I look down at my boots and their straps and see the sludge slathered on the tongue and smeared on the deteriorating souls.
I look down and I ask myself, if they’ll make it through this winter.
My pitted fingers caress the withering leather and thin laces with no pleasure of the flashbacks of the bludgeoning boots splitting the mire in order and precision.
The mire, dried now, brown and cracked like the hills we salted and left to eat itself from the inside out.
The split end laces compliment the worn leather.
While I’m complimented for my “Working Man reconnaissance”.
War made me an old man at 25.
Wrinkles helped shadows cast deep pools upon my face.
My scars tingled like my spine after I first fired my gun.
My ears still ringing from that first shot.
My mother told me my battle cry, reminded her of when I was born.
Her ears still ringing from my first cry.
I bowed my head at her funeral, just like at my friend’s funerals.
I bow my head now more often than I ever did before.
When I do, I look at my open wounds and my deteriorating soul and ask myself if I’ll make it through this winter.

I can't know what having nerves is like.
I don't want anything anymore.
I was never told by my mother to clean my room.
My room has been ***** ever since just so one day I hope she comes in raising hell just so I'll clean up.
My room remains close friends with the dump because I'm still waiting for that day so I can make it spotless.
I never knew what to do with those mother's day cards I was forced to make in school.
Maybe they were delivered to her by some divine mail man that never showed up.
Maybe I wasn't on their map, maybe I'm not on the map, maybe I shouldn't be on the map, maybe I should burn that map down with cliches of passion, maybe I should make my own map of the hills I've crossed, the ones I never tried to cross, the places I've been, the places I've never been, the place I was yesterday, the place I was today, the place I'll go tomorrow, and where it all ends.
X marks the spot.
I've stood upon the soil she cried on.
Up grew the tongues of people that could tell me "what really happened."
I chose to spray pesticides on those beautiful plants.
Instead I let weeds grow there.
They told me the truth, but too much of one thing is filling.
So in return I fed them salt so nothing would grow there ever again.
Sodium Chloride silenced the truth, I realized later that the soil sat in my ears and I made myself deaf and shot my foot off.
Sodium Chloride was the cyanide to my soil.
I drew a map of that soil.
It turned into a maze that I never did figure out how to get out of.
I still don't know how to feel, I can't even feel the crumpled map you threw out on how to reach me.

I am an egg in your gastrointestinal tract. I'll be living here, I hope that's alright with you, oh and make sure you treat me well, you wouldn't want to be a bad host. Don't bother pet naming me. My name is Enterobius, but I like to be called the Pinworm. I'll be hatched in your duodenum, which is your small intestine. Maybe your small dumb mind didn't know. I'm a grower and I'm gonna need some space so I'm gonna take a trip to your colon, I'll feel like a real adult by then. My husband and I will mate there and he'll sadly die, but not in vain. I'll still be here and I think I'll move to your ileum caecum, which is the large intestine, man you humans don't even know the real names for your body parts. I'll eventually attach to the mucosa and I'll be engulfed with eggs, my 16,000 little babies. And on my way out of your body I'll be expelling my eggs. I just wanna say, I'm as excited for the ride as you are.

I love the sound of car accidents. The car's skin peeling, the cracking and bending of the metal. The tires cutting the pavement with jagged lines and gliding across it. Nothing sounds better than burning rubber at 4 in the morning. The silence after, even from a simple fender ******, you know nothing will ever be the same.