It’s dark.
From what you can see through your eyelids,
But there is nothing but the darkness…
Just completely nothing,
Nothing around at all…

Lights low,
Eyes sown shut,
No one can see,
Not even yourself,
The harm and chemicals that race threw your veins,
And even if they could…
No one would know how to help.

Even with your eyes shut it’s unnecessary,
You know the feeling,
The fake darkness,
The sunshine that throws the dust around,
It’s not real.
The sun that moves the dust,
The sun that shines on only the wretched
That sun that shines on your depression,
Making it brighten to full volume…
And then the blinds snap shut,
So fast…
You don’t even know where those thoughts went.

Chemicals that your body is used to,
The chemicals that make your eyes shine,
Make your hands shake,
But nothing that you had to take,
No substance is involved,
Just the feeling of flying then shooting yourself down.

The chemicals course threw your veins,
Making twisting and turning paths
Threw every part of you,
No blood, just this nuclear fission making your eyes roll.
Sleep comes easy,
But it’s not really sleep,
Just enough to regain your strength to peak threw that window shade.
The darkness of the room, the black depth of your curtains,
The mechanical glow given off by the tv,
The news rolling almost as a portal to an outside world,
A world you are not comfortable with.

Your eyes press down the keys,
You take another dose of distain
And flip the power off.

Smoke drifts into the air,
Maybe from an apartment downstairs,
Voices scream at you to move,
But once your eyes open to nothing,
But fire.
Raging in a circle around you.
You have no escape but to hide within yourself…
The outside can not be trusted…
It’s not real…

Instead of giving your heart or part of your soul to a person,
It’s trapped on the other side of that wall,
You’ve been caged with no walls…
The fire isn’t real, and neither are the walls,
There is nothing.
No one
At all…
Just the sliding of your consciousness in and out,
And the draining of your comprehension.

A jump, a start…
Silence,
It’s in your mind,
A blow of wind, a scratch of death,
Inching closer to you….

Frantically searching for yourself…
But just deeper and deeper inside of thoughts you sink,
Drowning, thoughts of reality choke you until there is nothing left…
Just space…
Space that never runs out.

One day the curtains could be thrown open,
The blinding light,
Maybe a comfort for one not ready to see,
But at least it’s an inch closer to life.

Your eye catches on a moving color
In the vast white blanket of snow,
It’s really small but it’s orange
And purple
And green
And blue
And pink
And it’s all those colors on the canvas of snow

It’s a butterfly,
It’s a chameleon,
A zebra
A dolphin
A person
It’s all those things that you wish could live together peacefully-
On that canvas of snow

Its happiness,
Its doubt,
Depression,
Anger,
Love,
Confusion,
Its all those emotions that you wish wouldn’t mix-
On that canvas of snow

It’s the light of the light,
The dark of the dark,
The hope of all hopes,
The dream of all dreams
It’s what you wish to be-
It’s what you wish to make people finally see.

Like after talking on the phone for an hour,
The cotton- like silence that fills your ears
That was what it was like

The sun playing hide and seek
With the horizon
And the mist
Strung in the air with invisible strings

Dew slowly formed
Crystal diamonds
On a field of jade grass

Mist dissipated into the endless sky
Endless blue water above
Endless green below…

Air so pure
So absolute
So fresh
Every smell brings everything in

Every breath is like a cold winter day
Except it isn’t cold,
But you can still sense every
Little thing.

Small birds
Like children’s kites in the sky
Little frogs
Like small skipping stones

Me, maybe out of place
But not really
I know I belong
Because the birds sing

And the frogs croak
And the wind sings sweet and soft
The clouds drift lazily across the ever blue sky
The grass ripples like the water
Everything is slow and meaningful

Everything is meant to be
Everything is chosen to be here
Therefore everything has a part
Everything is meant

The warmth from the sun
The cool blow of the wind
The ere of magic
Runs threw my mind

It can’t be real
But it can’t not be real
Don’t open your eyes,
Open your mind…

The door is open,
But no air comes in
It’s stagnant and warm
Like a muggy summer day…
The air just kind of drips down from the clouds

It’s heavy and thick
And when you reach your hand outside
To feel the air that refuses to mix with its cold partner from your house,
It forms drops on your skin
It mixes in with the soft hair on your arms

You take a step
Your old sneakers hit the front step
Your faded jeans are slow to follow, along with the rest of your body
It’s like you’re caught in the collision of the warm and cool
The swirling tornado of time

You stand for a moment,
Should you go any further?
The warm air envelopes you and is pulling you forward,
But do you really want to go-
Do you want to leave the cool calm of your house?

It seems you can’t stand in the middle of the two
You try to put half your body into the cool air from the house,
And half into the warm,
But all you feel is a tearing sensation that is too much to bear

You push off your front step
You jump the next three steps
When your shoes hit the ground,
They are running before you are
They are taking you somewhere that you are unsure of

But you do know that your choice has been made,
Weather voluntary or involuntary-
You have made that first step
Into the sweat drenched air
Into the air that everyone else seems to breathe in just fine,
But it seems you can’t even catch one breath.

But you know you are,
You can hear yourself breathing…
It just doesn’t feel right.
You could go back to the calm,
But you will never be able to mix the warm and the cold

The choice is yours.
Will you be the one who stays in the shadows?
Or the one who works with everyone else…
A follower or the one that hides?
Neither seems appealing…
Or maybe… you will be the one who shakes this earth so much that the air will mix
And it will all come together when you make them collide

There is a door put up in front of you,
And as you may wish, you cannot walk through
You have to open it,
For that door is part of you.

Your hand slips down the handle,
Feel the cool metal,
Play with the idea of what is on the other side,
A tug-of-war match rages behind your eyes,
Just a crack couldn’t hurt…
You push the handle down,
Opens it a tiny crack,
Then that door slams open,
With all the things you held back.

You try to close it again,
Yet your efforts are all in vain
For you know you must endure,
What’s on the other side of that glass pane.

There is no time to breathe,
No time to think,
But you already know,
What you need to do.

You know your life isn’t a lie,
But it isn’t the whole truth.
You hold things back and lock them up,
In hopes they won’t haunt you.

But your time has come,
You’ve realized
That you’ll be a real person; not just half,
If you just step inside
See your reflection as it is in the glass,
Or be able to see your reflection on the other side too,
To be able to be able to see both…
At once

And as that door starts to close,
And as you step threw the threshold,
As the two mirror images combine;
You see yourself in a much different light.

The foggy mirror
Displaces your image
Back to you
Distorted and the right on the left
Left on the right

You rub your hand against the glass
Use the sleeve of your shirt to pierce the fog
Though it does not disappear

It’s permanently there, you decide
Along with the black mold that lingers at the corners
And at the sides

You look further into it
Just a piece of reflecting glass
Or that’s what it seems to be

You look directly into the middle
Not at your eyes but at the material of the glass
There is a small speck with no fog.

You start again to run you sleeve across
But starting at the speck,
The fog slowly circulates around the mirror
Like it is holding a pool of fog

You push the fog so it overlaps
And the edges are a deeper gray
A clear spot emerges in the center

You put your finger right in the middle of the spot
It’s not painful
But it’s not comfortable
There is pressure on your finger

A vibrating sensation
An other worldly pull
You are completely mystified
By the images that swirl through the fog

Though not of another world,
They are of yours,
They are what you may be able to hold in your hands one day
The others what happens with nothing in your hands.