Summer slips away
while I hide in my room
wasting time falling down
wondering if I’ll ever share
this wealth of love
I hoard on my mound
with someone besides myself:
a tragedy, curled up on the rug,
jaded by the compassion
that has been given up
and I can't get enough

I pinch in further to zoom
on the microcosm of my life
and see that it’s cropped into a frame
without resolve or anyone to blame
alone with the blinds drawn
frozen in a still shot
where I'm hiding from the moon
and it has me believing that
I might die alone
from lack of sleep
as I howl and brood

Morning breaks through
requesting me with warmth
and calling out to
wake me before noon.
I hear but don't listen,
instead I'll bask in this gloom,
listless

That surely must produce
some worthwhile art in the end
even if something will always
feel like it's missing

Sink into the void I’ve found
that appears as pointless
and you’ll find a requite of safety,
steady your breathing

Vacate needless self-help,
not all flaws require examination
it is sensible to be empty,
steady your breathing

When trauma is
held onto as a lifeline
we cling to its identity,
halting time in its tracks
helplessly watching
as our essence begins to rot
in a cell that’s only condemning,
steady your breathing

Find comfort through experience,
seek out the universal center
and its unaffected infinity,
steady your breathing

Nature has a heartbeat
we can synchronize with
by accepting her relentless mortality,
steady your breathing

Death is inevitable, a beautiful mess
it is the enemy yet also a friend
depression is the cause,
sufferance is the effect
and reminders of transience
are the master of anxiety,
steady your breathing

There is immortal freedom hidden
outside of tunnel vision
compelling us with a symphonic tune
to believe in life
and find acceptance in death,
to sing along with this chorus of
left and right /
beginning and end
where it then gives way to a verse
of chaos and symmetry /
repent and forgiving,
steady your breathing

Sounds perfecting the mirage
stuck in our peripheral
of duality in tonal form
so we can understand that true wealth
is noticing the difference
between what we believe
and what is reality,
steady your breathing

What if all the chemicals and screens
disappeared from the earth,
would you crawl out of your skin
or rise to the task?
it is said that there is no cure
because answers thrive only in silence
when one learns how to ask

Instead we accelerate
to consume noise
through wild fields of dopamine,
clawing with no poise
we exploit weakness for personal gain
until sincerity bleeds from the picture
and there’s no room left in frame
for an honest work of art
because we’d rather exhaust the canvas
with moments devoid of heart

Humility is a difficult lesson
most live in reverie
as hollow, floating silhouettes
desperate to equate value
with material progress
until one of two options remain:
convene with the shaking breaths
or envision a hapless fate

Darkness, it looms
pleading to steer our attention
to do nothing and sit with grace
showing a natural way
to create harmony while sifting
through time and space,
yet we continue to sit upon ivory towers
ignoring balance that only succeeds
with the fusion of light,
because in darkness
is the beginning of all life

The Starbucks was torn down
where my fantasies of us
were set apart from
tangibles that shattered
my existence;
its been five years since then
and I never wrote a metaphor
better to describe the mark
that was left on that day
or in the inevitability that
all things must change

Because I once painted
a dark haired girl
the color of my world
it was art on its way to self-demise
overshadowed by the comfort of
those nights that we would hide
blending into our chameleon moonlight,
she left me with many questions
but the answer to only one:
becoming empty enough to know
how not to love

This lesson was carved into the stone
of that suburban parking lot,
a reflection of her succinct goodbye
that collided with the surface of
every whisk to breakfast and sunshine
she rejected in my room,
engulfing me in combusted lies
mixed with the scent of coffee
and fleeting perfume

I was left smoldering on concrete
with the opus of an imbalanced soul
that reduced me to nothing inside
except reluctant aches that
ravished in our severed ties,
and all I could do was sit there
basking in the rays of the only time
we ever shared morning light

I've trodded this entire state
looking for simplicity
and a warm fireplace
but modern life is arduous
and it delays

Its forgotten that
community blooms where
we sow patience,
fear only ceases when we embrace it

So to seek outward is a fool's errand,
and here I am, a fool like the rest,
thinking about one foot forward
and blaming sorrow on lack of progress
when peace resides in each moment
where we finally resist
the push to be more than a miracle
that shouldn't even exist

If that isn't enough
then nothing ever will be
I've spent my life giving up everything
and the more I let go, the more it hurts,
but at the same time, there is growth,
and in wake of this understanding
was an emptiness that
made me feel whole:

An obvious sign that there is
still nothing to be afraid of
in the pull of the unknown

Within every burned forest
lies a newly sprouting seed,
irreparable on the surface
is a cycle that is forgiving,
albeit wild and relentless
it moves in ways that cannot
be comprehended

In the essence of
a bleak rain danced sky
is life striving to renew;
nature needs no hand
from humans to thrive,
the answer to all of our squirming
is to simply re-align

I am consumed by
negative spaces,
floating in between
death and the void,
looking for reason
that won't come
and there is no use
in running from darkness
when it's what brought us
here at birth
and the only thing
we part with in the dirt

If the way out is through,
why do they stay and
mock the despair
behind my eyelids?
They laugh as I search
for purpose that doesn't exist
in lieu of aliens that I swear are real
when reality has always been
my achilles heel

It's a dance of avoiding gravity
until inevitably strikes a heavy blow
that life is random circumstance
siphoning into black holes,
a collection of moments
that we will forget to remember,
but how does one find peace
without answers?

Daylight starts peeking in
to see if I'm okay,
I disguise the sentiment
as irrelevant
when I could really use a break
from this carousel of fear
that only wants me to want more
as if I am owed a life
that is somehow past due,
checked out by someone
who was less afraid
to step outside of their room

Sunlight omits more concern
over reckless abandonment
as it greets my pacing force,
but there is no stopping
what was designed without brakes,
carried by all the love and hate
that glorifies impulse to
sift through emptiness-
a sacrifice to this blank screen
that consumes me with dread
over a deathless dream
stuck inside my head