Down, down, down
You spiral into unspoken words
Which echo of gears grinding
Because the oil is never
Changed in a broken ship
Turmoil churning in the invisible
Argument with only yourself
A peaceful silence
To me is deafening to you
How can screams be so quiet
How can neutral be
Best case scenario
Half the time
While the rest is lost
To the vacuum of space
Alone
In your mind
Lost in constant orbit around
A planet far from home’s
Today and everyone who
Didn’t know tinted helmets
Reflect their own smiles
Oh, you’re alright! scorching
Like suns into the suit
You constantly weave with patches
Emblems worn by veterans
Who’ve no choice but
To pilot a broken ship
You don’t even know how to land
I’ll never know how brave
You are every day when
you defend me against
you when you defend
you against yourself
Every single day
in never ending
autopilot

That son left when harvest time came
Abandoned his own flesh and blood
For an easier path which he sought
And the pain his father endures alone

That selfish son with shaking hands
And cautious watching eyes yet blind
Stumbles and falls upon each pebble
Already the guilt has bore down deep

That ignorant son wretched with guilt
Promised his soon return but
Leisure engulfed and tainted his being
And robbed that fool of his honor

That weak son deserves the worst
Words and stones could possibly inflict
Cry, boy, cry! Cry for your sins!
Cry for the father you’ve abandoned!

Oh you cowardly son of your father
Why have you condemned yourself to this?
Why have you crushed this fragile soul?
Atone for you sins!

Howled the wind.

From this hydrant, I begin to drink
The wealth of knowledge, the geyser that
Overwhelms with ambition linked
To an endless reservoir of defeat.
I already feel the bloat setting in,
My internal resistance signaling
Near capacitance, the visceral
Response to give up, to give in, to halt.
Fight or flight has never felt so raw,
The two diverging at the carina
Aspirating the decision into me
As they inundate my atria.
I can feel the icy hot burn searing
My chest and neck from the inside out,
The irony of alveolar collapse
Rejecting my futile attempt
To breathe
Just like the titans swimming far ahead
Effortlessly whilst I struggle to tread,
Clawing at suffocating airways
That have yet to surpass elastance
And evolve the surfactant that promises
Life
Beyond the sleepless nights
Beyond the next exams
Beyond the repeating cycles
Of maximal effort and minimal results.
I crave the day when the desperation
For air to fill my lungs, to inspire
And expire the atmosphere, is replaced
With an aqueous tidal volume
That dissolves the surmounting pain
And converts water into air.

From this hydrant, I begin to breathe.

Pack it up, fold it off, ship it away
To the farthest corner of your mind and lie
To yourself that it will never open
Until just the day you want it to stay.
Resting, breathing, sweating on your
Chest where moist drops barely dry stick like tar
That binds skin to skin, superficial at first
Date which feels like lifetimes ago, but for
Now sets in deeper than is pragmatic.
The "right" decision rooted in logic -
Our attempt to pry apart our layers one
From the other, to disengage the magic
Butterflies that flutter from my belly
To my lips in the form of words that fly
Too fast for me to catch and suppress
Until the next approved moving day.

A poet's life
Is drawn from words
Scooping buckets
From the well
Within.
A drought
Dictates economy
Where buckets
Are little use.
A storm
Demands abundance.
Silence,
And flood ensues.