I sit here, at the edge of my bed
Stooped over my feet for these long minutes
As I make butterfly knots of the laces
Pulling loops, in and out
Dust rises as the cords relearn their ductility
My tugging leaves friction burns on my hands

My combat boots have missed my feet
I wish the same could be said in reverse
But though I luxuriate in the sheer strength of them
Their weight does not lend my legs vitality
For they do not belong to me
My combat boots are yours

I rise and take my first step
The heavy sound makes me turn my head in search
Though I know I will not find you
As I find my stride, my feet swing easier
And I feel the impact against my ribs
Where once combat boots had broken them

I walk on, meeting soldiers on the way
I see their boots dragging them onward, downward
You are calling them to you
My feet pull me towards the chasm
And death, where you await me
Your smile a broken promise of forever

I yearn to break into a run
I know not which direction; escape or reunion
But still my boots weigh on my steps
And I cannot fly, for flying is escape
If I wanted to flee from you
I would not be wearing combat boots

feeling broken is
looking at everything

you wish you could want
to do and realizing

you are not good
enough

You want to know who I am?
Are you sure?
Are you sure you're not just asking the question to make me ask it of myself?
If you are, allow me to inform you - I already have.
If my answer scares you - good. Run like hell.

Who am I? I am insane.
Crazy, mad, lunatic
Frenzied, demented, deranged
Psychotic
Psychopathic

I am the best liar you will ever meet.
You will not observe my madness.

I was not always this way.
I have been broken into these jagged shards of reason,
disconnected from each other and reality.

I have felt human bones break under my hands, and I liked it.
I have felt human bones break under my hands, and now
that feeling is etched permanently in my brain by the nightmares.

Though I seek my refuge in silence and darkness,
I cannot sleep without screaming.
I am a creature of the night,
though night is the harbinger of my agony.

I am made of contradictions.
My identity shifts from second to second,
dancing to a frantic beat only I can hear.

I am incapable of controlling my own mind
so I have built a wall around it.
You are not allowed inside,
for there lies my macabre domain.
Dangerous
Deadly

My every action is a double-ended knife
piercing me as I stab another.

My only desire is to cause no more pain.
In this I will fail. I have failed. I am failing right now.
My failure slices into my flesh and that of any who approaches.

I wish I could prevent you from approaching.
I wish I wanted to.
But I am too weak to win this battle with myself.

I am insane.
I climb as high as I possibly can
before I prepare to launch myself from that height.
I do this because falling is my only chance of flying
until I hit the bottom and escape into oblivion.
Do not look for me.
I am already going to jump.
Do you want me to pull you down with me?

I am choking
on the heaviness of the air,
the metallic taste of this storm
building, and I can sense it getting closer
electricity humming under my skin
and I know that it will break
and the voices in my head will do battle
with the voices of the dead and gone, carried on the wind,
and the waves will batter and drown my body
drag it down to the blissful, lightless silence,
and the wind will whip my branches
back and forth, bending, close to breaking
and I'll tumble though the stormy air
a leaf torn away from its tree
beyond control, uncatchable, dancing a frantic dance
but not really dancing, no,
swept along by the elements,
a marionette with its strings ****** by an epileptic puppetmaster,
tugging, pulling, tearing apart,
in pieces swirling, slowing, falling, landing
scattered over the ground in tiny scraps,
dispersing, fading away,
gone.

I will never stop
looking over my shoulder
for you.

I will never stop
wondering whether I look
in desperate hope
or fear.

I will never stop
hungering for your electricity
or loving you
just as

I will never stop
being afraid
of lightning.

My intimates made me
A soldier, an unworthy god, and a stone.

My friends have since made me
A she, a songbird, and a candle flame.

But only you
Could make me
A poet.

When I left
for a week, I did not
learn to shoot a gun. I
learned not
to shoot, not to let
the bullets tear
the air where they might leave
a trail of blood,
never fire on
automatic.

Would that
my words had learned
as well as bullets.

I never thought glass
looked so similar to diamond.
It doesn't sparkle as much.
Lower refractive index.
But you seem to confuse the two
quite a bit
when it comes to me.
Maybe your mistake
was assuming the twinkling lights
were a result of my brilliance
rather than a reflection
of yours.

darling, i'm
digging eggshells out
of my soles

with a knife
(it's not as sharp)

and shopping for hobnailed boots

The sky is too loud,
my music too bright,
my words too salty.

I'd really like to curl
myself into you and
drown in your smell.

If I have silent walls
Beautifully and meticulously painted
With my words
Then my family
Is a city coated
In pretty, lying murals
Uninhabited
Only under close scrutiny
By one who knows it well.

No thank you,

I don't have time for an existential crisis
today. I recommend trying
tomorrow, perhaps

I may be more amenable, less
upright, more lonely,
less alive,

whatever you find convenient, I am
sure you will have it some
day, but for

now, goodbye.

There is no time now.
So many of my poems start
with "when", like a manual
prescribing actions or words or
emotions to situations, like a clock
to tick away the lines, all straight, all
parallel, in neat rows, like the answer
to a question I always ask but never
speak, what will happen to me now?

There is no time now.
Now, there is only me, even
my words have gone to play in
greener pastures as my ghosts desert
me to haunt someone less
picked-over, to find a carcass that still
has meat on its bones. I am
bone-dry. I lost the companionship
of my tears long ago.

There is no time now.
Though I know it is midnight, that
fact does not seem to matter as much
as facts should. The darkness is
simultaneously vast and stifling, I am
simultaneously too old and too young. There exists
a longing, I cannot be certain what for, I
know only that it is unrelenting and threatens to
pull me out of my skin. I might not mind.

I thought I could drown
out the haunting melody, the notes
of sadness tinged
with despair running
through my head, a soundtrack
to my thoughts that I
begin to find sickening.

I thought that if I
filled my ears with you,
your chords, in major scale,
I would be deaf
to the minor
tune of myself.

All was discord and
cacophony as the music in
my ears met the music
in my mind and
I fled.