Battered and bruised
this heart takes a pounding.
As the mind goes into the spin cycle.
Taking no notice of time
that elapses regardless.

Worn and exhausted,
these lungs yearns and fights for...
Air.
Sweet air.
As if tomorrow would offer no more.

Unnatural and numbing...
Sleep.
These meds promise only the illusion
that all is good and well.
Encapsulated in high sheen gloss.
Shaped such to go down easy.
A means for a convenient albeit
temporary escape.

By Arcassin Burnham

I-see-now,
Doing well for yourself, you're on top of the world,
Son you could do anything,
Gain the confidence,
Use to be on the offense til you got your life I'm check,
Had bad days that you won't forget....
You use to fall , but now your all set,
i-see-now...
I-see-now.....

I use to spend every waking moment going through a nightmare,
And the other moments trying to forget it,
I-see-now,
I said that I would the absolute greatest in here,
I am the anomaly of myself so deal with it,
So you-see-now,
You-see-now.

if only i could stitch
this family back with
a needle and thread

i want to cry until i become an ocean
until the rivers of salt tears wash me clean
i want to be free
and i don’t want to feel so alone
i want to untangle the knot in my throat
i want flowers to live on the edges of my soul
i want to fall in love
with a pair of eyes
that fall in love with mine
and i don’t want to feel so alone
so unworthy of love
and i want a song
a song for me
and i want to breathe without it hurting
i don’t want love to feel
so far away
i want rain to fall and wash away the pain
and i want the words
for everything i am feeling
and i don’t want to feel so alone
i want poetry written for me,
love letters and late-night texts
and i don’t want to feel so alone

how can such a beautiful person
                                               torment themselves so much?
how can love pour out for others
                                               and hate be given to yourself?

we throw each other a bone
and are surprised
when we all start howling to the Moon

It took time to rewrite my past
in a way that looked pretty on a page
but everything-
just eventually
turned
   uncomfortable.

It feels
like i'm always
wearing wet clothes,
sulking because I tried to drown
these memories I didn't want at the surface.

But I needed air-
so they came to catch it with me.
They demanded a home inside of my world
  and so they put me under.

Now I'm clawing my way to oxygen
but this doesn't feel like
  just water anymore
  more sheet metal than surface.

Every move made
by anyone-
  myself included
feels like a weight.  

I keep fighting my way
to sanity and
I keep fighting
  to remove this memory.

but it says with me
and it screams
every time you touch me.

How will I ever be okay
with comfort?

How do I cope
with something
so adamant about
keeping me under.

These dark images
invade the back of my head.

It's not my fault
someone
  took away my childhood.

So why am I the one-
drowning?

I feel we're living the last days of Versailles
As beauty fades before my eyes
Convinced as I am
The gods owe us time,
I'd destroy this world
To keep what's mine.

My universe is necrotising
As I stumble through ruins
And colour drains away.

I bargain for time...

Throughout the many lives we've lived before knowing only each time we return,
To experience full transfiguration
You have to be willing to burn.

I'm losing my focus
so hard to concentrate
my mind is bouncing
like a rubber ball on
glass walls

Everything is weighing on me
like the fact it's been nearly
120 days since I last spoke
to the woman I love without
reservation

Or that I'm struggling
with my close friend
trying to mend the bridge
of the relationship is hard
when she never replies

Or the fact that my addiction
is spiraling out of control
burning me alive and yet
I can't bear to sleep with
a woman since my last

I'm losing sleep even faster
than the US debt is growing
no matter how exhausted i am
I wake up feeling drained
mostly dead

The worst thing about this is
I can't even commit suicide
because I'd rather ****** me
a little each day with the pain
because I hate myself

cracked an elbow making a tackle,
ruptured a kidney throwing a body block;
my less than illustrious football
career curtailed

so I chose to run:
an active verb--organs, bones,
are nouns, things to be damaged,
broken, frozen in almighty time

which slowed my sprint to a
jog, then my jog to a hurried hike
on my arid prairies and around
my wooded lane

where the young neighbors eye
me zipping by, deep in thought--who
is that old man pondering parts of speech?
don't let the children listen to him

for I know they have their own bones
yet to break, their own journey to make,
from fanciful fields of fame, to cruel knowledge
nothing remains the same--nouns decay

I'll keep walking wild as long as I can;
I recall making the last tackle, that final
fated block--those nouns now long gone, and no
adjectives can bring them back