What I wish to be exists not.
To have
Years of sorrow and grief forgot,
But oh, oh no;
That suffering will long remain.
It will riddle my mind;
Labyrinthine confines --
All alone, always,
Unfathomably far from every shore,
From what I once adored.
This is emptiness:
This is the void of being.

I will wake up with that knot
Still In my stomach,
Lying awake for hours,
Hardly moving,
Immobile,
Still, so still,
Clenching for comfort and warmth and care,
But it simply won't be there,
And it very well may never return.
That flame of the few
That I once knew,
So pure and so true,
Has withered into an ember,
And it's so far away, this I know.

I would rather go ahead and die,
Some times,
I think,
Than live a life of mediocrity;
Of predictability.
Yet I'm also dying to find any source of light
In this abyss,
Or an escape.
But I can't find one.
I'm having so much trouble simply existing.
I was not cut out for this world,
I can tell you that for certain.
Oh, with such certainty.
I cannot handle the pain of everything around me,
Of proxy wars and vast slums.
Of paved forests and rigged economies.
It is far too much for me to ignore...
Far, far, far too much,
This is for certain.
With such certainty.
So is opting out the way to go?
It's getting to where I'd do anything
To not exist as I presently am,
And to not exist where I presently am:
In this desperate mind inside a dying world.

I just want to be okay with living.
But I absolutely mean this when I say it:
All of the pain in the world,
All of the inequality,
Stratification,
Corruption,
Tragedy,
Genocide,
I feel it. I feel all of it...
It pulls and drags me
Into some unknown depth,
Some infinite chasm,
Where no light has ever been,
Where no light will ever be,
And where I am not sure
If I will ever leave.

There was a time when I had two arms,
But it got in the way, and had to go.
Out on the farm my little brother ran,
All around and back again.
Then came a shake and a stir,
And all that followed the noise was his faint whisper.
I found him wedged beneath some machinery,
So I picked it up and helped him out.
Oh, but though he fled to safety,
For me there wasn’t a doubt,
That as the weight overcame me,
My arm would fall prey,
On that warm September day,
And all my father could say,
Was “you did good son; I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

There are songs that remind me of older days
Melodies intertwined with memories
Evoking ethereal nostalgia
A horizon once crossed
Those carefree summers
Their night skies and street lights
Backroads and empty homes
No parents: the first taste of liberation
Moments captured within memory
Dissipating with the passing days
Sparked back into being by some old song

The fading notes of youthful songs
Drift into the distance
Where fields of flowers are cast in shade
And their glowing petals sink and fray

Nothing that comes is worth its space
We are bombs that never go off
And winter comes earlier every year
It will, one day, never stop

Life preserves itself
In the face of mortality
It spins stories of afterlives
It is a genetic defense

Live earnestly and eagerly
There is little else to do
The songs of man will fade
And every art will die along

My cat,
Maps,
Is pretty rad,
You see.

I let him roam
Outside,
Some times.
He’s agile.
Skills honed
Over time,
Naturally.

This proclivity
Is pretty recent,
Honestly.
I raised him in
An apartment
In Austin
With a second
Floor
Balcony.

I’ve done him well.
He’s happy,
Joyful, active,
Rather built,
And Inquisitive:
Very much so,
He’s even cuddly:
Friendly and approachable,
You know.

I’ve known a lot
Of cats,
You see,
But Maps,
Maps my cat,
Is my favorite cat of all,
Naturally.

I am not a fan of my darkness.
I don't want to wake up in a life
Where I consider not existing
A reasonable option.

I can't handle the daily grind,
The salaries and insurance bills,
And all these things I read
On how ****** the world is.

I just want to create things --
I don't want to cause harm,
But I am a source of profit:
Exploitable and disposable.

Suicide is not what I want, though.
I don't want to do that to those that care.
I just want to escape from this place,
This entire ******* civilization.
I can't stand it...

I don't even want to write about it;
I've done it enough.
I'm just so tired of this world,
Of profit margins and bottom lines.
I want to build a cabin in the woods,
Somewhere,
And live off the land --
To forge my own existence.

But that is abandoning humanity:
I feel an obligation to fight for the future,
Like I should give my life for what is right,
For a more empathetic world,
A world of understanding --
Something utterly fleeting,
And probably impossible.
But the fight must be mounted.
Someone must stand.

This world they have built will not last:
Infinite consumption is a hoax,
A lie, a grand delusion.
It will fall, whether we fight it or not.
The real fight is to ensure
That the world that rises
After this one collapses
Is built for the good of all mankind,
And not just the elite classes.

Man has been ruled by greed for too long.
We have been abused and sent to die
In pointless wars and toxic mines.
They preserve themselves:
Where a yacht is pocket change,
While half the world is starving.
They're a parasite that won't quite die:
A tick that keeps finding a crease in the skin
To sink its filthy face in.

We are a bag of blood,
Running dry,
Infested with ticks,
Swollen beyond imagining.

This is not a world worth preserving -
It is a rigged game,
It is a disgrace.
We should be embarrassed
That for all of our creativity,
Our intelligence and passion,
Our insight and foresight,
We allowed this to happen;
This global cataclysm.
It's so ******* depressing.
It's why I can't stand waking up
Some times.

I just hope that, maybe, one day
I will be able to wake up
In a world that has learned from the errors
Of this one.
I really hope it happens.
I really hope I get to see it.
Oh, how magnificent it might be.

I once remembered amber evenings
Atop rolling hills many years ago
The subtle chill of a singing breeze
Whistling through autumn leaves
In the dancing rays of a setting sun
All alone amongst the grandeur

These vivid memories have decayed
The glowing splendor of youth and bliss
Is resigned to dusty images
Packed away in a forgotten room
Locked with some ancient key
Forever removed away from me

I am a husk of bones and rust
Among worms and dirt my friends lie
Soon, so too will I
The timeless, dreaded darkness
That once seemed so far away
Lurks within my periphery
This is oblivion that I now see.

I am forgotten story, a tale once told