Scribble the words; don't be afraid of them they bring emotion that is begging to be felt, just as you are begging for his touch. Do not show up when you know being there will only make you cry. But do not be afraid to feel. That's why life is so beautiful: everything deserves to be felt. That's how life goes. When you are awake at 3am screaming in your room, burning the candles that you got from the festival, listening to the saddest song your heart has ever felt, do not be afraid. This is how it's supposed to be and when the thought that everything will be okay flashes across your mind like an island in the middle of the vast oceans, swim to it. It is not a mirage, it is not your imagination playing tricks again, it is not the drugs that you never took,. It's as real as the pain in your stomach. Swim to it and do not stop even when it seems you are getting no closer, darling, you are almost there. Don't lose sight. Do not remember the way he said your name or the way his words held you on the surface of yourself. You were made To go deep. Drown in yourself. Don't be afraid of that, because even when you drown, you are saved. He is calling you, He is guiding you young child. Do you not remember He who placed that island just far enough to make you appreciate the journey when you arrive on that shore completely exhausted but just in time to see the most breathtaking sunset your human eyes have ever seen? **** it open those eyes. They are there for a reason! I said, do not be afraid! For why are you afraid of living if you are not terrified of dying? You are on the tight path, keep going. Breathe. Don't be scared. He is holding you. He is holding your hand. Breathe. Listen to the voice saying "it will be okay" because in two days, it will not matter how swollen your eyes were, they still took my breath away in the moonlight. So perfect, standing there listening to yourself for the first time, hearing the words "I love my life" escape from your lips. Could it be? The first time? Even if you are unsure, you mean it because there is nothing perfect about someone that feels absolutely nothing and my God, you are perfect and I know you feel so much more than words could ever say. So, be in love with all of the emotions, the feelings, the heat of the anger, but yet the warmth of your breath as you shout "come back to me, I'm drowning in the middle of the street, staring at the moon so bright. Why can't you be there? Don't worry, don't fear. His eyes are on you and you should stop swimming up stream, lie on your back, watch the galaxies revolve around you in that moment. Time is nonexistent. It's made up. It's a figment of your imagination. Do not watch it tick away. Watch the stars, breathe, do not fear drowning... You know how to swim.

I wish I could love you
the way that you loved me
not at all, and selfishly

I wish I could walk with my head held high
I wouldn't miss a beat or be bothered by a stranger's sigh

but instead here I am, crawling toward anything giving off a sign of discomfort

I want to put my hands on anything broken
I want to fix their smile
my heart aches for those around me

you see, we are very different
I love endlessly and completely
your love is fleeting and only ever just the beginning

I can't do this anymore
live with the gore
of my body being torn
open,
like its the norm
my eyes are burning
my stomach is churning
I've given myself away
to everyone, every day
look inside
there's nothing to hide
in fact, there's nothing at all
no I didn't fall
you pushed me
I clung tightly
here I go, without a show
tumbling softly with no flow

I can feel it all soaking into my skin,
My downfall, the ****** of everything,
Every ending shakes hands with every new beginning yet sticks around to see it all spiral downward into the pit of the next "new beginning",
I've ruined a lot now, I don't know why I have the tendency to keep going,
Failure, my fear of success, my fear of failing successfully and never successfully being successful,
Or maybe it's just my nerves

I spend my day-times gluing together pieces of reasons why my soul is worth saving,
I spend my night-times in my bed poking my fingers with every piece of my heart that's breaking,
There is no one here to blame besides myself,
But why must I be so hard,
Why must I torture myself,
It all comes back to me anyways, so why do I ever give any of it away

Calm me down,
Calm me down,
Please just do something, anything to calm me down,
Cigarettes stopped calming the nerves and alcohol never stopped tasting bitter

I can't sleep, I can't eat,
I can't even shower because ******* warmth reminds me of when I felt it all inside of me, gleaming out like a sun who's crying to be the source of something,
I miss the way happiness flooded me,
I miss the way sadness used to be too terrified to even look at me,
I stop at every crack in the sidewalk because when we stepped on them together you joked about breaking my mother's back,
You never mentioned anything about breaking hearts, or how you're so good at it

I sit and watch traffic, wondering where everyone is going,
Wondering what everyone is trying their best to run away from

I wonder what I'm trying to run away from

I wonder if there's even anything to run away from

Black haired silhouettes dance in recollections of August, strip naked, strike a pose-
Driving up and down Vine with a head full of acid, every passerby looks to be the death of me and the city smothers stars while they sleep,
Darkness about something on the radio, lost in hardwood floors and slanted ceilings, laying flat on my back in the depths of a Janis Joplin howl of pain,
Talking in rhythm and never rhyme, drawing inspiration from the atmosphere and picking poems from the tension, collision course ego trips clocked in at under zero revolutions per minute,
Revolutions that begin in ****** bars in the suburbs, continued into parking lots, to the front seats of cars, culminating in bedrooms the way all things do,
Fragments of lost phone numbers and sunrises on the highway, crash into me, break all my teeth, show my face to the world,
Just make sure I can still stand come morning, all tomorrow's parties won't wait for me or anybody else
And don't let me forget this, no matter how much I beg

Kids on the brink,
We have all dangled our feet over the edge,
We know the appeal of falling like the backs of our fathers hands,
We flirt with oblivion, leaving our phone numbers on gravestones hoping the other side might call to tell us there is a bed waiting for us somewhere dark, and warm, and quiet
We long for the chance to rest, bones that have seen too many miles, fingers that have danced around calling the police to take us away
We are afraid of what's on the other end of the phone
We are also afraid of the police, but that should go without saying
Kids in urgency-
We become mad,
Mad to escape, to bail forever to some coast or some city street where the light will guide us along, to live under threat of eviction, to stay one step ahead of collapse, to light up a sky somewhere and to have a moment of love that echoes through decades
We become insatiable,
Never fast enough, never loud enough, never high enough, never enough, never enough
We take as much as we can from a night and leave the sun to sort through the wreckage
One more song, one more mile, one more poem, one more kiss, one more ****, one more fight, ond more hit, one more drink, one more revelation, one more flash of extrabrilliance, one more proclamation of fleeting existence from the superheated engine of our ****** heart in the middle of America with nothing to show for ourselves but the length of our hair and the grief we carry and the love of our comrades
Kids in the light-
We all end up home, most nights at least
We all end up alright, most nights at least
We hold each other up when we are strong enough, and never let a day go by without reminding ourselves we love us,
And most nights, that's enough to see us through till morning

3.
If I blink hard enough, all of this will go away,
I wish you would just go away,
I have lived in your shadow for way too long, I need to get away,
Why can't I get away, I would do anything to get away,
You do anything to get your way,
You drink from the bottle while staring at me and the only words I have the guts to say to you are, "I love you", regardless of how badly I can feel the sting in my chest

2.
It's working, but I'm still in love with you,
I stopped dreaming in circles because my mind has grown so tired of the thought of you that the only thing that pops into my head when your name is mentioned is, "****, this hurts, a lot",
I still smile on rainy days and I still laugh at my friends jokes, but neither of those things make me smile as hard as the first time I held your hand, or the first time you joked about how your cat had a thing where he'd lay on your head when you were trying to fall asleep,
You're always in my head when I'm trying to fall asleep,
I just wish you weren't

1.
****, this hurts, a lot,
But I'm trying,
I can do this,
Your mother always told you not to stay out passed your bedtime, but no fun ever happens before midnight,
I hope you think of me in your drunken stupor,
When you were drunk, you used to call me and tell me that you thought I was the best thing in the world, that you loved me, that I was everything right for you,

I'm blinking continuously now, but none of it is helping,
****, this hurts, a lot,

If I was everything right for you, why did you only talk to me when everything bad was happening to you

Blank pages, sick thoughts, strange recollections on an overcast July sky,
America at war, fires set in Denver, Nazis dead in Sacramento, immortalized in the thoughts and prayers of talking heads, all those spineless liberals afraid to take the plunge, buy the ticket take the ******* ride, meanwhile Missouri looks like Belfast '75, Detroit like Dresden '45, Baltimore can't maintain, unsubstantiated claims of Providence, more sinister tidings out of Washington, they know the last American hero died 4 years ago now we're trying to keep up appearances, can't maintain, trouble carried in on all four winds, the Devil in the Southern sky, hysteria on the television, nothing but nostalgia on the radio, no progress, talking in circles about guns again, no clear endgame here just numbers thrown at the wall, something might stick, somethings gotta stick, somethings gotta stick,
A man clutches a newborn child to his chest, asks me if I think he should **** the thing, I say that's between you and your God leave me out of it,
A black boy blows his brains out on the statehouse steps, out of options, a final statement to pierce the veil of bureaucratic esoterica, blood of love and rage and hope staining concrete for generations,
Desperation, something on the rise, chaos in any direction
God hasn't returned the President's calls since '81, Jimmy Carter deserved better, we all deserve better,
Cold rain in summer, cigarettes, celebrations, weddings and funerals, uncertainty in all things,
Tomorrow the bombs will go up, and no one can be sure where they will land

Reassembling the pieces shattered on inconvenience,
Smoking my lucky,
Trying to imagine what the taste of your lips would be like against a shattered nose,
Blacking out and bleeding profusely for my beliefs and opinions,

What a time to thrive,
What a time to thrive,
WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,

Waking up on the floor with a black eye, holding on to the floor; the only solid thing left in my world,
To the progress made and to the progress I have left to make,
Sipping fine wine and then chugging what's left of the pack of PBR,
Getting wasted on my youth and everything involving it,

A drunken recipient of happiness and sadness all at the same time,
What a ******* mess we have made,
I just hope the cleanup doesn't take as long as the mess did to make,

Even if you don't look back, be sure to know who was there and where they've gone now,
******* white and pitch black,
My worst fears, my worst fears,

I am just learning,
I have given so much hell,
Don't stop talking to me, I haven't been listening