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 Mar 2019 John Reilly
b e mccomb
i dread the day you learn
for the first time that
you can't just love all
the darkness in me away

and no matter how much
you care i will still toss
and turn at night and scars
might still appear on my skin

i dread the day you realize
that you can't cure me
and sometimes all you can do
is stand next to me and
hold my hand through fog
pouring out of my ears so black
and thick we can't even see
each other's faces

i dread the days i can't
get out of bed
the days you want to
take me out and all
i can manage is a prettified
shell of myself

i dread the day you learn
that sometimes no matter
how hard i try i still can't
pull myself together

the day you learn that
there isn't an answer
you can give that will
save me from my fears

you aren't the first person
who has tried to love the
darkness inside away
my family and friends
have given it their all
but someday you too will learn
that if love could
cure mental illness
the world would be
a much better place
copyright 8/6/18 b. e. mccomb
 Jan 2019 John Reilly
Ruheen
It's kinda funny.
Strangers, online,
Know more about me
Than people
I've known my
Whole life, do.
Y'all know me better than anyone else.
 Sep 2018 John Reilly
shåi
the sleek
cool marble
chills run
down
the stone
delineations
and curvatures
of fine hands
and legs
white and pure

her eyes
blue
a fountain of youth
i wish i could bathe in it
forever

her blank gaze
from vacant
rolling ball
sockets
falls dreamlessly
into the oblivion

tinkles of music
hum and drone
noiselessly
like spoons
clattering to
the unforgiving ground

her cold heart
exposed
as she reclines,
back arched
ever so slightly

she is without
her soul and mind
the marble
her master
keeps her confined-
her own timeless paradigm
a late night release...
 Jun 2018 John Reilly
zora
02.24.18
 Jun 2018 John Reilly
zora
my body is a crime scene
snaked up from behind me, a man slits my tongue
tells me god knows i sinned
tells me god made him sin

but there are no coroners here
the detectives mother the sidewalk
they don't dare cross over to me
they expel my lungs and call to me
they tell me to breathe

he's gone now
but i'm still here
i'm still here
i'm still here
 Dec 2017 John Reilly
Q
As to take my hands
And break every single bone
If you'd only be so kind
Take my heart and leave me alone
But don't touch my mind
My body is yours to harm
But if you'd be so kind
Please, leave me my mind.

My age may harm me in eighty years
And you may still peel my skin from muscle
But if you would show me a kindness
I swear I wouldn't struggle.
Death doesn't scare me
Neither does pain
I can take on the world
With little more than my brain.

I'm liable to survive
Through what I'm put through
Then come back with a vengance
And rip the heart out of you.
So you may hurt me now
Go ahead, be my guest
But if you leave me alive
I'll have your last breath.
Written in 2014 and rotting in my drafts since.
 Aug 2017 John Reilly
wordvango
shout out
****** a brush right straight down
the elemental throat
take all the things that make white
and paint the suburbs the city streets
the acres of corn fields variously
neon naked ladies
the truck stop babes
the pimps in black
the red and green lights yellow
caution
what is this canvas
if not the stew brewed now unfrozen
a big silver spoon
slid into
a commotion
a shotgun blast in a robbery
a bank
making false accounts for profit
the last ounce of street cred
blood leaking on the pavements black
they have power
those archangels those who preach
make America great again
I wanna go to a rally for
four years
have a maniac
speak dichotomies
like a psychotic
schizophrenic
one day sane the next neurotic
I take the brush and whitewash all of us and maybe
the nazis and imbeciles might pass  us by
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