My anxiety sits next to me & it is not small & I am not capable of bottling it up & putting it on shelf, it would shatter the jar & collapse the shelf & I have to live with the fact that it’s not something you can just put away & that’s it always present & it’s always there & that I have to ignore it & contradict it & have to deal with it actively trying to ruin every shred of ******* happiness I have felt & I think I felt & should I have felt it? & my anxiety isn’t some entity I can kick out my house & block the number of & I can put in little ear plugs shaped like pills & those little ear plugs will just dull out that one specific droning some of the time & then I’ll notice that the other thing next to me is telling me to **** myself & the earplugs don’t work on that (they amplify it & that’s so weird) & it makes some pretty compelling arguments & that’s really scary & so I take out my ear buds out so I can drown that out with my anxiety counteracting those arguments & sometimes they synch up & that’s even better & I’m just letting them chip away at me & I’m chipping away at me until there’s nothing left & what isn’t left? & in addition & also & including &

&

&

&

Continue, maintain, attempt to preserve something that cannot be kept while lamenting the fact it isn’t possible.

Spend your whole life obsessed with the mystery of death & have it be the final answer to your fruitless questions.

We’re all in this fever dream together, but everyone is in their individual beds asleep & that’s where they will always be.

Forever, until forever falls apart, because of all things, that has the shortest half-life.

I am not an empty vase for you to collect your dead flowers in.

You are your whole universe
Infinite & complex
With vast space for
What makes you to reside

Although your broadness can
Feel empty, too extensive & lonely
You are limitless, boundless,
Imperfectly organized chaos

Let yourself surround you,
     But never drown you.

Time creeps by here
Lazily waving goodbye, dear
And it slides agonizingly near
Before moving on to the next year

We ride down streets I don't know
With Spanish rock on the stereo

The street lamps are strange shades
I close my eyes as everything fades

I think of all the things I want to be
All the women I could see

You can call me before I go to sleep
And I'll listen to your voice through my dreams

I'm so angry at you
For what you do to me

As if you could ever see
How I've become so blurry

Trying & failing to meet
You're watery priorities

I'm black & white baby
And you're making my ink bleed

You were shining in the shade
As the dusk began to fade
I had to turn to you and say,

'Can it always be this way?'

The question never left my lips
And as the sun began to dip
Your eyes were completely lit

All I could do was photosynthesize you.

I am not built for love
I can't keep you warm
The fireplace in my chest
Is soaking wet

From the water that drips
Through my moonlit
Jagged holes

Beautiful to you
In some long forgotten way
You won't stay
In a rain stained skeleton

A visitor in a museum
I'll make a pretty photo
For you to look back on

When you go
All that will remain will be
Trampled leaves and high ceilings
A shadow in the trees

So many things have happened since I last spoke
I've been flickering in and out of vision
Like someone with a box of matches
On a windy day

Instead of attempting to let oxygen relieve me,
I'm suffocated by the incessant smoking
But burn as I may, I only can become
A pile of ashes

i sometimes sing myself to sleep so i can forget your soft voice murmuring

but it's never enough to erase your rough touch from my frail being

and as i lay awake and think about dreams that will suffocate me,

i can almost see the endless amount of breaths i wasted waiting for someone to love me.

My heart and soul are collapsible
My personality just a vessel
Hollow and dense

So fill me up
Till my veins are over flowing
And I'll dance alone in the darkness

It's three a.m. & I am not asleep

How could I close my eyes to nights like these?

When thunder rumbles my ribcage and breathes an ache into my chest

Where water droplets drip onto my thoughts & liquefy them

Lightning coursing through my shaking veins

Every strike echoing & electrifying my brain

Chilly breaths that creep along my skin, serenading it

My cigarette with every pull more luminant

I've circumvented myself into side effects of hopelessness

The sounds of rain stripping me softly into submissive erosion..

I oftentimes find myself compensating for my creation

As if merely existing is an extraordinarily enormous insult in itself

And my reason for living is to repeatedly apologize for breathing

Because the space I am apart of isn't and never will be where I am wanted

When I've left home &

the only thing left of me is holes

where all my pictures used to be

don't bother with pretending

like you care enough to be calling

The white pages, they taunt me
Haunt me
Empty canvas stripped of colour
Somehow duller
And I'm dimmer too for that
A fading glimmer
Each line shakes as I run away
Disappearing yesterdays
The heat hardens my fingertips
Faucets drip
Grasping at thin red strings
My aching heart
Cannot sing

I don't want to go to sleep

Weeks that stretch to the ends of forever

Because sleeping is weak

Never stopping weeping with the weather

And although I am that epitamy

Lost in the tangles in equal measures

I've been weak for weeks and weeks and weeks

I'd like to apologize for all the words that I have said.

And for how badly they unraveled when you touched them.

I miss you when nights are cold,
While the fire is breathing on my face,
And I can't stand to feel the trace
Of your skin on mine.
I feel so old.

To remove your fingertips,
Bury myself in the glowing embers,
Scorch any trace of you off
My blackened burns.
*I only wish.

Pt. 1: Before
To the filter, the only thing of me you'll have.


                                 Pt. 2: Over
                                 Whisper softly, I won't be one of your bad habits.


Pt. 3: After
I'm smoke, catch me in your hands, if you can.

We collided together as a cataclysmic collapse of black holes
                                                           ­                                   two days ago.

The strings of space around us stretched into small circles that
                             tucked us inside of them to hide.

Nestled away from nights and days, transcending the time that was
   beginning to slow.

Humanity & sanity fell apart but we spun on as the planets caved inward,
                                safely residing on the inside.

We were a blur of cosmic smoke and stars swirling at the center of
                                                                ­ this crumbling universe.

Bright burgundy fire built from desire washed over the silent sky
          radiating the shattered shards of our destruction.

Our blood vessels began to burst, our muscles torn from our
                                                            glow­ing bodies as we conversed.

We weaved ourselves in time, sunlight beaming from our eyes,
             as everything began to connect again.

Slots were filled with pieces that had not belonged
                                              shattered fragments placed along the outlines.

We became the blaze that lit up the center of the sky
                      filling it full of bright & warm color,
                               we were infinitely entwined as each other's lovers.

I don't stand idle very long.
If you disappear, you'll be gone.
Yet if I vanish, wait for me.
When I come back, you'll see,
It'll be like I never left at all.

I should practice what I preach.
It's different for me when I leave.
For you it is an ends to a mean.
Wired deep inside your physiology.

I go away to keep that sanity.

I will give you bruises on your body made of pleasure, not of pain.

With nothing but the stars to guide us on our empty ways.

We have been running through the woods like animals we truly are.

In the moon light I am tracing your violet skin that I marred.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

I've lived through roughly six thousand five hundred and seventy sunsets,

Yet nothing compares to the light you have shined upon my face in only two very long days.

I sometimes imagine my hands on your  

                           cool skin.

Hush, love, just let your warmth grow

                                                    from within.

Let your light seep out the corners of your

              almond eyes.

I ache to hear the cacophony of your lovely,

                                 begging sighs.

You make my laugh tumble like inefficient

      lovers dancing.

As you writhe and swirl, my heartstrings are for your

                                                         fingers grasping.

Listless lovers under the covers, turned away from one another

They were knotted together as soon as their heart strings brushed

The fire that was dancing on the sheets simmering to a small ember

Eyes cast to the walls while ardent fingers pick at their unkempt bind

Shadows that once crossed merrily cower in the corner of the room

They wait patiently for one to grab the scissors off the bedside table

And to cut the tangled strands.

Little cunning foxes jumping over bushes,
              slaughtering the sheep I have been counting in my sleep.

I hand-pick plump raspberries while I watch the foxes
              rip out their throats, all of our lips stained red & ******.

My hazy sepia toned dream shimmers as I sit in the grass,
              sipping on a glass of arsenic laced strawberry lemonade.

The cool sun hugs my skin and my collarbones
              that jut and cut my finger as I brush a hair off my shoulder.

I look down at the pin ***** absentmindedly and glance
              at my foxes as their black eyes gaze upon me wildly.

Magenta stained muzzles set in stone as they begin to roam
              surrounding the circumference of my skirt, snapping their jaws.

Ebony teeth tearing me like cloth, jerking my body like
              a frail little rag doll dancing with these fiendish, lovely beasts.

They leave me quietly, bones picked nearly clean, waiting now
               for flowers to bloom in my hollow chest and my empty eyes.

The youth are scratching up their throats
with paper & tobacco smokes.

Pinpricking holes in the fleshy, lonely parts
of their abandoned souls.

Rolling nature into little papers and trying
to slow the pleasure.

Drowning their sorrows in sickly sweets borrowed
from their parents' liquor cabinets.

Candy pills and paper squares dissolving,
highlighting the bright, evolving.

We came of age, we trade in our dreams for smoke, bottles, powder, needles, hallucinations, vibrations and green.

We saw others crumble, dead or alive, it spit all of us out eventually.

For those who lived, it's sad to see our fallen brethren as we walk towards adult mediocrity.

dew drop demons heavily falling off the leaves
                                                           then landing on my cheeks
                         where the absent of tears is present
electric strands twisting in the clouds
                                            making loud noises illuminating my face
                  and shaking loose the self knotted noose
the birds are calling to me,
                               chirping quietly watching with beady black eyes,
          responding to my cries and lamentations
as I fall to my knees, no longer running,
                                                                ­     ready  
                                                         ­      my wails turn into whimpers
as their wings began to whisper
                                  the raindrops start to quiver,
                                                              da­mpening my already worn skin
cuts from branches and thorns burn
                                             and my clothes are torn
I can hear them in the silence
                      as they take flight
             then gently land
in my hair and on my bare skin,
                                               their little claw like fingers grasp
I'm surrounded in sight by bright black wings
                                      circling my vision
                          they begin twisting into shapes I've never seen
               eradicating me
                                 and I go home,
                                                      painl­essly.

What do I do if I've used up all the open vacancies?

There are no more people to use as homes to hide in.

I have to go back into myself, my rooms, my hallways.

Where everything has gathered so much dust.

All curtains have stilled waiting for me to stir them.

I don't remember which doors lead where.

Or if they lead anywhere.

Are they now just ajar, vast caverns into the silence of space?

How much time as passed?

I've lost track.

I have to go back.

But I can't.

I'll sit outside of myself on the steps.

Try not to turn my eyes at the casting shadow

But everything is so,

so,

empty.

And I'm too scared to make it through the doorway.

I drafted my dreams out on a string from window to window

                                                         ­                                               Where they could see some sunshine

                So that they could feel the breeze that whipped the willow trees

                                                          ­I lay on the grass for hours hoping something would change

                                        Everything seemed so strange and sadly serene

My dreams used to be such a large part of me
  
                                                           ­                          I finished my cigarette as the wind writhed, breathing

                                    Pulled down the preliminary principles made of follies, folded them quietly

       Walked inside, adjusting my somber eyes to darker lights

                                                         ­       I open the closet door gently, hands full of my old fabrications

                             I keep lying to myself & trying to tell myself I'm
                                                             ­                                                   putting them away for
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                     *'safe-keeping'.

Bittersweet is the moon that dips below it's fate
Sinking into itself behind the horizon of the lake
Radiance of the sun shines momentarily on it's face
To light up the dark of it's visage, then it falls away

She smelled strongly of coffee and cigarettes.
Was that the last time that we met? I forget.
I dreamt about her breath, her beautiful face.
They still permeate every single membrane.
I wake, my fingers ache to lay on soft skin.
*But emptiness fills the air, and she isn't there.

I wish I were a cigarette
Perched in-between your perfect arched lips
Breathe me into you
I'll swirl in smoke tendrils around your face
And then I'll happily fade away
Until you light up another later
Being your bad habit isn't so bad
If that's what I am to you,
I'll take it

All the days are graying and I'm fraying like the sweater my grandfather gave me.

It still smells of cigars and old west, I'm ever quested and pressed with emotion.

I've become a faded flower fated to the pages of an old almanac in the back of the library.

Scents of worn novellas standing solitary on shelves and fragrant wisps of wisteria.

Alone to settle and mettle with dust and dialogues full of empty follies and triumphs.

A beautiful symbolism of death
The leaves are falling as they turn red
And your feet greet the pavement with vigor
Eyes reflecting the warm, fiery colors
You tuck yourself up in a tight knit sweater
Cheeks flushed and skin so alabaster
Sit on a bench to reflect and regret
It already begun & it's not over yet

When dancing skin illuminates your sin
I'll bask in the sight of your fair moonlight

When the warmth emanates your intakes and outakes
I'll fill my lungs with those sounds that I've found

When your hands are bands of muscles grasping me
I'll tantalize and tease, listen to you gasping 'please..'

But I want to drown in this, sink with me on this ship
I'll toss the sheets away, making white rippling waves

And we'll sail away, my dear, toss away hesitation and fear
As I'll lick the tender tendrils of your soul, just let go

So that I can hold triumph in the soft sounds of satisfied echoes
Gently tracing your skin, reminiscing the spots I've been kissing

As your eyes gently close, and the moonlight softens to a glow
I let you fade away into the night, but with me by your side

I need some love tonight.
But the mason jar up on my shelf,
It's all emptied out.
Crystal clear,
Like my tears.
God, why are you so emo?
So I smashed it up against the wall,
In a fit of rage.
Ha ha ha.

Head floating.
Thump thump
Thumping in your head.
Thump thump
You can feel every breath
Inhale
Dragging down your throat
Exhale
Each one a different texture
Inhale
Soft and cool, slipping down
Exhale
Climbing up, pushing out
Inhale
Your chest a vast cavern
Exhale
And every nerve attentive
Thump thump
Not being able to speak
Should I?
Nothing is important enough to say
Is it?
You are amplified and too focused
Am I?
Every thought decaying
Thump thump
You can feel the pieces falling
Thump thump
Making your heart quiver
Thump thump
And it goes on for hours
Thump thump
Which seems like years

Thump thump
And you can't hide your fears

Thump
They focus on you

Thump
And latch onto you

Thum
They love you

Thu
Don't let them go

Th
You need them

T
And they

.
need you.

Time goes by slow
When it's cold
My heart beats sleepily  
To snowflakes falling

                                  I bury my feet
                                  Feel myself sinking
                                  Ice coating my face
                                  Frozen in place

                                                          ­                                       Footstep falling
                                                         ­                                        Getting closer, calling me
                                                              ­                                   Go to look,
                                                           ­                                      But nothings moving

                    Now we're face to face
                    Peering inside of me
                    Radiating like the sun
                    Warming everything

                                                     ­  I find myself falling
                                                       Can you hear me calling?
                                                       Breathing smoke into my chest
                                                       You pull me back

                                                               ­                                                     Wrap me up in your wool coat
                                                            ­                                                        Arms around me
                                                              ­                                                      Pain is surrounding
                                                     ­                                                               Fr­ozen nightmarish dreams

But there you are
With a cup of hot tea
To dull the memories
Taking me back,
As I was supposed to be.