There’s a fire inside my chest,
I didn’t light.
An acid burn beneath my ribs,
That tightens night by night.

A sadness pooled behind my eyes,
Too deep to even cry.
A practiced silence choked by fear, Mutes the question: “why”?

Guilt curdles in my stomach like a rotten loaf of bread,
A hunger for an answer, that feeds itself instead.

Shame strangling me by the throat,
I’m gagging to inhale.
Desperate, shallow breaths I gasp,
Keep living, mustn’t fail.

My heart still beats but aches and bleeds with what I never say,
A scream, a sob, a whisper of the truth that’s held at bay.

It’s pushing up, it must come out,
The rage, the grief, the visceral shout.
But for the mess I would create,
I shut it down and lock the gate.

But I feel.
In every part of me,
The pain, the plea to be set free.
And someday, maybe, let it spill,
and trust that breaking just might heal.

It crawls beneath like a centipede under our bedspread
It stays there and tingles,
but after a while, we discover our skin is swollen.

It betrays our consciousness—
It comes like yeast into dough,
and we swell and rise,
we rise and swell,
until we eventually burst like a balloon.

Most times, it’s only then we realize we’ve swelled,
because it betrayed our awareness.
It’s pride, tingling our flesh,
causing a swell.
It comes unannounced,
and makes us welcome it.

It is left for us to kick it out,
trash it,
and pray to discern its arrival—
so it won’t cause us to swell and burst,
only to realize—after—
it has already caused a ruin.

I drew a world in charcoal ash
and stitched its lungs with wire.
Its sky was made of furnace glass,
its sea of teeth and fire.

I named the stars with broken tongues,
gave clocks a pulse, a face.
I laughed when saints forgot their names
and slit the throat of grace.

The children sing with gunpowder throats,
their lullabies all burn.
They don’t remember gentle things—
they only twist and turn.

I built this house of haunted bone,
each room a prayer undone.
The doors all lead to sharpened thoughts.
The mirrors flee the sun.

And every soul, a spinning blade
that dances for the wall—
I feed them what they think they want,
then watch them learn to crawl.

They bleed in time, they beg in rhyme,
they scream in violet hues.
They ask me for a different dream,
but I don’t dream to lose.

I am the hush between the cuts,
the crack inside the grin.
And every time the world resets,
I wind the dark again.

So paint your faces, scream your truths,
and wear your sins with pride.
You think this ends when morning comes
but I decide the tide.

I try hard to be like him.
Look identical with him,
Like an identical twin.
The way he would speak,
I wish to speak.
The way he would act,
I too want to do,
To be unmistakably in character.

I wish the brush of my thoughts would paint the picture he would,
To myself, and when I think of him or her,
I wish to be like him.
In words and deeds,
I wish to have his character,
copy and paste.

Have I achieved it?
I would say no.
So I would keep practicing his ways until I am like him in character,
As the words pop out,
As the thoughts pop in,
As the deeds sway out.

I want to be like Jesus,
Growing each day like himself.

hey mister,
didn’t I see you
on the telly
last night?

well you look
like him,
if you don’t mind
me saying

hey mister,
what d’yer wanna go
around pretending
to be him for      ..

i had a friend who was just like me
we convinced each other we weren't hungry
she taught me how to throw up
i taught her how to be loved
i was her one and only
stayed up all night just to keep her company
in the end, we could've made each other heal
and i clung to the idea that what we had was real
but nobody understood.
when they found out, there was screaming
yelling, and long lectures late into the night
they used her as a lesson
a way to show me i'm "not like that"
a way to convince me i'm "not that bad"
"not that sick"
"not that twisted"

last i heard, lisa is under the ground somewhere
though whether it was by drugs or a knife, i don't know
i wonder if she got a funeral
i wonder if anyone cried

in my solitude
relentlessly I age
time tick tocks
slowly turn the page

not too good at friendship
all she is is rage
Mr. Johnny Cash
Break My Rusty Cage