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.

Rolling my spirit free
From an early sleep,
The faint purr of my fan
Registers in my ears.

I am lulling with
Unconscious states,
Teasing them to return.
But,

My eyelids show
I've left the light on.
The house is static.
I'm hardly controlling my breathing,
When in my left ear
I hear a roaring, rapid inhale,
Other-worldly,
Infinitely distant
Yet right next to me.

I am ******
Into reality
And I see
before me
Only

my


room.

By: Forrest Jorgensen©

At the mountain's top
I roar to deafening winds
That I am alive.

Out there somewhere among the waves,
I feel you crawling in my brain,
Pleading to be more than just a memory;
Some old, forgotten name.

I locked you up away from everything,
In the recesses of my mind,
Where I thought none would ever find.
But you wouldn't rest;
You wouldn't die.

Now here I am, face down upon the shore,
Screaming to the curling waves for the woman I adored.
But you are gone forever,
You are buried and rusted somewhere,
Yet in every star I see your shining eyes.

Maybe a tide will sweep me away,
Deep down to the bottom of the sea,
And there I will find you,
Locked away waiting for me,
So we can then finally hold hands,
Until our bones sink into the sand,
Far below the curling waves.

I awoke to rain on my second floor window;
An overcast sky and tossing trees,
Glimmering leaves above tar-black streets.
I opened the window
And felt the light breeze against me.
I watched the droplets fall on my hand.
Splattering carelessly:
A downpour of tiny suicides.
So I closed the window,
And I took a cold shower,
And as the water poured onto my head
I stared down at the drain
Wondering,
How it would feel to clean this broken skin,
And fall away
Into oblivion,
Only to be reborn
Falling from the sky.

Primetime TV is asinine;
Intellectual cyanide.
Empty like a home in Palestine,
And corrosive like an alkaline:
It's the software for the poor.
Subliminally shutting your doors
Of perception,
While they pump the town full of more --
More liquor stores
And two cent ******,
Deadbolted doors
Adorned with gang graffiti
Where the government ignores.
So how can I sleep
When all these kids never eat?
And where's the sweeps
For the bodies in the streets?
They'll just pour more concrete
Over our homes.
Gentrified zones,
Minorities in tow.
High interest loans.
Money's dried up,
Foreclosure and drones
Dropping tear gas on the protesters;
Arresting anyone not in their homes
Please tell me, how can I atone
For the sins of a system
That riddles the world with victims?
This is the modern vista
The ghetto is everywhere
The aftermath of an affair
Between the elite
And their federal clientele.
Predatory lending,
Bailouts, drop outs,
A culture without.
Humanitarian drought.
Where's the empathy?
The love?
The care and clemency?
A solution for this endemic peasantry?
Man, I wish I knew.
I wish the numbers weren't true,
And I wish the sunrise brought a nice view,
Instead of billboards and condemned buildings,
Abandoned homes, potholes, ****, and trash:
The ashes of a golden age long past.

I miss what was:
The late nights,
Street lights,
Midnight diners,
And old music.
I think to myself
How lonely this is,
When the past
Was so splendid.

They're memories
That should make me smile;
They only empty me --
Isolate my heart,
And show me what
I no longer have.

The small cracks
Become canyons
That you can't fill,
Look what we are:
Distant stars,
Drifting apart.

Lonely satellites,
Singing to ourselves
In the depthless
Void.

Perhaps I'll find,
In due time,
Some lovely light,
Somewhere,
In the sky,
And we can sing,
Together.
Yes, we can sing,
Perhaps forever.

Let the frantic words of a caffeinated mind flow forth:
I shouldn’t write poetry when I drink coffee.
I shouldn’t drink four cups of coffee at 3am
With the intent to squeeze poetry out of my shaking fingers.
Seriously, I have to **** after every stanza.
How am I supposed to keep on track?
I can’t, I tell you,
So let’s just mark this up as postmodernist –
You know, the sort of art that is actually ****,
That shouldn’t be considered art,
Like that exhibition full of pictures of *******
(No, seriously, that exists);
That’s what this is.

The only effect I can hope to achieve is irony,
Or humor, possibly.
It’s about time I stop writing about love and life,
Like I’m trying too hard to be taken seriously.
Maybe that’s the way it is for a young writer,
Like I’m screaming in the street:
“Hey, pay attention to me!
I’ve experienced things and apply pseudo-elegant words to them,
Then call it poetry!”

You want to know the truth?
I don’t want to work a routine job.
I don’t like the way the world works,
And I’m scared of being still.
So here I am, writing and drawing and taking ******* pictures
With the faint hope that my creativity may,
Some day,
Be worth your time,
Ask valuable questions.
Spark valuable thoughts,
Give you an escape,
And pay the **** bills.

The sky is solid, gray, motionless.
Shuffling bodies with obscured shadows
Make haste for shelter
From the stark, lifeless outside
With its grass that only lives if watered,
The always leafless trees,
And the carcinogenic air.
Looking upward,
Through the smoggy haze,
One sees the neon silhouettes
Floating in the sky,
Atop the glass and steel monoliths.
They speak to those below,
Of subtle, clandestine oligarchy.
Subconsciously belittling the anonymous masses,
"We are Titans, you are rats."
Say the towers,
As the populace quietly passes over stained concrete and asphalt,
Wearing breathing masks,
Saying not a word to the thousands they pass.

We make haste in this world.
We cannot afford to help a stranger,
To make a detour with a view,
To get your child that gift they really want.
So fiercely we have been strangled
That empathy is illogical.
"What a world" we all say,
As we avoid eye contact with the hungry;
As we change the channel from the melodramatic infomercial
About starving, disease-ridden children somewhere else;
As we console ourselves with hollow entertainment and intoxication,
To keep the guilt at bay,
To keep the thoughts at bay,
"Just do what's best for you,
Don't step out of line,
Shuffle in,
Follow the queue.
That's all you can do."

There is an emptiness inside of me.
It does not stare back.
It offers nothing,
And it gives nothing.
Deep within me, it festers,
Writhing in unnatural ways,
Shooting infinitely black tendrils
Through every vessel of my brain.
They wrap themselves around
My memories, my emotions,
My friendships and obligations,
Like eating and education,
Then yanks them all into that void,
That vast emptiness,
And leaves me as
A fraction of who I once was.

By: Forrest Jorgensen

My uncle died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
It made his brain dissolve itself in nine months.
I stood next to the once-stalwart man,
With mechanic's hands,
Lying in his hospice bed
That smelled like disinfected death.
During his short stay there I heard him say
"What's happened?"
In his faltered, degenerated state.
"What's happened?"
He repeated, as he saw his withered arms,
While wearing a diaper,
Gazing around with half-empty eyes,
Grasping for some shred of light
In his shattered ruin of a mind.
The life he once made for himself is gone,
And somewhere within himself he knew it.
Somewhere that held on until his final breath,
As he shrieked with pure fear
In his final sleep.

Overlooking the back parking lot of this hospice
A playground stands, built by hand.
The children probably look over here
And wonder what this place is,
What happens here.
I'd tell them that
These are things you don't need to know.
Now go stay outside and play
While the sun is still up.

Forrest Jorgensen ©

Your past lover is hundreds of miles away, ******* another man.
Your mother can’t sleep because she’s regretting how she raised you.
Your best friends are wasting away and getting high in a forgotten town.
Your father, whom you haven’t really thought of in years, is somewhere far away
In the northwest,
And he doesn’t give a **** about you.
And you don’t give a **** about him.
And somewhere else, in a place you’ve never seen,
Happens the most beautiful thing
You have ever dreamed
There is a girl, far away, and she’s awake too.
Her eyes are about to open,
And yours are too,
One day you will meet,
And though life is meaningless
And though we’re a fickle plague on an undeserving Earth
And though this will all come crashing down, and humans will be no more;
Someday…
You know that spending your life with this girl
Watching, together, distant horizons unfurl
You will be able to live,
And you will be able to die.
Now open your eyes,
Both of you,
And never lose sight
Of what you feel tonight.
Unspeakable miles and infinite variables
All cascading into this single moment
This moment where your entire life becomes what it truly is:
Nothing.
And you’re okay with it.
Because you felt her,
And she felt you,
And what you two will one day share,
Is love.

Waves crash across the horizon.
Salt and sand stir in the curling crests.
The sun falls into the sea, ages away.
An expanse ignites in lucid crimson.

Calmly the sea reaches for the shore.
The lonely moon floats in depthless black,
Clustered with ever endless stars
Indifferent to the futile toils of man.

The multitude of eyes that look to this sky,
And shrink from the unfathomable void,
Laugh the whole of their little lives
As they willingly wither with the weeds.

Yet there are whispers in some ancient breeze
Of a timeless dream of something more --
A future that all of man should strive for:
Free of famine, strife, and senseless war.

Yes, we must believe in something
To keep the dreadful darkness at bay,
So we have created a perfect world
Forever confined to our mythic minds.

Listen, I force myself to laugh
At myself when I can't see past
The dark shroud of every day;
Sleeping in and withering away.
It's a defense mechanism I made
For when I couldn't get myself out
Of that senseless cycle of ******* doubt,
That I wouldn't make it out,
That I was doomed to obscurity,
That my life would be small.
*******, don't do that to yourself.
Smile and make some ******* friends;
Tell yourself you're never going back again.
Laugh it off and move on, ******* –
There's no use in apathy my friend.
We all face the void eventually,
We all lose hope existentially,
But that's part of this life;
There's struggle in every work of art,
And there's beauty in every scar.
I'll tell you that life has meaning:
The meaning that you make.
Seek your passions until you shake.
This ******* world is yours to take.

So I want to see you smile every single morning,
And you're not allowed to call anything boring.
Every day is full of potential ready for the pouring.
I want you to laugh away the darkness;
Every second is something to harness.
But a lot of people think life is pointless,
Saying **** like we all die regardless,
Or that every ******* is just heartless;
They need to realize everyone's an artist,
And they're still clinging to this life
Because they can't fight the fire inside –
The inferno to live like we'll never die,
So you might as well enjoy the ride,
Gaze with glee into the endless sky,
And learn to share the truth inside:
This empty world can be filled by our glowing minds.

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

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

I don't need you anymore.
I have forgotten about the nights
Where we tumbled to the floor,
And whispered like lovers
Beneath dampened covers.

I endured frigid centuries
At the bottom of that old black sea
That I dug out of your skin.
In those depths I searched for you,
But you were on the coast, looking in.

It was around a card game at Devon's,
Amidst nonchalant laughs,
And burnt coffee, that I learned
That I do not care about you anymore;
That you are an old, forgotten name.

And I keep having this stupid dream
Of you sitting next to me
In my passenger seat
Where you whisper "I don't love you"
Then I stop the car.

So I'll drive home tomorrow
And I won't text you when I'm lonely.
I'll swallow the glorious isolation,
And I'll greet the rising sun.
When I visit town again, you won't know.

I've been under the influence
Of a grand delusion for years:
That humanity was in need of saving,
That I could do something to change things.
But the vast, sanguineous swamp of civilization
Swallows you whole,
Indiscriminately forcing you to adapt.
Ripping your flesh from the bone,
Until you are a twisted phantom
Of who you once were.

The ants,
Though,
They work together.
Their colonies are, essentially,
A single organism:
An immune system of warriors with grotesque chelicerae,
With foragers and scavengers radiating from the colony's center,
Bringing back sustenance,
And the queen, ceaselessly pumping out generations.
They all live and work and die seamlessly:
Cogs upon cogs, organic machinery.
So what am I?
A blockage in an artery?
An aimless foreign object,
Doomed to be consumed by everything around me?

I don't know.
I wake up and I put my contacts in.
It's usually past noon,
And some days I can't get out of bed.
Don't ask me why.
But I go to class and I take care of things
I'm trying to at least be mobile,
To have options and use them.
I've got a wanderer's spirit
And a saint's moral code.
Why must so many go without? I ask.
Why do we cause so many of our own problems?

Again, I don't know.
We're naïve, hairless apes with nuclear weapons,
Cosmological Protozoa at best.
Our cities are staunchly divided:
The haves and have nots,
The grime and the detergent.
The ghetto is potholes, shattered glass, And faded, forgotten dreams.
This is not the succinct society I see in ants;
This is chaos, disorder, malignant and cancerous.
This is ecological genocide.
This is systematic exploitation and manipulation.
This is rigged elections and clandestine empires.
This is **** Sapiens circa 21st century,
And I want nothing of it.

The insignificance of a human life:
How monumentally minuscule it is.
Yet to survive,
To breathe in another sunrise,
To keep the generations coming,
The individual's most logical choice
Is to value itself above everything.

The realization of the self's grand insignificance
Is counterintuitive to its survival,
Thus, sentient life is inexorably tied to delusion;
To bent truths,
And comfortable lies.

Confronting one's futility,
However,
Often leads to desolation.
So fold yourselves within, humans,
Find a soft spot within your minds
And plant there the seeds of your joy.
Do not squander the little time you have
With things beyond your comprehension
The infinite cosmos is not for you.

Care for those that you love,
Fill your lungs with wild air,
Embrace your domain,
And live without refrain.

To my weary friends,
Your trials without end,
I wish to send you solace.

Society fails many.
Many die, some by suicide,
And the remnants are muck:
Corrupted and materialistic,
Base and hedonistic.
Yet within the dark bile,
Within its lukewarm core,
Diamonds can form:
Luminescent and pure.
Their bright minds fight for more:
A better world,
"The only thing worth fighting for,"
But they never see it through.
They cannot, I tell you.
The brightest simply shine.
They pray and hope and fight and die,
In their writings, in their art,
You see this coursing vein
Within it all --
In the pages of Karamazov,
In Van Gogh's shining stars.
It is this self-aware entity,
Pondering its own incredulity,
That screams to the sky
On so many sleepless nights:
"Greatness is doomed!
Society is static!
Dreams are but dreams!
Humanity automatic!"

Oh, and how these diamonds form!
Under such pressures and trials.
A life of constant disappointment
Where you only wish to better the world,
Yet the world pays you no mind,
And if you are noticed
It does with you what it wants:
You are slandered and trashed,
They ban your books,
They burn your paintings,
Then teach children about you,
Centuries from your death,
Some skewed version of your vision --
Something they've invented.
And there you were,
Wishing that hunger,
Wishing that war,
Wishing that strife and prejudice,
Were no more.
Oh, and you learned how hopeless this was.
Your infernous, naïve passion folded
Into a glowing ember.
For you have learned,
You wise, weary diamond,
That the ruler of man
Is his own nature:
For every advancement
Someone learns how to exploit it,
And all our theories,
All our lifelong efforts,
Inherited from diamonds before,
Will amount to nothing;
You will die only to pass the torch.

So,
How does a truly aware mind
Find solace with its life?
How can you sleep at night
With so much agony in the world?
How can you come to terms
With your own endless futility?
Oh, the timelessness of these questions.
Do not be dismayed, my friend:
I know how it feels to suffer,
To writhe on restless nights,
For decades,
And quietly cry
To the midnight sky.
We diamonds, we must struggle --
That is what makes us.
And imagine:
If there was no pain and hardship,
Our breed wouldn't exist!
We're byproducts, you know.
The world we wish for has no place for us,
So should we wish for it at all?
Should we end the lineage of diamonds,
For a world free of pain?
What sort of people would live there?
Docile, bright, kind,
Yet there must be something lost.
Yes, indeed there is
Within the darkness and suffering,
The abyss that we face,
We gain something --
Something infinitely valuable,
And only we know of it.

It is here that we learn
That even a completely different society
Would be relatively the same.
So tell me, diamonds timeless,
Why should I live?
To fall in love?
To travel the world?
To learn all I can?
I'll tell you,
You must live
So that you can learn
How to enjoy life
In the face of its ceaseless woes.
You must step over it,
And experience something beautiful:
Hold your lover's hand;
Walk barefoot in the snow;
Lie down in the sunshine --
You will find simple pleasures.
You will want to find more.
And all those years of worry,
Spent hurrying about
Trying to fight for something more,
Will fade into obscurity
As you, with your brilliant mind
Live for yourself some lovely life,
And if they come to take you away --
If you are burned at the stake:
Feel your searing skin,
Then swallow the flame,
For the secret is yours.
Laugh at it all
Laugh away

I am a point of observation.
I am your sword,
I am your shield.
I am your every word,
I am your crippled will.
I am your triumph,
I am your loss, your victory;
I am the passing centuries.
I am your mirror,
I am your history,
I am your nonchalance in the face of misery.
I am your passing glance at what you shouldn't see.
I am your only chance.
I am whatever you mean.
I am kind and I am keen.
I am the always unseen:
I am your myth,
I am your lore,
I am your every memory
A billion times before.
I am ageless,
And I am never born.
I am the first lie.
I am every star in every sky,
And I am right there with you when you die.

-Forrest Jorgensen

In reality I am on a couch,
Melting into its cushions
In the heights of an acid trip.
With my consciousness phasing
In and out of my corporeal being,
I lose grip, and project:

There is an ambulance,
Somewhere,
Backside down in a sinkhole
In some street,
And in the back is a dying man.
Each wavelength of perception pulls me into him;
I meld with his soul --
We become one:

Our face is pressed against the shattered glass
Of the left rear window,
Strewn in a suspension of blood,
Oil,
Dirt,
And pitch black asphalt.
We are not moving.
We cannot move.
We are crumpled into a position unnatural.
I see us from third-person and first-person
Simultaneously:
This ruined human form, broken and doomed.

Our heart is slowing.
The blood pools against our left cheek.
Each beat is slower than the last,
Each pump more shallow.
We're slipping away.
And then, at once,
No more beats,
Our eyes glaze over,
And I dissipate;
Melt into the folds of unknown realms:
I sink away.

There is no "Human" here;
There is no identity.
Nothing but pure wavelengths,
About me drift celestial ribbons,
Alight with infinitely brilliant reds and ultraviolets:
Pure mathematics,
Metaphysical, immaterial --
I do not ask where I am.
I am no longer "I".
My conscious spirit, my soul, my being,
Dissolves into the primordial frequencies
Of this sublime realm.
I touch infinity.
I become one with the source from which
All organic matter receives energy,
Where all life is recycled,
Where I am led to believe we go when we die:
The Conduit of Consciousness.

Yet, I am awoken,
Face down in a gravel driveway
Outside the house with the couch.
Much of my inside lip is missing.
My mouth tastes of dirt, grime, and blood.
It is five in the afternoon.
I'm on Earth.
My name is Forrest.
It seems that I am alive.
People, humans, ones that I know,
Are around me,
And they bring me up.

By: Forrest Jorgensen

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.

Clouds shift across rearview windows
Of ten million untouched cars.
Hesitant steps over uneven asphalt,
And the deep drone of interstate
Spanning the continent.

Dilapidated city centers,
Abandoned buildings and frayed neighborhoods
With all those chemicals still inside,
So birth defects are on the rise:
Another casualty of industry.

While there's shiny new shoes,
Couture wardrobe and golden rings
With a wood floor in the renovated loft,
And a computer that knows your face.
This view of the city is nothing new,
Though the price says otherwise.

Rain sweeps carcasses off oil black streets.
Excrement piles in the gutters.
Billboards like clawing monoliths.
The senseless beat of trekking tire,
And a really ******* big American flag.

Endless parking lots,
Suburban sprawl,
Incandescent spires,
Nonchalant death,
Distant eyes,
Mass demise,
Corporate ties,
Institutionalized,
No integrity,
No empathy:
A quiet suicide.

I was walking toward our old room.
I knew you weren't there;
I just wanted to feel something --
Something ephemeral and faint,
Tinged with nostalgia and sweat.

I couldn't turn the ****.
I heard every word
That we once shared
Blare into my ears:
"Are we meaningless?"
You once asked me.
"I'd still love you"
I said.

I forced myself into the room,
Everything pristine and clean,
But completely lacking you.
So I went to our bed,
Where we shared ourselves
With one another.

I could hear your voice
Whispering lines from our favorite songs,
And I could feel your skin
Falling into me.
I never wanted to leave.

Then, I heard your death,
Lurching and shaking in the bed.
All alone with no one to hold,
Or to hold you,
And where was I?

So I closed the door,
Away from the horrible noise
Haunting my mind,
And manifesting in our bed.
I just wish you were still with me
So we could walk into the morning fog,
And watch the mist glow at sunrise
Together.

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.

Do you remember those old days?
Glamorous nights and masquerades;
Lights and music and smiling faces
Stuffed with champagne.
I want to know what it was like
On the verge of collapse.
I want to see the doped masses,
The blinded eyes,
And I want to watch them
As they wake up in those mansions
On that late October morning,
With hangovers and wet clothes,
While they hear on the radio
That their little world,
Filled with excess and spectacle,
Would so very soon
Be no more.

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

An overcast sky poured upon the earth
Today. It seemed like it would never stop,
Then it did, and the city was flooded:
A shallow sea of silent standing water .

So I made three paper boats, and
Walked to the new ocean with them,
And cast them from my withered hands
To sail into oblivion.

I watched them glide down the glistening streets
Ever away from me, then I thought of you –
How we would cross the oceans together,
Where I learned how to swim, and how to love.

Then the last of the paper boats had gone –
Down wind, on some futile little journey.
I imagined you at the helm of one,
And I at the bow, looking back at you.

We sat about, legs relaxed and necks at ease.
Our window let in a light breeze, softly tumbling your hair onto the sheets.
I kissed your cheek,
Soft and tender to let you sleep.
I could feel the warmth of your glowing skin against me,
As shafts of golden light cascaded into the room.
No star could ever outshine you,
And I knew, in that moment,
That I love you.

I love you more than there are grains of sand beneath every ocean of every planet.
I love you more than there are points of light in every sky there is tonight.
I love you more than splendid summers under setting suns, inhibitions floating away with the flowers in the air.
You can wake up whenever you want, or you can lie in bed all day;
I'll be right here with you either way.

I dream of going far away.
Plunging into the grandeur
And the vastness
Of the world.
I am ready to leave this place;
I am ready, I say,
To be away.

I will write and draw,
And take drugs with strangers.
I will sleep on the beach,
Bathe in rivers,
And plunge into nature,
Away from four walls,
From screens and cars,
And toward greenery and stars;
Splendid laughter and epiphanies
Spilling from the ether,
Behind trees and over mountains,
In the silent water of calm lakes,
And in the crimson sky
Of some northwestern twilight.

I will wander abandoned roads
And drink coffee in midnight diners
Thousands of miles from home,
For the road beckons,
And the moon never waits.

The wanderlust of youth
Is nothing to waste.

I went to a sanctuary today:
The remnants of a dammed river
Called Tanyard Creek.
Life was vibrant and flourishing,
Glowing with green and streaming sun,
Cascading falls and clear pools.
I even befriended a turtle;
It was all very lovely, I assure you.

Yet, this used to be a river
Before Man built that dam,
And it must have flowed for miles --
****** and untarnished --
Before Man built that dam.

I'm reminded once I reach the other end
Where it flows under an overpass
That this all is simply allowed to exist:
Someone owns this.
Someone can trample all of this.
This fledgling remain of something ancient.

This is the fate of the entire world:
It all has a price tag.
It can all become a parking lot,
An oilfield,
A sweatshop,
A mall,
And if this system goes unchecked:
This paradigm of infinite consumption.
Then that is where we will one day be,
With backyards that need to be genetically-engineered to survive.
Where every animal is exotic and rare.
Where New York is underwater.
While we lie in gas-heated homes,
Huddled away from the decaying world,
As we chase away the fear
That it is far too late,
That these wounds are fatal,
And that we let our greed and indifference
Ruin the world that gave birth to us.

The torrents of restless dreams and shallow seas
Where we were never meant to leave.
I hold you with me,
This incessant menagerie of craving and sin
Skin to skin, pulling each other in grasps and gasps and melting hearts
Melding in toiled sheets in dim rooms
With a TV on mute,
And Phantogram on repeat.

You reach for me, lips to lips
Fingertips like lightning
Eyes afire with depthless desire
Your arching back and pulsing waves
Revolving over me, dancing
With that playful gaze
That I still love.
I think of fireworks on the coast.

You've sent me to another world;
Every avenue is steamy sensation
Flooded with these animal cravings
And when you scream my name
To every god above
And every demon below
They will know
That we humans are not merely flesh and bone
But beings of sense, of touch and taste,
Of sight and sound and pheromone

We master the art of our nervous systems
In these bedrooms,
Or wherever
And become the envy
Of every lifeless atom
That knows not the glory,
No active participation
In this grand existence.
No exploding nerve endings, quaking every muscle
And no simple, splendid mornings with a lover asleep in your arms.

By: Forrest Jorgensen

Every year I watch as the withered trees
Sprout new leaves in Spring,
And see those too turn to crimson and amber
To fall to the earth and begin again.
It reminds me of my own being,
How within me a clock is ticking,
Reminding me that each passing season
Is one less to live.
But, though I may decay into nothing someday,
I'd give it all to clean this mess we've made,
To push us toward a better way:
To give and not to take,
To love and to create.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

An ethereal Voice
From Tomorrow's horizon
Opened the sky
And sank the sun.
Now every star
Shines like the one
We've always known
Since so long ago.

And they do not fade
They do not stray
They are here to stay
They will never die
So It says.

The stellar era
Is timeless incarnate,
And life will forever thrive
On those lonely, drifting worlds

But I have heard,
In the whispers
Of some ancient breeze,
That the Voice will have me
Return its secret,
And with it,
The sun will rise --
Like it once did --
And the stars beyond;
They will be lost,
They will fade,
And we will never find them.

We will wither in the darkness.
We will wear and weather.
And long after the sun has died,
No more suns will ever rise:
Life that once blossomed
In every direction
Is now little more
Than a few particles,
Alone, eons and eons
Away from one another.

This is the Forever Dark.
This is the death of our Universe.

So burn me now,
While the universe still breathes.
Cast my ashes into Autumn's wind;
I care not where they land,
As long as they're here on Earth,
Where it is bright and warm
For at least a little longer.

I passed a drifter sitting on the edge
Of the I-49 on-ramp
As he gave me a fleeting glance
With his thumb up-stretched.
Then I passed a driverless car
On the highway's shoulder,
Dented and sun-bleached,
Whose owner is probably sitting in a cell.

Every commuter and traveller:
We all pass these stranded souls
And remnants on our way to wherever,
Without a second thought.
The shredded tires and shattered bumpers;
Skid marks as a testament.
They might as well not exist.

Just last night I read about some woman
Seen on a security camera in New York --
Eating a burger, of all things --
Witnessing a car plow into three people on a sidewalk
Across the street from her.
She turned around, walked off.
Two people died in that moment.

It makes me think about those charity commercials
Of starving children that no one likes to watch,
And how the marketing team thought
Those desperate scenes might inspire
Someone to help.
But, even when tragedy is right next to someone,
They seem to go about their business:
Business as usual.

We have left ourselves alone,
And alone we decay.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

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.”

The dreams of our children are dead before they're born.
We toil away so that made men can get paid far more than we want to say.
Our lives in this place are stilted and gray.

So tell me, why is it
That every art I see
Is tainted with inhumanity?
Why do the eyes of almost everyone I meet
Whimper with resigned defeat?
How have we made a world
That thrives off our own suffering?
And how does such injustice remain supreme?

The way out is within.
It is you, it is me,
It is all of humanity,
Together,
Seizing control of our beings,
And forging a world where we are truly free.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

In these streets gather grime and slime,
And an ideological undercurrent
That is by no means benign.
Indeed, this culture is rapacious:
Exploit, take, exploit, consume,
Endlessly, ever endlessly,
With no regards for when it all runs out.

This cancerous mindset
Is now mainstream.
It is default.
It is not only allowed,
But rewarded.
Selfishness and sociopathy
Are synonymous with success.
You are what you own,
And nothing else.
Your little words and little drawings,
With their little meanings
Mean little to anyone.
Pack up the books, the pencils, the paints,
Stow them in the attic,
And instead,
Slave away at something you merely tolerate.
That, my friends, is the American way.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

Life culminates and dissipates;
I remember to remember,
Then run out of space.
Your distant face in retrospect,
Crystallized by neurology,
Leaves me longing for an apology
Some respite for what you did.
The clouds come rolling in,
And you stay gone.
The wild runs within my skin,
And you're still gone.
I've learned a lot since then,
I've learned how to be me,
Taught by the moon's apogee,
Experience distilling my being
Into something that I hope isn't like you.

Stay gone, Steve,
Stay away from me,
Rot alone in your empty home.
One day you'll hear about me,
And realize I did everything I've done
Regardless of you.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

I remember late nights,
The interstate lights,
Their yellow hue
Through the windshield
With “Float On” turned up
All the way,
And our ****** voices
Singing anyway.

We went to the edge of town:
Those hills in the country,
That canyon we threw bottles into,
The back road where we cried in the rain
Like rapturous children
Bursting with joy,
And the warmth of friends –
Of people that love you.

Now, 500 miles away
I am typing words on a computer screen,
And I write about nostalgia:
About all of you,
And how I miss you,
How I love you,
All of you.
This is what I’m left with:
Memories and melancholy.

But I visit town often.
We drink and smoke together.
We throw up and pass out together.
We talk about futility and love and humanity
Infinity and *** and society,
Relaxed and without pretense;
We aren’t trying to prove anything –
We’re just talking and laughing and singing.

You’re told to move on,
Like the past is a commodity:
A tool for your growth.
Whoever says this never had friends
That were the family they never had.
They didn’t grow up alone.
They didn’t have an alcoholic father
And a distant family,
And years spent alone in a room
Playing with ******* Legos
Because they couldn’t catch a football.

I don’t want to move on.
How do you expect me to move on
From the people that kept me alive?
That made me laugh off suicide?
That gave me happiness and joy and warmth?
That turned the darkness
The desolation and decay
Into a vigorous existence?

You shouldn’t expect it.

I sit in this room, day after day, rotting and rotting and rotting away.
The sun that I see is snuffed by smog,
Transferred to LCDs in parks and streets,
Reminding the coughing passers-by
Of what it looks like to have a blue sky.
And I... I don't want to work a 9-5.
I don't want anyone to.
I don't want to participate in a cancerous system
That consumes continents of life just to churn out some ******* paper and oil.
It sounds apathetic, but it isn't.
I don't pity myself in the slightest:
I pity having to exist in this ****** up world
Where you're nothing more than an exploitable resource,
And where you are among the billions of others that will never be remembered,
Lost in the vast swathes of "disposable" humanity
That live and die in a rigged system
Built for and by those on top.

I just want to get away.
I don't want to be a part of this place.
I don't want to see another school get shot up.
I don't want to read another sensational headline.
I don't want to hear about a "just" war.
I don't want to breathe the toxic air.
I don't want to be see another skyline built by slaves.

I just want to be away.
Every second of every day I feel a desire to get away.
An incessant wanderlust for some place else,
Somewhere that isn't dark, cold, and bland,
Somewhere that wasn't built by poor immigrants.
Somewhere that wouldn't pave a forest to build a ******* parking lot.
Somewhere that isn't here.

I set sail long ago, and I took down the mast. The wind would blow, but only past. I rode nothing but the waves of the ocean – stars above and a setting sun to love. The nights shine with a sky so bright, as the earth turns, and I drift toward a fading horizon’s light. Where this ocean will take me, I do not know, but wherever it may be, I will find a home.

The sky was blue then, and in these days there was no ocean all around. No, there were children, a wife, and a home. There was a life of comfort and care and a vast land to roam. We had made for ourselves a life together, with nothing but a desire to share this forever.

A few years thereafter, the sky was burning. I came home to find the love of my life laid at my feet with her body limp and bloodied hair. My children were a motionless mass against a wall – None of them breathing… Not one at all.

So I left. I went to the coast, where calm waves crashed. There the sea beckoned for me. I had been so lost, and here was my salvation. “Unto oblivion” it spoke to me, “and into eternity.”

Guide me along the notes melancholy,
String me within their somber frets,
Assure that I entangle in the web
Of words written over several
Slow, sad evenings,
With rain's faint hum against the house,
And blanketing, billowing quilts of
Gray, endless clouds stretching to
Every horizon.
Show me into your heart,
Into the pain and disappointment
That made you start writing this song.

I know how to unmute the colors
On your friend's faces.
I know how to wake up with vigor,
How to complete tasks as they arise.
Indeed, many know how to cope
With losing someone:
You don't.
The years scab over our hearts,
They wrinkle our hands
And cloud our thoughts.
Alone we turn to stone,
As the years come and go, one by one.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©