Do I sink,
Do I swim—
In dem eyes of Lake Michigan?

I got my hopes up again
Tryna stay afloat
While the world ends
So I’ll build a raft of
empty prescription bottles
And ride it out in the plastic sea

Let it engulf me

Beach hazards statement-
I’m coming alive again
I’m done asking the current to pull me in

I’ll leave the call of the void on read

While The waves are thrashing
At the sea wall

So just pin me up
against the lighthouse

And whisper me
sweet static nothingness

I’m coming
I’m coming
I’m coming alive again

Beach hazards statement-
You make me wanna give a **** and mean it

We woke up on
Subconscious shores
Wind whipping sand in our face

You’re hushing all my little wars
Holding tight in your embrace

Staring into me like
Life imitating art Defines catharsis

you’re the muse in
my mind’s moshpit

You’re the last
punk rock princess

Blowing out the speakers
In another castle

In your old skool vans
And your mc5 shirt
Leopard nuanced
Leather queen

The madness
To the meaning

Let’s get hyper real
In the surreal cerulean

So tell me,
Do I sink do I swim
in those swirling galaxies of Lake Michigan?
Cause I don’t even think about the end
Just an abyss of
Fear and desire conflicting

we used each others bodies
for the sake of art
let's not get pretentious
a lil rebellious

you're so punk rock
Like every meal is breakfast
coffee eyes
and
coffee lips
Sealed me in
2 money shots of
double sugar,
     double c.r.e.a.m.
c* rules eveything around me
You’re a such a
sweet heart Attack—
At the heart of the war
You weaved the guts I spilled
     Into weapons

Blessed be the civil war
brewing in the newsfeed
I just hope both teams
have fun

If it’s not our bodies tryna **** us,
It’s confirmation bias
with a gun

Cause we live in a society
stranger than satire
Doomscrollin’ infinity
For the next dumpster fire

If all the world’s a stage
Then my anxiety
is a crisis actor
When all the world’s enraged
I’m screamin’ CLASS WAR
in the theater

Blessed be these antidepressants
With side effects like
suicidal ideation

Heaven left all thoughts and prayers on read
Now thats what I call
getting holy ghosted

Full send to divine abandonment
In a digital sea
of arrogance

Your favorite God is smashing
The laugh reaction
While the body count rises
Achievement unlocked: death to empathy

Is this ******* play about us
Or are we all just NPC?
Cursed with Main Character Syndrome,
Glitching out behind the scenes-
playing the victim
Is the origin of your villain

Cause we live in a society
Stranger than satire
Doomscrollin’ infinity
For the next dumpster fire
Just to tell everyone you’ve been enlightened

What if we kissed while I get 5150’d?
POV: I just met you
You’re in the dayroom oversharing me your
Sketchbook of celestial imagery
Running your fingers through my hair
Translating Le Petit Prince en Français
As you hold the English version-

Holding my head in your lap
I’m the womb in the wounds in your wrists
Filling the void
In your arms
where You just lost your baby;

Tryna brave the belly of the beast
But this enemy of me
Has got hands-

I’ve never metaphor for anxiety
Like this one
Imposter syndrome-

I was only a dark forest away
from who I needed to be
But feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy
Are twisting clouds so forebodingly 

Mara’s army fires arrows
Raining streams of self-consciousness
Like I wasn’t ready to self destruct
on impact -
detonation

I laugh and share memes of self-deprecation
Social media the new god
Where we worship ourselves
By constantly trying to impress
everyone else

Venmo me Dopamine tributes
With the truth in a cave of
depression and
Isolation

Maybe Holly’s right
And I do need to be here
She shines the light
On the darkness
In the hospital wing
5th floor at Evanston
But I’m afraid I’ve grown too codependent
On this astral plane
I’ve projected
And romanticized
these Ambien nights
Only to awake neglected
Screaming out her name
In sleep paralysis
On a dark night-


When I’m manic
I try to live it out like I’m in a movie
Projecting inner struggles
As external conflicts
To make the scene more interesting
Until I’m in this final battle alone like Odysseus
Lost all my friends when the monster ate our ship and I took em for granted caught up
Between a rock and a hard place-
Depressed and Hyper-sexualization
when spring is here again

I’m in the first act dip
edging the ******-
Stimulating the simulation

You’re no Harley Quinn
But you romanticize mental illness
Like a comic book villain-
It’s comedically tragic
To play with the full deck
Devoid the Joker

The worst part about mental health
Isn’t keeping it a secret
It’s just the revolution glamorized
To sell you more ****;

A little death
    begins at the end.

You keep telling them how woke you are
     Wish you’d smash the snooze

9 minute rhetoric In reverie-
Peel your eyes from the screen
Enlightened by one source
it’s their truth written
All
Over
Your
Face
And you say you won’t wear a mask;

Checking on old friends
in a new year-
means getting met
by a Memorial Page

Remembering you
Getting blazed listening to Cudi
While we turnt up and laughed as our friends ****** in the next room;

In the pursuit of happiness, you were gone and forgotten too soon
Until social media flashes memories
Between things it tries to sell me
And this legacy-
It’s that time of the year I’d be at ISU
getting high with the Man on the Moon

Living with a too late afterthought -
I should have been there for you
Life gets in the way
What can I say
I’m always on my own *******
I’m sorry if I ever let you down
I just wish I didn’t find out you were dead through Facebook;

It’s a new year of isolation
Check on your ******* friends;

My heart is an abandoned mosh pit;
I miss you beating the **** out of me in cadence-
some sonic *******
thrashing through the motions
moaning the music through my body electric
with liberation lashes enlighting me up.
I miss leaving mused and abused
dripping of our sweat-
Left writhing and pulsating in an echo chamber screaming my lungs out pretending to sing along with you-
working every ounce of energy out of me until you’re fulfilled
and I feel less vacant;

We live in an era of sociopath glamorization,
virtually devoid of empaths.

Welcome to the Evil Empire-
but first,
let me take a selfie;

Virtual pandemonium
In the terrordome
Of social anxiety-attacks
Of one truth shared more than the other
Smashing reacts to your
emotions of the moment
For the illusion of your audience
Written all over your face
Wrapped like a mask
Of a faux influencer
Speaking of change-
fashioned but never took action.
Now history is a broken record
Looping a distress call thru
The ether.
All the worlds enraged
And you’re just a crisis actor

If all the world’s a stage
then anxiety is a crisis actor

The trickster archetype
typecasting all my critical thoughts as truths

Into a monster of the weak
rogue gallery
of self-destructive episodes

Maybe it’s the lack of SSRI’s
but SI be like:

Since they slashed and burned
half the forest preserve
maybe you should slit your wrists
and self-immolate in the center of it;

Maybe you should spill
your guts like seppuku
at the center of Daley Plaza
underneath The Picasso
outside that Shepard Fairey exhibit
(Provocateurs; Block 37)
Call it an art instillation

If all else fails, I’ll just throw myself in front of a Tesla on the North Shore

Every kiss begins with chaos
Before we collide
Our unquiet minds
On to the mattress

We made this bed
To bash our brains
of imagination

Where you steady me
slit my veins
and feed on the electricity

Are you turned on?

Tune in,
and drop out.
This is a high
without the drugs

Darlin'
be a little more reckless
Wrack your mind
and embrace the transgressions

Whisper to me,
let your soul start *******

sweet static nothingness

Licked from the goddess apocalypse
to the tips of our
touch
****
and release

It's such a ******* relief.

Reorganized minds
mend the missing peace
between the reverberations
of our heartbeats
beating the path
down the rabbit hole

Don't you want to come with me?

Chained and collared
By Mara’s daughters

No safe word Baby,
bound by
desire,
fulfillment,
regret

They put their
hands
on me

and they drew blood
In the symbol of currency

Then they sold my soul
Into *** slavery;

No one blinded the cyclops
Now we’re walking wounded
Fueled by hubris
We’re headed toward the rocks.

Caught up in some bad religion
We’re only gonna die
For this
Our own arrogance
And we’re running out of time

Some men wanna
watch the world burn
Some die before they rise the fire
History repeats
We don’t learn
Burn the forest into a funeral pyre

She creates,
      She destroys;
Her body,
Her weapon,
Her own ******* choice.

Just pop this Quetiapine
And it's quiet time for me
I just wish you wouldn't choke me to sleep

Like lightning striking
tenses my chest
with regret
at night

Every time I hear John Mayer,
I think of how I pirated
Battle Studies
in an attempt
to get down your pants

And as I drove down
to your school in Bloomington
it was the soundtrack
when I was inside of you
for those couple minutes

Giving whiskey-****
disappointment
a name
Like Heartbreak Warfare

To the girl with the pin-up dreams,
Keep reaching for them.

Like the time you reached out
Like a dream and gave me
that over-the-pants-hand-job.

In my car, after work,
waiting for your train to come,
After I did.

“Burgundy sounds more poetic than maroon"
You say, in regards to your sweater.
-I’m just romanticizing it
tossed across
my room

As you push me
to the mattress
and strip me down
passed skin and bones

back to the vibrations
of my soul

Humming along,
are you a muse
or a siren song?

Are you rebirth
or are you just
another little death
of inspiration?

So fleeting.

I hate when you’re leaving,
because it leaves me longing
and pathetic

I’m just the impulsive one
with the most grandiose dreams.
Like I wanna give you everything
from the depths of these
****** up fantasies
With the most
golden ******* intentions

Because you’re the reason for
the ringing in my ear
when I feel like I’m onto something

The reason that the season
starts to make me feel better

So can you just stay
while I romanticize
your sweater?

They cut up her face
  to spite who knows

She cut off some weight
      despite her bones

She’s starved for grace
    like a hungry ghost

Is it passion?
Is it addiction?

The way she suffers
so stranger than fiction

She’s waning away
    just like the moon

It’s just the way
    the darkness consumes

As they edit away
    her absolute heart of the poem

Cut, copy paste
they stretched the truth
across her face

Now the disenchanted runway
calls her name

“Depersonalization"

Baby girl,
you were born
with it

Now you’ve
just been
manipulated!

The transformation
was a success
but you’re still sentient!

Screaming
"Being like everybody
is like being nobody
and this body
is no body
it’s a plastic prison"

built on a template
of all your false expectations

We need to
    cut off the face
    of the status quo

There’s nothing divine
    left to her ratio

Knock the Goddess
    from the pedestal

Conjuring
an idea
of you

that I can’t explain

like
Je ne sais quoi

You're still
wracking my brain

But now I’ve got you
on the
ta-ta
tip of my
tongue

I want to paint you
like one of those
French girls

le petite mort
You came
and went

Girl in the white
dress

You brought the light like
Sookie Stackhouse.
You wanna do
real bad things with me
A little stranger than fiction

You’re my strangest addiction
The only one
I’d ever spill my True Blood for
From here until the true death

le petite mort
You came
and went

Girl in the white
dress

Mesmerized
by them Lake Michigan Eyes
I saw everything I fear
and everything I desire

You got me
right where you want me
right where I want to be
like a willing sacrifice

le petite mort
You came
and went

Girl in the white
dress

You were my favorite
femme fatale
forcing me to face this
fiery finale

You and me
enlightenment-to-be
Like Nirvana
come on blow my mind

Ambien Angel,
Hallucinate
a halo

to replace
the self-doubt
that you’ve got
wrapped around
your mind

We only talk
at times
of
Swirling
self-destructive
forces

I felt your
distress call
through the ether

Spiraling
down
down
wrapped
in a cloud
of smoke, whiskey
and Bukowski

There you were,
The American Spirit
staring back
from the
Apothic abyss
of red wine
and controlled
prescriptions.

We all
get so alone sometimes
in Tales of Ordinary Madness

It just makes sense
to let another
Siren sing our ships
towards crimson catastrophe

But you handle
the collisions
so gracefully

Looking so
God-**** divine
like your name

This time
Go lightly
and let’s float
away

Now that
I’ve told
you all my secrets

Won’t you come
in the night
and ****** me
with the truth?

Push me down,
and tie me to the bed
that I made
Freudian-slipping
between layers of
in vino veritas
conversations

When I manifested
from under the mask
where I just
want to be accepted
as both the light
and my shadow

Won’t you come
pull my dark passenger
from the
dark
depths
of my sacral chakra?

My deepest desires
spiraling out,
you've
got me
wrapped around
your finger

I am the snake
coiled around
the core
of the sweetest
fruit
I just want to
savor

Then slither
back home

To the
Goddess of the Abode

To decompress
this tension

To Rise up and
slit my throat
at the vortex
of expression

I heard
that the darkness
finally blinded you

With the
temptation
of permanent
bliss

You kept running
through that garden
looking to get
your fix

So wickedly
seduced into
rebirth

Do you finally
see just like
a child?

Without eyes
you let
the truth
weigh in
intravenously

and burn
your garden
down

Strawberry Moon
So Sweet
So delicate

Glowing
in the reflection
of the summer solistice

While an oak tree
drips sap
in the shape
of the ****** Mary
or maybe a ******

the cosmic ****
the goddess nectar

Whispering
We’re all made of star stuff
Won’t you journey to the center?

Spiral in and out 
let fear
be the reason you enter

You'll only stand in your own way
if you don’t come back around
and pull yourself together

Abilify
you seemed to amplify
the monster inside me

Vivid dreams
of a devil in the driver seat,
Mirrored back
in my rearview, 
on the way to a crime scene
in my mind
where one of our sisters
was given plastic surgery
via shotgun

A crackling static
tears through my brain
and takes me
to the Ideation of 
self-inflicted martyrdom

Idealized death
put on a pedestal

hanging
in a basement
Of the subconscious

Until I wake up and suffer

I've
Had enough of
the akathisia

I can’t ******* sit still
I feel like 
my heart is going to beat out of me
When I’m already light-headed
I see me from outside me

Depersonalized!
this blood is poisoned 
with restless impulses

I can’t fight
or flight
just freeze 
and pulsate
an S.O.S.
to the telegraph 
at the other 
end of this the 
other half of
This sorry soul:

*If pain is a void 
I can feel you missing 
Where the doctor
Filled the hole
With prescriptions.

Will you hold me,
hold me,
until these looping
distress calls
cease?

I drew the shades 
And shut myself 
off from the world 

Let me lay in the darkness
Of this abyss
I'd rather suffer here
Than out there 
With the rest of the world's *******

Somewhere in the back 
Of my mind I'm fixated
On my most ****** up failures

Nothing ever lasts
So don't get attached
Everyone leaves
So don't ever love

2 days in this bed
It was 3 days last week

Maybe tomorrow 
I'll feel a little more god-like 
When the wolves are at the door

Would you be my
final girl
like Sidney Prescott?

I wanna
hear you scream
sweet
psychosis

Folie à deux
do you feel
the madness too,
now that
the mask
of sanity
is slipping?

Wearing
the sins
of man
like an overcoat
for the
over-dramatic
reveal
in the final act

Sometimes,
we need to go
a little mad
Or find ourselves
serving the
shadow
in a
tempter tantrum
of
bloodlust
for a
love loss in a
coup de grâce

Before you deliver
that final blow
and render me back
conscious

Staring back
from the apothic abyss,

faced with
a fiery
femme fatale

With a face
like ******
in the
moonlight

Mesmerized
by them
Lake Michigan eyes

With such fear
with such desire

You came and went
like
little deaths
of inspiration

Like the Earth was
a little more gracious
To perpetuate
your presence
beyond my ****** up
perfectionist
thinking

Paralysis by analysis
while I sleep
a demon stands on
my chest

Whispering sweet
cynical
"you're nothings"

It's always
Me vs. Mara,
In a manifestation
Of obstacles

The triangle
pointing down
inverting
the sunlight

Back to
black holes
In the mind

Just like the song
that makes you
think about the
end sometimes

‘cause nothing lasts

Baby
believe me
you’ll leave me

They’re always
******* leaving
like the Sun's
kiss of death
to the horizon
before the darkness
kicks in

When we’re stuck
suffering a solo
tango
under the Moon's
spotlight

Staring into
the same
apothic
abyss

I'm never violent
unless it's self-inflicted

**** me for feeling
something
worthy of a heartbeat
right?

Pulsating my wrists
to my fists
and unleash vibrations
in a caustic manner

I will destroy the dreams
of Darling Wreckless,
wracking my brain
like Mara's
malicious temptations

A self-destructive
sequence
in a God-mode
fashion

No Romance,
just the way
you liked it.

Just the way
You ripped off
Your dress

And left me to
romanticize it
balled up
on my floor

Just the way
you teased and
denied
my poetic soul

You said it
felt so foreign

Like you were
never worthy
of the prose

You left me
Writhing and
Alone
and
I know
you know
You’re not perfect

I just wanted
you to feel
like a goddess
I worshiped
beyond words
even if you didn't
believe in something.

Believe me,
I did my best not to be
bitter

But your cynicism
was never ****

No one cares
What you don't
Like

You would
look into the
Grand Canyon
and just see a void.

Avoiding
the obviously
numinous

Like where
your heart
was

Before it was
split with a river
streaming your
constantly
pessimistic
consciousness.

Maybe I was too sweet
finishing last
like a nice guy
that you just
left salty

To
slide
down
the
throat
of your
thesis statement:

NO ROMANCE

At a crossroads again
With the ghost of my regrets
Spirit of the stairwell
We can only ascend

"We'll always have Shoe Factory Road"
she says
As she plunges the dagger
Into me

So slowly,
Taking her time
Twisting the blade
Deep
between
Bone
and the guts
I never spilled
Before her
Holy Matrimony

She tells me she'll
Always love me
Beyond physical means

Cutting even deeper
While she's everlasting
with my soul successor.

Standing on ceremony
I should have never
Held my peace.

At a crossroads again
with the ghost of my regrets
Spirit of the stairwell
*Only I can ascend.

Miss Maiden,
might I compare you
to that of the guillotine?

Your swooping grace
like the edge of a
shining
silvery blade
that curves and cuts
across the sky
so seductively
slitting the throat
of the horizon

From the threshold of dreams
to bring a new day
Where we feed our blood
back into the monotonous machine
then drop to our knees
and pray for divine intervention

My femme fatale,
Could you take me out of this?
to break cycle
before you wax away

You know you were always
my favorite deity,

Artemis, Artemis
You’re the art I miss
from a life unfulfilled
From the music

The untold story
agonizing inside
writhing for a release

So I’m drawing you down
to this plane
to hunt me as a willing sacrifice.

Won’t you drop from the sky
and come blow my mind?

Just leave my head in the basket.

Enemies arise
when I close my eyes
and push them back

Until I see constellations
sparks coming off of stars
of divinity vs. temptation

A transcendence I romanticize
until I got lost trying to focus
back on the truth

As Mara's army fires arrows
I feel the presence.

breathe in, breath out
sat nam

The Earth bears witness,
arrows explode
into blooming flowers

I am still here
I am
grounded.

My friend the bartender
sports short shorts
and I can’t keep my eyes
off her little
purple ******* peeking along
the cusp of her waist
where olive skin and fabric contact

I can’t maintain eye contact
without fashioning her as an object
this little angel dancing
on the head of a pin

Or ******* symbol
when I let the id win

3 beers and 2 shots in
don’t blame me

I just turned 30
and this little goddess
just told me
my tab doesn’t exist

She just walked around the bar
wrapped her arms around me
and whispered in my ear
“Happy Birthday, kid"

Never play the
“Why would anyone ever want me?” game

When you’re unkind to yourself
You will know no worse
and deserve no better

Like Bukowski says,
Bet on the muse
in those moments of fleeting abandonment

We exterminate the love
we really deserve
and we keeping going back
expecting more

Always at a lack
Like hungry ghosts
in the stair case

Do we dare to dream for something to say?

Or do we keep it inside?
Until we wither
wither
away

There's a revolution at our fingertips.
Their lies won't be televised
like they were there
seeking out the unjust seekers of light

The world's on fire
We purge the dream destroyers

and collect their blood
as souvenirs
on a slide

It's that feeling of temptation fleeting
forgetting the ego
and ******* it all to chance
or pretending like you know how it's all going to happen

Fate faked until it's made
we were new gods predicting the way things would happen
hurt or held against our helping hands
to our beating ****** hearts
for the next person we hand it off to
to feel the warmth in everything

What are we passing on
and where do we hold ourselves back from
the call to adventure?

We so carelessly led ourselves into reality

Realler than any other *******
forgetting
What it's like to hold on

I feel like I got a song in me
Fortunate for you
I'm in tune to your stupid ******* heart

Let me in like a vampire invite

I am anorexia

I am the human condition
the **** of man
the status quo
the holy union
of Ms. America
and Capitalism

I will hold no peace
at the ritual
we all worked so hard
to hold together

But you can love without money
blood is running money

My hands are tied around this next new little thing
She's just another missing peace
To the eternal void
of the allegory of my emptiness

mood swinging to I hate you
don't ever ******* leave

I left the best part out
She's the goddess of the myth
she's the one I long for ever more from
the depths of my dreams

She can fix everything
probably

I just have to think about her
This ideal muse
mending my broken heart
Does she know how bad this loneliness hurts?

I just want to feel something
I want to resonate

and work myself to completion
Controlling everything from the eternal electricity

Deep beneath
buried away
giving my very best

But where do I go?
I want to be everywhere
Alive in anything that is or isn't
nailed down

When I feel so stuck.

I just wanted her heart
to melt in my hands

But she was a steel beam
and I was jet fuel.

My kiss eclipsed
From lips to lips

As above so below
From face to hips

Red wine tongues
Tasting teasing and tossing

Deliver the final blow
And suffer the euphoric bliss

You're more than your eyes
and the galaxies beneath

lusting for supernovas
in the face of the goddess
you need to resurrect
rise up and see
beyond
sight

or scientific mutations
beauty is a distraction
it draws the face of the masses
down to a religion

You're the new deity
in my minds eye
transcending like an iconoclast
throwing a wrench
in the status quo

and slitting the throat
of the exploited symbols
flashed between shifts of consciousness

We met on the shores of our subconscious
in oceans of cerulean
Red hair with a curl
like the first song I ever learned

I heard you on high like an angel
Or was I just high?
You were still an angel.

It was always the music
that brought us together
beyond sight
you were my favorite sound.

We've got a red white and blue bloodlust
For the drips
from the slits
in the wrist
Of Ms. Statue of Liberty

Miss America
Covered in capitalist pigs blood
camouflaged as corn syrup
whispering bitter somethings
to the diabetic nation
that broke her sweet-heart

They'll give her something
to fill her wounds
And add insult to
Self-inflicted injuries

in flashes of light
our arrogance
under-shadows
our destiny

She’ll overcome us
in her apotheosis  

She’ll come
back around harder
next time

When she finally comes for us