"Happy Father's Day" is just another sentiment I've never bestowed in sincerity
To an absentee father who made me another statistic filed under "addict parents"
Carve another tick under the "single mothers" column
Can you tell which one is mine?

No child support
No birthday gifts
No Kodak moments
But plenty of drunken voicemails saying how you wish we were closer
To guilt me for the miles of repressed anger I placed between us

I will not bridge that gap nor forge a path between you and I
Because some bridges were meant to burn
And some hells were meant to freeze over

I want to be enveloped by the silence that darkness solicits
For the dimming acts as a finger upon the lips
To quiet and linger in the space
Between what is and what isn't

My tongue gets trapped between my teeth
the crimson blood drips
drips
drips
cascading timidly down
down
down
To the final resting place on my chest
like ink on blank parchment
but ink gets the job done

Everything is black and white
It's right and wrong
wrong
wrong
It's all wrong and write
write
write

I tell my hands to do what my tongue can't
to tell tales my voice can't fathom
If actions speak louder than words
then my story is so loud
loud
LOUD

The noise of graphite on paper
the sounds of words from silent places
drowns out the drip
drip
dripping

I scream
*******
**** HIM
**** HER
**** EVERYONE
**** ME

And people tell me I've lost my ******* mind
Well, **** yea I've lost my ******* mind

Because god ****** me to live this life I lead
And god ****** me to believe I was free
And god ****** me to think I could see
And god ****** the sky to the sea
And god ****** the whole world and me

Made of stone and ice
Desolate and decrepit
My heart's consumption

Let the moss grow cold
Let the Earth release its sin
Let the fog roll in

Demure by nature
The palest garden of Eve
Ruined by a rose

Welcome Winter's moon
Feel the bite of solstice air
Frigid dreams await

Doomsday approaches
Quick now, bury your loved ones
I'll see you in hell

Mother Earth inhales
Fills her lungs with slumbered sun
Exhales blossomed life

Queen of illusion
Directs your curious gaze
To the looking glass

As this hole inside me grows
It swallows, blackens, deepens, numbs
Yet somehow remains the only thing
Left to comfort me

My hand in my own hand
I stand on these two calloused feet
Worn from the countless times
I have walked alone

No one is there to wipe my tears
Or whisper sweet ramblings of comfort
The echoes of their empathy
Vanish within the depths

This pit unnerves and dampens
Each time I think I've grown stronger
I only dig and descend deeper
Into singularity

I am so tired
Of staring listlessly at clock faces
Waiting to be hypnotized
Mesmerized into a lucid state of mind
To pass the time

I'm wasting today to fuel tomorrow
Running low on time borrowed,
Too little sleep,
And haphazard to-do lists
I can't seem to complete

I'd dream big but dreams are misleading
Fleeting scenes that keep repeating
One destroys
The other spares
What are daydreams to nightmares

Like the ocean
that slowly beats down
on the shore

Every time I embrace you
you destroy me
one grain of sand
at a time

My current disposition is one of constant instability
An ever changing transfixion
A standstill metamorphosis
An unending sense of finality

How becoming of a lady
Teeming with life
Yet fixated on death

I saw you in my dreams last night
As your body laid there cold and quaking
The doctor robed in decrepit shadows
Whispered to me, “wishes do come true.”

Your hands were pale and fragile
Like a thousand crumpled paper cranes
A thousand torn up love letters
A thousand rewritten apologies

So I gently folded them into mine
Hoping to give them back their true form
Reshaping your joints to familiar angles
The ones my own hands knew best

I studied the rise and fall of your chest
Encumbered with each painful breath
Your body and soul danced with demise
To the sound of the monitor keeping time

Then a disembodied voice rattled my sanity
A forgotten melody that once haunted me
“I cheated death for far too long
to let you be the one that stops my heart’s beating”

I could not reply, lacking the proper answer
Overcome with remorse and eager to end the torment
I hurriedly traded heartbeats with you
And felt my pulse shudder and stammer

My new heart’s cadence slowed then ceased
Suddenly missing the rib caged rhythm
An epiphany of the words I desperately needed
Became perfect, cohesive, articulate, whole

But the room fell silent and my voice fell short
Only the sigh of my last breath lingered
And my unsung requiem remains
*L’esprit de l’escalier

it hits you
but not all at once
or like a ton of bricks
more like
a constant migrane
a dull throb
with spikes of pain
that strike you
listlessly in vain
in the oddest
times and places
it hits you
in the middle of the night
or while staring
into your coffee
ruminating twilight
on your drive home
or when you get caught
in a stranger's sight
it hits you
and you'll want
to hit back
but you just can't
connect

Drain my life's blood and let it turn to tar where my body lies
Rip the pale flesh from my bones like a starved creature
**** the marrow from their ceramic casings

Bury me in an unmarked grave where nothing grows
Let the maggots consume my rotting vessel
It makes no difference in the end

Death by any other name would smell as foul
But my essence is that of divine shadow
And you must drown out the sun

O, Lord Death
Whose skeletal wings unfurl towards the void
Protecting the balance of existence
The universal dichotomy

O, Wise Reaper
Who does not discriminate nor distinguish
And with unwavering certainty
Decides the fate of all

O, Dark Master
Whose hallowed name is the purest form of music
And surely the most haunting
Resonating in my dreams

O, Fallen King
Whose touch unbinds me from man's ignorance
If only they could understand
Your gift is that of freedom

O, Soul Shepherd
Your paradise was not lost but merely misplaced
Yet fear not, wayfaring lord
For I have discovered its truth

Fear not he who bleeds the ink bone dry
From which to carve out our dear lord’s cry
Nor she who bears forth corpses of stone
Amassed in silence to reclaim his throne

Tell naught of his dreams that sing of sorrow
Its symphony beckoning us to follow
Nor tell tales echoed amidst black pitch
Coaxing the darkness to writhe and twitch

Keep hidden secrets of brimstone and ash
Daemons awaiting to gnaw and gnash
Keep hidden the key to the world’s iron braces
Those whom they fear must remain faceless

Sleep, my lamb, and dream ever sweetly
Fate’s threads stitch and bind completely
Dream of celestial tapestries divine
As they elegantly intertwine