This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.* — Franz Kafka

—

After some time on this earth, we come to be encased in a robotic shell; the same kind our parents were encased in and all who surround us are encased in. There’s a feeling of being trapped, of living a “semi-life”, of simply living yet not existing.

Gradually, you get dropped and dropped by the world. Parts of the shell start to disappear; you see parts of what lie underneath, yet remain encased by what you’ve come to assume. You see some lies, but at the same time, you cannot breathe in all that you see.

You get dropped and dropped some more. Your body reacts in all that has been taught; in hurts. The stabs and contractions scare it out of confrontation. The more you shield yourself, the more the shell seems to cling. You come to resist all that you once felt. And so long as you refuse, the falling will never cease. Till one day you fall so hard into the ground, shell encased, never found.

Does anybody really live
Or are we all just watching our lives pass by through a screen door?

We all do the same thing in the same places
White walls and nameless faces.

Maybe that's what's wrong with our world.
No one gives a **** enough to put a name to those faces,
No one can see that those white walls are really blank canvases.

A pounding heart bangs against the chest that has it incarcerated
It screams and cries and begs for a swift and humane end
Ambles towards the edge of the cliff and awaits the moment it finally takes the plunge

Fingers shake relentlessly, an earthquake in the bloodstream
It animates bones and ignites nerve cells in the worst way
Evaporates only after it devours every last ounce of precious serenity

Tears cascade from eyes that threaten to burst from their sockets
They flow like raging rapids and slap against the innocent riverbank
Steal away every meager thought of calm that comes into contact with the waves

Lungs fill with lead and tighten around that choked breath
It constricts and confines the air that surrounds, strips it of life-sustaining oxygen
Creates a misty, obscure world full to the brim with shapes and outlines that confound the mind

Words tumble from quivering lips that wear false confidence and clatter against the floor
They fall heavy out of arms and scrape against bare porcelain legs and draw blood from old, scarred cuts
Break bones and ribcages and hopeless hearts and never stop to consider an apology

Anxiety assaults without warning, without trepidation, takes its tribute relentlessly
It crashes into the room, a drunken roommate draped in liquefied poise on melted legs
Pounds at the door, shocks awake, then leaves all possessions in disarray and never offers to help clean

You dropped me
like loose change into
a homeless man's
Burger King
cup.

I would have preferred
to be thrown,
to be
smashed
into a hundred
thousand shards of
broken cardiac muscle
- because at least
that would mean you had
made an
effort.

I wanted you to
push me away with
all of your strength,
leaving me to trip
and fall
right out of
love with you.

But you merely
nudged me aside
- too weak to break the
chewing-gum strands
which stretched
between my lips
and yours.

I was
stuck and
I was
craving,
maybe out of habit
rather than desire.

Too short to reach
the emergency exit
I was left
wishing you had made me
feel a little
taller.
There were twelve inches
worth of difference
between us,
everything that you
were and I
was not.

But I guess I got it
wrong.

You are not
six feet
two inches
of man
You are
six feet
two inches
of cowardice  
and your
extra large
t-shirts correspond
to your
extra large
apathy.

Because you didn't
care.

You didn't care about
my five foot
inferiority complex
or the five feet
of reassurance
it would have taken
to make me
feel worth
something.

But I will not be
confined
to the gap between
your height
and mine.

I have the strength
to pull myself away
and snap
those chewing-gum
strands
I don't need you
to make the effort
I'll make it
myself.

And if you still feel
inclined
to drop me
like loose change,
that's a **** lucky
homeless man.

I have lived in this home
Since October of 1997

That is quite some time
Sometimes I wonder
If I will ever
Have the financial means
To leave here

LOL
I certainly hope so!

And so I'll like your selfie,
and I may send you an encouraging message.

Digitalized and marginalized
you exist upon a screen.
To me and my solipsist mind,
all that is real is all that is before me.

All that is after me is fiction,
something I, and millions of other poets may attempt to write,
but realness is lost.

It can be compared to trying to relay a first hand experience to another,
it is impossible to do completely.
I can tell you that the trees swayed nonchalantly and that the water was crisp and welcoming but you will never know what it was like to be on the lake that day.

If Jesus Christ himself were to tell me change my ways...

Put the music on repeat,
put the *** in the pipe,
pull the covers over your chest,
put your tongue inside my mouth,
and wake up,
I will do the same.

The thought of you,
the idea of you,
the digital image of you and everything you've said to me excite different parts of my body.
All these things excite my mind.
Your words excite the blood vessels in my cheeks and your body excites my groin.
I drink a tall glass of water,
I ******* thinking of you,
and I fall asleep hoping to dream of you.

I dream of you putting your tongue in my mouth.
My body excites in my slumber,
and though I only kiss you in my dreams,
I ******* in my shower.

I'm a mountain man dreaming of the desert,
and you're a Midwest girl dreaming of the ocean.

I want to feel your legs around my neck,
your hands held in mine,
and your tongue in my mouth and around my ****.

I want this of her and her and him and her and you but I cannot have it.
So I've masturbated 3 times today and if the son of God told me to change my ways I might need to ******* twice, thrice more.

Tell me a tale
Those that you bear from distances
Those that you covered with your feet
Those that you ran with against the wind
Those that you swam with ripples in oceans and seas
Those that you got out from that nomadic women's eyes, deep
Those you wept with in your dark nights
Those that stitched your heart back, glueing it back to its place
Those that take you back to the greener pastures and yellow meadows
Those which are rusty, covered in the dirt of that high trek you took
Those that I might have heard, recite them to me again
Tell me a tale
Help me put together my pieces, pull me out of my salvage.

I saw you once as I picked out a novel
It was a quiet bookstore and you sat on the floor
Your hair was pale blond like the sun on the snow
Ripped jeans, a shade of blue to match your eyes
You were beautiful, you know. I still think of you now.
What ifs swirling in my mind like an endless storm