How naive of me to think
Fire and water could meet
And neither extinguish or evaporate
How could I have thought
More often than not
Your flames as friendly fire?
How could you think
Over the edge on the brink
My rain as merely showers?
We were both forces of nature
That should never be played with
One which swallows forests
And one which erodes the mountains
Both to blame for a new beginning
Both to blame for the old endings
We could never be friends
and we tried to be lovers
How stupid we are to play with eachother
Beware of the showers
Beware of the flames
Neutralization was never the game.

To love is so much more
Than this idea of perfect contentness
Love is vulnerability
It is giving someone the key
To your precious dark world
It is making room
In the empty part
Of a special heart
That opens only on occasion
Love is letting go of the strings
To your favorite marionette.
No longer the puppet master
Of your emotions
With the warmth and joy
Comes the wretched feeling of it being gone
And yet, we dip ourselves into the deep
Abyss of it anyways.

have you ever felt
lost
in a deadly abyss of
thought?

it's emotionally
exhaustive
and socially
caustic
to be caught
thinking
thoughts
instead of
singing
songs.

with those
disturbing thoughts
come a lot of
perturbing feelings

and if you've ever
been unable
to explain or
detain
one of those feelings
just know that
you are not
alone.

not all of us can
assign a name
to an emotion
however benign
not all of us are so
well acquainted
with our own minds
that we can picture
the face in our brains
staring us down

but i'm daring you
the next time you
cannot justify
cannot simplify
or expedite
a feeling down
to a name
just don't
even
try.

place your finger
over that emotion
the way you would barre
your guitar strings
heart strings on
the second fret

gently
gently
run your other
hand down over
the sound hole
located somewhere
between your
stomach and
sorely neglected
central nervous system
and then pull
it back up
to play the
melody of your
most knotted
spinal chord
not too fast
not too loud

or if you find
it easier to see
the white notes laid out
unroll the shiny top
over your backbone
and press down
softly
softly
bending your fingers up
and down each
key of vertebrate
in an ascending or
descending scale
the length of which
depends upon
how tall you are.

slowly
slowly
forget
about
names
faces
sleepless nights
or how your insecurity
is still on par with
you at fourteen
when you first tried
to exploit it into music
but now you've found it best
just to tuck it behind your ears.

and learn
the cadence of
that feeling
explore each
note and tone
and play with
how it fits into
a song
surrounded by
other sounds.

you may never
play it again
you may play it
every day
for the rest of
your life

but all that is
irrelevant
in light of this
moment
a few seconds of
stilted peace and quiet.

listen to your
feelings
until your fingers
bleed
out the suppressed
emotions
society expects you
to ignore

play them like
you were in
an orchestra
and this was the
moment
of your solo

but don't
name
anything
unless you're
calling it cadd9
gsus4
em
or a7

and never
find yourself
or your
heart strings
afraid
of f#m
or even the darkest of
spinal chords
for i know that
everyone has cried
alone in the
dead of night
over the sound of
b flat.

first i would take the
grassy fields that
touch the blue

and i would roll
them up
like when i was

a child helping
put away the
tape-lined carpet.

next i would skim the
clouds off the milky
backdrop of your mind

and i would stir the
sunset from straight
red plains

into a hazy
blur in the
eastern sky.

and finally i would tightly
wrap the stars in place with
a wire jewelry kit

make sure the elastic thread
around the moon was
glued and secure

flip some hidden celestial
switch and watch it
glow against cool skin.*

and i would
do all of this
for you.

release your fingernails
from the
firmly indented
crescent moons in your
clammy palms

breathe in
through your nose
counting to seven
exhale out
through your mouth
counting to eleven
and feel yourself
inflate and deflate
as if you were some kind
of misused balloon

take down
one of the
coat hangers that
you have strung
along your
rib cage

and clothe
yourself in the
musty disguise of
who you had
forgotten you
ever were

struggle
against the tickling
feeling in the
back of your mind
that nobody really
wants you

nobody
really
wants
you

throw it to the ground
and stomp on it
as it squirms
under the worn-off
rubber tread of your
sneakers

nobody
really
wants
you

scream at it
until your own
ears make a distinctive
popping sound

nobody
really
wants
you

the darkness
is closing in
one more day
is one too many

nobody
really
wants
you

nobody
really
wants
you

bre­athe in
through your nose
counting to seven
exhale out
through your mouth
counting to eleven
and feel yourself
inflate and deflate
as if you were a balloon
and this were your last day

give yourself
until
september

september

september

*nobody
rea­lly
wants
you