Fall all you leaves of red:
(I can't believe you're still lying and lying right to my face)
RUST and disintegrate
(There's nothing left in your lungs to which I should listen)
Labor onward my slave,
(I won't let you stand there taunting me like I belong to you)
on and on and on. . .
(There's no line left for this desperate charade to ride)

For all that I've done for you
(It's true you helped me survive)
You repay me in change
(This has been on the distance)
Of which I can't be a part
(Since our original night)
I've been hollowed

(Don't tell me you didn't know when you've always lead this)

I concede if you can defeat me because I
Can't commit suicide

Trailing ground, claim this ghost, this ******
This cycle spinning out of control keeps haunting me, drawing me, on again
All I need, all I need is an opening out of this
Biting His smothering hands all the way to His bones, even if I have to crash

Burned trees
Dead wood
Black bone
In the forest of dreams a violet light shone
Violet
Lichen
Creeping
Around the repeating scene until the night died
Derailed
Into
Darkness
Until the smoke and the ash swallowed

The last lonely, laughing glance of His shadow

What I remember most is the ghost I left in the North that day
And how you agreed to drive--I almost didn't believe it
Not only not my body but not my soul, so what better an anchor?
Not my home and not my world--what better an anchor?

I-5 South to 405 driving like nothing, but leaving a smoke trail
S.O.S. outbound in denial with no signal return
Smiling beside the driver unknowingly burning, unknowingly smoking out

Could you respectfully decline an offer to wipe your feet clean at the door?
Outbound there's nothing that changes but the fear inset and instilled
It's just a portal
Could you respectfully decline an opening to escape with your devils moored?
Outbound it's better than ever if you'll accept it's not running away
Doorways are just portals

Stirring listless in bed under a patchwork of broken shade through moonlit blinds
It's 2 a.m.
My face has turned just as blue as the lunar white light as filtered by the night sky
Under the cold
I want you to know that even in growing old the trauma is ceaseless but I can't speak
My lungs imbued
Once with the strength of trees, pull in till my voice cuts, mute, and continue to squeeze
I see your face
Stir so listlessly close to mine, as if you were synchronized, and even closer with open eyes
We respirate

With the breath
From your kiss
Which you so lovingly demonstrate
Let us sleep, let us rust
Imbue me
With the hurt
That you so shamelessly share with me
Respirate

2 a.m.
Under cold
I feel your eyelashes slashing me
Let us crash, let us warm
The trauma
Is Ceaseless
The message is lost, I cannot speak
Both lungs squeeze

As he opens the door his shadow casts
on the wall before me with his back toward me
He turns to the right, he glances to the left
with his old mind set to yellow alert his due
will arrive, I know
unlikely by knife to throat
but by the worry that drives such fear
and with the time it stole
every year for years till now
May you wonder

Were the lies worth it?
Were the thefts worth it?
--Because the affluence you spent on chance wins won you nothing
Were the spies in bed?
Were your blind eyes met
With the stare of vengeful eyes like you thought?
No, I know you wasted your time
--I know you and I know you've no time

Often I sit cross legged
And move my ****** issues
As best I can into my brain
Where I can think about them
And then not think about them
By using some minor will
To hold them back
Right now in fact, I'm sitting
Cross legged in the backseat
Of a car with a busted tail light
Mary jane in the glove box
Backseat also full of groceries
So I adjust frequently, scowl
As I eat food
Licking my fingers after I
Eat octopus flavored snacks
I reach into the bag again
Noticing denim fibers stuck
Like cat hair on my hands from
When I wiped them on my pants
And that's kinda gross
So I stop
My back starts hurting

Happy Coming Out Day to everyone.

It's been only a big handful of months since my own coming out, but the months since have been the most gratifying months of my life. What I reflect on today is the turbulent course of crashing years on the lead up, and the extent to which I was lost, losing more and more by the day. The depression still wraps around me, every day, and it's a small difference that warps the world.

Rather than sinking with tunnel vision, that old, strange ill-will and self deprecation now strangles me with my eyes on the sky, knowing there's a way to the surface I've found--but I'm clawing out, even if slowly. Had I not resolved this particular internal issue of identity, I may have sank into the ocean floor, forehead first, and exploded in fearful doubt.

It's never easy, and if it is, it won't be forever--but it's never really about the forever. It's about the synchronicity that shows itself in between moments just to let you know you're riding right when you get so worried of crashing in the woods at night that you summon a self fulfilled prophecy. Crazy Talk is my nom de plume, but I hope you all know if you're falling again, still, or for the first time, I'll be there and probably falling, too--and I'd be so flattered if I could talk to you.

If your safety is threatened, then only you know the best thing to do--but once you're at the popping point, it's late to find the safety points, so be on guard, and when you've found a heart, arms, and ears then let it out.

Always your advocate,
Jaymi <3

To Everyone,

I want to offer you thanks.
Thanks for sticking around.
Thanks for reading and following Old Ghosts and Ghosts Trains to the end.
In honesty, this is the first project I've finished in at least a few years time,
but it may as well be the first project I've ever finished.

Now that I'm sitting here feeling as closed about the lyrics as I may ever, it's time to step back for a little while--which may mean a couple days, a couple weeks, or anything further--and give some emotional distance before I start the first round of revisions.

It means a lot to me that anyone out there took the time to read through and get interested--at least enough to skim.
If I can save, inspire, or alleviate through writing, it makes it all the better. I love it.
Ultimately, I write because I just can't help it.

May the fire that leads and haunts the swamp you see and thieve in your dreams never burn down or be exorcised.

Thanks and Much Love,
~JaymiAK <3

For once I'll cut the language play
in favor of getting to the bottom and being outright
Forthright with the motions behind
two eyes, emotions and notions like wind at seaside
Sure words work and we can know
because words hurt
words save and alleviate
Been twisting words more than a decade on
but when I stop and think what actually have I done?
Nothing much, just talk, speak, write
Once did and still want to be a novelist
and if I can learn to multitask at the keys I might
but as it stands, the wheels spin forever in the parking lot
only accomplished in the close-up shot
and when backing up the facade crumbles all on its own
then as quick as the pretense rose, I have no home
night is cold without the future wrapped around
the curves to which you're devout
the future slips slippery forever
whoops!
accident again and it's gone
that last shred of impetus keeping me strong
what if there's meaning though in the steps that I walk?
what if my mistakes raked up fuel the others who don't belong?
maybe being me means just rolling the dice
I haven't died or taken a life so maybe I'm doing all right
let these missteps and hiccups lead not to backspace
but fill the heads full of that black shrouded beast
with what earnestness I have
so that in hopes, though, perhaps vain
I might smudge the pain so that
when you look in the mirror while you eat the pills
and see your shadow looming in grinning and licking your ear
the shadows don't make it that far and fade into light

I don't know

What are we doing spinning our wheels?
I ran when you asked.
I thought that you asked.
You told me you're more forward than that.
I ran for nothing.
I laughed and told you.
You gave me clearance, and I dropped the act.

What scares me, you ask.
I haven't been acting
. . .

What are we doing meeting for drinks?
Walking down Hawthorne.
Poking fun freely.
You told me you may move away soon.
I first idly shrugged.
Cringe now in panic.
You dropped your shroud, I dropped mine in tandem.

What drives me, you ask.
I analyze my moves
captive to Virgo suns.

You gave me clearance, and I dropped the act.

What's funny, you ask.
Still laughing I kiss you.
What's scary, you ask.
I haven't been acting.
Still you do seek me out.

Still you seek me out.
. . .

Ice cream from the box
close to 3 a.m.
means we're doing it again
we're burning the blades
crystallize your life like this

When flames die and we arrive
in this moment
what will we have?

Big screen on and bright
each night the same games
distract from how our lives played
each thought the other
resigned design and instead

Stitched
What was wanted that no one wanted

When flames die and we arrive
in this moment
what will we have?
When flames die can we deny
the dreams we dreamed
or will we turn
turn and sleep?

I can feel it happening
I can feel the winding key
I can feel gears turning
As the wind blows
My heart screams
Soul blown out through my lungs
I sing against the dead breeze

Something has brought me into this place
Washed over memories
Rush through reaching to attach
Do I look like a fool to you?

I do will this blasphemy
I do will this frail mind free
I do will your caress
As the rain falls
A slow freeze
Sets just inside my chest
Is this what salvation means?

Something has brought me into this place
Washed over memories
Rush through reaching to attach
Do I look like a fool to you?

Something has brought me to this place
Washed over me
Run right through and reaching
Do I look like a fool

As I submit?
As I submit,
Attaching

Blowing smoke into the night
inhaled from a mini pipe
twisted with colors
I did not choose

My wispy gaze into rain
summons from the gone past pains
the deepest red hurt
faded, cloudy

and grey

What lost I no longer remember in color doubles affect in its audible cracks
Following in footsteps wherever intuition leads. Happily? Misery? In madness and smiling
What lost no longer hangs over in color but lives always in minute hands

I chose

Knock well on wood as you enter but
Know knuckles lend their skin for flood
Of the risk of entrapment eternal?
Well, few find their bodies stuck and
What's worth its weight in blood
Splays on the lit altar face

It can be warm
Only if you touch
If you touch first
You speak your secret
Farewell

Read through the words you spent sinner our
Real lines lie under thinner lace
Your constant wore hiding the venom crawl
Held below bidding inlay here
Half craving finger's trace
Specters bid sweet interlace

It can be warm
Only if you touch
If you touch first
You speak your secret
Farewell

Empty ones warn walls
Before little embraces
Creating lethal snares
Come
Catching worlds unaware
Come
"Empty ones," All say
(Come speak your secrets)
"I'm fine."

There are no thoughts as rows of lights flash
One, one, one, one, one, one, one, one,
Each light counted is killed with the next one
Being erased my mind recedes
Far and away finding death while displaced
Maybe the sixth sense
Maybe

A thing that can be said absolutely of life and death, is that the universal truth lies between departure and arrival.

Once more return to the place of hate, hot with the warmth of the womb still after decades, receding like always into the presumed delirium held in that head of yours--but it's both the head and the heart that have ever boiled blood and pried tears and forced seclusion and withdrawal, and continue. Continue through the threshold keeping hidden decay at bay from the world of the waking, unnatural wooden floors keeping hidden the past inefficiency of care in your wrinkled hands, failing to the strength of the stench filling each passage and room in mist. I'm feeling now the way I felt for every instance within the walls. Towering over me when I close my eyes is the memory of the life I somehow saved and though living thoroughly broken beyond conventional means of disrepair, the despair now pales to the nightmare pressed angrily into the backsides of these eyelids. Days like print turned burning script against the black hole that might otherwise be home and sanctuary and ward to the intricate and frightful realities of the outer world, days that wind away and then back in dead drop and ascent that has not yet failed repetition, because of an inability to nurture nature that stemmed more from apathy and disinterest than any real shortcoming. Each time the world begins to end with the potential crashing sound of bone and flesh driving through the depths of the vacuum to pass through solid asphalt and concrete, I wake and the world flips. The trip to your bedroom sheds light on all the others, where once slept two souls aimless and needy, now sleeps decay that you began breeding from the spores formed in their lungs. Cats eyes like lightning slice through the mind as I wander your dark halls to the end where I myself fail at opening the door. I can't breathe. I can't look. I leave. There are things worse than the fragments of mind I clutch desperately as blankets under the Winter sky. What waits looks bad but I'll go if it's smiling or screaming. You. You can die in your numbered hole.

manifesting destiny comes when i'm weakest
i'm weakest now, when my shade comes haunting me
tracers of past, near and far, grasp my heart, seal my chart
forever licking me
licking my neck
biting my flesh
whispering words selling failures in the stead
of who could whisper all accomplishments

here i am, open, seeping all my wounds for you
hurt through the cracks believing that the scars i wear just may reach you
here i am, open, singing the only words i have left

your shadow
my shadow sneaks in
all too close
hovering beside me
your shadow
my shadow knows all
that it needs
to do to destroy me
and it seduces

blessings rarely come and tell me i'm okay
in absence i have learned to rely on things
deep within my emotion but lacking from my bed
forever taunting me
licking my neck
biting my flesh
whispering words selling love to my loneliness
of that i know full well would disable me

here i am, open, seeping all my wounds for you
hurt through the cracks believing that the scars i wear just may reach you
here i am, open, singing the only words i have left

what the hell does love mean, anyway?
well, open your arms, i'll let you enter the void.
what the hell does our love mean, anyway?
open your reclusive arms, i'll let you fall in.

fall in to the extreme
logic fails where the soul has been
fall in to the extreme
i'm warm,
i'm warm,
i'm warm