Dripping in adolescence,
Breaking ourselves to get a gist of what putting ourselves back together has the power to feel like,
Late nights spent making horrible decisions to wake up in the morning and recover what little energy we have left,

It is not me, it is you
It is not we, it is us

Surrounded by hot sweaty bodies collecting cold sweat in jars so we have something to hydrate our obsession with confidence with,
Feeding off positive energy to form some sort of understanding of what pessimism takes to the battlefield every day,
In every way, this is everything we tell ourselves not to get into, yet do anyway,

Giving ourselves to the wrongdoers to see how much of a tolerance we have built up,
Searching the cracks of innocent bodies trying to find the answer to all of the promises broken on us,
Coming up with excuses so we don't have to apologize for being the lesser man,
Ruining our shoes by walking on the mud of teenage heartbreak,
Driving as far away as possible and hoping that our problems won't catch up to us,

We are dangerous, but we wouldn't change a ******* thing
We are always late, but we wouldn't miss any of this for the world
Broken, but not recovering because we love the feeling of knowing we still have the strength to help ourselves if we have to,

We are finding space where there is none,
We are loud when it is all silent,
We are never ending where the ends meet,
Lost in the static of this electrifying atmosphere we call our youth,

Look how high we're jumping from

Not dying, but getting there,
We wouldn't change a thing,
We are loving every minute of it

Light up a smoke
Start to cry
Relapse just enough
Rewrite your reality
Present a better narrative
Take stock of your surroundings;
Friends, lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, memories, psychoses, vices, recurring nightmares, moments of brilliance
Words that keep bleeding no matter how many times you write them down
People that keep calling no matter how many times you change your name
Spirits that cling to skin, absence of escape routes, confessions that never solidify into repentance, apologies that never pass through lips,
Heretic heart burning vicious under black sky
Bones aching for the weight of mourning
Take a breath
Stop freaking out
Keep your sense of humor
Give it teeth and let it draw blood
Dig yourself out
Kiss your lover
Kiss your friends
Kiss the sunrise as she relieves you of burden
Find the furthest corners of your mind
Keep a candle lit to view the writing left on the walls there
Take photographs of each moment in the event you find yourself missing it someday
Release yourself shamelessly into the night
Reinvent your language
Speak over people when they stop respecting your voice
Bleed it out bleed it out bleed it out
Fill your page
Fill your lungs
It will be enough someday

Flowers for loved ones

Reminders of mortality

Graves decorated,
The inconsistency of stories

Memory floating in on river breezes,
Bitter and sweet in cramped summer
Swaying with leaves and sanity, glimpses of history repeating

Movements in a piece of music,
Strings swell over sleepless city
Percussion beat urgency into angry hearts
Woodwind ease the beasts back towards dreams
Brass to commemorate the time lost in the between

Forests burnt entirely down
Wildlife returning in uneasy steps
Retracing paths lost to ash
Reconnecting with roots
Miracles in a slow march
Water from streams
Beauty in the remains
Finding a way to cope with the fallout

Think hard, think often
Don't make me sad, just make me try
Don't make me cry, just make me catch my breath
A sorry sinner is nothing but a disappointment to a praying priest, regardless of how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise

The dog days of summer draw heat from the burning sunflowers putting forth freakishly light fragments of a long gone but not forgotten dark alley way in the back of a decomposing poet's mind
Thought of a thousand times, but not remembered nearly as often as it should be
From whiskey saturated journal pages in the back of a city bus to a bouquet of roses delivered from lovers to their others, heartbreak is a beautifully tragic masterpiece that deserves the utmost respect even when being respectful is the last thing you want to be

Trust me, living is truly not believing until you've lived to tell about your beliefs without a crack in your voice
If I put this pen down, I will never get the strength to pick it back up again
If there is beauty in floating up, there is beauty in crashing back down
I just hope my forgetfulness never reminds me of the time I felt whole, I may never get the chance to write again
But my god, what I would give to not feel everything crumbling down all at once

I would die a thousand times if I were promised that emotions and feelings were never ending, I wish to feel everything all at once all the time; it gives me reassurance that I am alive
I wish to live forever
I wish to suffer
I do not love it, however I do need it
I want to feel until I no longer can feel at all
Let it be known that I will live forever in these writings
I have said all that I need to say
And when I am laying in my death bed, I will shout, "Last words are for fools who haven't said enough"

I spend my nights bleeding out intoxicated poetry written under candlelight and screaming vinyl, spinning a web of loose ends trying my hardest to tie them together
I couldn't stop loving you even if I hated everything about you
I couldn't stop hating you even if I loved everything about you
I am picked up by my feet and dangled over an open fire that blacks out all of the thoughts in my exhausted head
The thoughts that are too heavy to handle even on my best days
Bright highway signs welcome me as I look for an escape, if I drive far enough to get away, maybe it will be written in my blood
My canvases painted ferociously to imagine a world more vivid than this one, maybe if I keep painting what I'm feeling, I'll be able to feel something instead of trying to accept the fact that I've grown numb to everyone and everything around me
I spend a lot of my time writing all of this out on my bedroom floor
Sometimes it's better to lay on the floor because a lot of the time nothing is as solid as the ground, it adds stability when nothing else is as stable as I'd like it to be

I deserve to be miserable
I deserve to be miserable
I deserve to be mi--

Tears won't get me where I need to be
Bandages won't stop the bleeding
My skin is itching with broken promises and unfinished words
As hard as I am on myself for the things I have no control over, you'd think that I would be used to this by now, yet here I am, lit cigarette in hand, the shaking getting worse when I try to speak
My sleepless nights are finally catching up to me
My mother notices on a daily basis and all she knows how to do is pray for me, I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry that I don't know how to cope with this, or anything for that matter
I'm having dreams that seem more real than real life, I'm becoming more and more disassociated by the minute, I can't help myself, I'm a ******* trainwreck

Everything is happening all at once and it won't stop even if it were asked to

It's the doubt in my mind that creates a silhouette of confidence to portray to those around me, this kid's got his **** together
I am not a writer because I want to be
It's the thoughts that crowd my head, all I know how to do with them is write them down because if I don't find the time to drain myself of the negativity, the demons it brings will build a home in my head and they'd never leave
I promised myself I'd stop, but I've never kept a promise, I don't know how

I don't know much

All I know is that everything is happening all at once and it won't stop even if it were asked to

I want 12 o clock udf trips

I want to wake up next to you at 6 in the morning to simply give you a kiss and go to work

Because in America. After love, the only thing we have to sit on are the blue collar workers fighting the good fight to give us the freedom to love

I want your hand in mine,
But never touching wrist. Because you said you are afraid of our veins popping out.
But I'm afraid that if they do they will tie in knots and I won't be able to let go

You are stuck in a lump of post fling relationships that hold you back from tying  your veins into mine

From letting the tips of our hair connect in a patch of daises on the cold ashy ground of a meadow in woods of fallen comrades

Because although most wars are fought with guns

The good ones are fought with words.

I need our love to stand true and not fall through because I'm running out of puppy dog nicknames for random girls that always fall short of grasping my heart the way you did.

Your grasp is an iron maiden that caught hold two years ago

At times I feel it dies to the torture of the cold metal spike

But for that there are plenty of cold peanut butter milkshakes with chocolate milk, because white milk is just to normal for someone as abnormal as you

But I do understand there is a lot holding you back.
There is a man fighting a war that has no purpose being behind enemy lines
And if I have learned something in my many years. I support the brave troops. But I cannot support the wars for a materialistic freedom driven by oil consumption and corporate *******

I love you Because you are much like an American flag. Though we have been burned so many times. Even on fire we are a symbol of beautiful freedom that struck me in my childhood and that will carry through my soul for the rest of my days

If you love something set it free.
But you are already a beautiful fire flapping your opinion in the wind
Telling me when I'm being unreasonable or quite frankly a bit of a sarcastic *******

But I cant be upset at you
I've given you more reasons then one to not put your faith in me,
Anytime things get rough or I'm afraid of hurting you. I distance myself

But I will never forget the time you told me it hurts you more when I leave
Because I forced myself to choke back tears from the pain of tearing my arms away from you

My last words will not be as meaningful as Che Guevara
They will not be as ironic as tom Ketchum
They will not be as dark as Edgar Allen Poe
But they will mean something
Even though they have been said so many times
It will be simply this
I love you

Talking in code
Talking in rhyme
Sitting up summer nights on balconies high up enough to reach out and knock knock knock on heaven's door drunk on gin and chewing mint leaves trying to come to some kind of solution
There are problems here that need addressing but how much easier would it be to just ******* about it?
Piecing together alibis from the body counts of tragedies, picking up as many fragments as we can with the little strength we have left
We didn't do very much to deserve to feel this tired did we?
We could never figure out how to remove ourselves from the equation
Answers are a lot harder to come by when you've lost all personal interest
Where is this going?
Where does this progression end?
I wanna see what else is on
When I was a child I had recurring nightmares about televisions
When they shot Andy Warhol all he could say was that his entire life had been television all along
I don't know how to find comfort in familiarity
I am missing the connection here
I wanna see what else is on

Few look up to heaven
To see the Lord in all his beauty
Many look down
And will forever wonder

I am writing to convince myself
I am on the second day of withdrawal symptoms and I am kicking myself for using such juvenile metaphors
I am sifting through scraps of newspapers, each one bearing the face of Antichrist burned into my retinas
I am feeling myself swell with rage
I am clenching fists and biting tongues
I am limited in my capacity to destroy
I am becoming romantic about forest fires and wildlife again
I am becoming misty eyed at the thought of where we came from
I am speaking in tongues
I am establishing a dialogue
I am addressing Mohammed as if we met at a high school party
I am watching a child of Christ light a cigarette at a gas pump
I am trying to think of an excuse to leave
I am breathing in exhaust fumes
I am standing on Nietzsche's shoulders as if he owed me a better view
I am putting off calling my grandmother back
I am godless in my arrogance
I am strung out on my ideology
I am overdosing on words
I am fighting hard
I am losing
That doesn't matter