes I just needed to run.
   Something felt primal and therapeutic about it.  One day, in a lot of frustration and anger, I made up this stupid game.   It was simple.
1: Run.  Immediately.  North.
2: Don't stop. Don't stop.  Don't stop.  Unless stopped involuntarily.

   I leapt off the trail and ran.  Though I felt despairing, the freedom was liberating.  Constantly, there were split-second decisions to make...  Over or under?  Left or right? More often than not, it just had to be "through" and, in my determination and stupid teen nihilism, I plowed through lots of tangles and thorns, scratching up my ankles in the process.  I didn't care and, stupidly, welcomed the blood until a stronger patch of thorns held fast to my ankle. My running speed slammed me to the ground.  I think I laughed, then, like a ******* crazy person.  I saw myself and felt foolish.  I laughed at the sad sight of this broody kid, breathless and bleeding on the forest floor, who actually had life pretty good.  My troubles aren't even worth recalling, they were that trivial, even in the moment.  I picked myself up as if I were happily helping a friend.  I was feeling pretty good and helped him walk, carefully, back south again.

The dawn is breaking
Bones on its back,
The opposite of odes,
A reversal of a truth
We thought we once knew,
Which we were taught was true.

We cannot feed this whole army.
Not on a diet of skin and bone,
Of ash clinging to the bronchioles
And bullets plucked like
Pomegranate seeds from our skin.
The perimeter insecure.

We **** Papa, maim Mama,
When we strike out the son,
And not so much
As a thank you m’am,
A tip of the hat towards
The floor where we
Kicked our own faces in.

We’re turning this wheel in a frenzy,
So much fury at the sound
Of a full revolution,
Whirling dervish
With time sewn in the hem
So we’re right back
where we started again.

And for what?
To pay a debt
So in the black
We bleed red to cover the ink,
And whitewash over the stain?

The cost is just too costly,
We've penny pinched the flesh
To make it count.

Our holocaust is never ending:

So many tears,
Yet still a drought.

Folder:  The Art of Breaking
Feathers  of thought floating down to the gravity of reality
Finite ends drawn out so delicately, slowly and wholly.
Something so light, weighted so heavily
Beauty wrapped in barbs of wire and ire
Pained senses and armed defenses
You were so innocent then
Before the burning fire of desire
When life came at a pace,
Bursting with color in all directions!
when every which way led to adventure;
a life dancing among the clouds.
touching the sky,
tipping the stars,
huddled safely in the moon's sling
Before the crack of truth rang out the liar you still admire .

wrap your thorns warm,
and tightly packed
The time has long passed for love to fade away
fall, drift, settle into oblivion...



First draft:
feathers  of thought floating down to the gravity of reality
finite ends drawn out so delicately, slowly and wholly.
something so light weighted so heavily with pained senses, armed defenses
beauty wrapped in barbs of wire and ire
You were so innocent then Before the burning fire of desire
when life came at a pace bursting with color in all directions
When every way led to adventure
a life dancing among the clouds
touching the sky, tipping the stars
huddled safely in the moon's sling
Before the crack of truth rang out the liar you still admire
wrap your thorns warm and tightly packed
The time has long passed  for love to fall away
fall, drift, settle into oblivion

I don't want to know their name
I don't want to know who they are
I don't care if they make you feel
they aren't me.

Not me,
who's cradling your head in my hands
or wrapped around you thigh deep
or gently coupled by the lips
slung over your bed sheets
resting over your heartbeat
tracing the lines of your love
tipping your chin,
looking deep into your soul
and you meeting me there.

It was too real to ever let go
but you did
please don't explain
I don't want to know

Waste colors on me
canvas with a hole

Prefrontal cortex
Unplugged

Pulled the last thread
Unravel

Travel through time
A nomad girl.
Smoke from the ashes:

A beautiful curl

they have
been here-
Plath,
Hemingway,
Dickinson-
where merriment
grows little,
and sorrow
feasts abundantly
on the
sacrificial red
ink I
must bleed
to convey
what my
voice dare
not say.

Soaring to the sky
Seeing the dark sky comin
I can only close my eyes
.. and think how unkind I am

Spreading my hands in the air
Let the wind blow hard
Till I fall in the edge of this cliff
and fall to the endless pit

If you push me
I'll gladly smile back while I fall
For I deserve it
I deserve it
No its not enough

For I am a deceiver
an unkind creature
selfish and afraid of being alone
greedy and insecure
I want it all
Yet I am afraid to give it all