1st to 2nd
      sliding
      the saltshaker
      to mom,
      the clutch
      with short breaths
      as RPM’s
      rise through my
      chest,
breath
2nd to 3rd
      tremors grab
      the wheel
      as the tires
      rapidly success
      left to right,
breath
3rd to 4th
      gravel brushed
      tread serenades,
      foot to floor
      spins the handle
      punching heart
      to surface air,
breath
4th to 5th
      a deafening
      flatline
      dwindles will,
      fog rolls thicker,
      headlights are
      painting my vision
      dimmer with each roll,
      i follow a finger
      pulling me in.
breath
5th to stop**
      face kissed windshield
      wrapped around
      nature, glass
      falling from the
      salt shaker,
      crimson
      roadkill glistening
      in accidental 4-ways.

What's the point
Of living in a 600,000 dollar home
When you spend 40 hours a week
In an office

And two hours watching the television every night

I don't get Americans
Baby boomers especially

Forever saving for the future
They have to have it all
Never really seeing the present

Strange these people

This way is all wrong
Completely and totally wrong

They sacrifice their health
And drink coffee
Their whole lives
And take these pills

And it is all just *******

I will live frugally
And maybe one day buy an RV
And drive around the country

Dear God, I’m an unbeliever,
if there was a higher power
i don’t think you’d let me leave her,
with the pain and despair I’m finding
you’d think the power you held would
allow you to come out from hiding
being the veil of what you claim to be
and the honesty extends beyond me
I’m not speaking with any selfishness
only with selflessness to guide me
away from your declarations of
mandations that mould foundations
for nations that struggle under your hand,
it’s all part of “God’s plan” only if
the blueprints call to stand and watch
everyone crumble beneath the cries
to higher powers while the darkness pours
and showers, soaking sanity and the ignorance
of humanity.

Dear God, I’m an unbeliever
I’m writing to an entity,
a supposed supreme deity
foreshadowing naive spontaneity
for those who have no one else,
I hate writing with the topic of self,
but the constant lack of health
brings not an illness
but a stillness in progress,
I’ll pick up the gun **** it,
I'll fill my body with pills
and begin to rock it,
and will there be a hand to halt?
nay, only a finger to point fault.
any god, any being wouldn’t let sadness
flow through a spineless body,
whether a monotheistic mantra
moralizes a mental mantle or
a polytheistic point towards a
pleasant prefixed phase of
past problems postpones
present’s purity,
I’m writing to a transparent
inexistent foster parent
letting me cross the road
without looking both ways,
so, dear god, if you see this
let me count my life in years, not days.

as the reflection of the trees roll off the
shined roof of the hearse I follow to the
cemetery, my mind becomes scattered
with the thoughts of our last moments.

a face so sodden,
her hand to mine, my body seized with
a contemptuous blanket of emotional
disdain. a person I loved, a person I
trusted, snatched out of my life as
fast as she changed it.
her barren body clinging on to life sent
chills up the very arms latching on
to the hospital bed, shaking, with
the thought of denial ruining every
hopeful aspect of my mind.
this
can’t
be
happening.
I stare at her urn, sitting atop her
now entirety; the quiet whispers of
the funeral priest echo about the
walls in my mind, everything is silent,
white noise consumes my thoughts,
I’m shutting down, the ringing in my
ears is slowly overtaking the cries
of the siblings, the mothers, the fathers,
the cousins, and all of the friends who’s lives she’s
truly impacted. my eyelids bare weight,
my sight is becoming dull, and the tears
are building up as the content sobs are
becoming more and more copious with
each sympathetic clutch on my shoulder.
I say my final goodbyes as we make our
way out. I whisper reverence
“I love you”
as a blind man
attempting to feel colours
i touch your urn,
that’s all I can
say for what you’ve done for me and how
you gave perspective to tunnelled vision.
the cars weep in unison departing the cemetery
with the trees spinning the roofs
after 11 shots of whiskey
and with that comes a habituated
sadness.

I slip into bed, knowing that 5 miles away
there will be an empty left bedside next to a
man whose life revolved around her, a lonely
man, a broken man. a pillow she laid her
head on not 24 hours prior, the scent of her
body; still embedded in the sheets he now
uses to wipe aside his tears,
statin sheets
enticing the walls
inward

why you?
why not me?
thoughts of abstract
painted to a pillow
eight hours i’ll lay my head stagnant;
sleep not
to the morrow i awake
and you nevermore

paradise may you rest

It seems like just yesterday we
were twisting our bodies beneath
the symphony of the moonlight,
singing songs of everlasting
love with no sight of ending.
From the beginning I knew
there would be some halt
of companionship as a result
of a stagnant feeling that I was enough
for how perfect you are.
Theres nothing left of my pride
only the need to subside
from every burden i cause.
Every day I woke up and
rolled over to you
laying there with serenity  
thoughts collapses to emotion
knowing you thought you
were losing me, when
the state of my health
screamed out to me
assuring me I was losing myself.
So an awaited day finally came
where I let you go only to know
that you couldn’t live without me.
Seeing your distress left me
more of a mess than what I was before,
the only hope left within was the feeling
that you’d finally cope with me leaving
and find another soul that wouldn’t
constantly leave a hole
in your heart every time my insecurities
would start.
Mistake after mistake fuelled by
instances I knew i couldn’t take.
As you left after I did,
I knew I couldn’t rid
myself from the way I felt
but the reassurance that
you’d be looked at one day
by eyes that held no despise for
their self.
I now bask in the toxins
in order to mediate my conscience
to be sane,
accompanied by pills the rip the morals
from my brain.
Cigarette's packs are emptying faster than
the bottle, pills to make me happy I swallow
and pills that numb, pull me closer to the edge
as I use my thumb to pop the lid, to push my
consumption of poison to dredge every sense of life
from this already lifeless body.
Step out of your once loved mindset towards
my dredged excuse for a being
and open your expectations to those that
exceed what you once held for me,
there’s a room full of people right for you;
quit pounding on the door,
I’m not on the other side.

The world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.

her innocence is soluble
when dipped in
expectations,
her mirror;
like the bottom
of dinner plates,
her wrists are
tire marks on
gravel roads,
she sees not
what we see
but in what he
sees is what
she cares
but who is he
now?
a riptide splitting
face paint
saturday nights,
veins of toxins,
staring at roadkill
and streetlights
and garbage
hugging curb-sides
mixed with dust
days followed
with headaches
and remorse
dying not
I can see it in her
eyes
she’s only 16
                           MJB