You're so dangerous with your profane paraphernalia
Your pelvis postures pandering favor
The line of your stomach embossed by the fire is like a pasture for me
So paranoid with your pacifistic lust
As you proceed to please me with your posture so slightly
And I attempt to pursue oh so politely
You make me perk up like a peacock just with one peak
You're aware of every petty palpitation you can feel just under my sleeve
You play me like a piano, so plush with your lust politics
Pandering for a pardon of my ***** talk poignancy
I part you like Pluto from your orbits serene hum
I'll pleasure you, pleasure you until you're purple like a plum
A pastimes poetises to be written with pleasing lead
You plan every move like a predator in my bed
You're polarizing, plump, and pampered like a pageant doll
Pilfering every plausible pause with a pose of voice, your moan
Seizing the post with your post - modern pompous pouncing
Prompted like Pisces to postulate your prognosis
Lifting your posterior like the pun of a phaliccy
Pillaging me like a pandemic, a plague
Something to be paraded by paganistic plauds
Your pale skin is like playwear for sins
You're pinning me plastered with the play of your grin
Such a pretty motion picture to paint in the prison of your promise

When the streets are made for nothing but thinking    
It's the weight of the water that's caused our sinking
It's a loss of feeling that's made me lighter
It's everything around                              
That makes me neutrally bound
          
The only writers block is the writer
It's the kind of thing that makes a man with a pencil and paper a fighter
Like the paper's jumping up at you like a, like a alligator
                                          
But it's hard to chalk down all the mistakes, cause when you're trying so hard you're just being fake

You just gotta learn to let it, let it all flow
Show your all and let em all know
Just how you're feeling that blow, even if it means one or two bad lines, that's how you feel though
Cause life ain't a poetry book
It's all the points in between the pages that we missed
It's all the things that make us factories of emotions,
A crook with feelings creeping through the motions
Turning pages, trying to **** it all up like the books eroding

Don't you talk to me about feeling
Naw you ain't know what you be dealing, everyone's got there own ****, you can't tell me mines to be concealing
See, I'm a material void of expressionism
Cause I told everyone what I feel, not for the sake of impressionism
They chose to see inside and learn a lesson without all the criticism

Everything I've learned is turning me into a crustaceans fossil
Hard to the shell but brittle to the touch, and I preach my **** like a ******* apostle
You make me feel from the inside and I'll be your crutch, but you're gonna need more than a ******* rock hammer to open me up

My words I mend to make up for what I conceal        
But as I sit here thinking about how I feel
It's gonna take more than this to make me heal
Now let me dilute as I talk to the god inside my head and make a deal, something to end the pain and suffering I have concealed at the expense of everything real

Keep your eyes closed, we are blind tonight
You can sit on the floorboards,
where I've bled,
naked and dark with me.

"Where are you from?

"Me?"

"Yeah. Where are you from?"

"I'm not really sure. Somewhere. Where are you from?"

"Here. Well, I was born here. I don't want to be from here, though."

"Where would you rather be from if you don't want to be from here?"

"I don't know. Anywhere but, really. Maybe Alaska."

"Why Alaska?"

"Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. Well, you see, they have a month of darkness every year. Just complete darkness. Some people think it's miserable. I think I'd like it, though. That way everyone could be just as invisible as me, even if for only a month out of the year."

Do your parents love you?
Are you religious?
Do you love everyone except yourself?
Are people nice to you?

Swim into me, swivel in the air
your eyes are penchant stares
Try all you can,
let everything and everyone caress you
Let the cold wind blow
and the warm wind undress you.

"Do you know what you did wrong?"

"What I did wrong?"

"Yeah. What you did ******* wrong."

"I-I...I'm not sure."

"You have to be ******* kidding me."

"I tried my be-"

"Shut the **** up. Shut. The. ****. Up. If you want to be something, if you want to get ahead in life, then you can't rely on me, your mother, your friends, or anyone except you. You have to know that every decision is your own, and every consequence that comes along with each decision, is your own to handle. No one will help you, and no one needs to help you because it's not their responsibility. You handle your own ****, and you do better than your best. Perfection. If you aren't perfect, then you aren't anything."

Birds and flies swivel around my head
you sit under a tree with thorns in your hair
I say, "Hi."
You say, "Hi."
I sit next to you, and you don't get up.
You smile and say, "Where have you been?"

And death shall have no dominion?
Is that so much a hope rather than opinion?
Under the windings of the sea?
And if no air breezes by, for you and me?
And if the resolution of my lack of evolution keeps me free?
Is there any hope in harmony. Is there any hope in harmony.
Is there any hope in harmony. Is there any hope in being me.

"Dreams are dangerous, Josh. They're sedatives, not cures. Choose reality. Choose the bitter pill. Because whether you believe it or not, you will end up having it whether you're forced to take it or whether you choose to take it. No matter how much talent you think you have, no matter how much stubbornness that you mistake for ambition, you will be unable to attain your dreams."

"What if you're wrong?"

"What if I'm wrong? Well, let's see-"

"No. What if you're wrong? What if you say all this because of your personal experience. What if you believe all of that because your belief in yourself was stripped by those before you? You could have done something bigger, but you gave up on yourself. You could have been someone. You could have been happy, instead of what you are now. Don't take away the only thing I have just because you have nothing."


Fear is a deadly thing to bear witness to
The hollow spot in the wall,
the eyes staring at a coffee mug,
the words, "I promise."

Tear apart an inverted heart,
and disappear into reverse midnight
All alone with a telephone,
"You're still there, right?"
Dial-tone silence followed by
fist to wall violence
and to sit alone in a bathtub
crying
is a new form of living yet
dying

I can hear violins amidst the violence
And I can see your eyes in the dark
There will be hands shaking
To you, for without, every burn
that's been allowed,
a night to relieve
your weary mind from unkind
lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers
and a hope that you retrieve
yourself in the debris


"Why do you care so much?"

"Why do I care?"

"A better question would be: Why do you care about people so much?"

"Because there's more beauty than desolation in humanity, or at least I choose to believe so."


Sunset sonata
*** in empty beds, in empty heads
Our sweat is a stranger, just like you
and just like me
*** is like society
And we're so focused on ******* each other
no matter how badly it ******* hurts us in the process

I'm a ******
I don't do drugs or drink
my only flaw is how much I think
I don't believe in God but I believe in me
And I don't know where I belong on my family tree

I don't propose that **** is based on a girl's clothes
I suppose I'm dumb or brilliant but who really knows
You could say that I'm narcissistic or have low self-esteem
with a girlfriend with a pocketless pocket and a head full of dreams

Whoa that didn't flow, that last line
Imperfect effort seems to be an attribute of mine
Look at this rhyme scheme, it's so diverse
I guess I can get away with this; I couldn't get any worse
One favorite, three favorite, fifty-four
Give me validation, I could always use some more
Hello, Hellopoetry! You've been so forgiving
of my beautiful poetry that reflects an ugly way of living
Tell me, tell me: Should I write more?
What if my sadness is gone, and my melancholy no more?
Will you still love me if I write about crinkle-cut fries?

"****. No more suicide poems, does this kid still try?"

Is there still a Josh Haines if he no longer cries?
Is there still a Josh Haines if he doesn't wanna die?
Is there still a Josh Haines if he starts to fall?
Is there still a Josh Haines if he gets it all?
Is there still a Josh Haines after every kiss?
Is there still a Josh Haines after he writes all of this?

Eh. Maybe, baby. Maybe.

High school high,
from over there.
Mechanical hips,
wire hair.

Low count sheets,
cigarette burns.
All alone,
I have learned.

Initiate
what you will,
we chase love
until it's killed

****** winds
across my room
as I sleep,
my body blooms

On repeat,
my hurt is blue
don't feel bad
you can hurt me, too.