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Ryan Bowdish Oct 2010
There is a pounding at the door. Soon it will fly open.
Men in gas masks will flood the hallway.
With shotguns.
You have so much to live for, man, don't do this.
We'll come in if we have to. But we just want to talk.

Your children love you.
God knows why
After the things you have forced them to see.

It's humid and the air is causing the culdesac to shimmer
Just above the road, like we lit the tar on fire.
Gangsters lean on their cars to watch
Your misery unfold.

Helicopters keep breaking my concentration
Glowing eyes from the floor
A collapsed heap of laundry
Rustic

All curled in on herself.
Where did we go wrong?
How did it get to this? How did the police get involved?
Smashing up counter-tops with a golf-club.

The windows are breaking and tear gas starts to rise.
The last thing I taste is formaldehyde
And then steel
And then red life
Flowing out the holes
And the orifices.

Carry the children out.
Give them some air.
Move along.
There's nothing to see here.

How is the wife?
Carry her to the stretcher.
Another day in the life.
Tomorrow will be better.
#50
Ryan Bowdish Dec 2010
#50
The one that balanced out the flag.
The Aloha state, palm trees glinting and feathered
Like a heart, to a streetlight, tethered.

This is where your intelligence hides
While you lay inside an empty motel
Nothing but the smell of gunpowder
And sweat, and her tears on the barrel.

Who are these people? They keep breaking down the walls.
I don't know if they're fighting or making love,
These Days,
which is to say,
has there ever been much of a difference anyway?

Ice being shuffled by a small, Spanish woman
Who moves silently between doors
Crowing like a bird, to keep the house
Clean, raw, like her hands.
Strands of hair hanging loosely in front of her forehead
Dangling like your fingers in front of my face
Trying to take hold on my thoughts.

The machine hums a steady frequency
And makes ice
She thinks of the power box outside your Hawaiian home.
The emptiness is humbling.
Heatwaves are rolling along like leaves would
If there were any trees to drop them.

The body among the bed, lying in a heap
Of loose teeth and lost sleep
Of licked feet and low upkeep

When the clock strikes, you can't hear it.
All you know is the sun turns white.
And the coyotes begin to howl and whine
Under the black skylight.
The date is December 11, 2010. Please leave feedback.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2013
My bones buzz
Electric ecstasy
Split into atoms
Nanotechnology
Plastic anatomy

Ego death is visibility
Vulnerable to all thoughts
Universe displays
Vision overlay
Don't touch the body
That once contained me.

Speakers breaking
House shaking
I no longer feel the need to speak
This vibration is all I need
Music is the air I breathe
I lie in silence
Enlightened

Form roads on my cheeks
Carve into my jaw
Slowly my lungs leak
I hope to see you thaw
I'm over me
I'm over sleep.

I'm learning to free my eyes
To close my mind
From crowded sights
Florescent lights
I'm consumed by night.
Ryan Bowdish Dec 2010
You threw my ashes into the walls
Prolonged my life by a few minutes
You genuinely care about me
My singsong introductions
My performances, my body
My aging.

You really care, you really invest, you truly impress.
So why can't this grow?  Relapse?
Come hither.
I trust you to use me responsibly, dear.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2013
This place is becoming saturated...
Like the radio. The same old songs playing.
Words aren't worth the time to change
Waves and wavelengths.

I can't comprehend mistook madness
Or ignorant sadness
Or glorified suicide
Or justified genocide
Or hesitant trust
Or halfhearted lust
These things all exist
But who's to say they must?

I'm done being nice when I read something like,
"This fire burns so cold, it's like ice"
Or "I need you, baby, I miss you so"
Try a little harder to generate some response
Some actual emotional attachment.

Though I could say I am being a hypocrite,
As the only thing I feel right now
Is Annoyed.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2013
Since we've been a thing working
In a field left lying
Under a sun we have yet to see
In the fog of the symmetry
I have known nothing of me
And you have seen nowhere of you
So why do we play?
When do we do?

Let's just remain
In a permanent state
Let's just complain
We'll just procrastinate
Each other.

Each other
We leave it in a memory
So let it be sweeter than us
Let it replace.

I have been in a restless place
Where I wished to be alone and free
But you came to me and you helped me see
That I was just too young to
Hate the world around

I wish to be with them
The world that screams
For another enlightening
Outside of them.

Let me see your face in sand
Default
Go to the ocean and
Drink in

This is just another phase
That I leave in place of my own truth
But I know that my soul will live past this dream
This is nothing but a blink in the true scale

Though you and I will fade
I don't need to be sad
Because we will meet
In the one large soul
That is God and energy.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2010
PART ONE:
Shifting through the night
Year after year
Carrying the bodies as they
Grin ear to ear
Dancing in the moonlight
The fire in my mind
Ready to burn out as I strive
To keep my sanity alive.

A shovel is the tool I've
Been blackmailed into use
A beating of the skull, I've
Taken the abuse
I'm just a broken hero, I've
Always been able to see
There's no one out there
Truly suitable for me.

But one night, as the stars
Hung themselves from the sky
A woman, I saw in the yard
Tears cold in her eyes
She was wearing a bright white dress
And was rich, the eye could see
So it was no wonder why I took
Such interest in thee.

I stepped gingerly toward her
As her droplets shined bright
And asked why she was weeping
On such a lovely night.
She replied that she was in love
With someone rather bright
But he was poor and unstable
And loving him was a fight.

I asked who this poor man was
For I knew everyone in town
She said she has seen him
In the cemetery, wandering round
His eyes were dark, as was his hair
His nails ***** and clothes brown
As I realized who she described
I told her to turn around.

She looked at me with steel blue eyes
Shining with moon and tears
And I pushed her down unto the ground
And gently bit her ear.
I wiped away her eyes and
Washed her dress clean.
With the tears of my joy
Of which I'd never before seen.

I helped her up from the dirt
And we found we were in love
And that we'd be together
Until the sky fell from above
The graves played us a song
And the spirits smiled down
And they whispered to each other
Their heads whipping round.

We parted ways until today
And I'm off to find her with my rose
We said at ten we'd meet again
And still, she hasn't shown.
I wandered a while after
Back to my graveyard home
When a black coffin rested on the ground
Surrounded by crying crows.

I went to investigate
And see the empty grave
When to my surprise, before my eyes
In the grave, my darling lay
I jumped down to see her
And hold her one more time
When I felt a jolt ...
A bullet in her spine.

For hours I have cried
And felt my heart disappear
For my darling, besides all others
Did not grin ear to ear.
My depression turned to blind fury
And my mind broke into a roar
I swore that whoever guilt bore
Would rot away in my graveyard floor.

PART TWO:
Blurs are appearing in my brain
Blurs are obscuring all my pain
Blurs in the sky are throwing rain
These blurs in my head drive me insane.

Blurs of red splatter on my blade
Blurs stare at me and then turn away
Blurs of white are my guide to day
Blurs in my eyes turn wet and fade.

Blurs in my muscles make me feel weak
Blurs in my chest trickle and leak
Blurs in my care forbid me to speak
Blurs on my clothes stay there for weeks.

Blurs on the doors lead me to you
Blurs through the window tell me it's true
Blurs on my babe's face, black and blue
Blurs in my sanity tell me to **** you.

PART THREE:
Black, gray and red
A combination that's foretold
Many depressing endings
Where a man grows lone and cold.
I ran and I fled
And I tried to hide the body
But I suppose it was inevitable
That they would eventually find me.

I hid under the bed
They busted down my door
And didn't even bother to
Search the whiskey-stained floor
But now I've been found
And deprived of all the sounds
That kept me alive and breathing
That kept me around.

My baby died in bloodshed
For money of many sorts
For poor men with rich lovers
Is love that ends too short
Day by day I try to
**** myself in many ways
Just so I can die
And see some better days.

Red is a boring color
When it's the only one you see
For after all these days of trying
Anger won't leave me
Finally, I've got it!
It's been there the whole time
An asylum patient has to die
A penalty worthy of the crime.

Night by night I plan
And hide the paper in my skull
I'll bury her beside me
I'll fill that empty hole
Beating my own head
With my fists in a padded cell
I've been planning the day
That we overlook this Hell.

The final blood is spilled
They grab my knife and gun
There's no where else to go
There's no where to run
I've been sedated and I've waited
To meet my love again
And in minutes I'll be hung
When the clock strikes ten.

The noose waits for my feet
To collapse and hang beneath me
And I wait for the priest
To put me out of my ******* misery
He sets down the bible,
"Have you last words to say?"
"...Bury me next to Lydia
So I can see her every day."
Ryan Bowdish Oct 2012
This anguish is so unreal. I forgot it was there.
I never needed anything as badly as I need to stop this.
I'm so scared of myself now.
I need to relax but my thoughts keep reeling back
To the end of the night.
Screaming at you? I wasn't even angry.

I'm sorry I scared you, too.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2013
When you were a little girl, did you think love was an easy concept to grasp? Didn't it make you laugh the way that everyone said,
"It's undefinable, it's complicated, it's the root of so much pain"?
When I was a young boy, I used to sift through sand looking for the broken beer bottles
Because I wanted to try and find beauty in something horrible.

So I have done for years.
I've lied, cheated, stolen... sometimes from my own family members.
I used to assume I could pop into your life any time
Like a bad father
And you'd come running into my arms.
Just like a bad father.

When I left you standing at the altar, dressed like June Carter
I remember wishing I could have altered my timeline
So I could be Johnny for real, and we could make it big
People could start writing our names on jail cell walls
"R.I.P. Alex and Sidney"

These are the days where I scatter papers around my room
Pinholes in the carpet from relight after relight
Trying to find the right words to say
To convince you that I'm not the same as I used to be.
I've seen my own eyes gazing at me without a mirror
I've seen galaxies screaming at me and exploding

You pull my heart-strings.
You separate my anxieties.
You are the little bit of crazy within me
And when I let it out it's all sadness and wine
But when you let go, you're just a sugar plum fairy.
You dance and you sing and you laugh like I were a comedian.

Oh, that's right, I am a comedian.

Well, if my job is to make people laugh
Then my last laugh would be you.
This is a bad time, I know
But I still would do anything to rewrite our history.

I can wait a year if you want to run your course
Maybe you'll stay in our little town.

But this poem is to tell you
Your clothes should be in my laundry.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
The most beautiful and perfectly straight teeth
They're really quite misleading considering what's underneath,
Yet, quite a metaphor for you.
Your body perfectly angled and beautifully carved
With perfect little problems and all your pretty flaws.
You're mad and I love you.
Ryan Bowdish Mar 2013
I'd love to take you apart, pull your string
Watch the ivy grow at the seam, watch the bubbles
While I hold you down underneath
Let warm water run over our cold bodies.

Run along, now, you're no longer needed here (Maybe someday soon)
Splitting the wishbone, guess who got the bigger half? (There's no room)
How does the solder taste when you go down? (Always new)
I always knew you would need to come back again (I always knew)

See how the roses fold into the sheets
Just like a ******* hole in your sleep
You got nothing to worry about
When everything is simplified, no one will walk out.

You got no right!
You got no right to
You got no right!
You got no right to me.
You got no right! (Infinite)
You got no right to (Misery)
You got no right! (Imminent)
You got no right to me! (Ecstasy)
You got no right! (Infinite) [Calculations melting quickly, time dilation, seconds stretching]
You got no right to (Misery) [Minds colliding, bodies soaking, atoms bonding, seconds stretching]
You got no right! (Imminent) [Always what we never wanted, never who we always needed]
You got no right to me! (Ecstasy) [Saturation of our nature, stars our shining in our language]

I'm done.
I'm going back home now.
Leave me alone.
I'm going back home now.
I'm going back home.
Ryan Bowdish Jul 24
Crystal clarity at a cacophanous volume
Like decibel demons devouring depression,
Deep sobs drowned by Cranberries...
Yes, I have to let it linger...
Just a little longer.

The rug really tied the room together, did it not?
Its wool surface flays my face
As the smears of tears clear my cheeks
And vault from my visage,
The only human touch I feel now flying,
Cascading carelessly, silent and apathetic,
To smash in this rug, breaking a house broken home...

All lost,
"Like tears in rain,"
Blown away by the cymbal crash
The strumming of strings,
Screaming of someone's sandcastles
Swept away by shoreline showers,
Scraped from the shivers of my spine
Sloped like a summer puddle of slime,
Contorted like circus freaks...
You made a snail of me
No.
A slug (a happy home was my shell)

And now
If I were to curdle my blood
And destroy my lungs
There would be no shockwave
No sudden surrender of shame
Only stories scratched out
Severing slumber from my soul

And in the end,
The stereo is my lover.
Low ends learning my loneliness
Mids melting away my murdered marriage
Highs heaving with my heartbreak

It's good to be here.
No one can hear me shriek.
Not even me.
Ryan Bowdish Oct 2010
if i push this branch
the earth
tips
up.

tie me to the trees.
remember me?
your
banner.

when i spin this disc
the room
breaks
up.

drop me to my knees
dismember me
loud
hammers.

a virus on the land
a mansion made of sand
wrap me up in hands
of fire.
she'll never understand
or meet your high demands,
rather hire a band and
conspire.

if i flip this piece back
the crust
opens
blue.

you see the undertow
introduce the
wheels
to spinning

if only i could reach that
your trust
bleeding
through.

what kind of silence glows?
who told the atoms
to start
splitting?

the nebula commands
put forth the final plans
abandoned firework stands
are hoarding.
my vision blurs and bends
our eyelids now descend
has everything you've said
been distorting?
Ryan Bowdish Mar 14
There was no reason why I had to be born
There was no question of if I wanted it at all
And every time I think about the people I would leave behind
I just can't help but be sure that they'd have a better life

And what a pretty noose...
Just hanging in my eyes
And what a good excuse
To leave this world behind...

I sit and watch the sun set red on mountains
While the snowblind takes my eyes
And maybe if I'm lucky then the entire mountainside
Will bury my mind inside
And when I think about the people that need me to be alive
Sometimes I just wonder if they understand that I'm not alright

... and what a pretty noose
Just hanging in my dreams
And what a great excuse
To tell the world that I'm not what I seem

And what a great escape
From all the things that keep my in my cage
And what a great distaste
That I've developed for myself, and I'm sorry.
Ryan Bowdish Feb 2011
You sad fool. My dear, old friend
How I find myself waiting for you again.

Your eyes drive into mine, with brights on,
and you leave palpable words hanging in the air with the writings by your teeth,
without a mouth to open, just jaw clenched, no recognition of existence,
And your hands are soldering irons cooled clenched until clashing into my air
Touching time, and instantaneously heating space, as an element
Reaching Avogadro's number, ten to twenty-third
Holes appear between us.

I remember when we used to laugh
And mostly at each other,
but not as we do now.

There was no malice.
One day maybe there will be solace.

"You act as though I'm a nice guy"
So it's true you like to objectify
The object (oh, the irony) of your affection
Which is anything that cares to mention
How creative was your invention
It was not my intention to
Organize a fluidity to the scrutiny
And the staged mutiny of what was a foundation.
For it's not representative to your thumbprint.

I feel no organization here. You have ordered chaos.

Francisco,
Bring up your lights.
Just remember that you look best at night, when the moon is carved into the sky
and your real intentions revealed.
Where you sit upon that pale desk
And wrap your knuckles against the floor,
Stab with a quill the pools you leave behind,
to write your ***** recollection,
Just remember you look best when your tears catch this starlight.

Francisco, bring up your ****** lights.
The only other man I ever loved.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2014
And for that second when your genes mashed up, that boy was blank
A clean canvas, a selfless portrait, a plane with no industry, who he was for eternity.
Revolutions from within me burst like a bipolar hormonal abomination
Of catastrophic cacophony and discorded anguish, sunlit by the good times
And slightly obscured through tired, teary eyes...
All to be swallowed back into the abysmal sinful cesspool of simple
Cyclical cynical shriveled up and seemingly plentiful
EMPTINESS, where I'm inevitably spit.

Dreaming? Floating in sarcasm, feigning a figure
Shivering with the bonechill that is the outside world
Can't quite remember the last time I woke up or why
Everything is a bit too bright for me to focus correctly...
A bit jittery, a bit sluggish, all suspicious, subtly vicious
Listless and without bliss and sunkissed and unmissed
******* and ******, no goals, don't even have an interest
These troubling times are demonized, where's the exorcist?

Soft ripples in the air bless my ears with wet lips
The pulse setting hammers me into the ground in steaming silence
Some people go their whole lives without ever hearing the call
Hedonism and nihilism are more attractive to us all.
Dust devils spinning in an empty chest cavity
Throwing themselves over mountains in shame
Whisper in harmony to me to be nobody
Go through my life without playing the game...

Pick through these bones, you'll find grey hair and utility bills
Whether you live in South Central or Beverly Hills
You're beginning to see that we're all alone and desperate
Searching for that person we can stare in the eyes and say,
"I'm just like you. You are a part of me. I want to **** you. I want you to be me.
I love you, I need you, and if you dare go, I will bleed myself blue."
I want to shed every wall, I want to quit hiding behind words
Let the arrows rain and shadows lift to confine me in this verse.
Ryan Bowdish Sep 2010
One with eyes that burn me every time I move
A scowl which damns me the viral infection
Yet you hold her tightly
And it kills me.

I never could reach any amount of perfection that had been set as a goal for me. Never could keep anyone like you around. Never understood what she wants me dead for. Now you and her walk hand in hand.
After I spent so many euphoric nights with you
And so many restless nights now without...

She wants to hang me from telephone wires
She wants to impale me on trees
She wants my face stretched and contorted
To fit your needs! She will feed you!
She will have everything you want!
What will I have?

No heart, no smile, no happiness.
Just bitter, broken-hearted hatred
For her. Deserving you when I never can.
For her being able to be close to you.
For her being able to hold you.
For her being ALLOWED to love you.
Hatred for your acceptance of that
Hatred for the fact that you finally found
Someone as beautiful (if not more) as you.

You probably don't understand
How you can hurt me this much.
I don't know how to explain it.

Just, I miss you, I love you, I wish you the best of luck...

But sometimes I kind of want to hurt you.

Oh, yes, and just to be quite clear:


She doesn't deserve you.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2010
Sun shimmering highway violin
The eyes of her like clay painted porcelain
The air dry and frosty like moon-dried paint
A face drawn downward into the sand

Centering around the spaces between sounds
A great white somersault and then we lie down
It’s almost hard to sleep when you’re there next to me
It makes me breathe uneasily it makes me want to dry up

Worrying about your preference is way past pointless
A smile so simple and words becoming useless
Thoughts melt and blend into perpetual transcendence
Other people end in infinite dependence

Your voice is so refreshing in a setting so unsettling
A world unforgiving, and yet never forgetting
Concise and not faltering by around-the-bush beatings
All irrelevancies bleeding and restlessness receding

To come at such a time as this is divine.
All I can say is Thank you
For being mine.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
It is the time of a paranoid season
We'll smile and laugh for your appeasement.
Hands over your ears to block out reason.
How dare you claim I've sworn to treason!
You are nameless word on every mouth.
When you speak, our eyes fly south.
And what the flying **** are you singing about?
Your quality's dimmed and now you simply shout.

I can hear your falsetto cracking.
Your clear, dim eyes boring. Your
Gravel voice, gargling black tar,
Speedballs shining in the whites
Of your nose.
Glancing my direction,
As if you didn't notice...

Clear your ******* throat,
And quit avoiding my face.
We all love your bitter ways.
We all smile at your irrelevancies (gun to head), but
You stress the importance of falsehood,
By laughing with the best of us the rest of us.

I can see right into your skull,
You don't make it difficult.
How dare you speak once
(And only once)
On such blasphemous shame.

Are you having trouble sleeping?
I laugh at the idea of you tossing and turning.
Is that why you're always drinking,
Does it help you to suppress thinking?

You are a person with no shadow, no outline
No nucleus, no carbon make-up.
Just fire.

You are a lost cause,
Burning.

And you've trained us to turn away when you scream.
Ryan Bowdish Oct 2012
So I've been a little hermit lately. Kind of a homebody. Sociophobic.
I have been missing you so much.
I remember we used to be attached at the hip, the soul. Our faces on underpasses.
We had all we could do. It was only you.

Now you act almost like we're different. You act like we just passed each other by.

My acquaintance.
I remember how you smell. Exactly how you smell.
I can never look at a person who shares your name and think of them
"The Usual Way,"
How I Am Supposed To Look At Them.
How I Am Supposed To Look At You.

You don't understand my anguish anymore, do you?
I guess not, but I forgive you. Your life is big, too.
But avoiding the truth won't make it untrue.
We may be young but we've both lost our youth.
This trend is not old, this love is not new.

I miss you. I hate to repeat myself, but...
I really do.

Do you still think of me, too?
I hope so.

Because these signals will never go out.
Those Everlasting moments
Memorized always.
Ryan Bowdish Jun 2013
The magnificent stifling of a beating heart,
Supported by the cobwebs of regret and second-guessing,
Can be explained in the song of her drowning irises,
The streams of stellar jays and icicles gleaming.

A moment of weakness is sacred and cathartic,
For minds wander between truth and self-doubt
The pieces of you being put back together
Are letting the rays of your honesty out.

The best days of my lonely nocturnal ways
Were complemented by your steady rays
And though fear has consumed your future in waves
The rose-pedals and ashes are one and the same.

So let yourself lonely this dark summer's night,
Knowing you're only a full day away.
I may be craving to make you the master,
But you'll be the highlight of my day.
Ryan Bowdish Oct 2010
In my room with a crack in the curtain
Hands glowing blue, I ask if you're certain
When the veins of the water enter my lungs
You leave me speechless with my neck well-hung
From the bakery, you bleed into me and
The painting on the wall of the ribs I wished to draw
Floating shamelessly by us as your *******
Become my chest cavity, obsessed pleasantly with your smell

And if today is the day you say you love me
You'll disappear into the hills forever
Your metacarpals smell of rosemary and honey
Sincerely breathed the throat until Spanish September!

Your eyes are penetrating, your torso radiating
Bed creaking and complaining by the weight of our backs
And the cracks in my voice give me no choice
But to ask you to sweat out all your noise!
Sometimes I wish you still spoke Deutsch
So we could get under the shower without getting moist
What do you think of when I swallow your thighs?
What do you see when I look into your eyes?

And if today is the day you say you love me
You'll disappear into the hills forever
Your metacarpals smell of rosemary and honey
Sincerely breathed the throat until Spanish September!

You are an unpronounceable vandalized symbol on the
Walls of the empty bathroom stall that is my bone marrow
Elements out the window to remove limitations
So the space between our lips is sub-atomically narrow.
When I wake in the morning to lavender conditioned locks
There are no movements, there are no clocks
And when I open my eyes and clear my throat twice
You roll over to soak your hands up into my sides

And if today is the day you say you love me
You'll disappear into the hills forever
Your metacarpals smell of rosemary and honey
Sincerely breathed the throat until Spanish September!

You are the destination to my mind's only track
And I'll always remember you even if you never love me back.
She may be mine no more, but her inspiration created a fantastic amount of art. May she always be my close, old friend.

These words, once for her, belong to someone else, now. But they will always remain hers in terms of inspiration.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2010
You can now rise upon the backs of the dead!

The eyes of the suffering are goggles
Red and shining through the fog
Their backs are broken by wooden poles
Their chests are ripped by bullet holes

The eyes of the suffering are needles
Green and glowing in the water
Their back-bones are laced with poison
Their lives were met with a choice end

The eye of the suffering is a flashlight
White and beaming in the libraries
Their chests protruding MP5’s
They drag their blood for all their lives

The eyes of the suffering are missing
The brain is all that remains
Their backs carry all kinds of firearms
Their legs are 8, littered with scars

The eyes of the suffering are dog’s
The face is that of a corpse
Their stomachs are full from the slaves
Their home is upon the graves

The eyes of the suffering are burning
Their bodies are attached by the hip
They throw their fire through the halls
They stand six feet four inches tall

The head of the suffering is severed
From all the torture it’s endeavored
It’s arms are blades of rusted steel
They’ve no more love to feel

The eyes of the suffering are starving
Their teeth are seven inch nails
Their jaws are gnashing and skin peels
Their arms are stretched for a meal

The King of The Suffering is The Worm.
His Hate fuels The Suffering on His terms.
He runs through The City of Dead Dreams.
He towers above the tallest buildings.
Ryan Bowdish Jul 2013
I am afraid to **** the man who robs me of my entire well being.
Let us all force each other to make change.
You'll tolerate everyone on earth or else.

Sell my house. But only to a criminal

After all, I need federal funding.

Mandating is always wrong.

Challenge me.

Discipline these ******* kids.

Am I wrong or are you ******* ignorant?

Stop worshipping criminals. Stop glorifying hedonism. Change your culture. I don't care if you're *******. Challenge me.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2013
Serrate your eyes with a saw tooth wave
Beads of sweat do not a woman make
Tie me to the swirling clouds
Watch it rain my pieces down

I'd love to see you in a beehive
Dying to breathe in a new light
The sky's the limit and I've got a minute
To drain myself into the infinite
Ryan Bowdish Nov 2021
It's clear
After all this time
That talking to you
Is
Never finished this, checked my drafts and found it. I love it as is.
Ryan Bowdish Nov 2012
The lives we've chosen are leaving us broken
(Do you need your)
Crammed in a corner, don't speak unless spoken to
(Blue screen covers?)
December's coming close to reignite the ghosts
Of elder superstition, mythology becomes religion again!

Marry me, my darling
We've only seconds left to go
I know I'm not the life of the party
But no one here wants to die alone!

Let sleeping dogs lie! You're kicking a
Dead horse!
To arms! To arms! To arms!
Left wing and sou-souwest.

Cheers to the masses for forgetting the past
(Sticks and stones)
Beautifully passive, raising our glasses
(This is our home)
I want to ignite you, that's why I'm spiteful
And loathing your masters, hiding in laughter!

So walk away, you harlot.
Far too tired to give you time
You're not worth the effort I made to hide in
My hope for the world to split

Let sleeping dogs lie! You're kicking a
Dead horse!
To arms! To arms! To arms!
Bury our fears in our outlets.

Last call before we close the door
Just wait until the power's down
Let it be known coast to coast
What we've hidden underground.
Drive a hatchet into your front door,
Inside us all is warrior bone
Burn up all your televisions
Destroy all your telephones!
The future shall not be distorted
No crime shall go unreported
Give it to them as you found it
Without homes, without a sound!
I'll give my words, shut up and listen:
The old ways died and no one missed them,
Don't you see your hallucinogens
Are no excuse for ignorance?

Let sleeping dogs die. You're kicking a
Burnt bridge.
To arms! To arms! To arms!
Behold the 22nd.
Ryan Bowdish Jul 2013
Coagulation in the limbic system
The pineal gland commence emission
Insemination within the vision
Clouded by foreign dubbed derision
Fray the edges, fringe incision
Behold the schism, parabolic business
Subtitles for the learning minions
And it is booming like v twin pistons

Streamline slithering tunnel vision
Between the rock and hard resistance
Living the lie, we're deathly hidden
Not just fire but the end decision
Resulting is the pouring human
A sudden break elastic intrusion
The hour spawned upon confusion
Forever running through illusion
Ryan Bowdish Feb 2013
Our hands our calloused.
Raised old too young,
Too much, too fast to function.
Beliefs and needs
Underestimated in light
Of the weight of life.

Unenlightened self-importance
Breeds nuisance for intelligence
Struggles are active and bound
Revised, undeniable, retractable,
Forming, foaming at the mouth
We flow truth into new strife.

For those who can see through the plastic,
We made it out alive, with luck.
I try not to think of those days when
Dripping, pouring, outward noises
Made me their benefactor in shaking off
The incandescent light from garages long since passed.

I remind myself to shower, once more
This time, with every small drag I smell Propane...
Like leaves carnivaled in a spiral moth,
But it's just the smoke from my cigarette...
So maybe it is Propane...
I find this world to be quite amusing.

My body is a temple for the act of living once.
I am not concerned with long life, I'm mortal.
Experience all and see all, and thereby
Learn the meaning behind the words
That are written in peoples' eyes
So you can be trusted, too.

As long as you can trust yourself,
You'll see the colors realign
Unlike the mother who spoke before me
I will be the father this time
Swerving, slurring, shivering.
Can you hear me? Are you reading this?

**** not away those shreds of extra skin
Always remember how cold it is for me.
Try to conceive of a place for you and I
I will be sure to be asleep when the clouds
Erupt into showers of our pure enjoyment...

I invite you, too.
Ryan Bowdish Nov 2017
Brutality been building up
Cutting through the marrow
Feels like pork, penny flavored
High tension cord, aroma savored
Laced with liquid hydrocodone
World fades to black as the cleaver falls
(As the cleaver falls)
As the cleaver falls!

Spoken like a true warrior, you scheme
Despise it, revised it like a million times, it
Hurts to think that if it were tangible
I would probably just **** it to death
Scared to let myself get a handle
On the last human feelings I have left

She was a no one, a ghost
Her family left her in her glory days
Tell me, would you even have known
If I chose to keep it hidden away?

White lines on roadsides
Up my ******* nose again
I could **** it twice
This feeling I feel in the end

Every **** time I feel the cleaver fall
It's the whole night over again
A twisted groundhog day forever
Been runnin' since the very first ******
It's been building up
The brutality
And I can finally feel the release
Of the fatality
I'm balancing
Between the oncoming
Traffic
They'll say it was tragic
But not for me
Because I wanted to ******* end it

A shallow grave beckoning
Her bones like excellency
The eel in the cold pit
Slippery like new cement
Slow descent
No incentive
To respect the dead
Feeling the bile rise
Letting it coat her insides
The smell like hospitals
After a travesty

If I could put it in to words
I would just **** it red
Or beat it until my knuckles bled
And I know that if I find some help
I would satisfy
The sickest parts of me
So who the **** is next?

Don't ask me for my number, kid.
Kiss your mama goodbye
Ryan Bowdish Dec 2010
Your eyes dance like the last 3 men on stage at the end of a tragic play
Your legs grow from the earth and never falter like evergreen trees on a foggy day
we'd gallop down these empty cobblestone streets until we entered the veins
And on and on our twisted wires will conspire until we meet in the rain.

Darling, are you famous?
Is it for you I play this?
Why is it so hard to say it?
I want to loosen your teeth and your locked lips

Smile for me, the radiation in your mouth blinds the hateful fool inside me.
Laugh for me, I'll create a nation to bind you to the coils of my arteries
Hold me, your arms are oh, so cold, and they never relax my neck long enough
Open your mouth and leave your cries out to dry out and rot away in the sun snuffed

You're the one I bowed to, you gave me such a start
"Is it really her name that's been stuck inside my heart?"
And had I known that I really had a choice
My undying desire for you, long ago, I would have voiced
When you stroll by, all I can see are the music waves in your eyes
And sometimes, not knowing your name made me want to cry
So tonight, it will be known that I hate being on my own
And if I am lucky, maybe neither of us will have to stay alone.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
Your eyes touch the back of my mouth. Make it so hard to swallow.
I never breathed so evenly, my stomach feels so hallow.
I'll bury my face in your neck. Allow me to sink my tongue, and
Drown my teeth into your arms. Your breath fills my lungs.

Everything is easy now, since we simply let it be.
This is anything but sarcastic, the way our colors bleed.
I love your golden irises, I love your sepia skin.
Wrap yourself around my bones and melt into my ribs.

I feel like our arms glide through each other,
Like dancing lovers, after years of familiarization
Predictability in every step, but for once
Comforting to know what's going to come next.

Your hands hieroglyph the language of my fingernails
Decoding a sensation that belongs to something bigger than us,
And finally understanding that it's okay to touch that.

Contentment for war. Trading pity for empathy.
Trading sympathy for care.
You were always in the confines of my aching head,
Your name is in all my search-bars.

If I had the right fingers, I would create you in marble
I would design a statue and have it be gilded
In your honor. And if there was a temple for us,
It would be in the shape of a man, aimed at the earth.
He would be bowing to a large evergreen tree.
And our initials would be carved on the side.

Let's finally spraypaint our faces in underpasses
Eyes like this deserve to be gazed into.
Eyes like yours.
Deep breathing, my face in your chest.

Breastbone meeting skull
Dripping my lips onto your skin
Like candlewax.
If you kiss me with finality,
"I promise, darling, I'll kiss you back."
last line (c)mewithoutYou (Dying is Strange and Hard)

the rest (c)Ryan Bowdish
Ryan Bowdish Nov 2021
Rivers rising to the middle distance
Skylines sunken in sea-salted prisons
An endless ocean, the bottomless blue
Venomous, choking, a sacrifice for you

I've buried my head, but never to hide
I've broken my fingers just to provide
I've taken a throne, but lost all my pride
And here I sit empty, my love cast aside

The sky has broken in an instant
Memory serves to torture, insistent
A constant reminder of poor decisions
No number of wraps will sate this incision

Now let the blackness swallow it all
A shining beacon on the other side
Now see your actions be your downfall
You are the cause for the surmounting tide

I've buried my head, but never to hide
I've broken my fingers just to provide
I've taken a throne, but lost all my pride
And here I sit empty, my love cast aside
Ryan Bowdish Apr 2015
The night is the first thing I believed in. My life was surrounded by the desire for darkness, but it wasn't wrong. There was comfort in the simplicity of the stars, the glow of the crescent moon. There was something beautiful about the droning of the crickets keeping me tethered between dreams and the sheets.

There was a love in it, something that i lusted during the day. The still confines of a room, a buzzing light, a desk welded to a chair. I didn't appreciate the sick irony of florescent lights.

Cue the newest deliverance from something we dont understand. You branched into my life like the limbs of the sun, in a dark room, and surprisingly i wasn't upset by it. There was something inside the music you gave me that told me our lives were intertwined. I can't remember the first thing i said to you but i knew i didn't want it to be the last time.

When i wanted to rule the world i thought I'd be happiest if people would just leave me alone, and meeting you taught me that i wasn't ready for a life of loneliness. I think I'll save that for when I'm ninety.

I like to be a person of metaphor and extravagance. But there are occasions when I just don't have the capacity to be clever. You make me too honest. It's good, i rarely see this side of me.

You became the moon to me when we spoke together late nights some months ago. My stars became your words. My life has been stranger than fiction, because you ended up being my antagonist. Challenging me, reminding me who i am and why i exist on this earth.

You were a sonic boom in a cloud of feathers, a banshee in the middle of the bayou, a war horn from a still swamp. I couldn't ignore you. I never could. You always looked and sounded so good.

Even when i didn't earn you personally, I remember only wishing you by me. I remember because our names were the same, and it sounded so nice to hear or names spoken side by side, and so unnerving. Year after year i wished you were alone, I wished you needed me. I was a *******.

And yet there you were, like frozen sound waves during a winter sunlit morning, how your breath forms icicles on the roof. I saw you in a room full of rainbow music and yet you danced to a tune all your own. You knew exactly what i needed to see, what i was dying to hear. The way you laid down rules on me like i was going to be used, and i was happy.

The past is beautiful because we were such fun dumb little kids. This passion never needed to be so hidden. I love how you once told me never to say 'love' because now i can't go a single day without mashing into your head the sheer fact that i love you.

I'm afraid i may end up making some huge mistakes but i will do everything in my power as a human being to stay with you, to love you and be everything you need during the nights when you lack the shine of a crescent moon.

Goodnight, darling.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2010
A splash of white and blue
As if thrown there by a careless Van Gogh
Is interrupted by a small black speck

A message from the military:
"Stay away from my favorite houses!"
As they sour down to collect what none could reach

You wanna go out there? Be my guest.
The power must swoon with you.
Do you three share advice or happen to know
Exactly what to say?

The muzzle flashes show me your position
The blind dogs swarming the countryside
Have you seen a mutant rampage
As beautiful as this?

In the sunset the pigs turn to gray matter
The clouds become vapor trails
Like the end of this AK

Shelters are scarce and furthermore
Can not be claimed
It's just an ongoing war for refuge
From all the acid rain.

Radiation appears like the haze above a bonfire
But in the middle of a dirt road
And the Bandits want your *****.

Mounds of garbage piled on hillsides
Of swaying grass
Facilities, power-lines, bare trees in April
Holes in the sky

Where to turn?
Ryan Bowdish Apr 2013
The sound of the peace (Om)
The wind in the leaves (Home)
Your eyes opened just enough
To see the world shine

To exit in your dreams
To forget your worries
And be immortalized in memory
By the ones who cry

Your soul is recycled into the wheel
And soon someone will take your name
Drinking in your blessed vibes
We open the stars to your face

No more movies or t.v.
No more taxes or sickness
No more crying or bleeding
No more sadness or giving up

Your hands grab the rail again
Speaking with your eyes
My tears have a place in them
You'll no longer need light.

Your soul is recycled into the wheel
And soon someone will take your name
Drinking in your blessed vibes
We open the stars to your face
And now that you're done
Your song will be engraved
Into the hearts of all of us
Who sang.
Rest In Peace to one of my favorite musicians in the world. <3
Ryan Bowdish Feb 2011
As I breathe for a second,
The look in your eyes
Reflects torture, fear and hatred
For the pain in my cries,
As if everything you thought
May have been wrong
At the blink of an eye
Or the shard of a song.

You amaze me, you know
For you try to calm me down
And whether or not I do,
You want to feel my sound.
I don't understand why
I let the world get its hooks in me.
Just promise me you wont change
The way that you look at me.
Ryan Bowdish Jul 2013
Shannon, Mariah, Serena, Maria
Meridia, Midian, Sharon, Alliah
Rochelle, Camille, Rose, Halo
Trenna, Jessica, Ashley, Georgia
Marla, Olivia, Sofia, India
Daniella, Diana, Christina, Caroline
Isabella, Amelia, Amanda, Matilda
Nadine, Haley, Bailey, Francine
Eliza, Annabelle, Kathryn, Sandra
Melinda, Audrey, Aubrey, Emily
Tara, Emma, Ginny, Kathleen
Josephine, Helena, Charlotte, Laura
Chelsea, Arkady, Megan, Kelsey
Kayla, Karliah, Moana, Vivien
Kaysea, Macy, Stacy, Lorraine
Theresa, Felicia, Cecilia, Darlene
Holly, Brianna, Alexa, Ariel
Marianne, Miranda, Jennie, Coral
Korra, Daisy, Penelope, Rayne
Zoey, Cassandra, Grace, Stephanie
Female names are beautiful. Poetry on their own.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
On ladders about to give way,
I'm having guitarist's block.
Waterfalls on the freeway...

Streets bathed in virtual light,
Golden luminescent glare.
Strangers stand in the driveway...

Screens are broken wide open,
Worthless tokens, I'm smokin'.
Flies are chokin', who's jokin'?
Souls have spoken, cheeks swollen.

Passers-by leaning forward
To meet the grade of the ground
Climbing roads in search of more words...

Dreams, we've found, are untoward
Interrupted by that sound.
Deep inside, their very core hurts...

Met you crying under spotlights
When we were frying, it was alright.
Echos bouncing off the black skies
Faucets leaking in the night.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2013
Directing the populace to march through cities and suburbs
Rifles held in militant fashion, all are one
Dictate the reformation and find solace in those who are still here
Leverage made by battles won, solitude to those who are all gone

Eaten by the moths in sand, my clothing is stripped into bands
Crazy not to walk away when my friends disintegrate in my hands
When your leg flies through the air and hits me knocking me away
Looking into the sunset and pondering if it's real or the fray

Sober is not acceptable here, crack the bottle into the lake
Swim under the radar and love in flying bullet parades
My gathering for a new world, will wait patiently out in the rain
While the ruler converts all their wives and drowns away your sorrows in its veins

Genius, pure and swift. Powers are unconfirmed regrets
Should I have let you win when you begged for the apex, the crest
Stupid and young all are, escaping from the facility's sweet arms
Simple and refined we will accept you into our swarm

Remember the cars are gone, the money gone, religion gone
Remember all is mine, all is yours, all is ours
Remember ownership and government is dead
Remember all of your worries are in your head
Ryan Bowdish Dec 2012
Once again, four thirty-seven.
No one else but me.
No one else.

I open my palms upward to study how a reading's done
All I see are roads I have never traveled.
Did anyone ask for their fingerprints?
No one else but me.

Nose to the sky, rainfall and lakes collide
Please take me to the fire.
Locked inside, safe, alive.
No one else but me.

When your mother spits you out, she says the same thing your teachers said:
They say you are a snowflake.
If that's true, how did you end up so much like me (or vice versa; you did come first, after all)?
Life lost momentum when I met you: The world finally stopped screaming past.
So it's given me some time to reflect, and here I sit,
Just entertaining the notion that I would like to die with you.

I think of your eyes in my child, years into the future.
Long evenings by the fire, watching rain hit the windows and explode.
There you are, with your eyes full of tears, and I am just as lost.
Dream weddings, cold champagne...
A dinner table crammed together...they all talk with their mouths full. How cute.
A dark bedroom, those eyes...no lust, just a look.
That smile I wake up to every single day. Her head on my heart.
I do not want this to happen to me, if it can't be you.

You're scared to trust too much, you do it so often.
You think too much, you're anxious.
Sometimes lonely, sometimes for no real reason at all...
Like Sunday morning blues.

Could we be any more exactly the same?
Our differences still excite me. Noticing discrepancies makes my heart weak.
I love finding out new things about you. I could build an entire encyclopedia on you.
And we may be down some, but we're geniuses. Young and talented.
Brilliant and creative. We find pick-me-ups.

Sometimes I consider staying in bed and giving up
And then I just tell myself...
Every day brings me that much closer to you.

I don't know why I am so worried to miss out on the opportunity
That is your compassion.
I keep feeling you slipping away...but probably that's me being antisocial (pause for laughter)...
Well I am not scared anymore.
My soul has been opened and I am glowing inside... I feel ascension.
I have a road to follow...

And know if I am never a musician, or a firefighter, or an electrician, or any of those things I love...
I will be your husband.
And there will be NO divorce.

The snow is falling barely.
Like its indecisive.
I used to be that way, but you beckoned me inside.
No one else but you.

Loneliness is an illusion with you alive,
And let it be known that my soul is yours
Or God strike me down.
No one else but you.

It's warm here, in my arms...
You can barely keep your eyes open...
I carry you to our cold sheets.
No one else.

No one else but you.

(Defying fate; Forging destiny)
Dedicated to a specific bay area resident
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
Blindsided by a rhinoceros.
Tendons, muscles, unraveling. I can't do this any--
Glitch, system failure, shutdown
Restart, blue screen, flashing cursor
Epileptic shock. Epinephrine injected
Command line. Run:

Beautiful flying objects thrown violently.
Don't open this door! Kiss me hard
And not in a good way (if you remember how),
Like when fishes try to breathe on dry
Land on jagged Rock
Climbing without
Gears spinning and clanking
*** and pan. (Glass and sand)

Sizzling in this artificial sun
Created by brainwaves soaked in
****** and LSD and yellow cake uranium
Ghostriding patterns erupting like
Stop. Fail. Restart.
Detecting equipment...
No input present. How will you communicate?
Try again. Restart.
Password required.

Why don't you eat?
These tears are making my face numb.
Put this in your arm.
Trust me, you'll love it.
You'll have Tesla coming out of every orifice.
Dancing physics, matryoshkas.

You can deny the existence of a God and live,
But if you deny the existence of gravity...
Well, just try and walk off this cliff.

"These thoughts are so scattered.
I don't even think they're mine."
Those memories? They're not yours.
They belong to your master's daughter.

I must be dying, I'm only this awkward when I'm dying.
Connection timed out.
Ryan Bowdish Oct 2010
Cardboard boxes containing a fabric
Of something quite similar to corduroy
Converse high tops and a ***** old mattress
All the while oblivious to the boy.
Stacks of old donuts and Burger King fry bags
With whiskey and wine and a strip of barbed wire
Wrapped around a pair of prosthetic legs
And in the meantime he couldn't get higher

I see the photographs flashing in his eyelid telescope breastplate
He slams the sky and dances to the end of days
Crawling on the floor and throwing wet sweaters
Into rusty old dump-trucks on days of red letters!

Sunglasses mimicking Kanye style on a sweater-vest
With hands crawling up made out of glass bowls and jewelry
To encase the black chin made up of the camera-rest
Leading back to the nose jutting forward; a full-finger ring
Molly was her name and her fair hair flowed beautifully
Made up of plastic bags and empty pill-capsules
The eyes are glowing so bright and the mouth gaping open
He screams his dark magic right into the night!
The ******* techno disc-jockey ******
Runs up the telephone pole into kaleidoscope starlight
Eating the moths from the mouths of the dancing girls
Laughing quite gaily and not looking quite right!
The objects unfold and the man crawls from underneath
Surrounded by possessions, clinging to everything
Trying desperately to breathe, dying from a quiet disease
All the things he owned ended up owning him, you see!

Oh! Oh!
Red, red lungs!
Whoa no!
A wire undone!
Ryan Bowdish Nov 2010
These buildings have fallen.
This earth is rotten.
Dust devils are really it,
Just a long, deserted highway...
Tumbling.

I miss everything we did, the way we held hands
And clasped legs
And lie there as if we had been married for years
(when I had known you for weeks)
Covered by our safe and stable concrete
Between deep breaths.
Biding our time before we go back out onto the grass
The only grass in the entire world.

We will make fireworks and nuclear explosions
For generations to come
No one will remember our faces after this.
It's perfect.

How I wish you and I could simply fall in love.
Could be pure, could be simple again.
Could love the skin, the subtlety,  the grace
Between stepping closer and closer
Trying to delay the touch, delay the kiss.
Then the dance, where our bodies become one.
Let these god forsaken people never, ever know
That these bombs fell for us.
Take these pleasures to the grave.
Curse the day the people know we set off these fireworks.

But if you ever need a lover, and if you are still
Out There...
in this Wasteland...
These searchlights in the sky are for you.
Love, R.
For a beautiful woman.
Ryan Bowdish Mar 2013
Our world has changed quickly
We used to write each other letters.
Now we just like stuff.
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
We're Replicants.
We boot up, we shut down, we most definitely restart.
Viruses make us sick and sometimes break us to the point where we need new hardware.
Sometimes they break our firmware and we need to wipe.
We have command lines to perform actions, and registry keys to keep memory stored of the things we learn.
The world is our power supply,
and when we boot up in safe mode,
like
some
people
do
every
day,

we only use the bare minimum of our potential.
Ryan Bowdish Jul 2013
I have felt pain.
Therefore I can assume to know everything about anyone's situations.
I am alone.
I don't recognize cliches.

A good poem is a statement that no one had heard but everyone has felt. Not the other way around.
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2010
Our God has forgotten our world
But we would rather float alone
We would rather own this home

No renting from judgment
Hypocritical clockwork
Every six minutes
Another empty phrase

This isn't just a warning
About the empty globe
This is a promise

Truly an apocalyptic nostalgia
Nebulae will fill the skies
The clouds will dissolve into green madness
It will be the most beautiful night of our lives

Souls have vacated all mankind
Only a few remain in right mind
We're the last to drift alive
But it won't matter by the end of night

The final hour is upon us

It's 3 in the afternoon

Trees all bearing fruit laughing
Gassing animals with broken hulks
Rusted on the roadside

The grass goes on and splits the mountains
The temperature begins to build
My hand and your hand
My glass and your sand

A broken mirror in the rocks
A final breath before it stops
Ryan Bowdish Oct 2021
Historically speaking, I am evil.
I used, I hated, I hurt, I cheated.
I lied, I drank, I wanted to die
But history is history.

I can't sit still while my world crumbles.
I can't stop trying to facilitate health.
You would that I made no mistakes
You would that I crucified myself.

My foundation is frozen in purgatory now
But humanity insists that I'll make it somehow
And when your record is littered with lies
The truth will always be clouded with doubt

I don't want to give up, but I want to give in
To the conceptual bliss of not having to be
I don't want to die, but I want the pain to end
I wonder what world waits for spirits set free.

Sometimes I wish that I never chose fatherhood
So I didn't have anyone to hurt, left behind
But I have to believe that this life will get better
Even when suicide strangles my mind.
"Speaking words of wisdom...
Let it be."
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2011
Incense and steam listlessly fractal
into air molecules. Keyboards weep,
A typewriter ticks on awkwardly.
The hallway wide awake;
Kids crying.

Letters can't reach you quickly
(I'll write 7 by the time you have 1).
There aren't enough hours in the day.
Phones should be like lions' roars.
I wish I didn't have separated parents.

Hoping you have a full stomach.
I saw your warm bed.
Hoping your ears are covered,
Your back straight, your hands strong
Your grip tight.

I want you back.
Let's make love.
Sketches of you scattered.

Sirens forewarn rescue.
Maybe yours? (Please)

Please be free.
I love you.
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