The clock spits hours like broken teeth
and the walls sweat memories I never asked for.
Outside, the sky is drunk—
staggering between night and neon,
while dogs bark at shadows that aren’t even there.
I laugh into my glass of whiskey,
because what else can you do
when life hands you a fistful of
nothing
wrapped in yesterday’s bad news?

The neighbor’s kid screams like a siren
while his mother chain-smokes apologies
to the universe through the cracks in her window.
There’s a man down the street
who argues with God every morning
like they’re old enemies playing cards.
He always loses,
but he plays again anyway.

I’m not crazy—
I’m just tuned into a frequency
no one else wants to hear.
Static and sirens.
The hum of dead stars collapsing quietly.
The sound of a world
that doesn’t even know it’s burning.

I haven’t slept in days.
I keep chasing my thoughts
like a dog chasing its own tail,
round and round,
until they collapse in a pile of exhaustion
and I sit there,
staring at the ashtray,
wondering why my heart
feels like a busted vending machine
spitting out all the wrong things.

They call me a lunatic
because I see the cracks
in their perfect porcelain smiles—
because I know
their gods wear suits
and their saints sell lies.
Because I walk barefoot
on the jagged edge of this world
and I don’t care if I bleed.

So I howl at the moon,
dance with my demons,
and kiss the chaos on its lips.
I scribble madness on the walls,
make love to the mess,
and call it life.
Because maybe lunacy
is the only sane thing left.

I’m dying of thirst.
Not for water—
but for something real,
something unfiltered,
something that burns when it hits the throat,
like whiskey or the truth.
I’ve drowned in cheap gin
and it didn’t fill me.
I’ve smoked a thousand cigarettes
and still can’t taste life.

They talk about beauty,
like it’s something you can hold
in your hands,
like it’s a thing to be bought
or sold,
wrapped in gold foil and put in a frame,
but all I see is hunger.
There’s no beauty in the world
when you’re scraping the bottom of the bottle
and staring at a ceiling
that refuses to speak to you.

She told me once,
“You’re not what they say you are.”
What the hell does that mean?
What am I supposed to be?
Some saint in a robe,
some poem written on parchment
that never makes it to print?
I’m just a human,
drunk on the emptiness of it all,
suffocating in the silence
of people who think they know me.
They don’t.

They say I’m lost.
Yeah, I’m lost.
Lost in the noise,
in the crowds,
in the streets where people walk past me
like I’m invisible.
And they’re right,
I am invisible.
I’m invisible because I’m trying to be something I’m not.
Because I’ve spent my life
pretending to be the person they want me to be,
but I’m still dying of thirst.

You’re supposed to find yourself,
they say.
Well, I’ve found myself,
but I don’t like what I see.
I’m just a **** wreck,
a torn-up book,
pages stained with the ink of mistakes
that never quite dry.
You don’t get to fix this,
no matter how many times
you try to put the pieces together.
They’ll never fit right.
They were never meant to.

But, hell, it’s fine.
I’m still breathing,
still walking,
still waiting for the next drink,
the next hit,
the next lie to fill me up.
If I don’t keep drinking,
I’ll drown in the thoughts
that keep chasing me down,
the ones that scream for attention,
the ones that tell me
I’m not enough.
And maybe they’re right.
But I’d rather be half-dead
and honest
than full of air and lies.

She called me “brave” once.
What the hell does that even mean?
I’m just a fool who didn’t have the guts
to shut up when it counted.
I’m brave because I didn’t fold
under the weight of the world?
Or because I kept showing up
when I knew I’d get punched in the face
for being different?
Hell, maybe I’m brave
because I didn’t run when I should’ve.
Maybe I’m brave
because I let myself be a fool,
and I wear it like a badge.
But bravery doesn’t mean a **** thing
when you’re choking on your own blood
and no one’s around to help you up.

There’s no poetry in this.
No high-minded words.
Just the crack of my knuckles
and the taste of blood,
the sound of my own thoughts
screaming at me to stop,
to feel something
besides the empty ache.

But the truth is,
I can’t stop.
I can’t stop chasing something
I’ll never catch.
I’ve been dying of thirst for so long
that I don’t know what it’s like to drink anymore.
Maybe I never knew.
Maybe we’re all just waiting
for a glass of water that never comes,
and we convince ourselves
we’re fine
as we slowly fade away.

You want me to be something more?
To be noble?
To be a saint?
Well, I’m not.
I’m just a fool who can’t escape
they’re own **** skin,
trying to find something to numb the hunger.
And if that makes me a coward,
fine.
Call me whatever you want.
But I’m still dying of thirst,
and I’ll drink until it kills me
or until I finally feel alive.

if I die,
it won’t be with roses pressed against my chest
or candlelight flickering
like some poet’s dream of a clean, quiet ending.
no—if I die,
it’ll be on a Thursday when the trash hasn’t been taken out,
the rent’s due,
and the world just keeps dragging its feet
through dust and noise.

will you write about me then?
will you scrawl my name in the margins of your mornings,
squeeze me into the spaces between your coffee and silence?
or will I vanish,
like the half-smoked cigarettes we used to leave
burning in old ashtrays,
forgotten until it was too late?

I don’t want the pretty lies,
no poetry about sunsets or fate.
just say I was here—
say I burned bright,
not with brilliance,
but with the stubborn flame of a bad idea
that refused to die.

say I laughed too loud in empty rooms
and drank too much in crowded ones.
say I cursed at the world
and loved it anyway
in the same breath.

there’s a kind of beauty in not being remembered
by statues or verses.
I never wanted to be carved in stone,
only in the raw pulp of memory—
messy, torn,
something you’ll think of
only when you hear a certain song
or smell cheap whiskey in the air.

if I die,
don’t put flowers on my grave.
put words on a page,
put stories in the air,
put that wild, laughing thing I was
back into the world,
if only for a moment.

but if you can’t,
if life gets too full of its own noise,
I’ll understand.
because dying is simple;
it’s the living that gets complicated.

Flames lick the edges of a city that never sleeps,
where dreams are charred, and hope smolders in the ash.
The night is a canvas of ember and smoke,
painted by hands unseen, indifferent.

In the alleys, shadows dance to the crackling tune,
while sirens wail like distant, mourning lovers.
The air, thick with the scent of despair,
chokes the whispers of those who dare to breathe.

Neon signs flicker, their gaudy promises
melting away in the heat of reality.
The boulevard, once a river of aspirations,
now a barren wasteland of forgotten footsteps.

Yet amidst the inferno, a lone figure stands,
eyes reflecting the chaos, unblinking.
A poet, perhaps, or just a fool,
scribbling verses on the back of a scorched receipt.

“Fires, fires everywhere,” he writes,
“and not a drop to douse the soul.”
The city burns, but he remains,
finding beauty in the blaze,
and solace in the ruin.

They say you’re the whole **** thing—
the stars, the beggar on the corner,
the lover who left you bleeding
and the cop who fined you for it.
One life at a time,
one failure after another,
you’re everyone and no one,
just waiting for the cracks to show.

Some holy fool whispers,
“You’re the universe learning itself.”
Well, what’s it learning, huh?
How to crawl through dirt?
How to choke on your own dreams
and smile while doing it?
It’s a sick joke, this cosmic egg,
wrapped in gilded lies and half-baked truths,
like Wilde’s wit, polished,
but bitter underneath.

You think you’re only you—
the tired eyes in the mirror,
the aching feet that shuffle home.
But somewhere,
you’re the king in his velvet robes,
drowning in gold,
or the soldier buried in the mud,
forgotten before the war even ends.
All pieces of the same shell,
all scattered across the floor.

They dress it up like wisdom:
You break, you’re born again.
Every crack a lesson,
every fall a step forward.
But sometimes,
it’s just falling.
Just hitting the ground over and over
until you forget what flying felt like.

Still, if you’re everyone,
then maybe the pain belongs to you too.
The laughter,
the warmth of a stranger’s hand,
the quiet moments that don’t ask for meaning.
Maybe that’s what holds it together—
this mess of cracks and light.
Maybe that’s why you keep living,
why you keep breaking.

Because someday,
when the last shell falls,
and the pieces finally fit,
you’ll remember.
You’ll remember you were everything,
and nothing hurt
as much as forgetting.

I’ve met the night a hundred times—
She carries no remorse,
Her silver hand upon my chest
A silent, steady force.

Her breath is like a frozen hymn,
Too soft for earth to hear—
Yet chills my soul, and bends my will
Until it disappears.

I sought to end the endless ache
With shadows on the wall,
But shadows only shift and shrink,
And answer not my call.

There is no mercy in the stars,
No kindness in the frost—
Yet some persist to claim that light
Redeems what has been lost.

End me, then, O faithful dark—
Unbind this brittle form,
And leave me not to linger here
Through one more bitter storm.

the first time her lips met mine
was like a war ending,
like the moment the bomb hits
and the smoke curls up,
and for one second,
the world forgets its weight.

it wasn’t soft.
it wasn’t polite.
it was heat,
and teeth,
and a hunger I didn’t know
I’d been starving for.
her hand brushed my waist
like a secret,
fingers tracing the curve of my body
like she was trying to memorize
the taste of me.

we fell into it—
the kiss,
the touch,
the way our bodies came together
like they’d always known
where they belonged.
I wanted to hold it,
wrap it around me like a blanket,
press my face to her neck
and never let go.
her breath was warm against my skin,
her heart beating louder than mine,
and in that moment,
nothing else mattered.

but then—
the door slammed open,
the world barged in,
with its judgment and its fists.
the voices rose,
too loud,
too angry,
too full of things we never asked for.

“what the hell is this?!”
they screamed.
and I looked at her,
hoping she’d hold me,
hoping she’d fight for us.
but she pulled away,
eyes wide like I was a stranger,
like I was the one who’d made her
forget her place.

“no, no, no,”
she screamed,
shaking her head,
her voice cracking like glass.
“it wasn’t me—
she made me do it!
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t want her.”

and every word she said
ripped me open,
every syllable was a knife
twisting into the space
we’d just built between us.
I stood there,
frozen,
feeling the weight of her denial
crush everything I’d felt.

her eyes,
her beautiful eyes,
didn’t look at me anymore.
they looked at the floor,
at the people who’d come to take me from her.
and in that moment,
I realized how small I was—
how easy it was for her to forget
the taste of me,
the heat of me,
how easily she could sell us out
for the sake of safety.

I didn’t fight.
I didn’t scream.
I just turned,
and walked away,
my lips still burning from her kiss,
but knowing it was already dead.