you still make me restless

this is how i die
i guess
my legs are stiff and my back pops whenever
i try to get up
my face is dry and
itchy
i can't remember the last time i ate
and tasted the
food
it's a sneaky descent
that's just how it goes
i thought that these bruised knees and
swollen knuckles would
keep me afloat
i was wrong

this is how i die
i know
rotting alive

they forget that you are just trying to survive and they expect so much too much all of the wrong things from you and it kills you it makes your chest pull it makes you want to give it up and fly up to god I hate it here I hate it here I need to be leaving soon

an ugly color for an ugly girl
brush your ******* hair
mommy didn't want you
mommy didn't care
mommy didn't notice until
you had the knife to your throat
mommy still didn't care
mommy, mommy dearest,
i'm not so close to home anymore
mommy, mommy, mommy,
you lost your
first born
a very long time ago
first to cry
then first to die
mommy, stop hiding my pills
mommy, mommy, MOMMY
let me paint my room
let me make it match
the reject inside of it
ugly colors, ugly hands,
ugly, ugly, ugly girls
don't last long
oh, mommy
you know it best

i'm taking you with me when i go
and most people would think that that's a threat
that i am trying to drive you crazy
both been there, both done that
but they're just ******* idiots
just ******* idiots interjecting themselves for the thousandth time
only just to make their bubble-wrapped lives
look all the more impenetrable
i am taking you with me when i go
because i can finally stop thinking long enough
for the good to outweigh the burden of caring my heart around with me
because, you
you, alone, will always be the good
and your love will always make me feel at home
it is just so hard to hurry along with me
but i am taking you with me when i go
and i refuse to think myself out of something to wonderful

I didn’t think this is what would be happening

At this point in my life

I wanted to be okay(?) with it

Whatever it had become

I had no understanding of


How to be able to live with this(?)

when i look at him
i think of all the times
i have been wronged
beaten down
by the stupidity
of so many before him
that looked the same
and smoked the same
and held me like i was water
but this time
i am not afraid of him
of it
of myself and my tendencies
to throw away used hearts
used bodies
weathered lips

i know that he will stick
because i'm okay with staying
and he's only a frog
sick of being a ******* prince

and i don't want you to look at me that way anymore because once the time is gone we'll never get it back and after you scrape your knee once the skin will never be the same and once i leave you will never see me again.  because the world isn't the place they told you about in high school.  it's not a place for cotton candy clouds or smiling face or hands like yours that grip too hard in all the right places.  don't you understand?  we're living in a time capsule buried beneath the earth and sooner or later someone is going to find us, let the air infiltrate us. then you will have nothing, and still, i will have less.

i used to know what i would write in my letter
what i would want to read in the letters from friends and family
i used to know who i would blame
who i would torture with the accusations
that could never be resolved from a coffin in the ground
i used to know that i didn't want to be the only one
i used to know that i didn't want to be any one
and i used to know that nothing she did
could ever bring me back
nothing she did would ever be enough to relight the snubbed out wick
i don't know any of that now
i only know the uncertainty
i only know the questions
i only know the black page in front of me
inked from the future that i don't think much about
i used to know that i was ready for the black to swallow me

now i know i i'm more fitted for the grey

They want me to be soft.
They want me to bend under the strength on their hands, under the pressure of my curated thoughts. I feel like I am dying under the weight of it all. Every day I wake up and wish I were dead, but then I accept that I am not and realize there is nothing else to do but go on and so I go on, shuffling my feet along the same roads of everyone before. Along the same roads they have paved for me, entrenched me in.
I want me to be soft, too, but it seems to come at a price. The others tell me that hard women get **** done. The others keep saying that I can be the same and more, that I carry the armpit of the women before me, that I can be just as strong as THEM.
I want to be soft and safe.
I have been so hard, so calcified for so long, that my knees are forever creaking and my wrists are always sore. I know that I am hard. I know the power it brings.
I want to be soft.
I want to feel the things I’ve been deprived of for so ******* long. These pretty blondes around me are so thin you’d think the wind would break them. I want to be like them. Happy? Soft? Cashmere. Let me experience the luxury of living in a padded world.

he cups my face and asks me
how is your mind today?
and all i can do for him
is lie
all i can do for myself
is lie it all away
he takes me upstairs and lays me down
i missed you
and i want to cry because
i know i'll miss him more
i know it'll hurt me more
when it's time for him to leave

i let him hold me after
let him own me
*please, don't let me live after you've gone

Shatter me? do it and you’ll suffocate under the pieces of me, under the pieces of me that you wish you could eradicate. You do not like me tall you do not like me standing you do not like me in your way when I’m walking my own line. Shatter ME? you’ll die trying.  I’ve been torn apart before, I know how this goes. Flexibility has kept me alive while we sit in your stagnant world. Shatter me. I’ll only become a greater beast.

they tell me to be softer
like the snow they love to trample
and I look down
I look down at this body
at these killer slopes and cliffs

they are afraid

I make the best of this brain so
I KNOW
I can make the best
Out of the worst
Anytime

Unstoppable

She is forever trying to understand what it means to be soft and what it means to be hard and how the two are nearly the same thing but given different connotation. To be soft is to be loving but that is also to be hard. To be hard is to be brave but that is what loving is. She doesn’t need you but she allows you to rejoice in her, because that is what loving is.  Being soft is being open and being hard is not?  To be hard is to be ready to be confident to be challenging. Is that not what loving is?  To be soft is to be hard is to be soft is to be HER.  You have required a division of the good of the great of the unstoppable inside of her because you are nothing.  Being soft means being hard and you must watch her do it all.  You must watch her NOW.  She is rumbling.

my hands are covered in paint and glue
my hands are not new
they are old and
i'm tired of hearing about them
what have they done
that i can be proud of
nothing

no one is reading my **** anymore
it's not generic enough
not sad enough
not happy enough
not ******* insane enough
not sadistic enough
not self-deprecating enough
this is why the best writers always ******* **** themsleves
or drink themselves to death (because somehow it isn't considered suicide if it's done over a few decades instead of in an instant)
i'm not mad that people aren't reading
i'm just confused
what am i doing
they told me anyone could be a writer
and i've seen enough published ******* to believe that that is true
i'll write about cats
about cats ******* cats
is that crude enough for you
i'm screaming now, and you can't hear me
you're to busy with the spectacle-boy with a vape pen and brand new perfectly shredded shoes
this is why everyone hates themselves
and why everyone who doesn't always seem so unaware
is this how the world divides
the blissfully dumb
and the dying intellects
not intellects
pessimists
that's what we are
if i could live in your world i would
but i'm stuck with incessant thoughts
and loud, depressing music to make them sound less appealing

Eyes propped open by the incessant thoughts that threaten to keep you staring up for the rest of your life, continuing to search for the relief that doesn’t exist. This is how you shrivel up and die in the tub full of self-hatred, in the bubbles drawn from the shadow close behind you. You don’t know how to do it like the rest of them, waking up and walking along and not having to fight off daydreams where a happy ending looks a lot like a fresh pile of dirt in the meadow. Knobby knees knock together and your feet won’t even still while you’re lying down. Always needing to run towards the “more,” the “better,” never finding solid ground to build a hiding place.

you don't smoke, do you?*

                                                                        well, now i want to
                                                                        what would you do,
                                                                        hit me?

                                                                        i don't feel it anymore

i am losing my mind
maybe i already have
and it's just taken me a long moment
to realize

either way
things aren't looking up

all messed in the head
scrambled eggs
in place of a brain

call a technician
my electrodes are on the fritz again

other people don't think like me
don't see the images that haunt me
do they?

there's been a break
a snap
a loss
i don't know how to go back

nothing is right aymore
and i'm drifting
will the current bring me home

i'm seeing death
my old friend

i think i'm gone

i wake up
and i'm not so sad
maybe
leaving the house
isn't as bad as i've
made it out
to be
it still hurts
the sun
the stares
the voices in my head
mingling with the ones
outside
it gets bad eventually
always
but in the morning
i can breath
the jar is open
the air is fresh
how do i keep it up?

I want to be a fucken poet.
I want to spend my whole life writing meaningful things that touch no one and indiscipherable codes that every claims to get and so now they do.
God, I want to die sometimes.
What would a life of poetry be?
Boring. ******* depressing. Lonely and anxiety-ridden FO SHO.
I'm downing now. Heavy head like a dead giraffe and slow hidden eyes.
I could do it.
I'd just go mad.
Is that why God made me this way? Never a fucken second of peace and quiet that isn't accompanied by loud and tiring.
I want to write the books that change the world, but all those books have already been written.  
Bukowski wrote a whole fucken genre.
Drugs are old. Depression is mainstream and covered by insurance (except for all the times it really should be).
Pop a pill, go to rehab, all done.
Right, Nurse Jackie?  Oh? Oh, yeah, **** the pharmababes, too.  If you're gonna do it, do it good. Do it right.
Why won't he let me tell my stories? Will they hurt him, hurt them, hurt me?  I'm sure the answer is me. I hope the answer is me. I guess that's why I want to write.
**** me.
I can't do it on my own.

how to write
a book about
depression that
isn't about
depression
that's some
sylvia plath ****
i am not her
i do not want to be her
i want to be me
i need to find it
i feel it beating
i still don't know
if i am alive
there's got to be more to this than
that
that stupid ******* bray
**** her
i need more than that

I know that I haven’t always felt this way.
When I was younger, I was nervous.  I was quiet and shy and it always took me a while to warm up to people, even those I saw on every holiday, birthday, and graduation.  But I wasn’t like this.  I wasn’t like the other kids, but I was happy.  I could go about my day without an onslaught of questions running through my head without any reprieve.
I could ******* breathe.
There was a breaking point.
I know that now.
I was sad but I wasn’t like this.  Yet.  I was drowning but still unaware of the fact.  I could get by if I needed to, wanted to, and I did.
Now, a hangnail can plunge me into darkness.
I don’t know how to get back to the before.
I don’t know if I will.
I don’t know if I can keep going on like this.
Hopeless.  
Lifeless.
Every rise and fall of my chest takes a tremendous amount of effort.
Every morning makes me sick, and every night reveals more that needs to be fixed.
Fixed.
They gave me pills.  I went to therapy.  
I talk about it. I talk about it with anyone that will listen.  I know that somehow it helps me, even if in the moments, it makes me feel like I’m helping dig my own grave.  It’s heavy.  It’s tiring.  It comes spilling out of me like a ******* wild fire.  All it needs is that one spark.
God, I’m sick of the natural disaster metaphors.
I know that I’m not a disaster.  I know that this is normal.  I know that there are millions of people around the world that feel just as bad as me.  A lot of them feel worse than me.
But right now, I feel like I’m the only one who has ever known this kind of suffering.
I know that isn’t true.
It doesn’t help.
The air conditioner sounds like a rainstorm.
I miss the rain.
Last Christmas, I got really bad again because the days were so short and my job kept me in the dark and out of the sun every single day.  I forgot what the day is like.  I forgot what it meant to be awake.
It didn’t let up for a long time.  
I had to quit my job to get out of the bad place.
I ended up in another one, though, because then I didn’t have any money and I wasn’t eating enough because I was too anxious to leave my room and I couldn’t focus in school and I ****** my grades up.
I don’t know if I’ll get into Cal Poly.  I kind of doubt it.  
My GPA is average.
I probably had a better chance of getting in in high school, and I still got rejected.
I know I wouldn’t like it there because the people are too normal.  Too white.  Too rich.  Too blinded by their privilege and the pretty bubble they live in.
The happiest place in America.
We’ll see about that.
Maybe.
I used to be like them.  I could have thrived among them.
I’m different now.
My life is divided like that: then and now, before and after.
That’s how I know there was a break.  A shift inside of me.
I can’t see anything the same way.
I hate the people from high school that I used to so desperately want to be popular with.  I can’t eat steak.  My hair is green.  My skin is pale.  Football just doesn’t do it for me anymore.
They’ll tell me it’s loss of interest, a common side effect.
It’s not.
I’m just different.
I don’t eat eggs.
Where is my life going?  Do I need a purpose?
I suppose.
I don’t really want one.
The whole idea of being here on earth for a reason is terrifying.  Angering.
I don’t want to have to do anything.
I just want to live.
But even that isn’t enough for me.  I can’t keep going through the motions.  I love my routines, need my routines to keep from falling apart, but I think they are killing me.
I don’t know any alternative.
Routines keep money in my bank account, good grades, enough food in my stomach, strong legs.  
I would be nothing without them.
They are the ******* replacement for the purpose I loathe to discover.
I know where I am headed.
I will get bad again.  Just in time for the holidays.  And I’ll lose my grip for a while.
The anticipation is a *******.
I can feel the pressure building inside of me.  I can feel the vibration.  I can sense the change before I can recognize it.  
A volcano.
And then what?
I live on my own.
If I go down, I go down alone.
Alone.
Alone.
Alone.
Maybe that’s what get’s to me so much.  I know that I need human connection because it’s basic biological fact.  I know it I know it I know it.  I refuse it.
It’s too hard.
It’s takes more energy than I can spare right now.
I hate that I have to think this way.
Because it’s a need, not a choice.  I can smile and laugh and tell myself I love life and all the little joys it has to offer me, but it doesn’t change how I really feel, what i really know about life.  I’ve felt the pain.  I’ve ******* made it my wife.
It’s raining again.
I can hear every whisper in this **** library.
I can never find a book.
The medication is plateauing.  There’s only two more doses after this one, and I’ll have to try something else soon.
I did this to myself.
I know that,
It doesn’t help.

Oh look
The people are caring now
Carrying their guilt
They know better
Too bad
Not sad
For you at all

they always say to me
"you get attached too quickly,
and always,
always,
to the wrong people"
and i tell them

you'd hang on to
the smallest
hints of hope, too,
if you've been left,
been forgotten,
been as faded into
the crowd as i
have

and they don't
get it
they can't fathom
walking up to a crowd
and not finding that person
whose soul meshes with
their own
and going days and weeks and months
******* years
like that
without ties
and without empty lungs

and they say to me
"you just have to be more welcoming"
and i tell them

i have had my home unlocked for years,
windows wide open
and a front door so
tired of never
welcoming
someone new
i have only ever been
a beacon
and you all have only ever been
blind mice
senseless gusts of wind
on a dark night

and they never understand
but the people
i hold onto
so tightly
love so fiercly
after minutes
seconds
of meeting them
they know the same fear
the same
devotion without
apology

and they say to me
"we can be so very wrong and so very stupid
together"
and i tell them

*i am home
don't you dare
leave
don't you dare
rob me and
throw me to the
birds
unless it's
with you
sinking just as quickly
into this
muted crowd

sometimes
my mind forgets my body
and the pain i've put it through
it trudges us along
the path of bad choices and damning denial
it drowns us
in false hope and sickening pleasure
beats us with the harsh
metal of reality
someone
put the **** thing to rest
let us rest
we are falling apart under the pressure
of it's tyrannic commands
something
something has to give
as it continues to take

I am in love with a boy
And all of his friends
Because they are so nice
So kind
So smart
So good to me and each other
And I want to hold them
And never let go
And I want him in me
Forever

LOVE HAS ONLY EVER BEEN A RAFT TO CLING TO IN THE WAVES OF MY SHADOWED MIND BUT NOW IT IS THE ACCESSORY I PUT ON EVERY DAY, THE SIDE EFFECT OF BEING ALIVE AGAIN, AND IT IS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING I HAVE COME TO KNOW IN THIS NEW LIFE.  LOVE IS NO LONGER ALL-ENCOMPASSING.  LOVE IS NOW THE THING I CRAVE AT NIGHT AND ON THE WEEKENDS.  IT DOESN'T KEEP ME FROM KILLING MYSELF BUT IT KEEPS ME FROM THE DULL MONOTONY OF HAVING NOTHING TO THINK OF WHEN I'M GETTING WORSE.  HIS LOVE IS LIKE A ******* PUNCH.  I HATE IT BUT IT HURTS MORE WHEN I HAVE TIME TO BREATHE IN BETWEEN THE HITS.  THIS FEELING THIS FEELING THIS FEELING IT TEARING ME APART.  THIS FEELING THIS FEELING THIS FEELING I CANNOT BEAR TO EVER LIVE WITHOUT.

we don't chase the boys
and they don't chase us
they find us
they stumble out of their
misery
their immaturity
and they latch on
always looking
for another mother
to abuse

they never last long

i can see myself in these people
these happy ******* people
it is strange but i feel good about it
i am terrified
but growing accustomed
to looking up
to looking ahead
it is strange to be coming back
to these simpler times
these simpler states of being
i am afraid of grasping everything i once had
just to see it leave again
i am afraid of learning how to walk
just to be shoved down again
but i want it
god
do i ******* want it
that cold air without a bite
god
please
please let me have this
i don't know what i'll do with it
the calm
once i have it
but ******
i want it
and i am ready for it
it feels so good to breathe

oh, Jon, sweet, *******
*******, Jon,
i will be so happy when
you find the earth
between your fingers
under your nails
clogging your lungs
death won't be enough for me
no, no no no no no
never
you deserve the pain
you need the pain
you ******* idiot
you **** annoying martyr
no one likes the sad ones
who can't see past themselves
everyone leaves
leaves leaves leaves
a leaf on your grave
they won't even see you
six feet under
because it won't be enough
never enough

you'd know that best

when you can’t get anything right and everything is heavy and the sun is cold and you don’t know what to do so you walk around in circles like a toddler and hope that something changes but it won’t and it doesn’t so **** me ******* and **** the world too amen

And I am dead to the world
Dead to your voice
And dead to your hands
Especially your hands
Because they've always known better than the head behind them
And I am dead to the garden out back
Dead to the bed we shared
And dead to our tiny dreams
We've both made new ones by now
And I am dead to you
And it is not because you have chosen someone else to get your fix
I am dead to you because I want to be
I do not want to live on in your memories
Get me out of that place
Get me away from those claws you call your feelings
Get me away from the razor sharp teeth of your hindsight
I am dead to all of it
Dead
Let me burry myself in peace
I am dead to the world
Because I am dead to you

look at all this *****

Coming out of me
Violent currents
Sinking rocks
I am drowning
In my thoughts

bright colors
aren't for movies anymore
the water make noise
even just for me
and when i look up
clouds aren't stagnant

i can remember
i can relearn

the bright colors
the sound of waves hitting concrete slabs
the ivy behind the gate that doesn't have to choke like most other does

bright colors
warm clouds
cold stones and ragged peaks
that don't - can't - cut me

keys are tools not weapons
and this pen is not designed for bleeding out

fill me
soft petals
red coral
feel me

bright colors
stilled feet
tender flames

all mine again

And it feels like the end
But worse
Because it’s more like the beginning of the end
A long end
I want it to end

and he loves me
but he's scared of me
terrified of how he looks
at me
and can't say a single
bad word about me
other than
i want her so much it makes me ache
and i love him
and i tell him all the time
because i want
him
to know that i won't hurt him
like i did the rest
he makes me want to be good
he's a little boy at heart
trying to stay safe
without the guidance of
a mother
the hand of a father
he is shaking
in the air that surrounds us both
he loves me
i love him
*i will give him time because it is all i have to offer

I burned all of my bridges
Without knowing it
And now that I know how to seek
(Not only hide)
I am walking into gutters
Gorges and ravines
Dug by my absence
And the interpretations of
Those who once loved me
And I know that
Not one person is at fault
But it's hard to breathe when I see
The divide
And it's hard to keep stepping
When I can feel
That loss of warmth
No one else can see the person
Taking control for you
No one else can understand
It wasn't me who forgot about you
I am stranded
The old commander is gone
And I'm the only one left to blame

I'm writing again
So does that mean I'm
Getting bad again?
I thought the pills were working
I always hope they will
(stop ******* yourself)
Things are looking familiar
Maybe in a different light
It's sunnier, warmer
But more callous all the same
(the perfect illusion)
Things are rough
Rough enough to make me new
Keeping rubbing up against it Big Bear Baloo
(it's the itch that never stops)
Pain changes people, right?
Every good thing comes from
Terrible, terrible evil, right?
(keep rubbing)
Let it rip you apart, stupid bear
New docs, new meds, new
Reasons to stop this - whatever this is
I am tired
Not ready to die
But barely hanging on.
(my knees ache)
I must be getting bad again
I keep seeking out sharp edges
To haphazardly maneuver around
Just to circle back for more
When the job isn't done
A ******* life down the disposal
(i'm not supposed to think like that, he he)
Wait a little while more
And you'll see the blood
Mine
Yours
(it's all the same)
We're all ****** the same

what am i doing
playing pretend
waiting out life
going through all the motions
but not very well
i feel like i'm dying but i know that
i haven't begun living yet
i am scared
life is a monster
all it wants to do
is **** me from behind
put teeth in my shoulder
rip out my hair
make a ***** out of me
i used to be senseless
i used to not question every little thing
i miss that
but i could never go back
enlightenment
hate it
but can't live without it