Houses in tall grass.
Another one shut down, the mines.
Boon of pride, swollen like a tick caught in your sock.

Winds blow through yesterday and are colder now.
Ever wonder why some things aren't allowed?

Attention like reception, cut-down by the everything in-between.

The quarry used to be a swimming hole.
Now it's just a hole.
Memories are the only reminders worth remembering.
The second hand embarrassment of a word mispronounced
makes my skin ***** with goosebumps.
Makes my hair stand on anxious end.
Hope no fleas are underneath.

Stay at home. Stay inside. Stay put.
Hole yourself up in your room.
The chance is a drink you'll wake to regret.
The mistake is in believing you know best.

What greatness have you achieved to give yourself advice?
Everything accomplished within four walls you've lived in alone.
Your whole life.

Houses in tall grass.
Sleeping in dusty room.
Tread softly lest you disturb the might-have-beens.
The first step in succeeding is listening to the lessons.

I am sad again, but I have no idea why.
Living keenly with an idea of what I want out of life.
My favorite season, autumn, is upon us.
And my writing is frequent and fulfilling.
So why am I sad again and why am I an orange juice, spilling?

I miss the days where drugs meant fun. Where ridicule was a pasttime.
Between best friends, and Windows didn't force updates.
The Internet was an escape around which Identity was ignored.
You were your username,
and you were too full to be bored.

I am sad again despite selling two poems to a couple patrons
during an open mic night I frequent.
I hadn't been much, chose instead to spend
my time writing and feeling sorry for myself.
Now that I'm out again and re-befriending familiar faces.
It almost feels like belonging is as lost as context between the spaces.
I'm stark raving sad and I've only just arrived.
One year finally after the middle-age of twenty five.
If I make it until January consider me your unlucky kin.
A day without morbidity, how long has it since last been?

Too long;
So long, too.

A new phone does not need to mean the latest model.
After the last firmware update meant to throttle your
speed.
I still have a Samsung Galaxy
S7, and no, not the ones that explode.
Those were the Note.
Mine is fine and every single day five PM sharp,
another update readies itself to start and download.
But I say, "No."
And push it off another twenty-four.
It's become my own version of an alarm.
A reminder that putting off what you don't want to do
is fine, too.
Fear of missing out?
**** that, my life is in my hands.
Which shake as they screen calls from numbers I don't recognize.

As well as any other anxiety.
Keeping pace with the Joneses doesn't interest me.
If it were organic, the push to upgrade and not be obsolete,
then maybe
I could find myself worrying about sending out faster tweets.
But life lived parallel to somebody speeding through on tracks.
Makes the living-now too blurry in a time when looking back
is called depression.

High waisted jeans.
Converse with the colors faded,
Socks that are too warm.
Coffee that you forgot,
now it's too cold.
Goldilocks with a pixie cut,
but it's grown out.
And dyed red.

Joking about suicide but taking it seriously.
Alive on a bed with petals and thorns.
While autumn decays the terrace around to warn
you of the winter soon to storm through and
separate you from the torn.

His smile faded worse than your shoes.
And you spent a lot of time walking at night,
through puddles, trudging up dredged silt
and kicked loam
on your way half-buzzed to your apartment home.
It took a season longer for him to fade from bright
to held steadfast against the backdrop of vacuum
stagnant light.

He smells of sweat and sweetly crunched leaves.
Popular spice rub and sparkling water throat-feel.
Your jeans you bought with the holes in them are *****.
You'll wear 'em 'til you're thirty,
you're thrifty,
and frugal, but you still tip thirty percent per purchase spent.
Because you were in their black shoes once,
dressed shirt pressed and smiled to impress those
who spent less than you'd guess on their own tips back then.
Mid-20s and all you are is memories of nineteen.
A few more to even the score.

Yoga pants as pajamas. Pajama bottoms to class.
It used to be about the glances, and remarks.
Now it's about delivering yourself from the past.

You'll tip handsomely to the ugly people.
And nod your head with your chin bounce up,
in a show of recognition for the facade we all front.

You'll smile when most frown.
You'll rejoice amongst the vogue of cynics.
You will, because will is what does and you don't give up.
In a show of recognition for the facade we all front.

Hello, my stormed out songbird.
In the grey halo of a power outage.
The darkness has blues and tinges
of tender outings within it.

The whirs of mechanisms and technology suddenly stopped.
The air crisp in our lungs and not scared of Legionnaires.

Autumn has begun and it is upon us.
On every cold shoulder of forgotten friend,
a penny underneath an old shoe.
Whose tread is worn thinner by the year's end.

Who are you, my songbird?
Where have your gay chirps gone?
Sing something fresh for me in the light.
The grey halos of the storm need song.

Sunset nostalgia backlit by 1990s film grain.
Walks by the sea, but in reality,
it's only a small lakeside.
Beaches are broken bottles and liquor drunk.
River glass so smooth you could skip it as a stone.

What's wrong with living in your dreams?
The echoes can't answer you there, that's what.

Childhood nighttimes and dreams in black and white.

She never minded the scars I carved.
She'd beg me for more, and as her wrists were tied in knots.
I'd make sure another night was never forgot.
Sure, she'd struggle, much as any of us must.
But she was lurching toward me wild and bewildered such.

She would calm as I tended wound and her panting
below became a parting of bloom. Springtime crept
in like a slow, low light on a horizon only meant
to be seen by us two.

Her struggle turned to sound and her mouth stuffed still.
Her lids heavy hiding stained glass eye windowed sill.
Her knees buckled with belt tied firm to keep her tight.
Her smile crept wide as tongue wetted what kept words inside.

Her drool ran and stained our sheets,
her eyes filled with tears which ran down cheeks.
Pleasing pleadings strung out by Morse code taps of her feet.
She was more than a canvas,
she became my tapestry.