“Mom!”
The creaks of the old metal bed frame pierce in the silent night from across the house.

“Mom!”
Footsteps on the hard wooden floor slowly making their way to my room.

“Yes darling?”
A shadow emerges into my doorway.

“I had a bad dream.”
The light flicks on and my eyes close tight.
A new weight set upon my twin sized bed,
the bad dreams release from my mind in my six year old body.
A warm hand grabs the back of my head and arms around my body.

“Theres nothing to be scared about, ***, no monsters in your room.” She checks underneath my bed.

A kiss upon my forehead and a rapid change to darkness,
I lay there with my eyes wide open hoping not to get this dream once more.


I hope I’m not the only one who this has happened to before.

When falling off your bike was the most unimaginable pain, but a band-aid seemed so magical.

What ***** about a split family is not being there for the other parent.
my biggest regret in life is not seeing my mom and sister enough.
But ****** mom these dreams are coming back and the only thing I can yell for at night is for the monsters in my head to go back to underneath my mattress where they belong and to leave me the hell alone.

I hate the quiet.
I hate not hearing dad watch Fox News in the living room because that meant you were in the bedroom.
I accept the fact that you and dad are never getting back together,
But I can’t find a day where I wouldn’t **** to come home to both parents and my sister at the dinner table.

Talking about how ******* the education system is,
How corrupted our government is,
I don’t even care anymore.

Mom my nightmares are coming back,
I look out the window and ask the moon for advice
and I can hear it talking I just cant unscramble the words in my mind,
when all it’s trying to tell me,
is there are no monsters,
you’re going to be fine.

I am sick of writing sad poems.
I want to write a happy poem.
My only problem is,
I don’t know how to.

I mean,
if I were funny it would be one thing,
but my humor consists of bad puns knock knock jokes.
Knock knocking on the inside of my brain wanting to push a smile onto your faces but the only look I get back is confusion because I can never seem to get my tongue to work in times of...
In times when a belly laugh would come from their abdomen and satisfy my hunger for becoming a comical genius.

Heres a joke for you.

Knock Knock.

“Who’s there?”

Orange

“Orange who?”

Knock knock.

“Who’s there?”

Orange

“Orange who?”



Orange you glad I didn’t finish my joke?
I keep my tongue dormant so the punchline doesn’t come out wrong,
to save myself from the embarrassment of being an idiot.
I’ll laugh it off,
but n my head I hear myself say.
“Max, what the hell was that?”
Listen, brain, I know I’m not funny,

I get my humor from either my dad or the internet,
and even then,
Tuna fish and pianos,
Oranges, apples, any kind of fruit really,
couldn’t even save me.

Three men walk into a bar.
I don’t know how they didn’t see it but that isn’t my problem,
my problem is that I am not funny, or a cool pal to hang out with.
In all honesty,
I’m pretty much a stick in the mud that wears hoodie sweatshirts every day.

So the next time I come knock knocking,
I advise you to shut the door.

When I was a little kid,
I was afraid of Santa.
Of course I believed in him, what kid wouldn’t.
I guess I just thought it was creepy that some old man would break into my house
and leave me gifts underneath a tree.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the gifts.
I just always thought it was weird that Santa had the same handwriting as my mom...
Or we had the same wrapping paper as Santa...

Now that I am older,
I realize that Christmas isn’t always a good time.
Sure,
We get the chocolate and the food,
We get to see and talk to family we haven’t seen in ages,

But we’ve lost loved ones,
Families have been split,
Christmas just doesn’t have that same magic anymore,
or the feeling in your stomach when you wake up on christmas morning.
Pointing out gifts under the tree like constellations in the sky
The mystery in whats inside the paper baffles our small minds,
until the gift is in my hands,
The magic just isn’t there.

Frankly,
I would do anything to have that feeling I had on Christmas morning when I was younger.
Not a worry in the world.
All of the toys were awesome,
and I didn’t really have to get gifts for anyone else,
Of course I miss Christmas the way it used to be,
Except getting up at like 5am, I’m pretty sick of that.

Christmas with only two guys in the house is pretty interesting now.
Our nights are usually spent eating chicken wings and listening to loud Rock ‘n Roll,
But with how things are now without the magic,
I wouldn’t want it any other way.

When I was little,
if I were scared,
I would crawl into my mothers bed to fall asleep,
to feel safe.

Now,
The monsters in my closet and under my bed come lay with me as the monster in my mind makes them feel the need to be safe.
Silently the monster takes control of my darkened room,
The wind applauding every dark thought that my mind generates and pulses through my veins

A chill slithers down my spine although I’m sweating,
I kick my legs and roll around,
like a wrestling match,
my body versus my mind
I wonder who will win.

A sadness overcome by
A simple thought of a bright light.
The slight imagination of an illuminated orb
How much i’ve missed a smile.

A remembrance of what used to be clenches my muscles
until my heart commands my body to stop what I’m doing and breathe.
Sometimes, too much of a good thing can be dangerous.
Being alone with my thoughts on a good day can sometimes be worse than my thoughts when I’m sad.

Tears of joy turn to glass bullets as both are a beautiful thing but still painful,
the glass bullets shatter into my brain and cause my to spiral downwards,
into a locked vault of memories of gut laughter and family game night.
the light to the game closet has long since burnt out,
hasn’t been touched in years.

I remember a time when family game night was a chore for us,
now I would do anything to have that again.
the four of us laughing our ***** off until bedtime,
mom saying “Jon, let them stay up a little longer.”
It kills me now that we don’t have that.

I miss the times where we would pile in the car and go to my sister’s piano recitals.
I hated them when I was younger, I thought they were boring.
listening to a few kids pluck away on a grand piano for hours on end just wasn’t exciting.
But if you listen carefully,
you hear that now,
I am plucking away at a piano. Motivation from something that I dreaded.
I loved listening to her play,
my sister.
Absolutely brilliant.
Brilliant and bring like the light in the game closet but like I said all lights burn out and stop working but all you do is wish that you can flip the switch and the room illuminates with the sound of a perfectly performed tune.

After every time she finished a piece, I swear my dad would say,
“you know, you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.”
After a while, it got old. But ever since I haven’t heard it.
His mouth stay closed like the game closet door and his tongue stay dormant like the burnt out light in the closet

Is it true that the mercury in the light bulbs can burn skin?
Burnt out and never to work again but mercury can still burn through your palm and seep into your veins and make your blood cells dormant and burnt out.
Or possibly just your mind.

Pianos to burnt out light bulbs and tears to glass bullets,
an alliance is formed.
A piano extinguishes tears, but glass bullets shatter the bulb.

Volcanoes erupt on both sides of my skull
Simultaneously spewing out lava,
it creates permanent craters in the mountainside created by flesh and bone,
It burns like a hot fire,
But it actually has meaning this time.
A watery clear lava erupting from my eyes causes more damage to my mind than pompeii,
wiping out villages of whatever self confidence I had left,
leaving only the scraps and ashes for me to work with until the next eruption,
at this point,
I don’t even bother building the villages back up.
They create more obstacles that I don’t have the patience for,
but it’s not like they were much to begin with.

While villages are ruined an empire gains their power.
An evil kingdom of what used to be a happy go lucky teenager,
now filled with depressed thoughts and hateful words only used upon himself,
who’s only skills are to talk others out of suicide where sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with his own self.
Trapped inside of a sad kingdom lives one happy soldier who wants to break out but isn’t strong enough to break down the walls and reveal the dark secrets to the world,
I think what he is missing is someone to understand him,
Join his rebellion against the sad army,
And defeat the war on depression.

A cold autumns night.
Trains and coyotes whine in the midst of dead silence.
Thoughts strewn about like leaves on the front lawn,
Dead and soon to be weathered away into thin air,

Happy thoughts weathered away in the wind,
gone with the breeze goes the last shred of sanity I had left.
Back to bullying and prejudice,
where the word “gay” gets slung around to anyone who likes to dress different.
Who does the school play instead of the football team,
who didn’t get the nerves to talk to the girl he likes because he knew she wont even listen,
but he’s tranquilized by her poison and that poison is the look she gave him in class today.

But all he hopes for is someone to give a **** about him.
For someone who will actually be there and care about him.
Life savers surround people with compassion and care,
but the preserver is just hung up to dry when his eyes are wet from dragging others out of the sea.

a boy whose never had a good thing to say about his own skin but a million things to say about anyone else’s.
He gets lost sometimes too and manages to find his way home,
like a blind puppy in the woods,
scared and alone in a scary dark world,
he walks and walks until he’s not bumping into trees any more and he feels the soft grass underneath his feet.
Only to find out he is walking into a trap dug by his own thoughts that capture him and drag him underneath the soil,
with the reaper dumping shovel load by shovel load of sand on top of him saying “Don’t worry, you’re home now”.

He cries with the trains and the coyotes on the cold autumn night.
Alone in the woods by himself with nothing but his thoughts,
a weapon of mass destruction to his own mind, and he doesn’t even know it.