How can they tell when they've drawn blood?
of holy remains
and forked tongues

Let this be a lesson to you
All we can hope for
is the surface
Invisible and crafted into place

My owners taught me some new words today
Ones that won't allow me to kneel and pray
or take my medicine and pray

They let me out today
but not too far

Dirt
Figment
Breeding flies
Sweet charity
Hot, stagnant breeze
Doves in a stale autumn wind
An entity so dense
Holding such little weight
Topicality
Technicality
Revelation and rendition
Something so malleable
Yet so rigid
Reformed
Thick like honey
but smoldering
Grey paste
Emotions breeding anxiety
Still getting by
Not saying, but just saying

I am going to die
I don't know
I think I am going to die
I think I need to die

Brass buttons
To fasten a cape made of everything false
To cloak me in feigned serenity through the night
To sing me to sleep
and turn me into someone like you

I can never stop crying although I want to rebuild my body

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

Drink more
Think less
We're conditioned into doing our best

Make money but never profit