Picture your pain in a plastic pouch
Put it away till it’s lost like change in your couch
Maybe you’ll miss all this aching
Maybe you’ll be better for the loss
Maybe you won’t ever really rally past it
Maybe your pain is like plastic
Elastic and ready to snap back on you
Perhaps you can send the couch to the cleaners
Perhaps they will take all the pain you were saving
Wash it in foamy suds or dry clean it
Perhaps you should have just thrown it away

Each one was elaborating
all about life at length;
in many words, all one heard
was just about themselves

she boiled my blood inside a *** of steel,
with bread she cooked it thoroughly till foam,
had covered all, unseeable, unfeel-
-ing, vengeance wrathful, hardened to a loam,
          where blood is life, she caused the life to be,
          unlivable, no more a life to me

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

Anxiety is not a feeling
As some of you may believe
You wouldn't be alone
Because plenty of people place it in the same category as
Sad, angry, elated
But one of these things is not like the others.

You see, anxiety is everything and nothing
All at the same time.
Anxiety is when no matter how spacious the room is
It seems to be getting smaller
Until you can see every intricate detail on every wall
Each corner touches your skin
And flattens your chest
As it rises and falls
Your breath is getting short until it stops
And then you become as functional as a corpse
After all, isn't that what you are?

Anxiety is
When your love stands over top of you
Watching your diaphragm as it rapidly pulsates
Wishing he could hold your hands as they sweat profusely
Wanting to breathe life into your convulsing body
But instead, he cannot even grasp the concept
Of why you are not alright.

Anxiety is
Accepting that your reality is not truly real at all
And deciding to realize that people wish they could fix you
But understanding that they don't know what to do
And you don't either.

Anxiety is
Learning from all the
You're blowing things out of proportion's
And
You put to much pressure on yourself's
When you begin to have these panic attacks
In which you feel like death in imminent
Over trivial things.

Anxiety is
Being with people who love you
And still getting bursts of loneliness
That ignite and explode inside your pores and underneath your skin
The blood flowing silently through your veins reminds you
That you are all alone.

Anxiety is
Relating each and every thing you do
To how you are not adequate
And how you must take charge of everything.
It influences the things that tell you
"Make yourself throw up"
And
"Skip that meal today."
Most times, you shoe it away with every particle of strength that you have
Other times, you are not so lucky.

Anxiety is hard to personify
But it is.
And as I muster up the courage in my soul
And the hope in my being
I realize that those things need not be stored
Because I use them every day as I fight this battle.
We are all waging wars
Mine just happens to be against
This thing that is so intricately woven into the chemistry of who I am.
It is a part of me
But it is not all of me
And my voice is louder than this sickness.

I didn't know
I was your puppet
On a string:

You tossed me
Turned me
Made me swoon
To your every word.

I didn't know
I was your puppet
Until you cut
The strings,
And I fell face-down
Into what I thought
Was love.

Your words--
They grate and corrode.
Rice and birds--
Explode.

Rage wells,
It overflows.
No more silent spells,
We're grown.

Spinning top vanishes in a blur
motion finds an inward swirl
through a tunnel undaunted
find quietude, dazzling light, merge.

Most here have no divine purpose
no kindness in their hearts
no forgiveness from follies committed,
we talk about this night, in the velvet frog

This is a peace keepers hyper blade
the division of bodies and souls
loyal for it takes lives to suffer
and by god we have suffered many

So here we are healing our wounds
trying to get the lies out of the dead
I did call for mercy and tolerance
yet the others are screaming for war

We are outnumbered ten to one
the others are baying for blood
I don't think our communion
will hold them in the velvet frog


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris