Cautionary visions visit in viciously vivid fashion
I'm dead and my head is missing
Everyone is laughing
        
                     But me

And the sky is sorta dreary but I don't know
With no eyes you don't see too clearly

      Sew me a new one on,
Attached at the neck
Plastic instead of brittle skin and maybe then
     I can exist in some form above the normally gray and grim

    I pray to a faceless facade
            I made a "God" in my head
An eternal alternative to turn to and blame
   And claim to strangers that he works in mysterious ways
        My lips are chafed from singing unheard praises
  
        I'm tasteless and it has me thinking that maybe my mouth was only a product of my imagination
     Food for thought I chew and stop
           Its too **** hot for contemplation

      Still, I used to think my hands belonged to someone else
     Right up until I used them both to **** myself

And try to light em underneath an ocean's worth of crude oil
      That is forcing it's way into my lungs
            My high hopes hung their heads in the past as they waited to be hanged

               But now the concept of life felt empty and displayed itself as a delay
        A casual lack of oxygen shut off all process in the brain

                 And we are on our way.


~spark~           
                            

                      in the depths
              And the darkness fades to grey,
           **A less ambivalent shade.

Bad memories linger
     In sour clouds of self pity
   **Like farts of the mind

Depression has become an insulin injection
       A necessary evil

             Only required because I have been underneath it's moon so long

       Any other tide pull would surely drown me in confusion

I etched patterns into a tree with a pocket knife that had a red plastic handle
            Indentions such as these never stay
            Yet eternally we press against the world

        Hoping to make a mark that will shine in the daylight and glow in the dark
                    ~

           I'm a shriveled slice of the Americana pie
      With my soul on a swivel and the devil in my eyes

       Life was a son of a ***** with fists that spat dirt when it spoke
                And it ONLY screamed.
        
         ~

   I'm somewhere between *David Duchovny and Stephen King
      And I'm trying to rip up manuscripts that I didn't write and I don't know who did.

      Goodnight America. My patterns will explain my existence more than I ever could.

Life is a melody
      You can listen to only once.

    The first thirty seconds, you find the groove,
         it's appealing
    A harmonious rhythm hereto unwritten
                    
       This could be your favorite.


 
             It is.
       For the next three minutes, you settle in.
               The chorus comes around.

          *You'll be here again.
                  It's fresh, it's catchy
You're enraptured by these certain pitches and the words rhyme perfectly.
   One line flowing into the next, the ends justifying the means.
       Another verse, another chorus. This one feels more weathered
          Routine, maybe. You still feel that groove but your perspective of it has been altered by the change in tempo and direction during the last verse.
               

           You realize you have fifteen seconds left.
         This was your song. What did you do with it?


       *As you think back, a gentle blanket of white noise embraces everything that ever was, and your song fades

Being interrupted by far off people making exceptionally loud sounds while trying to write poetry is exactly like having a horrible toothache and trying to perform a tracheotomy on a rabid cat.

If you look at everything a little sideways

     You would be amazed at the intricate connections between everything in this life.

       **Everything is poetry, just as poetry is everything.

You blend with shadows*
          And the cracks in sidewalks
                Brittle grime trickling down your hand
       You catch each bit between forefinger and thumb
    And turn them all into tiny broken men
           Stench streaming in smoke like ribbons
               Your skin is icicle cold
      But the smell ignites the sensory fears of those you draw close
Shattered skull love songs emit from your bones
    Calling all sinners to you to atone

You are the blackest person I know.
Not black by skin tone,
     **BUT BLACK BY SOUL.

Who did the *****?
I'm wanting to know
             Was it Chrysta or Alex
   Or someone unknown?
            27 ***** chilled my spine to the bone
                  I've seen less ***** on ***** sites that I surf when alone

        *Evidence was prevalent at the High School and the class fool was pinned as the guy
           Peter and Sam then planned to document everything to figure out who and why

          I won't spoil specifics cause that wouldn't be slick
     I'll let you peruse through a plot so thick
       Keep your eyes open watch for clues in the mix
       And ask yourself this question:

         **Who Did The *****?

I had a dream in the middle of the day
          About a boy with springs where his legs should have been
        He jumped so high he got tangled in barbwire clouds
             And it rained blood and viscera for a month

Breathe each breath as if you are inhaling the sunrise of a new day**
            Possibility filling your lungs
        Every cell in your body
Dancing to the rhythm of a fresh start.

It's our time
The sublime
Rhyme and reason
We season this reality with words instead of thyme:
Both are medicinal
Antiseptic chemicals to keep away the grime

                   *Don't tell me any different

                Bare witness to the gift of bliss that is *expression
                       Words can increase life expectancy in the midst of depression
             They can get back at those who hurt you without using a weapon
            Or refresh your mental image when you're feeling less than

They form legacies and dedications
Eulogies and congratulations
They give everything in existence an identity
Even the most ****** obscenities

Words are life and words are love
Words even form this silly cheesy stuff

       **To everyone feeling poetic, I have but one question
      What's one way, while writing, your life has been blessed in?

Lost inside a clockwork
        Heart attack
        ‎     Waiting to happen
        ‎   Ticking and cracking
        ‎    The silence in half with a second's helping
        ‎           I was hungry and delving deeper into somnambulance
        ‎                      Gambling my waking minutes
        ‎       Away with a hazy resemblance of life
        ‎     The sharpest of minds couldn't cut it out
        ‎   This troubled route gets more fractured with each forced laughter
        ‎             Hours pass faster the faker my happiness becomes
        ‎                    I scrape by on a yearly basis as my days have gone numb
        ‎

Tempestuous pestilence of manic depressive tendencies invested in a message cocked and loaded as a centerpiece

           Unfold it, if you will,

   The beast lives in these pages
  While the people all went home to their own separate cages
Locks become phones that never ring
  No bars but still encasing, these cells are in our genes
   Its a prison of DNA strands unlocked with a paper key*
    Held firm by *words written within the world awaits to see

Stranger things have happened
The splitting of an atom led to all the Eves and Adams
We just keep climbing up this ladder
What happens when we reach the top of it
Does it matter?
Still, stranger things have happened
I hung myself with string theory gripped in madness
And visited the vast void dripped in blackness
Crippled past tense reminds us of what was
And how inevitable it is that everything gets crushed and
Deboned with time
My skeleton remains hesitant at 11:59
Still even stranger things have happened
I woke up as a lab rat with a hazmat and a gasmask
Phantom of the operating theater with the seats packed
Breathing in sterile air trying to feel the breeze
Strap my self into a gurney
To perform out of body surgery
I said I'd never turn the other cheek but
Stranger things have happened

Dragging my knuckles* on the sidewalk
      I find myself hoping for a *spark
     that would confirm my mechanical makeup
        Titanium and servos buried mere inches beneath faux flesh
        Scraping concrete

         *Friction, it would seem,
           is the only force powerful enough to reveal me to myself

You can
        Lean on me
  And let our broken pieces slide against each other
    And together, we will make a **beautiful ******* mosaic

A poet's supposed to only post poetry
     If I try to do anything different under a pseudonym
They'd know it's me
               They're not too dim
  To shine a light on similarity
             Between two varying laugh tracks despite all the hilarity
        Been getting down to brass tax with a microscope
       I could read the fine print even if both my eyes were closed
     So tie the rope tightly around your own necks
                          As I work far outside of my trajectory from how I make the bow flex
         If I was Archie mixed with Cupid
          I would
    Follow an arrows arc like an archery marksman whose targets are Betty and Veronica's beating hearts
    And when they get hit,
        They both fall pretty hard
      And meet me in my back yard where I get their backs archin'
         Point is, I've got precision aim
    When I'm shooting for emotions
            Make you never feel a thing
      Make you clear minded and focused
             Let you all in on my pain
   Have you buzzin' like a locust

~

I'm standing here

       In this doorway

   Halfway between where I have been
And where I will go

     *And I can't help but cry tears of joy.

Suicide should only be committed once*
So why the hell do I try every couple months
Something's up with the water
I don't feel the rush like I used to
There's no happiness tutorials on YouTube
I laced together my shoes, through them on a wire and convinced myself to sit and think
The kitchen sink's dishes stink
But you are what you eat and I had a helping of insane

Low key lowlife, broke and high under a spotlight
No ice so there's more drink at the drive thru window with my eyes suspiciously low
I'm ridiculously close to laughing what's left of my mind away
I forgot how it feels to feel fine today
It's either *love or hate and there's no areas of gray

*I wish I had a thousand hours to sit down and figure out exactly what the **** that I've been running from
I wish someone would stick around long enough to identify with the place that I'm coming from

I remember when all our guns were sticks
I remember when pine cones were grenades
I remember when we always got back up
And war was just a game we played

My artistic tendencies have been asleep
Wake me up
Confetti coming when the cake is cut
Make sure to rake it up
Taking puffs to feel the same only made my visions change
Still mixing liquor, rain and other liquids To **** the pain
Plain paper bag with the key to life inside it
Problem being I only conceptualize it when Im high
Trip and fall and lose altitude
The earth is coming fast
I'm bout to hit rock bottom still praying my high will last

I get lost in your kiss
                   Yet feel at home on your **lips

Sometimes I hold a dead phone to my face so I don't look crazy as I talk to myself.

The oppression hangs stiff and unrelenting
And the sincerity comes off too awkward and from left field
I just want to move, but all I can accomplish are twitches in different directions
You're talking at me, not with me
And I'm close to fabricating an elaborate story to put you in shut down mode so that I can continue on my day
I don't care about your message
I'm not buying your book, I'm not reading your pamphlet, and I'm not joining your group.
I'm eating a ******* burrito, and that's IT.

Tonight, I spoke into the darkness,
No stars to light my way,
       The black void all encompassing

   My words drifting up in ribbons,
          I waited for something, anything to happen

              I felt a rumble that was akin to ripples emanating from a drop of water hitting a puddle

        I was small next to the impossible,
And when it spoke back, it changed me
      
        The blank canvas of stark black was pierced by blades of light,
    The sky becoming a shutter in a rain storm
           Blowing open and closed
       The words came and wrapped themselves across my body in its entirety
        Constricting my air flow

             I felt myself shatter
  An implosion of feeble glass
       Ricocheting through a skeleton of paper, reflecting the brightness above inside ripped skin

                I was nothing.
                I didn't exist.
                I floated in an incomprehensible place that had no end, no walls

     No ceiling or floor

            Just illumination in every direction

                    I opened my eyes
  
    And was blinded by an incredible radiance

      I shut my eyes tight and swatted in front of me
        My hand struck something metal and I yelped in pain
          
          I shot up and stared downward
    Towards the desklamp unplugged on the floor
        
          Breathing heavily, I sat upright in my bed,
                 *Struggling to pull away words that had already sunken in

Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar

Muhammad Ali died on the third.
Kimbo Slice died yesterday.*

    If one thing is now clear, it's that life doesn't appreciate those who are strong enough to fight back.

Sleep*
  Hanging in the eyes

           They struggle to open
But are tightly glued shut
  
              I wonder then,
When the dream began and ended

          And if I was ever awake
                        *At all

Poetry** is the ADHD of literature

She dipped her fingertips in paint

        And left her identity on my canvas

I'm writing myself into my own little horror movie
             One where all of my victims are **myself

I stop in my tracks,
          Listening

  A hollow clinking in the darkness.
In an alleyway, somewhat familiar,
Vacant and forgotten in the twilight hours
Except for the lingering cigarette smoke
And the scent of frigid, dehumanizing hate

  And a clink
Low and somehow beneath the dense, dank dark

  A sound disillusioning and honed to a fine point, like that of a blade meant to harvest death

  A clink
And another clink

                           There is a man sitting near the end of the alley
                           At the back of the throat of Hell itself
                           He has his head down
                           But through the thick black smudge of night
                           I can still see the base of a brown glass bottle tap the bottom of an upper row of teeth

He stops, and looks up at me with eyes that resemble mine a little too much for my comfort

                                    He brings the bottle down, and lowers his head, gazing at it as if for the first time
                                    Suddenly he snaps his eyes up to mine, instantly staring into the deep void of apathy that looks back.
                                    He smiles a knowing smile, and slams the bottle against his teeth.
  


              It does much more than *clink.

If I could find the connection between each raindrop,
     No matter how infinitesimal,
I know I'd be *OK

I opened myself up and pulled my ribs to the side
        Trying to find something that matters.
                   Something to stick to.
A religion,               a belief,
                |Anything
And in the              dark empty space
                |I found
Whatever                  led me to understand who I                                Thought I was
                **|was already dead.

I wish the mind was as self-healing as the **body