A toucan flies to rest on a thought,
Branches reaching towards my heart.
Carcasses of childhood memories filled rooms with
Doors locked from the inside.
"Evacuate the premises, nothing to see here" a sign reads
Forlorn and tainted, stitched into the side of my psyche
Graves engraved with unsaid prayers.
Is life an option, when all I feel is the weight of my
Heavy, unrested eyes?
Jeopardize my future.
**** my hopes and dreams.
Living with
Manic Depression
Never allows the reassurance of stability
Or survival within the ocean of sentiment.
Parking lots outside the windows of my soul hold drunk spirits
Quarreling under a street light, broken beer bottles as their words.
Room for one more troubled soul?
Sure, come on in, 've poured so much of myself into people and
They still see the glass as half empty.
Uncrown me of my halo and tie it like a noose around my neck.
Veiled threats of "it'll get better" and "this too shall pass"
When? There's no pill for who you are.
X marks the spot doesn't it?
Yeah, sure.
Zoos hold less animals than the inside of my head.

From the depths of my sister's eyes
I found castles built upon hills that would never be touched by the sun.
Here her fortress of human,
Cascading light outward,
Wrote symphonies of melancholy
Until every paradox played pity poetry.
She would not speak a word,
Yet arms enclosed around her,
"I’m sorry" I said.

Tears would hang onto the precipice of her eyelashes
Begging, “Please don’t let them know
That my ice, cold heart melts.”
Dormitories of lost carriages and open wounds
Like silver plattered i love you’s that would
Just get sent back to the kitchen.
It wasn’t what they ordered.
No, they wanted your confidence on a skillet,
A tall glass of Abuse Me,
With your insecurities on the side.
Now see that’s what indulges them.
Little sister, do not break as they turn your immobiles.
You diamond of strength,
With pure crystal lungs
And steal volt of a rib cage.
Do not let his laser hands touch you.
If he says he wants the light on,
Tell him about your moonlight smile.
If he says he wants to see you naked,
Tell him about your December in the psychiatric hospital.

You are not like the other mountains,
Your Everest avalanches into the ocean.
High tide with erratic currents washing up all the debris lost at sea.
Do not struggle its pull,
Or attempt to hinder its rise.
For all you’ll find is
Yourself,
Crushed under the formidable waves.
There is no rest for the wicked,
The rage does not wither with sunset
Nor wince come dawn.
Though you wish your waters would reach
The mouth of your volcano,
The high will not last the journey.

Somewhere in the foliage you will find yourself
Subsided,
In a battle field,
Unarmed.
Desolate.
Dead rose bushes will look like home
And you will fall asleep
Tangled in the thorns
But the cuts won’t hurt as much as that
Two headed dragon
That’s been trying to blow out the birthday candles inside you,
Not realising that he’s left
Every last piece of you in ashes.
But the candle continues to burn.
The sun won’t shine here.
Neither will you.
You will stare into rivers wishing the reflection would change.
You will try finding vines on trees strong enough to hang from, but pretty enough to still look like a necklace around your neck.

At these times, little sister
Remember:
You are more than skin on bones
You are midnight cast shadows
To the nocturnal.
You are laughter like orchestra,
Like finger’s on cello,
You are strings,
That will shiver and shake,
But never, not ever
Break.
You are eyes like Van Gogh’s finished canvas.
You are not the store bought version of beautiful,
You are the definition.
You are not an extra 5 cents.
You are the change that will make a difference.
You are the earth’s 8th wonder.
You are bombarded significance
You are.
You are.
You are.
So don’t ever give up.

They say I'm self-centered.
I say, I'm made in the image of God,
this is what He intended.

Recently, the sun hasn't risen the way it used to.
Instead I've found birds singing only to the moon like wolves crying out in the night.
I don't know what we did to turn ourselves into Nightwalkers.
But I know I can run my fingers through your hair and it'll touch me like dragon glass.

To say I haven't slept in years, is dramatic.
But so is writing poems at 2am about someone you'll never be quite strong enough to forget.

I'm rambling, because that's what I do. That's how my thoughts come through... have I told you about the abandoned waterfall inside me?
How since I last saw you all it's rivers ran dry?
They've been empty for years, but at least with you there was one or two storms that'd pass by.

I know this feeling will soon fade away. And still I will regret nothing except for all the things I put on you.
All the things I needed you to be.
I'm sorry I tried to acquaint you with my demons.
I forgot you had your own, waging war in your battlefield shaped mind.
I guess I was hoping you could tame mine.
I guess I was hoping I could tame yours.

I guess I put a lot of hope into just another bottomless chasm.

I used to play games
Where I'd walk on the ceiling
And pretend I was a fly
My hair would climb down
From where it rested on my spine
And walk the corridors of my childhood home.

I used to play games
Where my closet I'd be cleaning
As I watched my parents cry
As the skeletons came out
Slurring and shouting
And clawing at the heart
Of my oh-so-fragile mother.

I used to play games
Where I would die while sleeping
And on my single bedded coffin I would lie
A knock on the door followed by
"Are you okay?"
My parents made the most repetitive sounds.
"I'm fine," I'd whisper, clawing at my own grave.

I've got mountain ranges trapped inside me like whistles on a broken melody of symphony
I speak in sonnets of Shakespeare my anxiety it's shakes fear
I've got oceans bottled up inside messages asking for saving
This is survival poetry.
So let me tell you about how I was saved by the colour brown.
They say fall in love with the girl with forests in her eyes
So my whole life I've been searching for hills to dive in.
Till one day I came across a mid-winter's night dream.
Of leafless trees and barren fields.
Of branches shivering in the cold wind of winters heart.
Every idea
Every sensation to exist
Every desire to consist-ently
Talk about how yesterday I was a graveyard but today I'm a orphanage
Not dead yet
Just searching for a home
For a family
I'm searching for serenity
Before I'd search in places made of gold and tender hands
Before I'd search in places that said the right things
Before I'd search in places called emotional abuse.
Called a trip down memory lane, except the memories were in the basement and I was pushed down the stairs.
Walking around with a broken halo and an excuse to call misery home.
But today I see sunsets reflecting off mirrors into the southern void of the Carcasses you once loved.
Scraping gum off the sidewalk of my spine.
Replacing them with burnt bridges and animal traps. Like claws saying, "don't **** with me."
You ever hear of the buddy system?
Well it's enforced a poor sense of self worth in me. Making me think that being codependent was survival. Making me think that I was incomplete in need of another half.
But I'm only now realising I'm both sides of the moon.
I'm the night and the day.
I'm the birds in the morning and the crickets in the evening.
I'm the ocean and the sand.
The mountains and the canyons. I'm the whole ******* in one.
The other day someone mentioned that whole and hole sound the same but are polar opposites and maybe that's why my whole life hearing the words "good enough" sounded like a request to empty an abyss.
Maybe I was misinterpreting. maybe it was a poor choice of words, like
i need you
But only to fill this void.
To take the pen and write a poem but then say, "it doesn't really mean anything I was just bored"
Bored like boarded windows and mean like the average amount of demons hiding in the brightest corners of my mind. (the answer is one less than the amount of hands clutching onto the pen.)
I'm addicted to this feeling of revealing every part of me in words that mean everything other than what they're inclined to be.
This world is Kryptonite in your veins and you've got are 24 steps left to reach the sun.
A day ago you were speaking about crystallized harmonies like your sister's violin chiming through the corridors of your two story childhood home. She had a room all to herself,but you had to share yours with skeletons in your closet, flies on the walls and the elephant who always seemed to be in the room.
However they weren't the reason you couldn't go to bed.
Cause after 17 years you've still got voices living in your head.

Father, is this our daily bread?

Who are these people behind your pencil marks, why do some drawings look so much more detailed than others
Why didn't you draw his mouth
Why didn't you give her ears
Why do you take away their parts
What about it don't you want to draw
What about it don't you want to put on paper

An inferiority complex means you are always wrong, even when you're right.
It means in a room full of people you will be just another shadow.
It means no matter how loud your voice is, you'll never be heard.
It means when it's your turn to talk and someone else takes it from you, you let them have it because they have more important things to say.
When they are mad at you for no good reason, you will apologise for everything you've ever done because you know it was the wrong thing to do.
Who are you to live boldly?
Who are you to take the sword instead of the sheild?
To take a stand instead of your worn out seat?
Who are you to be yourself in a crowd of strangers?
These people do not want you.
You do not belong.
You will never be good enough and you will remind yourself of this everytime you try to make an effort to be something special.
Because you come from voices that have been lost in the wind.
You come from leftovers discarded in the trash.
You come from abandoned cities.
You come from empty homes.
You come from nothing ever acclaimed enough to stay around for.
You are reminded of this in crowds.
You are reminded of this in deserts.
You are reminded of this in the company of your own most cherished relationships.
You are the needed silence to voices more impregnable than your beating heart.
Your walls are not to be destroyed, because no one wants to see the wreckage inside the desolate castle.
No one wants to hear about the kings who have conquered your land only to find it wasn't worth the trounce.
Rulers will not even mention their triumph over your kingdom, for it will trivialise their feats.
An inferiority complex means you will fall vulnerable to anyone even remotely salient.
You will remain in the peripheral vision of history.
You will live and die on the fringes of society.

In us we lust
The stars they ******
Into my eyes
With parted thighs
And warm hands that strangle
Like twitching fingers that tangle
Among sweet lips of death
Each holding their breath
Unaware of the danger
That kissed your neck
But now your body's inept

And your thoughts they collect
Pebbles
And aims them at varying
Levels
The sweat on your frown
Trembles
the castle of hearts
It does fade
The next card on deck
Is a *****

But the laughing man's mouth is a cage
His sentences like homes that fall
Each word is a crumbling wall
Fists clenched in a ball
That roll off the bridge of my face
And send blood through my breathing space

My temper, it burns like fire
My body once filled with desire
Now craves to see your life expire

A stampede of elephants
Running through the rooms of my mind
As their legless bodies ask
"How?"

A toucan flies to rest on a thought
With two million and two branches reaching towards my heart.
"How many cans can a toucan can if a toucan could can cans?"

Now this monkey must be joking
Those are my feelings he's holding.
And he continues to toss them about.
He peels off the skin and throws it over his shoulder
And takes one big bite out of the happiest one.

And this little duck waddles,
Left foot, right foot.
The left side is fine, but his right
Sends a nerve that clenches a fist to a glass window.

"Quack, quack."

Snip snap,

And there goes the vertebrae in my spine.

when did compasssion leave you
and get replaced by apathy
and lips touching bottles of alcohol
like they belonged to her mouth
you only wish you could hold the sun of her face
sweat off your worries in her holy
let her know that to be resurrected
you first need to perish
let her feel the sadistic toll of stillborn happiness
let the content promise
be a threat
let her know you will not auction off your heart
for it to be sold again at a profit
let her fall asleep knowing that
you will be there in the morning
but you will watch her all night long
to make sure
she does not leave you hollow like a haunted house
an abandoned building
you've watched too many lonely sunsets
to believe that hills like her are anything more than a shelter
you've heard too many whispers of the wind
to think that the way she touches you will last any longer than storm

This noose around my neck is getting looser as I step beyond the line of what's been said I know my mind now must be dead cause I can finally go to bed. 

My body's inept.
My soul has wept.
And I have crept'
Outside the hole inside the ground
The devil's laugh was the only sound.

My heart is finally on a cloud
And it'll never come back down.

Take my crown
Hold me down
Don't let me break free from inside the cage of this disease that I deny is apart of me.
Who holds the key?
Tell them to burn it
I'll never earn it
...
Now how do I word this?
What is our purpose?
Why am I nervous
To jump from the surface
Of my cursed devoted path of living past the horrid mask
Into the open
Into the ocean
Of current events
Of paying rent
To hide inside a body made of broken ribs and shattered hands through cluttered pots and pans
Pots and pans
Pots and pans
Pots and pans
I'LL CALL UPON THE SON OF MAN
BEFORE I REACH THE PRECIPICE OF MY DEMISE
Into the southern skies

A day, a day, past.

How strongly one’s emotions can affect mentality.
The constant reassurance of stability is about as crippling as the entity of emotion itself.
How long can one suffer in the ocean of sentiment before they eventually drown?
The aspect of progression through the soul is subtle, faint and bleak.
Nostalgia disturbs through inducing wistful affection;
Upon recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

Resurrected from the salty chuck.
I awoke with the absence of instinctive regret;
To think a shadow burdened my day,
Until I no longer wished for another.

I could stare at broken windows all day
And not once feel what it felt like
when I first realised I really didn't want to be put back together again
like dull crystals and melted snowflakes
I wish you would just notice me
I got suns inside me that would orbit you if you just as much as smiled at me

Your eyes resembled the troubled waters at sea,
always shimmering, churning, crashing, always making me wonder if you had sky blue galaxies trapped inside of you.

And your smile always looked as if it had been carved into your face with the same instrument used to make those marks on your arms.

I found comfort in your sadness, because that was the only time you were true to yourself.

I found comfort in your freedom. I always loved seeing you live carelessly, daringly. Insubordinate to anyone who tried to stop you.

Sometimes it worried me to see you scratch your skin after you cursed about destroying everything you touched.

Sometimes it worried me to see you lose yourself among the empty bottles of alcohol.

You were burdened with a heavy heart, and like the pupils in your eyes and the emotion in your smile and the sound of your laugh, it was vacant.

And all I could say was, maybe, just maybe, if you unclenched your fists you would've found that you were holding onto nothing.