but i am the one thing you could stand to lose

when the wind falls back
dies down
the fire burns brighter
the flames sting again
but burning
is better than darkness
the inferno
is favorable over the abyss

i feel so small
when i'm on my own,
when i'm falling apart,
when i'm melting down.
it's terrible.                                i feel so small
                                                   when i'm with you,
                                                   when you hold me together,
                                                   when i melt into your arms.
                                                   it's wonderful.

"see? no cuts."
please don't look into my eyes.
there's nothing on my wrists
but you never check my thighs.
my skin is like a canvas
and i just can't help myself
my razors are my paintbrushes
"no, i don't need help."
*i love all of my paintings
i love the way it feels
when porcelain skin
is met with stainless steel

why am i so proud of these stupid cuts?
why am i so ashamed of these stupid cuts?
they don't mean anything.
i guess they used too.
now they're just there.
now all they mean is i have to wear long sleeves.

you can't decide who you are
you can't tell people how you feel
you can't motivate yourself to do ****
you cant stop destroying yourself
you can't see the good in things
you can't make your words sound nice
you can't do anything
and it's all your fault

i'm becoming less interesting.
the world is noticing
& so are you.

why do you wait until i've fallen
to try to hold me up?
why to you wait until i'm broken
to try to hold me together?
why do you only meet my eyes
when they're swollen and red?
is that when i'm worth noticing,
when my heart is all but dead?

that cat came back again
i had almost forgotten about him
he scratched me up again

there's no such thing as cool kids
no one really knows what's right
diamonds are just rocks
dark is just absence of light
love cannot be proven
wars are never really won
people are just atoms
just like lilies, stones, and suns.

looking straight up
scared to look down
scared to slip
and fall
off the solid ground

when dead becomes the new normal
life starts to feel wrong.
you feel weaker every time
someone calls you strong.
am i dead to you
like you're dead to the world?
did you become my poison
or were you killing me all along?

nothing could take the pain away
so nothing became my relief
nothing became my morphine
of all of my vices
nothing had the strongest grip
sweet sweet nothing

i didn't choose to love
but love decided to haunt me.
       love decided to taunt me
                                torture me
with what i didn't want before
                 what i now long for
                                      but can never have.

you seem to underestimate
the amount of hurt
the amount of hate
the amount of sorrow
that it takes
to hold up a razor
a lighter
to skin
to turn against instinct
self-preservation
in favor of pain
self-harm

You can't live like this
You can't love like this
In bursts...
They'll think you're dead
They'll bury you
Before your heart beats again

she didn't know how to read
but she loved to look
at page after page
of book after book
each letter was so beautiful
she decided to teach herself to read
so she could learn what each beautiful word meant
she went back to her books
after she learned every letter
but she discovered
that if you knew what those words meant
they weren't so pretty anymore.

i had never been the one to love more.
i had always just been picked up,
                                        swept along.
                                                            and i liked it that way.
now i'm the one doing the sweeping.
     not sweeping anyone along, though.
            sweeping everything under the rug.
   love, heartbreak, tears, aching, anger, loneliness, longing...

she sensed a venom in her blood
slowly killing her heartbeat.
she knew she had to fix it.
she thought that the only way
to rid her flesh of this toxin
was to cut it out.
she tried.
she failed.
she learned to live with poisoned blood
and a dead heart.

hindsight is 20/20..
you know that now.
you didn't have to wait though.
from the outside it was obvious
how reckless you were being.
but you were blind.
you told me to tell you next time,
but will you ever listen?

is it my fault that you left?
did you leave because you felt like it?
because i wasn't enough?
because you wanted to hurt me?
because you needed someone else?
or were you never there to begin with?

creatures made of skin and bone
were meant for wars of sticks and stones
when flesh is forced into the deep
it's soul retreats and falls asleep
and hides from what it cannot believe
from wars of fire and sky and sea
i wasn't meant to walk this path
will you face the darkness' wrath
for me?

hand in hand you stood.
eyes to eyes you stared.
soul to soul you stopped.
for only a moment.
that's when you looked.
that's when you saw.
hidden behind her eyes,
those bright shades
seemed so dark.
without moving,
you leaned forward,
you stepped inside her eyes
to see what you could find.
through the gates,
into her mind,
and what a mind it was.
it went on and on and on,
from what you could tell.
it was filled with wonders
that you couldn't see.
this endless land behind her eyes
did not have
a single ray of light.

since then, whenever you could,
you would reach into her eyes
and fumble in the darkness of her mind,
grasping blindly
for a light switch.

i cut and paste line after line
from your book of tragedies
to patch up broken phrases
in my broken poetry

i carve out line after line
out of each of your words
while stones may break these bones
words can never *hurt

we exchanged the ringing in each others ears
wrote empty vows deep in each others hearts
the world spun faster, faster until it disappeared
"until december do us part"
"until december do us part"

two pairs of eyes
exchanging
static shocks
tiny sparks

  shaking hands
  aching heads
  cease to matter
  anymore

    pinpricks
    painless pain
    in skin
    in blood

      your heat is
      all that matters
      you're here
      i'm glad

there's  something
something in the stars
something in the trees
something in the oceans
something out there
out there among the mountains
out there among the rivers
out there among the canyons
something within me
within my bones
within my blood
within my soul
is it you?

i'm trapped between life and death and uncertainty
my head always feels like i'm stuck hanging upside down
a quantum dream in which anything is everything and nothing
reality seems to have been all but unwound
i'm coughing up smoke as i drown

the TV screen static
is burned to the insides
of my eyelids and now that is
all i see when i close my eyes

constantly dreaming,
but never asleep
it feels like i'm floating
but i'm sinking deeper and deeper
into my mind
leaving behind
all that i used to call real

countless epiphanies met in between train tracks
entropy and insanity conspiring to wear me down
walls full of polaroids and bottles of prozac
crying out for help in the middle of a silent town
i'm coughing up smoke as i drown

the microphone feedback
is stuck in my ears
when the sky is jet black
the noise refuses to disappear

constantly dreaming,
but never asleep
it feels like i'm floating
but i'm sinking deeper and deeper
into my mind
leaving behind
all that i used to call real

concertos played on
nothing but black keys
incandescent light bulbs
dangling from trees
i'll write about this wonderland
if i ever make it home

**i'm leaving behind
all that i used to call real

sometimes little things
can be big things
wearing a short sleeved shirt
can be a big thing

when the first fire started to die,
man did not know how to save it.
if they touched it it burned them,
so it's heat and it's light
faded away.

i feel the way that dying flame felt:
helpless,
flickering out of existence
those around powerless to save me
without being burned.

love is easy to fake,
easy to confuse with adrenaline
you had no heart to break,
and i was just a slave to serotonin.
fluorescent street lights
made your eyes shine so bright.
for once in my life
i wasn't terrified of the night.

the world looks different
not better
not worse

when you open your eyes wide
and stop trying to piece together
your life between eyelashes

it's not good
it's not bad
it's just real


for the first time i can see you
the way you are
i can see what i tried to hide from myself

i was scared
now i know
you look...
different

planets will spin in circles,
waves will crash upon rocks,
lights will cross the sky,
with or without me.

rain will fall and vapor will rise,
stars will collapse and explode,
evergreens will live and die,
with or without me.

worlds will turn,
matter will remain,
life will go on,
with or without me.

when every white rose
starts to bleed red
sane becomes a bore
the nonsensical feels right
the cheshire grin at night
isn't alarming anymore

when mercury becomes
one with your blood
the hatter makes more sense
broken watches seem exact
fairy tales become fact
your mind is your only defense

when every head case
every basket case
makes you feel safe
maybe it's time to stop
pretending to belong
in the world of the sane

drawing is easy when you're tracing
tracing over lines from long ago
lines from different mediums
different circumstances
different art
tracing over old lines
with new methods
is a new form of art

there are things
i'm unable to escape
there are things
i love and despise
and the feeling is mutual
there are things
i feel guilty about
and wrong without
there are things
that feed on sorrow
and despair would be
their victory feast

and then there are things
that are all of the above
and those things
are one of two things:
addictions
afflictions
and sometimes
when lines in sand
are worn down by wind
when watercolors
run together
when one thing
is a bit too close to the other
something is both

now can anyone
who's seen what i've seen
tell me the difference
between
an addiction
and
an affliction?

quitters never win
winners never quit
but if you stay in the game you lose
so we're all quitters
rats
abandoning a sinking ship

i you're planning
to hold your breath
until you get
what you want
then take a deep breath
'cause your lungs
won't fill again

row
upon row
upon row
of books
books with glossy covers
books with broken spines
books with smudged ink
books with missing pages
some have been opened only once
some are too tedious to bother with
some have been forgotten in corners
some are constantly reread
and those ones always seem to be
the ones filled with pain and regret
for some reason they're irresistible
but they hurt to read
so why are those the ones
that are opened the most?

"so how do you feel?"
"fine."
"so what do you feel?"
"nothing."

breathe in
breathe out
inhale doses of cold
exhale pieces of soul
watch
as soul blends
with translucent fog
becomes one
with the water
hanging in the air

there is no more night
there is no more day
there is nothing
but misty grey
and breathing in
and breathing out
and becoming one
with the water
hanging in the air

to drift through the cold
suspended alongside
water molecules
slowly breathing away
soul
slowly sinking into
oblivion
to simply breathe in
and to simply breathe out
and to call this...

grounding?

staring
at a plain white ceiling
eyes burning
hands frozen
not moving
not blinking
not thinking.
what's the point?
4:06 AM
why sleep?
why do anything
but stare
at a plain white ceiling?