this bed feels acutely
empty tonight
and so do these arms
not holding her tight

question obtusely
why i'm not there?
why i still crave?
why i still care?

stuck back in that place
where i cannot cry;
last lesson life teaches
is that we all must die

love dies, and hate dies,
and courage, and fears;
rivals & friendships, and
laughter & tears

nothing is lasting,
nothing can remain,
everything changes;
it can't stay the same

we have to let go
for nothing adheres,
might as well nay existed
in a hundred years

i know all of this,
and accept it as well,
yet i want more to say,
but no more i can tell

still can't stop myself
as i stare at that phone,
but, what the hell, in last moments
we all sleep alone...

they live
across so
many of
different
divides,
all across
the physical,
across so many
miles of vast and
beautiful lands, for
doesn't every land have
it's beauties, though i'd
of course not trade any of
them for the north, though
i curse myself for it each and
every winter; but there is
truly no place like home;
across oceans, and often
from such very different
cultures as well, and ******
preferences and of genders,
across ages and those shared
frames of reference dictated by
history, so many divides, but
no barriers, just differences,
but thinking somehow still so
much alike in so many ways,
and drawn to a particular love
of a very specific and dying
art-form above all, but still,
it is like any of them might
have grown up with me in
the same neighbourhood,,
that someone who couldn't
have less skin in the game
as far as your immediate
day-to-day-to-day
life, a magical quality
as it makes them so
much easier to trust,
and they care, and
for no other reason
than that they care,
and even love in
many ways, though
my experience has taught
me that one particular kind
of love seems doomed to
painfully fail, which
*****, but such is
life, but that knowing
people care for no other
reason is because they care,
like an element, something that
can't easily be broken down into
smaller pieces or explanations,
it is just because it is,
and that's a really
nice feeling
to have.

i know the chance that
we would ever meet
are slim-to-none,
but if that were
to happen with any
of them i would
have an extremely
happy day, and
that's an especially
nice feeling
to have, too.

i don't know if it
can ever be defeated,
the studied opinion says
it can't, and the statistics on
it are personally terrifying knowing
i almost made it on to that list three times
in my life. but i know what i'm doing is not
working so exhausted emotionally so i
can hardly think, when i'm in my own
one-person karpman triangle in my
mind, too, to match the trip from
my bed to the washroom to the
kitchen on an as much as i
know it isn't true because
i've been here so many
times before, type ii
treatment-resistant,
but it seems the
triangle is on
endless-loop
forever with
no break at
all... though i
know that isn't true
the best way i can
describe it is my mind
knows it, but my heart is
too stubborn, and it says to
the messenger, no, i trust
neither you nor the mind,
and it all feels so endless,
but i need to do something else,
not necessarily something more,
but instead of devoting all this
energy that is at such a premium,
and pleading with my heart to believe
that this isn't going to last forever,
so please heart, just do this one thing,
because you will hurt and be hurt
out there no matter what state you're
in, and if you chance falling apart
in public, or even in front of one friend
that you can't stand the shame the
mind puts on you, and that isn't even
the mind's fault, so please heart, you
nor i can't get this thing all fixed over night
but you can do at least this one thing, please?

and i stir and go to my back entrance,
and pick up my phone in the first time
in two weeks, and i charge the phone
up, and then i turn it back on, ceding
control is tough itself, on a pc i can
control how much i can take in, or
think i can, when my heart loses its
faith, but i know my heart learned,
its first step back, that when it does
not know if it can trust yet another's
that at least in one moment it finally
lent it's trust to me, as it needs to learn
to do, maybe, maybe for the first time ever.

reason (racing)

isolation (self-imposed)

sweet symphony (yet un-composed)

wishes come (a curse with each)

this longed-for one (just out of reach)


myself, to her, cannot belong

(with all my last words taken wrong)

cry with me, mourn this dire sleep,

the seeds she plants but cannot reap,

our kiss will never come to pass

(no room tonight for this romance)


what of the heart that cries tonight,

what of the song it sings?

if i could, i'd fly to you

if not for broken wings

there can lurk
a mighty danger
in romanticizing in
memory that which
merely was ******

what comes up
must come down
and my hypomanic
phase is crashing down
on top of me, with more
new social connections i've
made just over a couple of months
that there is no way i can maintain without
that seemingly superhuman and boundless
energy i've had all Spring, but how to
explain that, who to pick, and my
guilt over having overestimated
my abilities, and people now
hurt over that, and it's hard
to care as much as i should
when it's a struggle to
make it from my bed
to the kitchen, or
washroom, or
even sometimes
to flip over... i know
well enough that what
goes down must also eventually
go up, but for now i'm getting by
hour to hour, and it isn't even a depression
just an exhaustion from months and months
of only sleeping every couple of days, or at best
sleeping 5 or 4 hours a night i think, my body worn
out and though i know this will pass as every phase
of this endless cycle that reminds me of a metaphor
for the mainly Eastern idea of reincarnation, i feel
it as a wheel, that i am the wheel, and it needs to
keep on spinning as long as i am to breathe and
live, so i spin it even on the days where nothing
gives enjoyment, the smallest task like running
a marathon, for no matter on what phase the
wheel is on, it is a much better alternative
than it not spinning at all, mixed-phase
rapid-cycling usually comes next, the
worst, but i am still breathing, i am
still keeping body and mind each
together with each other and for
now that is enough, it is more
than enough, and those that
love will understand or
seek to, and those that
don't i could never
explain it to them,
it seems to have to
be something they want
to learn enough to learn some
on their own... i remember getting
my wife early on in our relationship
on being in a long-term relationship with
someone with bipolar disorder, and she told
me how much she learned from it and how much
easier it would make things. when we got divorced
and i was going through the bookshelves, and when
i came across that book, i picked it up and saw that
the spine had never been cracked, not even to the
index or table of contents, and it made me laugh,
like i wondered if all those years before she
thought i was giving her that book for
some benefit of my own. i'm not
bitter or angry or let down,
finding that book really
made me feel better if anything,
but that's my explanation for not
trying to explain anymore, and at
times like this not to feel selfish or lazy
or like i'm not trying enough, i did that
for years, and it just made the slide slippier
and that landing harder. i've found that no-one
and nothing will love me, or take care of me, or
forgive me, or understand me, anywhere near as
well as i can for myself in times like this when my
batteries are just empty. the best thing i've learned
living with an illness that has a 50%  mortality rate
and a string of broken relationships because it is one
******* to try to hack being in a relationship with
someone with it is that it isn't my fault, it isn't from lack
of trying, it isn't a spiritual sickness, and how liberating
that was, that growing up in a family where anything
bad always had a culprit, where getting the flu and
throwing up meant dealing with a heavy hand,
i fell into that thinking for a long-time, but i
am now at least at peace that i know there's
either no-one to blame, no more at least
than diabetes or cancer or genetics,
and that there is no way in the
world if i could now just
pick being this way or
not, i'd choose this,
i'd choose me,
still broken me,
like we each
uniquely are such,
just as i accept others,
just as they are,
just like i am.