Sometimes, I want to die.

Not because I am unhappy

or lonely

or tired or scared

Just to see if I’d get the chance to do it all over.

If we would get the chance to rethink every thought

to take back a kiss or a silence or a ****** essay we wrote the night before it was due

a do-over

But if we knew that we would

what would we live for?

I have tried it all
To get the monsters in my soul
Smoking them out
Drowning them in alcohol
Poisoning them with pills
Putting them to sleep with green happiness
Bleeding them out
And yet every night they whisper
I am here
I will always be here
As long as you are here

drive a knife into my hand
and I couldn’t tell you
if the blade
was sharp or dull,

if the pain hurt
or just sat there
existing,

if you should stop
or just go ahead
and try
again.

look into my eyes
and I couldn’t tell you
if I was looking back.

my mind is drowning
(nearly blacked-out now)
and everything’s deafened
(both the good and the
bad).

I can’t see and
I can’t hear and
for all I know that hand
you just stabbed could be mine
or yours or someone else’s
entirely.

please,
wake me up.
the knife didn’t work.

We had not spoke or wrote
for many long days
turning to even longer weeks
which grew into the longest months
until I could no longer weep
and again I found peace
in my once restless sleep.

But you came a calling
and a texting me
just when my hands
finally started feeling clean
spinning them words like
"I miss you"
"I just wanted to see"
wicked turn a phrases
pierce ears like crooked hooks
they could turn a man's thoughts
like the pages of an ancient book.

Your fingers gliding gently
over now so hazy memories
we meet again amidst a fog
but your eyes, your eyes
they do not remember me
they see a man foul in form
ugly, twisted flesh, weak and pathetic
ripping his own heart from his chest

This is not me you see (no not at all)
but a protrusion of your own ill-regard
you slithered on your belly like a serpent
begging to be tread upon
so I moved like certain kinds of dances
around tribal fires
determined not to slip but inevitably I did
how dare you hiss "Liar" at me.

I'm just a man
working on being a better one
I don't expect you to understand
cause I never said I could fly
so why the **** did you think
I was superman.

The type of man that lived purely for the thrill.
Although he himself was diagnosed as terminally ill.
Lab coats gave him two years left of breathin'.
In return he gave them a margin of error that left them seethin'
Upon the ocean with a wicked grin is where you could find this heathen.
If you crossed his path he'd most likely leave you bleedin'.
If it was your life that you should be a pleadin'.
Just offer to throw him a grand party and front the bill.
The celebration is purely for his crew.
His happiness doesn't come from a bottle of any hue.
What he seeks is the freedom only found in the deepest blues.
Turbulent waters provides him with more comfort than any pew.
Worries are nothing to a man with grains of sand so few.
The grin he hides behind says it all
He'll happily make it to his own grave, even if he has the crawl.

not here,
in the present time
in my present place

I am elsewhere
in some other place
with some other people
doing other things
that are not the things
I am actually
doing

and if I am not here
and there does not exist
where am I?

what is fantasy?
and what is
reality?

what,
and better yet
who
really exists?

and where do I
fit into all that?

where do I exist?

I wanted to eat you alive with my heart,
Disseminate my love for you,
soul coughing a Heimlich dance routine
that struggled to keep us one.

You were to busy ignoring the coward
that kept me alive
to see the bravery fighting chance
and drawing curtains against fate

There was feeling in these young bones
where the medicine was make believe,
all sugar coated fiery tales to drive us to the well,
wishers of hope forgot that love is an effort.

Liars will tell you that there is just one,
and that one and one is one, and I too,
will lie to you but only to keep the placebos
sweet jesus if you knew the truth.

There's a colourful cobweb
I tangled round us
And yeah, I'd take the floor away,
if it would keep you falling for me.

There is not a thing I wouldn't do
to keep the demons from your door
And the wolves in docile dream states
Nodding yes to your every request.

But Memory lane is no place to build a future,
Lets move past all the haunted houses
and build the home from more than cards
glued together with coffee stains.

Fits of laughter and pits of passion
litter landscapes of love in foreign places
where speaking in tongues
becomes common language.

Blissfully aware of our ignorance
We turned a blind eye to status chorus,
breathing freeform jazz into
independent harmonies,

Shards of Shotgun Showers
Add bass to blissful dreams,
A sense of the real, reeling us in,
A foundation shaken in eternal sin,

As the sax plays us out,
its a standing ovulation,
that keeps us on course,
encores are for failures, and things that... stop.

I hate my poems
that’s the problem
I hate them because they try too much
(they try the impossible really)
and, yes, some of them are good
but none of them are great
and none of them get it
right
they all **** it
mess it up in small details
or don’t make out the big picture
from the little parts
except,
perhaps,
this one.