Pass the time
Pass the time
Pass the time

Think of what is not killing you
Let it seep into your skin and let it fill your lungs

Crack your brittle knuckles and pop your achey joints
This is only the beginning
Tie a noose around a tree and let the branch break, just to let yourself know that nature is keeping you alive for a reason

Now think of what is killing you
Let it fill and spill over and under your thoughts
Let it whisper soft meaningless nothings into your ears
Flirt with the idea of crushing a caterpillar just before it blossoms into a butterfly
Let yourself realize that there is beauty in the innocent
Learn that corruption is at every street corner, just begging and pleading for your attention

Pass the time
Pass the time
Pass the time

Give yourself to the wrongdoers
Let your blood bleed dark red onto your favorite t-shirt
Feel knowledgeable and learn consistently
Walk gracefully and fight viciously

There is no bliss in ignorance, just like there is no good in evil
Time is as valuable as diamond
Do not shied yourself from its shine and do not hide in its shadow

When the next opportunity comes, do not pass it
Do not pass the time and do not let it escape you
Breathe in air and exhale fire
Watch the clock like it is your favorite movie, it may just surprise you

This script has been written a hundred times over, and much like the rain, it will show itself less before it comes back again,
And sometimes it is heavy, sometimes it is soft,
It will kiss your forehead to sleep and then wake you up in the morning, sometimes like it is begging at your window for some kind of help, other times like it is just sitting on your windowsill, staring at you with bright eyes and a lust for washing away whatever has hurt you

I sit at this desk with flowers and candles and a whole hearse worth of broken words to express over a keyboard,
And the script will be a masterpiece until it isn’t anymore

And I will pick out the actors and actresses using the names of hearts I am not invited into anymore,
And I will play out the script on the stage I call my bedroom floor,
Dance around until the early morning with or without the memories of emotions I do or don’t feel anymore towards these people

And what a curse it is here,
Having writer’s block at this keyboard because I’ve drowned out the words for the script with the rain of someone else’s clouds,
No umbrellas to catch whatever comes falling from the sky,
just drops of rain on my glasses and soaked button ups

And by the time my clothes are dried and my glasses are wiped clean,
When I look back at my keyboard and then the screen,
The script is back to the first sentence I started with, and it has been like this a hundred times over now

When I finally finish this script, what will stop the rain from loving it too much?

Come to me when you're ready, I've been waiting so anxiously,
In this moment I'm nothing, but in this moment you feel like everything,
I stayed up until the sun pushed away the moon, I've been waiting so patiently,
I'm so ******* sick and I can't take a breath without coughing, but I can't blame it on you, you just take so much of my breath away, effortlessly,
I do this **** to myself purposely but I don't have a purpose, not for you, and definitely not for me,
I do all of this subconsciously, I'm a wreck, a ******* waste, but I'm trying my best, please come back to me,
I'll get better, for the both of us, I promise, I'll stop everything

I don't know what makes me more bitter, the fact that I'll never be able to get over it or the fact that I'll never get any ******* closure,
Or maybe I'm just bitter because of the way you lead me on, like you were something so ******* special, something not to be stepped on,
But I guess my body is a doormat, only a stepping stone for you in hopes you'll be able to find a home,
You'll never find yourself in anyone else so stop ******* trying, and for god's sake, just tell me you're going to hurt me next time so at least I'll be warned

I guess heartbreakers like you don't need a trigger warning,
I know exactly what I'm getting myself into, I know I'll do it to myself to find some kind of solace but I know you won't say goodbye in the morning and everything about it will be so ******* hurtful,
But I'll do it anyways, and knowingly, I'll grab a hold of you and pull your heartstrings just to hear the music and makeup some kind of false love to make all of this feel like it's purposeful,
But I know there's no purpose to this at all,
I'll break my own heart over this just to keep learning how to build stronger walls,
And I hate myself for that,
I hate that I feel so ******* small,
I hate this and I hate myself but I can't find anything in me that hates you and that's what hurts most of all,
You'll never be there for me but you keep coming back because you know I can't just watch you fall

*******, I don't need you, I just need cigarettes and alcohol and poetry and loud music and good friends and genuine lovers who'll take care of me until the end,
And I can't wait until I can fall asleep again,
It's 3 in the morning and I can't sleep and that's your fault,
So I'm writing this ****** poem for you while my mind feels gray and dull hoping that everything in my body just turns numb

I'm sorry I wasn't enough, but I'm not sorry about this poem,
I just hope these other people can love you like you want them to,
Just know that I won't be here when you come back, but I'd love to see it when it happens, I bet you're even more beautiful when you crawl

I guess this is what you get for breaking a poet's heart

I used you,
I used you for the inspiration to write this and I'm not sorry,
I broke your heart over mine and your tears became the ink to this pen and I do not feel bad about it, any of it

You were close to the edge and I pushed you, I pushed all of you,
I knew you weren't ready but I pushed you so I could catch you and become the hero, besides, there's gotta be a hero in all of this, right?
A real ****** nice guy,
A miserable excuse for a lover,
Don't touch her, she's mine, all mine,
And I watched her knees bend until they hit the pavement,
Execution for drowning in heartbreak's debt, you asked for this, you know that, right?

I saw your breath and I breathed it in, it spoke to my head in twists and bends,
There's just something here that I need to get rid, of,
Mice and Men, I was Lennie and you were George, we all know how this ends,
You were always so smart but there were cracks in your skin and I was so stupid from your love but I felt strong enough to make all of your wounds mend

When I get to Heaven I wonder if I'll see any of my friends,
Or if Heaven in and of itself is a sin,
I'll never know because as long as you knew me, I made you my religion and I prayed every single night to you, it's only natural that you left, just like Jesus did,
But you never died for any of this,
You just kicked baggage into my chest like mud onto my shoes and now I'll never be able to walk clean again,

I can't seem to get enough of your love, and,
At this point I'm swallowing your pills by the dozen,
I can't wait to wrap this up in a big bag and nail it in a coffin,
I'm sorry if I was a mistake then, but you have my body rocking and it's going a million miles an hour in circles now, it's coming loose at it's ends

I have a lot of friends who lost a lot of friends to ******, Jesus Christ, what are you trying to prove? That I'm still not over you? I don't wanna think about you but thinking about you is just what I do and I can't stop myself, even if I wanted to

Somewhere between genuine ignorance and outright blissfulness, we're either getting there or we're suffering, so what's the point anyway?

This is a bad decision but I ******* love suffering more than anything so you really know I'm not going to stop any of this any time soon and I hope you feel the same because at this point I'd be absolutely nothing without you and I ******* hate myself for that more than any of you could ever understand

But I can't stop, so I won't

I saw you in my reflection once. You were yellow in the golden hour and you shined like you were baptized in glitter, and I could’ve sworn right then and there that time stood still. Every clock in the house stopped at once, and I knew that meant you were something born out of everything I find perfect in this world. I stuck my hand out and offered to pull you through, but let’s be honest, if something is perfect, we should keep it right where it is. But it never works like that. Someone gets selfish. Someone starts a fire that they can’t put out, lights a match that shouldn’t be lit, dowses every crack in the concrete with alcohol. We didn’t care how dangerous we were, we just wanted to say we felt something. We wanted to dance. So we danced, and danced, and danced until our sweat felt like rain clouds. Like rain clouds. Like rain clouds. Drip drop onto our hands and knees and pray all night like God was listening. Like it meant something. Like we’d both not care in the morning when the war was over, but we had to go and pick sides. We were so young then, when we thought that actions spoke louder than words and we took each other’s hands and looked into the mirror, that morning, and kissed each other on the cheek. How innocent. How sweet and beautiful. And innocent.

We get it while we can
If sunrises and exhaustion have taught me anything, it's that we need take risks when they present themselves, and that we need not miss chances when they are given to us, we are infinite

A raging river sharing its company with those who need to get everything off of their chests, cigarettes to mask the inner conflict of it all, good friends and good literature, we are infinite

Broken hearts mended by perfect symmetry, hands shaking with the uneasy excitement of what to expect next
The moon kisses us by showing us the stars on a breezy night, missed flights to god only knows where, the answers written on the arms and legs of the ones who find faith in everything, we are infinite

Riding home with your comrade, thanking the sky for sharing its beauty of a breathtaking sunrise, promising that everything can be okay again, and that everything isn't always bad all the time

If nothing else, this alone is worth living for
We will go where the road takes us, and we will find peace in the destruction of everything around us
When everything else is hell, this, right here, right now, is heaven

We are infinite

I don't want to slip back into it

I want to wake up early,
I want to eat fruit for breakfast,
I want to turn on the Beatles and run until I feel my legs burn

I don't want to tell my doctor that I smoke cigarettes

I want to pick flowers without being jealous of their beauty,
I want to smile and mean it,
I want to socialize,
I want to tell my crush that I think she's cute and finally take her out on that coffee date

I don't want to tell my mother that her God is not my God

I want to have lunch with my grandparents,
I want to stop my mother's crying,
I want to be familiar with happiness, my god, I want to be familiar with happiness

I don't want to run into my old friends and have them realize that I never grew up,
I don't want feel uncomfortable,
I don't want to beat myself up,

I want to make amends with existence,
I want to befriend Jesus,
I want to walk the field and feel accepted by every flower,
I want to walk by and no longer try to rob them of their beauty

I want to have good habits

Welcome to the parade
Don't get it twisted
This is a sick sad establishment

I greeted Death with a smile and all I got in return was wishful thinking and eternal life
At least that's what he wanted me to believe
In reality, realism never looked so ugly
I've watched all of those around me die
And this is all taking so long, I'd rather watch paint dry

My contract is irreversible
My body stopped growing
A solar eclipse is the last thing I want to see
Satisfaction has become dissatisfaction
The flowers on my porch stopped blooming
All of this has only made me see

The big man in charge is a ******* and not even a forest fire could burn my hopes and dreams
I am eternal
I will live forever
I will makes the most of this
Whether you want me to or not
I will be here forever and there is nothing that can stop me

I will drink soda before going to bed
I will sleep with the lights on
I will have the craziest dreams

I will wake up thankful
I will be kind
I will be thoughtful
I will make sure no one ever knows
I will be the most beautiful

Don't get me wrong, death is beautiful
But everything beautiful must die eventually

I'm drinking
I'm so sorry
I'm smoking a cigarette
I'm so sorry
I hate you
I'm so sorry
Everything is blurry and my heart is aching for you
I finished my last cigarette and I want another
I told myself I'd quit but I also told myself I'd forget about you and look how that's going

I'm sitting in my bathtub and
I'm scrubbing until you come off of my skin
This is the third day sitting in this tub thus far and I'm still showing no sign of getting rid of the thought of you
No amount of alcohol will get your taste out of my mouth and
No amount of smoke will get your air out of my lungs
You make me feel so *****
My skin will always crawl with yours still on it

They weren't wrong when they said you'd always be a part of me
What will be, will be, and I'm having a hard time realizing that
I don't want to just live with it
I don't want to just accept the fact that someone so disgusting broke me in two and I don't even have enough strength to glue myself back together

It's been three years since
I still remember your breath like it was my own
It smelled of smoke and bad decisions
Who knew you'd teach me to follow after your footsteps
I guess this is what growing up is supposed to be about
I never thought I'd grow up without you by my side
I guess I am still growing up with you, considering you'll never leave my head
I just never pictured it to be this way
Maybe it was for the better, or maybe the worse
Either way I can't imagine my life without you in it
I don't want you anymore, please get the **** away from me and let me breathe before the thought of you suffocates me
You are the devil

I want you to cover my feet with cement and beat me senseless until I can't remember you
Maybe until I can't even remember myself
I can't remember myself much after I gave it all to you anyways, so I guess it doesn't matter

I have spent such a long time becoming familiar with fake gold that I do not know how to handle you
My fingertips have only grown to know the feeling of fool's gold

You sparkle and glisten at every crack and crease
I do not know how, but I do know the difference
My life has been spent digging and digging and I have finally struck gold
I am rich
I am rich with the feeling of empathy
I am rich with the feeling of guilt
I am the poorest rich man that you could ever meet

Here we are, our paths will always cross, no matter what
I have never been as thankful as I should be about the majority of things in my life, but in this moment
Right here
Right now
I have never been more thankful

I will come and go
You will always be on the move
But trust me when I say this
Not a single map on this Earth could do our journey justice

I wish for nothing more than to put on these gloves and so delicately hold you
Your atmosphere is heavy and enthralling
Being drawn in is the only feeling I will ever experience

I will never not be thankful
I will never not know the difference between now and forever

Today is where this starts
And forever is where this ends

Today I have struck gold

Starting today, I will never look back

Over a lifetime, I never loved her,
Empty gas tanks,
Empty cigarette packs,
Empty paint bottles,
Empty minds,
Empty hearts

I keep carrying the dead with me,
Burying them in the back of my mind to form some kind of understanding of why things are the way that they are,
Why people don't finish what they started,
Why hearts continuously ache and break at the smaller things,
Why her father never loved her mother enough to stay around to see her grow up,
At least he isn't around to see her laying in the hospital bed,
At least he isn't around to see her struggle with the thought of why her father never loved her enough

Over a lifetime, I never loved her,
This absence is dizzying,
Pitch black,
Pitch black,
Swallowed by the memories of agony,
Every moment awake is a moment my God should've never breathed into me,
My god, I never should've let your breath fill my lungs

I keep carrying the dead with me,
Burry them all, burry them all,
Give me some sense of dignity,
Don't let me slip on the souls of the broken,
Don't let me become one,

Over a lifetime, I never loved her

I'm still so ******* bitter about it and I can't relax, not even a little,
I wonder if this is what a toy feels like when its batteries run dry,
Getting pushed into fight or flight without any warning, without even having any wings to fly,
So anxious I'm throwing up the flowers you grew from your chest,
I picked every one of them with my mouth but maybe I should've just left them alone because everything will die in the end and now I know who's fault it is

I got hurt and I'm just trying to fix myself, please stay away from me, I'm no good and you're no better, I don't have a single grudge to take,
I'm going ******* manic, I'm setting my body on fire and eating the ashes,
I'm pulling my stomach apart and digging my own grave,
I'm hungry for blood and I'm vicious,
I'm sick and getting worse, even though my friends and family pray for the better, I don't wanna say too much, it's better that way

We have nothing better to do than break our hearts on each other,
We're lonely and hurt and this is all we need,
Mr. Hangman, go get your rope,
Protect your lovers, we are nothing but slippery slopes,
We can hug and lust and kiss and **** but once we love, it's all downhill from there,
I can feel this disease flowing through our hair and it feels like there's something in our mouths, like we're breathing it in through the air,
I can feel myself breathing you in and I'll keep doing it until my lungs collapse, nothing's fair

They say in heaven there's no husbands or wives,
And the day I show up to the gates I wonder how many of them will be surprised,
Just know I won't have a phone to call you but I'll do everything an angel possibly can to stop the hurting in your minds,
None of us deserve to die but then again not all of us really feel alive

So if I die before I wake, I pray my poetry says the things I can no longer say

I can't stop thinking about you
Maybe that's why I can never get any sleep
I'm so busy trying to get you in my bed that I can't even get comfortable in it myself
My sheep are too busy running around the thought of you to jump over a fence
You're my favorite nursery rhyme
I could scream your chorus until my voice grew tired
I wish I could grow tired
I never have energy, but it seems like I have enough to never stop chasing you
You're the only thing I think about, I can't stop
You're like a drug
You make me feel on top of the world, but I know you won't last forever and I'll be laying back in my bed wishing for more of you when you're gone
Maybe I need to stop thinking like that and just stop thinking about it in general and go with what feels right
Maybe I need to shut the **** up and just grab you by your waist and kiss you
Maybe I need to stop being afraid to
When I pass out you're all I see
My dreams are nothing but your hand in mine, and it kills me a little more each time I wake up and realize my fingers aren't touching yours
Although I wish we were more, I'm too scared to regret meeting you
As much as you drive me absolutely crazy, you're the only solution I've ever found to any of my problems
It isn't even a bad kind of crazy
It's the kind of crazy that makes me want to set everything aside and drive across the country with you with nothing besides our love, loud music, and the moonlight that'll chase us the entire way there
Maybe when you read this you'll call me up and ask me to get some coffee with you
I don't know why I'm kidding myself, I'm running after a ghost
Maybe I'm just too stubborn to actually speak up
Maybe you've been thrown back in my face this many times so I'll gather up the courage and ******* do something about it instead of write ****** poems about you

Maybe one day I will, but until I get the courage to do so, I'll just sit in my shower and cry about why I'm too afraid to and why I feel like something is holding me back

She said baby I can’t wait to see you coat the back of your throat with those lies,
Kisses sweet like honey,
*** like medicine,
Skin on skin therapy,
I’ll lick your wounds if you like mine,
Tears leave burn scars on the cheeks,
We set the whole world on fire and laid back wine drunk and called ourselves freaks

Our hearts, a thrift store painting, cracked frame, with inanimate intentions, little to no feeling, we just can’t wait to look good in someone else’s home some day,
Worth nothing more than a couple of pennies,
Heartbreak is seemingly dirt cheap now but I can’t wait until the day that we grow so much from it that we see it as priceless

They tell you never to hurt an artist because you’ll live in infamy but I bet that ****’ll be so beautiful once they all leave

I’m not saying I wanna her lonely,
Just happy,
I’m not saying I wanna see her hurting,
Just laughing

They take her, call her theirs, take advantage, to the point where she confuses her breathing with second guessing

I can’t wait until we meet again,
I can’t wait until we grow and I can’t wait until we meet again,
I’m a completely different person, I swear it,
I haven’t taken off your heart from my sleeve, I think at this point I’ll always wear it

Honeybee, you got all of me, and some days that might not seem to be enough, but trust me,
I’m trying

This isn’t a love poem yet, but someday I hope it will be,
Forever yours,
Always

Every time I look into the mirror, I see someone different
I've been trying to find myself in other people for as long as I can remember
My body belongs to those who have shaped me
To the ones who have taken me by the hand and have taken me apart one by one, I present before you the one who was rebuilt by his surroundings and the ones who cared enough (or not so much) about their work

The forgetfulness in my bones stems from the girl I met in elementary school
She was so lackadaisical, you couldn't find a care in her world even if you tried your hardest
She taught me that it isn't always in your favor to care so much
That sometimes it isn't worth it to worry about everything or everyone else, especially if the situations or people are toxic to you

The boy I met in my 7th grade math class
He smoked cigarettes and liked to skateboard
I'd like to thank him for giving me the push I needed to stop caring so much about the way I looked and also for showing me that the words people say to me don't matter as much as I think they do
I don't talk to him much anymore, but I know he'd be disappointed by the fact that I've let such sadness and pessimism slip into my veins
Things were never simpler than when listening to loud punk music and skateboarding were the only things that mattered to me
I'd give anything to take myself back

I met a boy when I was 14 years old
He listened to cool music and played call of duty with me
He was my best friend
The more we grew up, the more we grew apart
His opinions started to differ from mine
His personality changed for the worse
He taught me that "depression is a sin" and I need to "find God" to rid myself of my sadness
He taught me that sometimes even the ones you love can slip away from you in the blink of an eye, but it isn't always a bad  thing

The girl I met my freshman year of highschool
She was short and full of steam that never seemed to come to an end
If rebellion had a face, it was definitely hers
She taught me that people can lie about anything as long as the ones listening to them care enough about them

But trust me, those were the least of my trust issues
The girl I met my junior year of highschool gave me such a different point of view about everything
She was older, so I thought she knew better
I thought things were different this time, better than they had ever been before her
Now my most vibrant memory of her is sitting in her driveway while she bawled her eyes out and cursed me for hours
Even though I wasn't in the wrong, I put myself in it and I stayed in it until I was forced out
She taught me that lust wears a costume
Sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's pretty
Sometimes it looks like love

I met a girl my senior year of highschool
The sunshine shimmered through her hair and the words she spoke were softer than a pillow after a long day of work
She had a lot of problems, but so did I
She taught me that it's not right for me to carry someone else's weight without being strong enough to lift my own
She taught me that love is a struggle and it can get extremely ugly if it isn't kept up with

I met a guy a few years ago
Through thick and thin, I know we have each other's back, no matter what
There are some people that you meet that you just know will be in your life for as long as you want them to be
They'll love you regardless of what you've been through, regardless of your opinions, and regardless of if you think badly about yourself
They will be here for you until the end, and he taught me to cherish real friendship; it isn't easy to come by

I met a girl when I was 15 years old
I didn't know it then, and I'm having a hard time contemplating it now, but I know she's something special
Through everything we have both been through, we always end up back together
It seems that we pop up in each other's lives when we need each other the most
She taught me that people who are meant to be in your life, will never leave it for good
They will always find a way back to you

As time went on and I thought things couldn't get any worse, I met my future
I met friends who cared about me
I met a newfound hope that I thought was extinguished years ago
I met happiness and I shook hands with it

From start to end, my life is a puzzle that I sometimes have a hard time finding the pieces to
I've found a few pieces so far, and others pieces haven't fit perfectly, but trial and error will get you through anything if you try hard enough

I've held up to this point, and I don't really see myself collapsing anytime soon

As much as life and I have a love-hate relationship, I don't think I'd change anything

Everything seems to be pitch black and quiet
I'm alright with this, considering I've grown tired of being in the spotlight
I don't remember how I got here or how long I've been here, but everything looks and smells so vibrant
I'm laying in what looks to be an endless meadow of roses
Everything is so beautiful over here

The last few things I can remember involve a couple of pill bottles, a couple glasses of water, and falling asleep with my TV on
I hope I haven't been sleeping long, I don't want to worry anyone
Maybe this is a dream
Something so wonderful like this couldn't possibly exist in the real world

I see people walking around way over there, but to be honest, I don't even want to bother them
I'm having the best time in the world just resting here in the roses, it feels like home
The people looked like flowers at last
I want to cut myself open and let my entire body pour out around me here
I wonder if the vines will wrap around me and turn me into something beautiful
The weird part is that I'm not even jealous anymore
I don't even need to plant my roses anywhere, I'm completely surrounded by them and they look to be all mine

I suddenly felt a shock and my chest lit up in the pitch black of what felt like the promised land
I woke up but I couldn't open my eyes because the lights were brighter than they had ever been
I saw my mother quickly reach for me but another woman immediately stopped her

"Your son is in shock, please don't touch him, it could make things worse"

Where in the hell am I?
Is this a hospital?
Where's my meadow?
Where are the roses?
Why is everything so bright?
Everything is so loud!

The doctors repeatedly shock my chest while my mother grows hysterical next to me
I didn't mean for this to happen, I swear
I only wanted to take a nap, honest


--

A few years have passed
My therapist made me start my own garden
I'm embarrassed I couldn't do it on my own, but I'm glad he made me do it, or else I probably wouldn't have
I still write in the same journal I got from my grandmother when I was a small child in hopes that she sees me, wherever she is, and that she knows I'm still fighting for myself
My garden is growing like a wildfire and some days it's the only thing that makes me smile
At least I can still smile

It's been a very long time, but I can still remember my adventure like it happened yesterday
If this is what death is, I'm upset that everyone fears it so badly

*Everything was so beautiful over there and the people finally looked like flowers at last

Sanctuary,
I will get to you someday
I will feel you in some way,
I can feel this, at least it's something,
They have the guts to scream but never know the words to say,
The ones who got in but couldn't wait to get away,
The girl from down the street who always smiled your way,
The euphoric atmosphere that your worst nightmares made clear as day,
I always knew it, I just never knew exactly what to say

This is a morning when I step into the streets and fall in love aimlessly, hoping to somehow, some way fix myself using someone else,
A morning that's too brisk to not wear a jacket, but too hot to not break into a sweat,
A morning where each drag of a cigarette hurts my throat, but takes my mind off of my upset stomach,
I'm spiraling, but I'm taking others down with me, even when I don't want to

I'm sorry,
I'm just tired,
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry

The leaves blowing up and down the road are almost as restless as my mind is when I try to wrap my head around why you left,
Maybe I can fill the void with someone else, and maybe when I stop talking to them for no real reason, they will go on to do the same,
I don't mean for this to happen, but I fear that it's inevitable,
I don't know how to fix myself,
It's like I'm trying to fix something that was never really broken to begin with,
I hope now you understand what it's like to deal with this

I'm not truly sorry, but I'm going to keep apologizing because nothing else that I could possibly say sounds better

I just never know exactly what to say

Everything is so bright but also bleak,
I just never know exactly what to say,
I want to get away from here,
I just never know exactly what to say,
Please,
I just never know exactly what to say,
Help,
I just never know exactly what to say,
Me

This hurts like hell, I just never know exactly what to say

Spill your coffee on me
My skin is exhausted and maybe the caffeine will soak in and wake up my tired bones
I could be your poetic trainwreck, baby
Don't ever worry about running out of cigarettes
Light up my fingers and smoke my soul,
I'm sure it's full of toxicity
Paint all of my journals black and rip the pages out, everything in them is about you and I don't have the ******* time to do what's right with myself
Stop whispering about me, I am so loud about you
I know you're disappointed, we all are, aren't we?
All I have the motivation to do is make up excuses about why I can't get better, but they're all *******
My pessimism stops my optimism from showing its face, but maybe that's a good thing, I know this will pass eventually

I COULDN'T WRITE THESE POEMS WITHOUT FEELING HORRIBLE
I WOULDN'T BE ALIVE WITHOUT FEELING HORRIBLE
LIFE IS ALL ABOUT FEELING
AND LET ME BE THE FIRST TO TELL YOU I'M FEELING ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING

These pages keep getting coffee and paint dripped on them
Everything seems sluggish, but with coffee, even the most exhausting situations will become awake with astonishment
Everything seems dull, but with paint, even the ugliest situations become beautiful

I want to be the man with the hat
I want to be able to pull doves out from under my hat, anywhere anytime
That way I'd be able to let my problems fly away instead of letting my problems settle and make a home in my head
Trust me, this is magic
All of this is magic
These few tricks have been tucked away in my sleeves and it's about time I let them go
Heaven is no place for the wicked, especially not magicians
What can I say? Life is better with a little bit of magic
For my final act, I'll make all of my sadness disappear

Self deprecation helps keep my head in check
It makes me realize I'm not the best, but I'm trying, and that's all that really matters
Even the summer thaws out from under the winter
I know my beauty will thaw out from all of these problems
I just have to be willing to see the brighter side of things and give them the permission to melt the ice that holds all of my problems in place

In a world far far away from ours, I like to envision the people there. The beings, there. How they feel things, if at all. And how they express themselves. If they feel what’s right and what’s wrong, or if they know what forgiveness is, or if they even have a need for it. And if they do, how is it painted across their faces? Is it ugly? Or is it understood?

If they are able to understand the forgiveness, how do they express it? Through words, actions, being quiet, or taking no action at all? And if so, how stagnant does their love become once the ugliness of their forgiveness becomes quiet as snow?

Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe they have no desire for forgiveness because their wrongs don’t amount to rights, or their rights to their wrongs. How beautiful must that feel? What we all would give to feel flawless inside of our morals, never taking for granted the misery we fill ourselves up with just by misunderstanding forgiveness.

In that world so far, far away, how are apologies painted? Or have they all collectively come to the conclusion that they should not need to apologize for the space between our worlds, and we should not need to forgive them for it, simply because it was created that way.

It feels so immeasurably invalidating to confront the fact that we are as simple as children until the day that we die, and every day until then, we dress up in our suits and ties and parade the idea of forgiveness,

just hoping that we can become a martyr for it.

I shouldn't, but I love it when bad things happen to me,
I take it all, write some of it down, the rest is poetry,
Emotionally inept kingpin, you can find me laying drunk on some curb on some midnight lit avenue, pale skin, tongue blue, I've had too much fun, I don't remember how to breathe

Come to me for whatever you need, depression, anxiety, heartbreak, whatever the case may be,
I have empty suitcases for your baggage, I even have a couple empty coat hangers in my closet, next to the skeletons,
You could even plant a couple flowers in my garden, if you wanted

I'll set myself on fire just to see your eyes light up,
I wanna be your burden,
You can love me as much as you do on the comedown, on the come up, or not, that's up to you
I'll give you the drugs as long as you give me the love, I never knew our relationship could be so easily summed up

I have what you need and I've been waiting so anxiously for you to come along and ruin me,
Fit to be,
Meant to be,
*******, hanging from my neck like a rope,
Hanging from your necklace, a rose,
Tie it tight, suffocate me, use it like a noose,
At this point, I'm used,
Sadistic, full of it, a mess to be made and cleaned up,
A bone to be broke,
A memory to be forgotten and a grave to be dug up

Lonely lovely, I've been feeling so blue, I just want a taste of you,
I just want a taste of you

I just wanna hold you close, **** you dry, clean your blood, wash your wounds, I'm selfish, I just want too much of you

I want so badly the good but nothing good ever lasts and I want forever, so I'll be fine bad to the bone and lonely,
****** that you want me and me only, Worth a lot, but not worth any money,
I spend it all on flowers that'll die eventually,
Kisses sweet like honey,
A snake bite in snake skin, I'll feel it but only slowly, not enough to stop me

I'm eager but I'm weak,
I wanna smile but I have broken teeth,
I see everything, but only in my dreams,
I feel it all too much, to the point where sometimes it feels like I can hardly even think, like I can hardly even catch my breath, like it hurts to breathe,
Something to bring me to my knees,
I deserve this,
I wanna know what it's like to feel humiliated, to feel vulnerable in front of someone else,
I wanna drink cheap beers in the street and shower in sinks

I keep putting myself into situations I can't handle,
I can't talk to you without hurting you so I don't talk to you at all because hurting you is just something I can't handle

I don't want to be the one to cause damage because I've been damaged enough, I'm so tired, ******* exhausted, of hurting everyone else without even trying

I just want to be good for you and I can't be that right now, and I'm sorry

It's all coming together now, one more time, I swear,
I'll get this,
I promise

I'm sorry for falling,
I never knew I'd be on your bedroom floor for this long,
It shouldn't bother you anyways, it never has before,
You probably don't even know I'm here

I ate your insides and threw up flowers all over the place,
It's too bad there's a garden inside of you that I'll never get to see grow,
I'm sick of you,
I'm sick with you,
I'm sick, and I will keep apologizing until you realize I am here,
I just want to have validation,
I just want your attention,
I'm sorry my pity party is a bust, but I have cake, and that should be enough

Your hair is burning with reckless intentions,
Your eyes are as blue as my sadness,
Your lips are a wall of graffiti that my spray paint could never cover,
I'm going over again, please never forget about me,

I wash up on the shore a few days later to find you wrapped in the arms of another,
I wish I would've fought harder,
I wish I knew when to stop,
I'm so selfish, I'll never stop being angry at myself,
I-- I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so, sorry

Everything at once,
Now nothing at all,
A cycle recycled over and over until it is the last thing my mind can get a grasp on, the only thing I can rely on,

Friends, enemies, on, off, stuck

Stuck

Between the wall of abundance and the wall of isolation,
Finding love in the rubble,
Forming friendships from the dirt of the garden, picking flowers to give to hopelessness,
A toast risen to the collapse of the modern poet,
Surrounded by wreckless abandon and driven out by the fear of living,
The fear of not being enough,
The fear of being too much,
The fear of a little bit of everything,

Taken by the hand and shown true beauty, wiping tears away from the face that's too far exhausted to even make out in broad daylight,
A disaster,
A broken messiah picking gospels out of the hairs of broken hearts trying to mend,

I,
The soldier,
The commander,
We, they, us,
A figment of a wild imagination trying to thread the string of suicide together with the string of optimism, getting stuck on the pessimism catching the needle at every vice,

I will suffice,
I,
The soldier,
The commander,
Fighting a war with no winner,
Stopping to rest my head on the headstones of the forgotten,
Please do not forget about me when I am gone,
Paint my flowers golden and light a cigarette while doing so,
Lay them together on my grave, and, instead of a moment of silence, raise your lighter to my name and read to yourself quietly,

I,
The romantic,
The saddened,
The disaster,
The punk playing music so loud it vibrates your thoughts,
I, the remembered,
I will go out in flames just like how I showed up in flames,

You, try your best for me
I am not much, but trust me, I am worth it

I'm writing about you and I know I shouldn't
The only reason I'm trying hard is because I can't decide if being with you or not being with you will save me the heartbreak
I don't know which one would break my heart more; being with you, or not being with you
You're here for a reason but I'm a ******* mess, so spell it out for me so I won't have to myself

I a m s o r r y

I am not sorry, I am a disaster
I am however sorry about this mess

I a m s o r r y

I know I shouldn't be writing about you
I know I shouldn't have held your hand
I know I shouldn't have kissed you
I know I shouldn't have made love to you
I know I shouldn't be writing about you
I know I shouldn't have told you all of that
I know I shouldn't have smoked so much
I know I shouldn't have drank too much

A madman will cope the best he knows how
I am the maddest man and I do not know how to cope
Maybe that's my problem
Maybe you're my problem
Maybe I'm insane
Maybe I'm perfectly okay and this is just my grieving process
We all die eventually but I'm dying sooner rather than later because of you but my god I would die for you a thousand times
I don't know what I'm rambling on about
I don't know what you're all about
I do know what I'm all about, you
What's driving me crazy, you
What's tearing me apart, you
You may not know this, and this is my fault
The only solution I'm looking for is innocence but I'm not innocent in the least and heaven knows you're not
I know we'll end up together eventually and that's what keeps me going
Or maybe that's just what I keep telling myself because I know I'm too fragile for you

I'm sorry

Hello, 4am, it's me again,
Hello, grandmother, I'm sorry I never called you again,
Hello, mother, father, I wish it was me speaking

How many times do I have to say it, Son? It's just your emotions,
Father, it feels like my emotions are waves, and I'm at war with the ocean,
Momma, I was kinda hoping that you'd listen while I still had the chance to say something

I guess this is all for boasting,
Maybe if I share it online, my name will get a couple of postings,
My twitter feed will grow famous,
My pretty and depressed Tumblr blog will attract the ones like them, the ones who use sadness as an accessory,
The ones who don't take it seriously, but really just "hate themselves more than anything",
I can't ******* take any of you seriously,
Seriously, there's a monster in my head and it's burrowing itself out to cover for me

I'm not even here anymore,
I might as well not even pretend to be,
It's hard to be bright when the dark is all that you see,
She, is all that I see,
He, is all that I see,
Them, they, are all that I see,
I don't want to ******* see anything,
I just want to melt the ice and see the roses in the spring

But don't mind me,
It's not like I'll make any of this apparent for others to see,
It's kind of hard to do something like that when the blue you see is black to me and the grass is grey, not even a little green

Trust me, I've tried the drinking,
And yes, I've tried the smoking,
But none of it is helping, not even a little bit, I still feel it, I still see it,
I still feel hollow
I don't want to be alone,
I just want to feel at home,
But I don't

I'm tired,
I'm tired

I called God to ask him if I could still get into Heaven if I killed myself,
The operator told me that God called in sick today,
Take this as a plea for help, yes,
Take this back to your home, yes,
Take this into consideration, yes,
Take my life,
I just want someone to take it before something else does

Ice cold,
Heart's stole,
The feeling's dry on the riverbank

You're gone,
I'm worn,
There's only you to thank

Tired and dragged on,
Sleeping on the thought of you,
My body's cold,
It's missing you

Playing notes on a keyboard,
Singing loud,
Playing loud,
My eyes are sore

Can't eat,
Can't dream,
Having nightmares

Seeing you,
Feeling you,
It was all new to me

You hide,
I breathe,
And I count to three

It's perfectly okay, I'm afraid, too

I could start fires with what I feel for you

A sadistic sickened scatter brain is something I consider myself to be
Not in the over emotional attention seeking teenager kind of way, more in the overthinking pain seeker, seeking love and affection where I know I'll get hurt
It isn't much of wanting to get hurt, it's more like wanting to be with someone so badly that you don't care how badly you're getting hurt because of it, someone who over analyzes how to get someone else to fall in love with them, forgetting to care about themselves and only caring about the person they want so badly to be in love with

It really shouldn't be hard, it should be easy
I know I don't ever shut the **** up about you, but I can't help myself
As much as I hate this, I can't stop
You're everything I want
Really you aren't, I really don't know what it is about you
Maybe it's your recklessness and how badly I wish I didn't care about everything like you don't
You pull off danger in the most seductive way, always on some **** that I've never heard of, and I ache so badly to have you
You're a ******* car crash and let me be the first to tell you that I'd die for a rush like you

You live on the edge and I'm stuck in my safe place
I'm finally coming to the realization that being in my safe place is good for me
You're just so enticing, I'd do anything to get a taste
Maybe it's the lust that's trying to convince me that this isn't love
Maybe this is love and we're just too young
You keep coming into my life and I can't tell if I should appreciate it or hate it
Either way, I don't know what I'd do without it
I don't know what I'd do without you

It ***** to be so attached to someone that doesn't even really know you're in love with them
It's been five years and your face was and still is the only face that could make my heart flutter with a simple glance
I just wish I knew what was holding me back
I don't know if it's a sign, that I should keep away, that you're a mistake
Or if it's just my head holding me back because of the ones who came into my life and rocked my world so badly that I don't have the ability to trust anything or anyone anymore
I don't know if the ones who ruined me were there to make me realize that you're my diamond in the rough, or if they taught me to stay away from bad feelings like this one

I know I should talk to you, but instead, here's another poem documenting the breaking of my heart
Maybe that's why I'm so self loathing
If I hurt myself, no one else has the chance to

You don't even need to break my heart, I'm doing it myself

Sugar, sugar
Take me away
Sail me on your stream
Find me in my dreams

Sprint through my veins
Show me what it feels like to not know pain
On again, off again
I lose what I gain

You are a cloud and I am the rain on the riverbank
Watch me flow in waves as I claw and scratch like a fiend
Nothing is as it seems
I swear to god I am just living in a dream

However it is so tough to care when I am floating in this shipwreck
My body is but a vessel being carried by the loveless
It punches me and kicks me and stings me like a wasp's nest
I will wear this crown of thorns you call my regrets
And I will cheer and cheer until my vocal chords snap

We are living the best we can
So on and so forth we follow
These words are tough to swallow
But I wallow and I wallow and I do not dare to call you

Sadness greets a familiar face with a "Hello, nice to see you"
and with this I retreat

*The river and the clouds
of the white sugar sweets

Fading, fading, everything is fading,
Pacing, I'm pacing and pacing,
My troubled mind is nothing less in this moment than what it was at my lowest,
It's like I never even left,
I don't think I'll ever have the guts to leave

I'm breaking down because I need to,
***** breath from ***** cigarettes,
Please never forgive me, I can't even bring myself to do it,
I can't even bring myself, I can't even--

Look, I can hear it coming, I can see it,
I just want to be a part,
Lonely hearts, broken stars, cataclysmic lullaby,
Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep,
This is what we've all been waiting for,
This is what I've been waiting for, anyways

Anyways, these days are low,
Bruised eyelids from beating myself to sleep every night,
I can't even sleep at night,
Repetitive repulsion, blood dripping from every crack of my intuition,
Suspended from the balcony, watching it all play out in front of me,
Holding on to every last breath I could possibly breathe,
I do not clap,

*I do not clap

Today we have just scratched the surface
Here lies your hopes and dreams
Mary Magdalene would merely laugh at me
Meadows of chloroform and chemical winds bypass my every thought but then again
Maybe I am not a disaster and maybe this is just a test

The strong willed and strong stomached gasp at the sight of this
What treachery is love and why is it not forbidden
What lovely tragedy, oh, what a comedy
You crave and thrive on drama and you are so two-faced
Even Jesus Christ is fooled

I am but a morsel lacking morals towards the monstrosities and the ill mannered
Flying high on the backs of the enemy
Laughing despicably
Uncontrollably

Gasping for every breath
Drowning in what seems to be nothing besides oxygen
I am a train wreck
I am a car crash

My fumes will spread near and far
Not as far as I'd like them to
But far enough to make the world know
That I am here and suffering

Please let me off easy
I'll do anything
Please let me off easy

Broken, beaten, battered, battled
Bestowed on top of the highest mountain
The clouds are my escape and I pray that I never have to return home

What is life without a little bit of adventure
What is a nightmare without a little bit of terror

Life is a thunderstorm and I am a chain-link fence
It was all very shocking at first
At least I am used to it by now

Victim victim,
Red ***, red ***,
Send hatred right over,
I set my eyes on fire and cry to put them out,
I tore my bible apart and laid down on the pages in hopes my demons would spill out,
I kissed death on the lips and made love with her body,
It felt good

There's something so liberating about watching the toxins run dry,
I didn't wanna tell you this, but the apologies sounded more like hymns than they did tragedies, and,
The look you gave me was ******* crazy and I knew right then and there that there wasn't gonna be a ******* thing in this world that could rip you out of me, and I think I like that,
It gives me something to feel emotional about,
Feel sentimental about,
Something about cyanide makes it taste better on the way back up than it does going down,
What happens when the hero becomes the heroine? I'd **** a man with my bare hands if given the chance, and after that I'd teach his corpse to dance like the needles in his veins

You got me feeling off white,
No lights,
Can't see, in my feelings deeper than the Dead Sea,
I've been so ******* blue, see,
Heartbreaker, please, come along and ruin me,
Lungs black, too filled up with smoke to breathe,
Been knocking on the door for forever now because I lost the key

We didn't say **** to each other for minutes, maybe hours,
I don't remember,
Not that it even matters,

I count the tulips in my head until I fall asleep and your face is all that I see,
Two lips, two fists, twisted, intertwined in one another, and I'm not giving anything up until I have to,
You ****** the blood out of my neck like Nosferatu and the stream felt like a million waterfalls and nothing feels real anymore

I carried the weight of the world and then some, your body felt like a backpack and sometimes I wish I had a bullet big enough to **** the sun

Red rover, red rover,
Send recklessness right over,
High off the adrenaline but I know I'll crash too soon to even give a ****,
This knife felt better going in because at least then I didn't know it even existed, back before it all happened it seemed like I had such better luck

Tummy tuck, semi truck, run me over, slice me open,
You were gone by the time I'd woken,
But there was something about you and that night that felt so golden

I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to the way I was, when everything felt normal and I was normal, but here's to hoping

Atomic boys and girls play with their atomic toys and curls,
At 18 years old she was atom bombs,
Gloomy and angry, 16 years old, she used to draw mushroom clouds on her bedroom walls

She always thought to herself,
How strange it is to be anything at all,
21 years old, she realized how badly it hurts to become

She was in love with the sadness, and she wore it on her sleeve in place of her heart, already too broken to keep together all in one place,
She was always so afraid of the dark, so it never went well, always causing the power to go out, it would take days, sometimes weeks for the lights to come back on,
But even after, it seemed as if no one wanted to come close in fear of the radiation

We did drugs, we rolled our windows down, we drove too fast, we tuned the radio until we heard God start playing air raid sirens, and we sang until our bodies became bombs

Always until the light came on, he promised her,
Whether it be the sunrise,
The moonlight,
Headlights,
Night lights,
Lamp shades

It didn't matter, he would never leave her alone in the dark,
He would bring an umbrella every night, knowing she would rain on him, it didn't matter, he loved her, enough to wear a raincoat year around, he even built a raft for when it rained hard, when even she thought she would drown, for when things became too much

She loved the the way his mouth seemed like comfort to her,
The way his arms were always around her, and the way his phone calls seemed like get well cards,
She told herself that she wouldn't let it get like this, but she did,
He told her that he wasn't going to leave her, but he did,
I guess everyone's a little bit of a liar in the end, right?

We danced until our bodies spilt our souls and then we fell into the December cold, right into the snow,
Until there was nothing left,
Until everything seemed to be just a bright flash

Let's all go play Nagasaki, we can all get vaporized, hold my hand, let's turn to ash I'll see you on the other side

I swear it's better, over there, where we can finally see the birds flying all around the air, where the heartbreak actually sets you free, where it doesn't hurt to breathe

Let's all go and meet our maker, they won't care who's side you're own,
I was so afraid, I prayed and prayed,
Before I learned to love the bomb

Let's all go play Nagasaki, what a lovely way to die,
I was so afraid, I prayed and prayed

Until I fell in love with the bomb

If we were given the option to cut ourselves open and put back all of the guts we’ve spilled out for other people, I wonder how many of us would actually do it

How many of us must be content with waking up inside of someone else’s skin and claiming it to be our own

I never really learned how to sleep easily, for as long as I can remember I’ve been kept awake every night by whatever skeletons show up in my closet,
And that’s why I threw away my night light,
Smashed it

I was seven years old when I first saw the fire

I remember vividly hearing my mother’s preacher tell me that I should keep my heavens tilted towards the ceiling,
I knew then that church was no place for an honest and forgiving man

There will always be something that could fall through the floorboards at any minute

And when it all came crashing down I could feel my hair start to shed itself into shards of glass,
The pieces eclipsing mirrors through the smoke in my basement

The spark was born in flames and there is no doubt in my mind that it will go out the same way

I’ve gotten off to people telling me they’re in love with me and I became so obsessed with the feeling that I would grow my wings out and claim myself to be a guardian angel

And I am realizing now that there is no heaven in the ceiling and my guardian angels are nymphomaniacs only out to devour what little is left of me

Sleepy eyelids,
Fall into slumber,
Fall into the dark,
Fall into my arms,
Fall into my heart

You were so wonderful,
Everything about the way you were,
It was all so wonderful

As perfect as a spiderweb,
You worked so hard to build your spiderweb,
Pacing and repairing the wounds carefully, hoping maybe this time it would stay,
Hoping maybe this time he would stay

They never seemed to,
They were always mean, too,
You held your head high, but they always kept you so low,
Maybe it's better if we do this thing.. solo,
Maybe it's better this way,
Maybe it was better that I didn't stay,
I held you so high,
I swear I never would've let you slip, although it wasn't my time to get a grip,
It was known since the day I loved you,
This would never last and eventually I wouldn't even know you

This is the worst because I can still hear you,
I can still feel you,
Your long brown hair being twirled in my fingertips,
Your mouth, a loaded gun, pointed straight into mine,
When I go back in my mind, when I pull the trigger, all that comes out is flowers,
It's like all of this was made in the dirt of my mind to begin with,
A perfect angel, heaven sent, with a gown of gold and a crown of rose,
Nothing hurts,
Nothing hates you,

I can still see you, I can still look into your eyes,
I can still see that silly little grin you always made when we cracked stupid jokes at one another,
I can still see the tears falling helplessly from your eyes,
I can still feel your fast heartbeat, panicking whilst your body collapsed into mine,
They were always after you,
I hope they never caught up,
I tried my best to keep them occupied, I promise,
I will always love you, I promise
Nothing knows love like you do,
Nothing hates you

You packed your bags and left a letter in the back of my mind,
You never kissed me goodbye,
You left without even telling me,
It's been months, but I'm still too scared to open that letter,
I'm too scared to know why,
I'm too scared to understand,
I'd rather stay drugged up in your absence,
It's better for me this way,
It's better this way,
Maybe if I keep telling myself this, it'll make sense to me,
You never seemed to make sense to me,
Maybe that's why I was so in love with you,
Maybe I'm just rambling now, I'm just running circles around you,
The feeling is familiar; you always ran circles in my head
I could run circles for weeks, I would still feel nothing,
Nothing hates you

I haven't heard from you since back then,
Just know that I'd rather you be alive than dead,
I just hope, to you, I'm not dead

In the hole you left, there is nothing now,
Nothing hates you, but I cannot

I am the hummingbird now

I am the one with wings a million miles an hour and not enough nectar

I am too small to notice but when you do notice me I am the most beautiful thing you could ever see

However it is getting colder now,
Colder than it has ever been,
And my wings have forgotten how to move quicker than lightning,
And I will fall louder than thunder in this neighborhood,
I will die a martyr for your eyes and a sweet tooth for your candy

Salt shaker pepper jack dinner table,
I am a lonely man,
My family has since gone away but this house is still as full as ever,
I set the plates and silverware out with a candle for each

I have become my own apostle, disciple of my memory’s Christ, and when this dinner is over I will have realized that I was the one who betrayed myself

I still talk to the dead about them, and I am not scared of their reactions any longer

And when I ring the dinner bell, I will sit and eat and fellowship with everyone all at once

And we will break bread, like my wings when I am cold

And we will drink wine, red like nectar from the backyard

And when I finally go, there will be thunderstorms in this neighborhood

Spinning, restless, contagious
Let me under your skin
I can feel myself coming for your throat with a raised fist to the air and a plethora of vices that haven't had any luck letting my filthy soul rest
I feel disconnected and a lot more stressed when I think about the times you told me how much of a ******* wreck I am and how it isn't healthy to be with someone so sad all the time
It's funny you ever said that, I mean it isn't, but I've heard that humor can cover up sadness, so I'm trying my best
I tried my best for you, I really did
I gave you everything I had and a little bit more, honestly
The amount of times I fell asleep wishing of something that would never come to me, I knew you needed me just as much as I needed you
I can't blame you though, I just wish it wouldn't have ended this way
I can only imagine waking up like none of this ever happened
Putting on my shoes to drive to your house with flowers because they were your favorite and you could never be in a bad mood when you saw them
It just *****, y'know?
It just *****, a lot
All I can do is learn and live and live and let live and never let your lips give my legs a run for their money like I used to, my god I would run around the earth for you, regardless of how broke I was; in every sense of the word
I just hope wherever you are, you're happy
I just hope wherever you are, you wake up every morning and yearn to better yourself; I know I do

*We were both the right people, we were just meeting together at the wrong time

Yes, the lights are off, but you are not on your floor crying.
It's 3am and you're laying silently in your bed and you can't stop turning. You haven't gotten a good night's sleep in weeks.

It isn't "You can do this, just hold on!".
It's the constant gnawing at your neck and the feeling of disgusting hands reaching around your throat and choking you, yet your arms are so tired that you can't even muster up the motivation to want to reach up and yank the hands away.

It feels like you want to do everything you possibly can, yet you're too tired to do anything. So much so that you would rather lay in bed and come up with excuses about how even the simplest tasks are the biggest problems that you can't come up with solutions to. You would rather stay here and wallow in your sadness than open your window for fresh air and fix yourself something to eat.

It's being surrounded by your closest friends and still feeling sad.
It's staying up to watch the sunrise without even wanting to.
It's feeling nauseous without riding a roller coaster.
It's sitting in your shower long after you've washed yourself clean. You're only sitting in your shower because your tears feel less noticeable with the faucet running on your face; the only reason you're sitting instead of standing is because you're too exhausted to stand anymore.

You can't stand it anymore.

It's realizing what's best for you, and when you try your hardest to do what's best for you, it feels like the world is collapsing onto you.
It's a walk in the park on a freezing Tuesday evening in December when the snow is beyond cold but it's the only thing left that makes you feel anything so you feel compelled to sit in it.

It's a lot of things.
Most importantly though, it's nothing.
At least that's what you keep telling people.

*Please stop sugarcoating it.

By the time you read this, my car will be somewhere in the Ohio River,
By the time you hear this, I will be long gone, do not try looking for me, I will not be found

I made up my mind eventually,
I went home,
I packed a suitcase with my favorite shirts and shoes and hats,
I was too afraid to leave a note, but I should mention that I don't think I'm ever coming back,
I know I have a lot of responsibilities and it's stupid of me to leave,
But it's the responsibilities that made me want to leave in the first place,
I'm sorry I never grew up, I'm sorry I'm a big baby,
Above all, I'm not trying to prove anything, I just need to get away

Before you even mention it, I stopped going to classes weeks ago, besides, I was never really one for commitment, you know this,
And I'm sorry you had such high hopes for me, I don't really have much to say about that, besides sorry  

Like clockwork, I stand in my kitchen every night,
Silhouetted by the refrigerator light,
Searching for something to eat but I don't find a single thing, nothing sounds or looks good, even slightly, I haven't eaten in weeks,
I'm surrounded by the darkness now more than ever even though the sun is shining,
I'm sick of it,
But I'd be nothing without it,
It's kinda my thing,
But I don't got a lot to show for it,
You know what I mean?

Got a lot of money but it doesn't mean a thing,
I'm as broke as ever and it doesn't even feel like I have time to breathe,
But I manage,
Like I was told back in therapy,
Not everyone leaves,
and sometimes I just need to blink but I'm afraid if I blink I'll miss everything happening,
So I've been awake for days looking up at my ceiling hoping maybe if I prayed one of these gods was listening,
I don't got a lot to lose, right?
I don't really believe in miracles but maybe this time is different,
Like, maybe if I showed interest someone or something will talk back to me,
Even if nothing happens, I know I need to start caring, start trying,
It's just hard sometimes

So my plan is to drive off the bridge,
Maybe something will stop me,
Even if nothing happens, there's nothing wrong with trying,
And if I drown, I drown,
I was never really one for swimming,
There's no life jacket where I'm going,
But I'm fine with that,
Maybe I'll see you again sometime

I'm sorry

I can't stop talking about heartbreak,
I guess I'm just too sentimental about it,
Then again we all know that we can't stop talking about things that we love,
I just can't realize why I love it so much,
I guess I'll never really know,
I just know that I have to keep writing about it or else it'll write me instead and I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if something like that happened,
Then again, I can't ever sleep at night regardless

There's just something about it,
I can't really put my finger on it,
I just love being sad

Sadness does that thing with its tongue that we love so much,
It's always taking cherry stems and tying them into knots,
It never stops to think if it's hurting us,
It never stops to ask us if what it's doing is alright,
Then again it knows that we'll never ask it to stop because it knows that we love it too ******* much

I don't have anyone to talk this through with,
I need help but I don't want it because this is all that I've ever known,
See, not knowing what's going on, that's what scares me the most,
But why would you turn down happiness? Why would you not want both?
I'm sorry I'm coming off a little crazy,
I swear I'm not a ******,
I just love,
Too much

I'm not one for tying knots but,
If nowhere else, you can find me at the bottom of some rope,
I love to hate love and I love the cigarettes that I smoke,
I love the feeling of being alone,
Even though I just love to talk,
******* I ****** hate this,
But honestly it's all that I've got,
So for the rest of forever I'll take it and run,
But for you I'll make it seem like I'm just going for a walk

I was told to find what I love and let it **** me,
*I think I found it

I wake up every morning at 3pm,
Brush my teeth eventually,
Get dressed most days, but mostly it’s only a probably,
Shower myself like a good boy,
Clean boy, wash away the ugly,
Turn my tv onto white noise,
Drink down the sorrow and,
***** the bad thoughts into piles of poetry,
Finally sit down at my dinner table at 5pm for breakfast,
I pour myself a bowl of Rice Krispies, refuse to eat it, I’m starving,
I’m all snap and crackle but no pop,
I’m all talk but no bite,
My head’s been telling me to **** myself a lot lately and y’know what, I just might

Put some pants on, my favorite t shirt,
Black on black, I’m not a priest, it’s only a uniform,
Yet I treat myself like God,
Forgiving everyone and everything until apologizing becomes null and when I don’t have any sympathy left I steal daddy’s cigarettes, aim for the palm and burn holes,
A deadbeat Jesus, happiest at my dirtiest and insufferable at my cleanest

This loneliness will crucify me and I’ll let it,
Let it breathe and become home,
I’m writing this with sweat and blood and when I’m done it’ll hurt so bad, it’ll probably feel like I’ve broken a couple bones

I don’t remember when these words started to feel like guns but if I don’t use this sadness as ammunition then I’m going to die cold and alone

We are born inside of war and don’t question it until we die and when we die we realize if not for sadness, there’d be no point in being alive

Barrel to the sky,
Shoot it until it cries,
And let it bleed until it dries,
And when it dries,

Rip it back open, you’re gonna need it,

It’s gonna be a long night

Every poem's about who I don't want to write about anymore,
The ones who got away,
The ones who chose to leave,
The ones I pushed out,
All of them

These poems are full of the skeletons from past friends and lovers, gone but not forgotten,
Never forgotten actually,
My mind could never get rid of any of them

I'm feeling it all,
All of them all over me,
Suffocating me,
Radiating a toxic hymn from the depths of everything wrong with this world,
Humming a toon that could only be heard through the ears of the broken,
An apocalyptic afterthought of an apocalyptic messiah

If I choose to die, who will live?
If I choose to live, who will die?

How long until I am forgotten,
How long until I am a skeleton,
How long until I am just an afterthought,
An unpopular opinion thrown onto a popular back burner,
Everywhere I go, I have my back turned,
Everywhere we went, she couldn't look me in the eye,
I can't even look myself in the eye

How long until I forget about you?
All of you,
All of you,
How long?

Rally the horses,
Tally the corpses,
Go manic and shoot off your body like it's a gun,
The walls bleeding bright red, dripping into puddles on the bed,
I always tell myself that I wasted so much time, but time is irrelevant when everything feels dead,
60 seconds 60 minutes 60 ****** knives, we both lead such ****** ****** lives

And she said I know it's hard but this will get better
This will get better

I remember when you told me you were going to set the whole ******* world on fire, what happened?
I remember when you stopped and regretted it and I remember holding onto all of it as much as I could because I knew you couldn't handle any of it, not anymore

Go supernova and leave them all in your wake,
A no good do gooder drunk through the relapse with broken teeth,
You were always here but it never seemed like you were enjoying even a minute,
Emotional asphyxiation is such a heavenly way to die but you're the apple of my eye and as much as I don't want to,
I need to say it

And she said I know it's hard but this will get better
This will get better

I never stopped to ask you how you were feeling because every time I stopped you just told me to keep going and I'm
done with it,
You get the jist,
Tried eating and I just get sick,
Tried sleeping but the bad dreams never end,
Sipping yellow paint, filled with yellow haze,
In a craze I'm in a maze and my head won't rest,
Hate being happy, being sad is the ******* best,
I'm sorry

Broken poet, baptized and drenched in Sisyphus,
Beaten ****** pessimist,
I wanna fight it but I'm too much of a pacifist,
Brittle even with vitamins,
I never knew disaster could look like this,
I digress, I'm ****** twisted and you all can't get enough of it,
Keep em comin 'til I drown in my own spit,
The way you're talking makes you sound like a ****** lunatic but ******* I can't seem to get enough of it

I need you,
I shouldn't say this but I need to

Toxicity's filling my veins and the numbness is clogging my arteries,
You can't swim well in a dead sea

I tried to fight through the fog of your feelings but it was too dense to see, anything,
I never knew you had such a lust for blood until I saw the fangs,
Inside of us are such broken pretty things

You were such a broken pretty thing and I need you,
I said it, I ****** need you

It's been soaking for a while now and I think it's best it finally bled through,
I'm finally realizing you were right when you said it was for the best that we were

through

I shouldn't have said this, but I needed to

I will come back to you when I learn how to be alone

I will come back to you when I learn how to stop burying memories of other people inside of you

I will come back with a welcome mat and house warming gifts when I know that I can with confidence call you my home

I still tell my therapist about you every now and then,
Not so much about the trauma anymore,
More so when I’ve cried deep enough to reach the happy thoughts again

When she asks me how I feel about all of it,
I can’t help but think of how many times I kissed you in a row on our first date, or how I fell madly in love with you when you first opened your mouth towards me

I knew trouble was coming, and I knew you were the ticket, but *******, it had been a while since I had used someone as a coffin for my own heartbroken feelings

Your eyes were the perfect kind, the ones such a deep blue that I could feel my phobia of the ocean every time I looked into them

Maybe I was never really looking for a home

Just looking for a place to face my fears

I don't wanna ******* hear about it,
Stop trying to get your **** wet,
She doesn't want you, I figured you'd realize that when she told you to stop; that she was uncomfortable,
What made you think she was just being stubborn,
What made you think the only thing in the world she wanted was to have *** with you,
Why are you like this

Women are not just toys,
Women do not want your **** as much as you think they do,
Women especially do not want your **** when all you can say when you're around them is jokes implying that you want to **** them,
Why the **** do you think you're entitled to their bodies,
They are angels and you are the devil,
Please, for the love of God, give it up

It makes me sick to think that you're sick enough to think you have a right as a man to act this way,
That because you have a ******* for a woman, that it's completely okay to force yourself,
That it's completely okay to act filthy,
That it's completely okay to joke about,
That it's completely okay to be the biggest ******* on this planet

Our sisters are being taken by our brothers and we are not doing anything to stop it,
Our diamonds are being stolen by thieves, and all we are doing is slapping their wrists,
Why can't we stand up and stop this


Why does a woman have to feel afraid to stand up for herself,
Why does a woman have to fight what seems like an endless battle for a right to her own ******* body,
Why do we stick up for rapists,
Why do we call women *****,
Why do we congratulate men for using women,
Why do we stand for this

We are doing this to ourselves,
We will learn eventually,
Or maybe not,
We reap what we sow

A gut wrenching unforgiving livid catastrophe is making a home in my bones and will eventually burrow itself out of my skin to make my mouth a puppet to my worst fears and insecurities,
I am bleeding, crumbling, don't you dare utter a single ******* word to me, I don't want to hear any of it,
Nothing on this earth could rot my bones faster than the feeling of failure when I try my hardest to be successful,
A pathetic poet putting on the facade of feeling mediocre at best, I am at my lowest, I just don't want to show it,
My breaths are being stolen one by one by the devil and he knows it,
The steam rising from the streets of my anxiety are making my vision foggy and all I want right now is to lay in the embrace of bad intentions in hopes that it'll let me rest my weary eyes and make me feel right in the mean time, because nothing good ever feels right,

No matter how tall I build myself, you could easily come crash all of my walls down without even trying that hard
Maybe that's a good thing,
Maybe my walls are hurtful,
Maybe that's a bad thing,
Maybe I'm just too exhausted to deal with any of it, so I don't,

I'm so sorry
I am so sorry

I don't want to breakdown, but now seems like a good a time as any,
I feel like I am sinking and sinking, and the lower I get, the easier it is to just let it happen,
Maybe I need to shut the **** up and just let it happen,

I am constantly torn between trying to create a home and trying to escape one,
Oh lovely helplessness, I've come looking for help again,
Wrap your arms around me and tell me I'm okay again,
Isn't this everything I need,
Isn't this everything right for me,
I can barely breathe, but isn't this good for me,
Better to lose my breath than to get choked out of it,
You always made me lose my breath, I wish you would've just choked me out of it,

How unfortunate, picking flowers to fill my head with anything other than ugly thoughts, I wish it worked,
I wish all of this just worked,
I've lost motivation, I need to help myself, I just don't want to work,

I couldn't be better for you,
I couldn't help you,
I didn't know how,
I was trying so hard, but you just left

*I'm sorry

I can't help these tendencies to push people away from me,
I can't sleep, I'm too busy awake dreaming,
We all go to sleep in the same place, I just wish I didn't wake up feeling the same way,
Last night they said the fire had spread but I didn't even move my feet, I knew I couldn't change a thing, I let the fire consume me and from the ashes I was reborn, an angel drunk off Jesus' wine, I tried to look at the clock but the arms were broken, I guess we're all broken, even time

No care in the world,
A numb ******* hypocrite,
Dumb, ******* ridiculous,
I'm sick of it,
I want your body so badly, I'll do anything, I'll even rip my own wings off, I never deserved them anyway,
You never deserved me anyway, and I'll say it,
When it came to our love we were spastic, We were made out of glass but we acted like we were plastic,
We knew it was fake, but we acted like we would've lasted,
It just ended with you laughing in my face, I thought I saw right through you, like nothing was going to go wrong, but I guess you broke my glasses,
I can never seem to see straight

I wanna be pure, I wanna go back in time before I was hurt,
I want what I deserve,
And I don't deserve this,
Or maybe I do, and I'm just having a hard time getting up the nerve to notice

My body is a disaster, I haven't cleaned it in months,
I've been waiting for you to visit so I decorated my walls,
But my insides are a wasteland, especially my lungs,
I just couldn't kick your habits after you kicked me in the heart,
But I can't say that I'm sorry, because I'm not

It's not like it used to be,
I got so used to you, but it felt like you were never used to me,
It felt like you were using me,
And I was so used to being used that I got used to feeling like no one was ever going to use me but you showed up and I gave you a crown made out of roses, you sat on everything I owned,
You will look for me in everyone new that you meet but you will never find me because I treated you like a queen,
And you got used to it, just like I get used to everything,
And now that you're gone, I'm getting used to being alone

At this point it doesn't even hurt anymore, I'm used to being alone

I feel like I am living inside of my worst nightmare’s fever dreams,
I’ve been dreaming for better days,
I’ve been hoping the feeling might stay

Or, go away, whatever is better,
I can’t make up my mind on what happiness could and should be,
I’ve been too busy hoping for something,
I’m not sure what, though

When my mother looked at me with tears in her eyes when the latest celebrity killed themselves, and asked me if that’s how I feel sometimes,
I didn’t really know what to say

I remember being 8 years old and telling my mother that I was afraid to go to the swimming pool because I did not know how to swim

I never learned how to swim and I do not know how to tell that to my mother

None of my friends ever learned how to swim either and I guess you could say that we just never learned how to hold our breaths long enough to notice any difference

Around here, where everything is so underwater, where everyone you talk to is so under the weather,
It’s hard to keep any of it under the radar,
We do not know how to swim and we do not know how to tell our mothers

So instead, we crowd into our cars, roll the windows down, crank up the radio, and enjoy the air that we have, hoping that if there is a God, they are enjoying the company with us

We just have to learn how to turn the wasps in our heads into bumblebees,
Pollinate the dead flowers regardless of if they have any life left,
Dance in the rain like everyone is watching,
And not care if our guardian angels get embarrassed for us,
I might be a little crazy, we all might be a little crazy,
I haven’t quite decided yet

None of us are going to make it out alive here, so let’s just drown our brains in antidepressants and good memories, we have to block out the bad ones somehow

Sorry, I've just got a lot happening.
I'm no longer able to stand the bright lights, so I've been standing off to the side trying to think of something to say so everything will get off of my back and leave me alone because it's unbelievably hard to manage stress like this.

Of all things, consider these:

You are sitting in an airplane and the pilot comes over the speaker and explains that you are thirty thousand feet in the air and something horribly wrong is happening to the plane. You have roughly twenty minutes until the plane will be forced into the ocean.
Will you speak up, or will you sit silently?

You are dying of lung cancer and you have roughly three months until your body has no choice but to stop working all together.
Will you speak up, or will you sit silently?

Your father is lying on his death bed and he is confessing his sins and apologizing for never cheering you on when you were trying to get your act together.
Will you speak up, or will you sit silently?

Of all things, consider what is really happening here.
Will you be the one to hide under your blanket when the wind picks up and knocks the tree branches onto your window on stormy nights, or will you be the one to embrace it all and accept it for what it really is?

I've been thinking a lot lately, almost too much, and I've reached a point where the end is almost as rational as the beginning. In other words, it isn't.
Nothing makes sense when you really think about it, so why even think about it?
All I want to think about is the number of roses I have left to see in my life, and I do not want to miss a single one.

I'm not sure when I'll be returned to the roses from which I came, but when I finally reach them again, I hope that I can smell them just one more time.
I always pass the roses in my life and rarely do I ever stop to smell them.
I make a lot of mistakes, but that's probably my biggest thus far.

I'll be jealous of the people with green thumbs I'll meet in heaven, they spent their lives taking care of beauty, and all I did was spend too much time thinking about it.
Of all things I've considered, life is a garden and I just cannot find a place to start digging. Maybe one of these days my mind will stop racing and I will comfortably find a place that I want to plant my roses in.

Until then, you'll find me in the shadows of it all, just thinking of something to get myself by.

Yeah, I can tell you I’ve been finding my intimacy inside of someone else’s skin,
I’ve been avoiding contact with my own garden,
I’m too scared to come back, I don’t know what the flowers will say when they see me, and I’m too afraid that I won’t have enough water for all of them, I don’t want to see them like that,
Dried up and dying, but I guess we all get to that point

My organs have been feeling like empty warehouses with dust and lack of emotional labor,
It’s really ***** around here, and I don’t have enough in me to hire someone to help,
And I don’t have enough in me to fix everything that’s wrong inside of them,
I’ve been hoping that maybe if I leave them empty long enough, I’ll finally get the chance to bulldoze what little is left after it’s all rotted away and grown over with weeds,
And the cracks in my body’s sidewalks will grow thorns too thick to walk through

My angels gave me fertilizer but I’ve been too busy using it on the community gardens,
What I would sacrifice to see everyone else grow

I am living the death of every empty sad warehouse in every town in every city in every country of my body, and I am scared that I won’t know how to rebuild once it all crumbles back into the grounds from which it all came

Instead, I’ll crawl the surface of my body, getting cuts and scrapes from everything that’s become broken, just like that two headed boy back in ‘98,
and I’ll sing my hallelujahs into the open wounds like my magic could possibly heal something that no longer has potential

But it’s all a beautiful kind of war,
Where the guns and anger unlearn dead and relearn life,
Where the bullets are poppyseeds,
And the whole battlefield is lit up with a happy kind of high,
A feel good kind of resolution,
And the blood shed on my body’s soil is like water in the stems of all of the flowers killed by everything that has collapsed and fallen in on them

And when the horses come running, when the bells come ringing, when the soldiers return home,
They will begin anew, and every warehouse in every town in every city in every country in my body will have lights in their windows for the first time in years

Aren't they always so perfect?
In heartbreak I'm a broken juggernaut, she loves me, she loves me not,
She took my veins and tied them into knots,
My bloodstream is full of sadness,
And my bones are full of happiness,
See I'm so busy breaking my own bones and she's so busy filling my blood with sadness,
That when the blood finally bleeds through, it's colorless, I guess that's what I get for becoming so emotionless,
But they made me this way, it doesn't feel like that because I can't remember the last time someone stayed and when it comes down to it, it feels like there's nobody but myself to blame

You know ****'s really rough when even your therapist says he's never seen you so disheveled,
And now more than ever I wish I were deep in the ground somewhere with fresh dirt on top of me being looked down on by someone with a shovel,
Never again, never again will I let myself breathe, I feel it all weighing down so ******* top of me,
She weighed down so ******* top of me, the only relief either of us got, was when she was laying down on top of me,
But there's more to love than just lust and sometimes a simple **** just isn't enough, but that won't stop either of us from using either of us,
Neither of us have been happy in a long time and neither of us have felt loved in a long time,
But it isn't too late to start trying,
I keep telling myself that, but I know I can't try hard enough for the both of us

I can't stop breaking my own ******* heart over people who just don't give a **** and I'm so ******* sick of it but I write poetry for a living so I guess I'll have to live with it

You're so hot when you're cold,
I love it when you use me, I love it, being worthless, but don't worry, I'll act like there was some kind of value about me,
Just like there was something special about you, every single one of you,
You're all gone now but I can't stop thinking about you so I guess you'll live on forever, if not in my heart, then in my poetry,
I'm a ******* trainwreck right now and I'm surprised I still have empathy,
Please be nice to me, please show me sympathy,
I don't know what's wrong with me, I feel nothing but love for my enemies and I don't want to, I want them to hate me,
I want them to leave and never come back, I just want the thoughts in my head to get the **** away from me

I'm sorry

I can't figure out why I keep caring for things that don't care for me and I'm finally starting to realize that that's so unhealthy,
If I'm missing you I'm missing a part of me and I hate that, I can't keep saying sorry, but I never did I anything worth an apology, I just can't come to terms with any of it and it makes me feel better if I take myself away from it by being a recording played over and over and over

I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I'm sorry

It's not my fault, it never was, but I make it that way

We hold onto things even when they’re long gone,
We hold onto the familiarity because we do not want to go through a grieving process,
We do not want to cry, alone,
So we will latch onto every hymn and memory possible just to feel nostalgic and sorry for ourselves, and we will cry, even long after the grieving process has passed

I carry crystals around my neck and in my pockets when I walk because often I talk to myself and often I talk to the dead,
Often I am so confused that I do not know the difference between the two,
But I like that,
It leaves a sense of mystery to everything my mind has already planned out for me

I want to know where we all were when the world ended,
Who were we with, what were we doing, and were our hearts as full as they could be,
I stay up late at night sometimes and I just sing as loud and as long as I can, hoping that maybe possibly whatever creator is awake will hear me and keep me company, and not care who’s side I’m on,
I just want to be able to feel something for free

I do not want to keep sacrificing myself for heartbreak, and I wish I was ignorant to everything, I just want to know what it feels like to not know any better, about anything

I write these because I am hurting and I have yet to find a solution, and I am too broke for therapy, but I promise you I would pay dearly