The world around me slows to a crawl,
No one around me knows me at all.
I look over the crowd of familiar faces,
From various times and different places.
They laugh and they play, one and another,
All with secret pains, I’m just like the others.

Don’t cry,
our memories
are only one
reality.

©Ben Ditmars 2014

when people ask me if we like eachother
I reply back and say
"no we're just friends"
but I tend to think different because the other night:
when you were drunk,
you told me how you thought my laugh was perfect
and that whenever I do
it makes you smile
and how my smile lights up any room I walk into
when you were drunk,
you told me how you loved my eyes
and how they change from brown to green
you got mad at your friend who tried talking to me
and kept saying to him
"No she's mine"
People say that the truth comes out when you're drunk
I just wish you could say these things sober.
Whenever I bring up another boy,
you pretend like you don't care
but I can tell by the way your tone changes
and how you look at me like I've said the worst possible thing I could.
I don't think you realize
that if you said you wanted to be with me
I would drop anyone for you
but then I remember
"we're just friends"

My poetry is not for you.
My heart is.
My words belong to the wind.
Emotions cause this volcano to explode.
A release of rhythm, of prose
Of joys and of pains
Of memories of today.

You are a muse.
That's amusing.
A tempest of a temptress,
Your touch sings maladies on my soul.
A dirge of crystal tears
Reflecting lost hope
Lost love.

This poem is not for you.
Yours is a smile that lightens
This burdensome heathen.
Whilst your scorn leaves new scars
Over old,
Like a worn patchwork cloak,
That no wizard ever wore
But this one dons with the certainty
Of the pious
And the loved.

They tell me I should draw my feelings
As a means of coping.
They do not realize
How scared I am
Of what my hand may scribble.
My art would be too dark
As I still have thoughts of relapse
And worse.
If I drew
They would send me to the hospital
Once again.
But why?
I have not acted on these impulses.
The drawings would show
The demons that lurk inside of me.