Nature fashioned
a thorny crown
to cut my scalp
and bleed me dry,
leaving me to decide
if I should cry
or try to write
my suicide note.

There was no lover to
pull me from the sea,
or make anything
mean anything.
So, I was just floating,
tears and snot soaking
this body choking
on bitter salt truths.

There was no fire
to keep me warm.
So my digits,
and heart went frigid,
and that rhythm
that was given
to the living,
I no longer missed it.

The sun disappeared
and when the clouds cleared
even the moon had skipped town.
The tides came and went
pushing me out,
and pulling me back in again,
but I was already too dead
to drown.

The husk they found
was a terrible art display
of a soul fried and flayed
till it up and flew away
to smoke itself and disintegrate.

My five-disc cd player
shuffles through
sad soft songs
that sing
me and my depression
to sleep,

a melodic muse
to still the
inner tempest
and let this
lonely witness
escape the deep
shades of darkness.

Alone with
someone else’s
consequences,
in so much pain
that I try to end this
but even suicide
is hopeless
for me.

There is no opening
out of this bubble
that I have been
living in.

There is only
the cycle that
washes, rinses,
and dries me out,
makes me cry out loud
when no one is around,
but never tell anyone
that I am hurting.

The pills and razors
are still not working,
so I’m just burning through
my terrible twenties
and most of my thirties,
never ever feeling worthy
of any sort of love.

I know I won’t be here forever,
and I am just wasting away,
watching politician playing their games,
play acting outrage while preventing change.

There is a no place for my face
that shifts and distorts from the pain
that I am forced to witness over and over again.

I’m not the cleverest
but stating facts makes me feel like
I’m trying to scale Mt. Everest
while screaming against the bitterest winds,
like I am going to have to watch all of my friends
slip off the top and drop nonstop
until our whole civilization ends.

I’m just dressing my heartbreak up in
stark sparkling words meant to
amuse and enlighten all of you,
until the same fate catches up to me to,
and my legacy disintegrates
with the rest of the human race.

The trees pirouette past me
as I drive fastly,
outpacing other drivers racing
against the resignation
that this human nation
will not change
despite all that we are facing.

Time’s eternal tide
brings pressure from all sides.

Still, I go on contemplating
losses that are devastating.
Shouldn’t broken bodies bombed out
cause a pause or at least minor doubts,
but it's like their lives don't matter,
like these children aren’t even collateral.

In that realization I succumb
to a dark cavern where a
mad Minotaur makes a cold
depressing labyrinth that shakes souls.

Language is the only way
I can take control
of this stark pain,
as I use metaphors
to explain and distract me
from what is exactly
happening,

but pretty words are like
flowers scattered on
a festering wound.
The rot goes on
and all too soon
this buffoon
will fail and fall.


-2021

If life is a show,
it is one that
goes with the flow,
growing and retreating
with the seeding
of insights
we are receiving.

Rivers shift, feeding
bigger bodies.
Life is change,
but no one
really taught me
how to accept
that reality.

People come
and go
in and out
of our lives
and periphery,
occasionally
coming in for
a reentry,
then fading
into background
static.

Life is for the living
to grab it,
because death
will not grant us
any grand reprieve,
so all I need
is what I see
to go on existing
whilst being me.

-2021

I’ve been to the ledge,
looking into an abyss
certain that I
wouldn’t be missed
and even if one person did,
they’d be better off in a world
without me in it.

I’ve seen shadows creeping
while I was almost sleeping
halfway between
waking and a dream,
with a spiderlike scribble
crawling across my blanket
that I couldn’t smash
or even shake off.

I’ve been swept up
in a manic moment,
then began drowning
in an endless pit,
and almost died in it.

So many self-inflicted
near misses, electric,
pill bottle, and razor kisses
but my body insisted
on living when my mind
wanted a quiet end
to the painful buzzing.

Some say it gets better,
and for me it did,
some say all you got to do
is keep trying to live,
some day you will make it.
It’s one struggle at a time.

But sometimes people
go into those dark caverns
and never come back.
It’s not a beautiful death
just a tragic final act.

-2021

A grin with thin rimmed glasses,
smiles with delight
as she speaks to her sprites,
whispering
with hands wide,
telling them to listen to
her tale of things that go
bump in the night.

“When I was very young
there was a crooked old tree
that sat savagely waving
down the road from me,
a mess of gnarled branches
that looked like they could
grab you up and take a bite.

One day I went out to play,
saw a small squirrel,
and chased it all the way.
Until, it climbed up that
wooden monstrosity.

Distracted,
I did not notice
how the grass reacted,
shrinking under my foot falls.
I failed to see
how far I had actually gone,
because to my little mind
the distance from my yard
to that tree was shorter,
but in reality, it seemed to be
approaching me rapidly
as what was behind
faded out of sight.

Daylight became night
quicker than expected,
and I suspected
that I should go home,
but when I turned around
I found that I was lost,
and all alone.

I heard a twig snap,
then felt a limb smack
me on my lower back.
My body seemed to contract
as I lost my breath,
and a fog of coldness
washed over my flesh.

The wind lifted
a small pile of leaves
revealing tiny
black shiny beings,
a nest of chittering beetles
that started skittering
ever closer.

I cried out. No sir,
and tried to hoof it out of there,
but I had lost my sense direction
and didn’t know where
my small house was.

A little bug
that looked like
a hairy brown spider
leaped up on my dress.
I quickly flicked it off,
then flinched when
I heard something
purring.

I turned in time to see
a small pair of glowing eyes
focused directly on me.

The feline
passed by
rubbing gently
against my thigh,
and then strutted away.

I followed that kitty,
and I thought we
were heading back to my city.

We passed a stone fence,
and a small wooden hut,
a little gas station
that didn’t have much,
plus a tiny graveyard
and a busted gray car.

I walked so far
that my feet got blisters,
saw a stranger,
and cried out, hey mister,
but he didn’t even turn around.

I kept going not knowing
if I would ever get back.
Nervously, I started to laugh.
I had probably snapped,
cause I was scared and starving.

It was dark and cold,
and I couldn’t find
anyone to help me.
People didn’t even
acknowledge my presence
unless I bumped into them.
I tried to speak,
but no one would listen.

I never got home,
just settled here
in this little cottage
for the last
seventy plus years.

No one has stopped by,
in such a long time
so thanks for listening
to this story of mine.

Now, come closer my little dears,
because I am soooo hungry.
I don’t want to be rude,
but you look like food.

Why are you running?

You see when you heard me calling,
you shouldn’t have listened,
like me,
you to are now missing,
but I know where
your new home will be.
There’s a place in my stomach
because it is so empty.”

The little old lady smiled,
chasing the last small child,
with a sharp tap on his neck
she laid him to rest
in a well-dressed bed
of greens and liquid red.