There’s nothing but dark water in every direction
Reflecting the night sky
In all its brilliant display of power.
The thing is that you look at the stars
And admire their beauty,
You sit there and you wait and you hope to see a shooting star
So you can make a wish that will probably never come true
And even if it does
The stars didn’t have anything to do with it,
They’re just flaming ***** of lifeless rock
Without care for human life.
The universe,
In all its glory
Sprawled out up towards the heavens
Is too big for anything to ever matter
But I never realized that before.
It’s not something to ponder
The stars aren’t there so that some measly humans
On a tiny planet
In a galaxy in the middle of nowhere
Can try to make sense out of it.
There is nothing flowery
About the stars in the sky,
There is no meaning there
Except that there is no meaning anywhere.

Why is that so hard for me to get through my head, then
As I stare out in wonder
The smell of salt water filling my nose
The warm breeze of summer enveloping me
My mind staring into the sky and searching to find a place to call home among the stars.
But there’s nothing there,
There never will be anything there.
I know now that the light I see is expired light,
Hundreds, thousands, millions of years old.
My humanity just can’t stand up to that kind of time,
And so I can’t force it to try.

Tomorrow breaks along the horizon
But its faraway, still
There’s time for the darkness to grow
But oh what light it holds.

It’s a wide world we live in
The stars in the sky
Painted with the permanence of impermanence
Blot out the unforgiving,
Unfeeling
Nature that holds them in place.

But they’re just projected fossils
On a screen that floats above our heads.
Their sparkle only a reminder of their struggle
To live until the sunlight fades again.

Tomorrow grows stronger
Waves break along the shore of my mind.
The ocean is vast,
But float long enough,
I’ve come to realize,
And you’ll always find land.

I used to only use the stars to navigate
The harsh light of the sun
Burning away the map they set out for me.

Now I grit my teeth and welcome it
It doesn’t burn as much anymore.

The mountains are alive with smokeless fire.
Yesterday I was running from it all,
I hopped in the car and threw my life out the window
And started to drive
Windows down
Music off
Nothing but the stars in the sky devoid of the moon
And the thoughts in my head that spread out like the road before me.

I didn’t have a destination in mind
When I drove to the harborfront.
Getting out of the car seemed monumental
The cold outside was a barrier I didn’t want to risk crossing
But I braced myself for the slaughter
And opened the door up anyway.

My foot touched the ground
And I winced
But nothing happened.
Each step forward forward forward
Brought me closer to the ocean.

I think it was snowing.
Something was swirling around me in the cold
Encompassing me
I couldn’t tell whether it was controlling me or I was controlling it
But it didn’t seem to matter.
My feet touched the sand
The sand was covered in white dust
The starts reflected on the calm water’s surface
But when I looked down, I didn’t see myself staring back.

Is emotion ponderous?
I suppose it is if I’m writing this,
If I can even ask the question.
Why do I feel so deeply
And have all these thoughts that wash my brain out like the tide
But never can find the right string of words
So that it will impact more people than just myself?

There are things that make sense to me
That don’t seem to make sense to anyone else.
In a fit of passion I see emotions in my brain
And write what I see
To the best of my fleeting ability
But what comes out is just a jumble of words
A couple of images
And not a through line of sense in it at all.

Maybe I should read more.
That’s what I always tell myself
Read more books with meaning
Instead of just the stuff that interests me.
Read more poetry that has words too big to follow
And morals so far buried
I need heavy machinery to dig it up.
Why can’t I write like that?
Why can’t I make words dance across the page
And up and around the minds of those that read it?

All you’ll ever be is someone who’s life has no meaning
Who can’t justify her place in this world
Because she chose the wrong thing to focus on.
There is no gift there
There is no talent
Whoever saw it there once was lying to you.

There’s too many ideas in your head
Too many grand feelings with emotions that can’t be put into words
And not enough concrete to solidify it
There’s no point in continuing.
They’ll just laugh, you know. They’ll read what you have to say and tune out their ears.
The writing is garbage
It’s terrible
It’s uninspired
It lacks the je ne sais quoi
The kind of thing that needs to be had and not taught
The kind of thing that you thought you had, once, but now don’t think so at all.

Nobody else thinks so either
So what are you going to do about it?
You’ve wasted too many hours of your life,
Written too many thousands of words of nonsense
Of pointless nothingness.
You’re past the tipping point.

Keep on writing, I guess,
That’s all you seem to keep doing.
Some people say that once you write enough garbage
Once you dig through enough dirt
You can find gold underneath.
I sure hope that’s what happens,
Because if not then I don’t know what to say to you
I don’t know where you’re gonna go.



Try to write yourself back home.

There aren't many days
Where at the end of the night
I lay in bed and smile
Reliving the highlights as they play out on the backs of my eyelids.
Today was one of those days.

Its midnight.
The water laps against the docks
Moonlight shines in ripples across the calm harbor
Laughter and music drown out the song of the night.
Everything is right in the world.
A camera flash:
Time stops moving
Everyone is frozen in place and if the world were to end at this very moment
And this is the last scene before the credits roll
It wouldn't be such a bad ending
To an imperfect story.
But the flash lasts less than a blink
And time continues to move
Ticking in time with the cicadas in the trees.
Its not summer
But it could be
There's a warmth in the air
And a feeling of utter weightlessness
And both radiate from the small crowd
Of familiar people
Laughing alone in a dark, sleeping world
illuminated only by the moon and the stars
And the flickering dim streetlights
That line the night.
Nothing is ever perfect
But this scene
Of this night
In the park by the water
Feels distinctly like magic.
And we are alight.

The gap between the platform and the subway car
seems to grow the closer you get to it
Until crossing it seems like the worst idea you could make
But you close your eyes and brave the void
Taking care not to thin about the tracks beneath
So alive in their snaking routes and tortured screeches.
The doors shut abruptly once you've sardined inside
And its all you can do to grab onto something, anything
Before the wheels begin to turn again
And you're lurched into some other time,
Some other place
As the tunnels decide what your fate will be.
And the doors will open again
As a ghost of a platform appears
But commuters be weary
For the tunnels and the tiles can be deceitful
So as you leave the decay
And the fractured tiles behind
Take caution
You might not notice it at first
You might not notice it at all
But the subway tunnels are unpredictable
And they enjoy making the rules
So the vortex you thought you imagined with the tunnel's lights speeding past the windows of the train
Might have actually transported you to some unknown city
To some other dimension
And there's no turning back.

Light shines against my closed eyelids
So I'm seeing red.
The darkness pretends it can't touch me here
In the light of day
While I lie awake
But there are places to hide
When the sun comes out
Down, down, down it goes
Burrows into my heart and runs through my veins
While I breathe in, out
In, out
Willing the daylight to take over once again
But all my angels have fallen out of the sky
And the music I once heard has gone silent.
Even the sun doesn't shine as often anymore
And the thunderstorms of my mind have spread to the rest of the world
Allowing the darkness more time to work
More time to brainwash me into thinking that its normal
That everything is absolutely fine
But there's one small bit of my mind the darkness hasn't figured out about yet,
Or maybe it has but it couldn't win the battle,
That has a light brighter than even the sun
And maybe that's my starting and ending point
Or perhaps its some divine spirit seeking refuge in my ravaged mind
But its the only thing keeping me from succumbing to the darkness
Its the only part that stays conscious while the rest is violated and mislead.
But lately that light has been dimming
And the ink stains blotching my fingers
Feel less like the blood I know they are.