you've told me you are uncomfortable
my words about you are cruel
that poems should not be
dipped in gasoline and tar
left to burn poison flames
but these words are beauty
they are what you've done to me
I cannot find error in a truth
you chose to create
yet you still defend your ******
that I am overthinking
but I am just writing
I am writing pain and aches
and the tightening in my chest
do you feel it? can you feel it?
I write in good spirits
that someone else may read
the writing on these walls
realize that your love is not worth this
the suffocation
I cannot breathe on my own
and you choose
to critique my life support
do not trample a flower you refused
to water
because I am finding a light
your darkness never knew
I'm sorry
but I am not sorry
that you have to be my muse

maybe you are my new nervous tick, because let's be honest, I'm a little obsessive. and if it's not you, it's the person after you. the person I can't recognize because I am so blind to everything but what we had. it's my involuntary physical and mental attraction to you that makes me tic, makes a tic, that is my tic. it's repetitive; calling you Friday night after Friday night, believing it may fill me up without drowning me out. but I'm empty, I'm always empty. I don't mean to involve you, and I know you think I do this because you're still my everything, but you're just a something. a physical preoccupation I've yet to overcome, as you're always in reach. cover up the void you've left behind, never fill it - that isn't your place; tics are not mutually beneficial. we in no way help each other. do not know a way to help each other. you aren't my saving grace; you're the bad habit. the phantom limb I need to forget. the tic to fit my criteria: close, but never here. available to hold me, but in holding me you're making my tears. could you ever fathom such a senseless incongruity? and just where are you now? you're holding me in the darkness but I know you don't feel what I feel, won't ever feel a thing. me ignoring the truth of your coldness, the brevity of your affection - tics like your timepiece. maybe next Friday night, it'll be different. maybe next Friday night, I won't need a tic like a crutch, won't be crushed. until then.

I envy your poise
your solidarity
an untampered grace
of which I could not know
I imagine one day
I too
can keep the words from spilling
trickling from my throat
down the corners of an upturned mouth
I dream that I may keep focus
a clear and narrow vision
until then
I muddle through a landfill
of memory I keep
for old time sake, for god knows why
I tend to make sharp breaks
in word and action
for no apparent reason
except that logic is not my forte
I've given in
to irrational
insanity gave me a voice
and I will not soon
make myself a mute
all for a chance
at normalcy

Fridays nights always start the same
and they go like this:
I've got a hopeless wonder
you've all got bad intentions
hit me once, I can't hit back
it's a ragged jumbled way
to start a weekend
start anything really
and I'm more of a loser now than I've ever been
sitting in the blackout
maybe starved, maybe just tired
knowing someone
it can't cure Friday nights
because I never really knew anyone
seemingly
had the world at my feet
and no one by my side
but you who sits there
you need to listen
because one day I'll be gone
I will have the world on fire
and the nights I needed
and maybe then you'll understand why
I spent so many Friday nights
at the top of that hill
crying

your poems aren't art
God may as well be dead
your words don't fill me
and flowers have never sprung
from my mouth or yours
it's a ******* joke
and a sick lie
a poem never saved a life
because God laughed
and didn't make pain helpful
he made me sit down at the counter
at 2 am
to hit my fist again
and again
over a **** page
and even he knows
this poem isn't art

she told me to be myself
but myself is screaming in my car
at the top of my lungs
going 80 on dirt roads
in the dark
where I think I've lost it all
but I can't stop running through
because it reminds me of you
and how we used to talk
how it was easy to be happy
and easy to forget
all the things you said
were wrong
and I'm crying out in pain
nostalgia's chokehold
she told me to be myself
I think I'm going to be myself
for a very long time