I ****** my best friend.
We were drunk, but I can tell she wants me sometimes-- even when we're sober.
I forgot about it until lunch the next day. Hit me like a ton of "ohfuckwhatihaveidone" bricks falling from the delapitated crumbling building that is my life.

I ****** my other best friend too.
He's in love with me, so maybe it meant something more.

I'm not even that pretty-- maybe they just like the concept of the "hot mess"... Or maybe I'm the one attracted to them, maybe I feel I have nothing to offer except ***.

I broke up with you
Because I'm dishonest; a cough syrup symptom of walls I built so high.

I broke up with you
Because when I look at you I hate you; that glare of pain in your eye. The pain I've caused it hangs like smog over once beautiful hazel-greens.  

I broke up with you
Because you remind me of my parents' relationship... If you could even call it that. Doomed from the beginning, loomed and grinning over my sister and I.  

I broke up with you
Because I'm an *******.
Because I'm afraid.
Because I'm selfish.
Because I don't deserve love.

At work I disguise hospital beds for home,
But everyone can feel the stark truth--
It hangs in the air,
"You'll die here",
And I can provide no answers or words of comfort to ward off fear.

No matter how hard I scrub
I will never be clean.

All the words in my head bubble to the surface,
thick black goop, a mess of words of no real use,
they just hover, linger and ooze.
Cold night, fist fight, darker shades of blue,
Closed doors, corridors, I don't live here anymore.
A house of stone and words of glass we throw to waste our time,
Monday news, funeral shoes, let's do another line.
She won't come back, heart attack at the age of forty-nine,
Cross-dressers, gloomy weather, valentine be mine.
Closed doors, corridors, I think I've lost my mind.
Closed doors, corridors, I don't live here anymore.

I don't want to feel ok,
Ok is a lie when I see wars on tv and I just watched children die.
Please don't be ok,
Please don't let this be ok.  
Don't let a false sense of security become an excuse for apathy.

I'll meet you in Paris and we'll talk about the weather.
It's just small talk though-- something to fill the silence,
you'd think we'd know better.

For me to be alive I must eat.
For me to eat, things have to die,
And for what?--
An existence I can't even justify.

I am a crumbling doll of ash in a city of paper...

I stare at the LED screen, it's been a few hours.
I can start to feel that hum of the light and vibrations of thoughts behind my eyes, telltale signs of not blinking for too long.

I sit slouched on my bed, bent over my laptop immersed in another world-- one of ideas and electrical signals.

50 year old me will look back on these days, I'll probably regret my poor posture, poor diet and bulimic tendencies.

I am a product of my generation, addicted to any escape mechanism to which I can cling, God knows there's tons of viable outlets.

I can talk to strangers online and pretend I'm important. I can play games like living another life, I can do drugs, have lots of *** and immerse myself in the complications of relationships.  I can develop an eating disorder and immerse myself in the depths of that nightmare; anything to avoid the even bigger nightmare which is life, which is truth.

I choose not to wake up.
world of war craft-- not wars and bombings in far away countries.
Strangers online--not my ****** up family problems.
Celebrity Instagram-- not politicians and corruption.
Selfies-- not self worth.
I choose not to wake up.

There were so many words we could've exchanged so naturally we sat in silence. Our minds loud enough to drown the need for conversation.

I am God of the fishbowl,
Every reality past these water blurred walls doesn't concern me.
In my fishbowl I am heard,
I matter,
I make a difference,
There is a God,
There is a God,
There is a God,
I know because as I swim closer to the glass I see his face reflected back at me.

I am a global citizen, a temporary resident of this earth,
I barely exist but I refuse to be anything less.
I refuse to bury my head in the sand behind borders.
Borders are just ideas, right?
Ideas that compartmentalize people and places,
It's easier to be apathetic to foreign faces.
It's easier to be controlled and lulled into the hamster wheel that keeps the world going round in the right direction for those with the money.
As long as we run and don't ask questions the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
But the worlds' pain is my pain, and their pain is your pain-- wake up.
Children are dying in horrific ways, people are suffering, and the real irony of it all is that it doesn't have to be this way.
While I'm writing this, the old boys politician clubs of our "democratic" countries are smoking cigars, driving foreign cars and talking about the weather.

There are paintings in my bones,
When I retract myself far enough from reality I can see every sight as a painting, a portrait, waiting to happen.

I reject your food,
I reject your greed,
This is a protest.
This is the only thing with which I can make a point.
And when they ask my why I'll ask them "why not"?
I'll ask them why they allow this culture, this society, these warped values and ******* to infect them.
Why are we so apathetic?
How can we stand to be alive?

I watched a man die today.
It happened at the breakfast table;
he slumped over in his chair and started to convulse.
His lips turned white and I helped him from the chair to the floor.
He gasped for air and I grabbed his hand.
His chart clearly stated "DO NOT RESUSCITATE", so I didn't.
I kept calling his name, as if recognition of his existence would ward off death. It didn't.
Helpless, I sat there on the kitchen floor, with a man I took care of but didn't really know.
It was like trying to preform vitals on a mannequin. No pulse. No respirations.  No blood pressure. No air.
I pronounced his time of death "11:12h",
I told someone they should probably write that down.
I had never seen death before, not even at a funeral.
They made me clean his stiff body and we carried him from the kitchen to his room.
Now I understand the saying "dead weight".
I kept his jaw closed so the undertakers wouldn't have to break it.
They call this "rigor mortis", when the body stiffens.
Then everyone looked to me for guidance "you have an education, right? You know what to do."
They don't teach you this in school.
The undertakers came and hoisted him into the body bag.
Why did they take him like that? Cleanly zipped the black bag of doom from bottom to top.
There, ladies and gentlemen, was the grand finale of ninety-three years of existence.
I wasn't ready for him to leave.
How will he breathe? Wait-- right. Dead people don't breathe.
I wasn't ready for him to be dead.
They should've come later.
How do I move on from this? From something so absolute?
Maybe I should've chosen a different career.

I am the swollen belly of a snake,
Filled up with 150 different flavours of ice cream, 100% fat, 100% diabetes. Give me more.
I am the swollen belly of a snake,
All night drive-thrus, the Golden Arches of heart disease.
Give me more.
I am the swollen belly of a snake,
Super sized, double order of fries, any kind, anytime.
Give me more.
I am the swollen belly of a snake,
Gobbling up commercials selling the same **** a million different ways.
Give me more.
I am the swollen belly of a snake,
absorbing political excrement like a big fat chocolate candy bar.
Give me more.
I am the swollen belly of a snake,
Gobbling up fear and propaganda, I slurp up lies, and wash it all down with a big ******* to a blatant reality staring me square in the face. I assume ignorance and deny responsibility. Give me more.
I am the swollen belly of a snake, bursting, spewing ***** over cities, because we knew deep down  it couldn't last.
They filled me up so full I vomited violently until there was nothing left.
I am the empty belly of a snake and I am hungry.

I look down the neck of a bottle into the empty belly;
My head whispers, stirring my conscious, "I will only **** you",
These are words of comfort.
Guns **** humans.
Hatred kills humans.
Greed kills humans.
Corrupt governments and politicians **** humans.
Consuming alcohol kills me.
I stagger to my dimly lit refrigerator,
I retrieve another bottle of poison and think;
"worst case scenario: this will only **** me"

I watch the sun come up; this is the third morning in a row.
Darkness, darkness, darkness then suddenly light.
Light sweeps over hills and reaching golden rays intrude even the darkest of corners-- this is the bravery of the sun.

I had a happy childhood,
it exists in my mind as the salty seaweed smell of the ocean and my mother's sun kissed garden.
My mom planted tomatoes and black eyed susans in her garden,
and her infinite love for my sister and I was reflected in everything she touched.
Everything she does is a labour of love (will I ever be like that?);
Her love is a labour so strong it turned me into a prism, giving me the ability to love the world,
shining through me and the things I touch and now,
I have a garden where I grow tomatoes.

I found truth at the bottom of everything,
I found peace in the war that I’m waging,
I found belief in the lack of,
I found trust without love,
I found you, at the bottom of everything.

I had a nightmare,
But then I woke up to the rain,
Echoing softly off my window pane,
But I woke up in vain, because everything’s the same.

What do you want from me?
With your cities of concrete? Are you complete?
What do you want from me?
Your skyscraper views and your morning news,
What do you want from me?
Your holiday in the countryside, where does happiness reside?  
What do you want from me?

We are not dead,
We are just waiting,
Life is a joke,
Feels like I’m fading,
No way back, no way home,
Home is in the past,
All I do is roam,
Place to place,
Face to face,
No comfort in these crowds,
My head is foggy,
I can’t live here it’s too loud.

I bite my tongue until it bleeds, but I feel nothing--
or is nothing the feeling of everything?

Remember us.
We built monuments in our name,
and cities to accommodate our existence.
Remember us.
Concrete, steel, pavement.
We were here.
We destroyed life and slashed our names across the globe.
When there's no one left to remember us,
The wind will whistle through the empty streets,
the hollow concrete buildings will crumble,
but we always had a lurking suspicion that our monuments were empty--our existence subtle.
Remember Us.