I want to look at you the way I look at food , with longing and desire but I know you won't fulfill my appetite.

Loving you
Kills
Me inside every day-
But
I don't know
How to live any other way.

You'll need a backpack to
Carry your doubts and fears.
You need them, but don't be
Afraid to lighten the load if they
Start to weigh you down.
You'll need to lace your hair with
Hope like a ribbon and
Never let it fray.
You'll need to pin a compass to your shirt
So you will never forget to follow
Your North and no one else's.
You'll need to hold a seed in your hand
So you'll always remember your roots.
And wear a crown of flowers
To bring peace to your ravenous mind.
You'll need steel-toed boots for your travels
Because God knows the road ahead is long and rocky.
You'll need band aids for when you trip,
But not to worry, dear,
It happens to the very best of us.

And if you ever get scared
Remember the flashlight in your pocket
And it will light your way.

It is usually best to avoid
crushing hopelessness, to swerve
and defer disaster, but even so
the world is well and truly ****** up.

Seek solutions to this conundrum.

Try to avoid curiosity, a pernicious
strain of insanity that conjures up
irrational fears of orangutangs
with meat cleavers, lethally ascetic
Tibetan monks, bathroom carpets
of abandoned razors or Big Macs
rife with E. Coli.

Avoid metaphysical musings that lead
to questions of coleslaw, vegan
water parks, the Team Quadraplegic
Gymnastics squad and the horrors
of the Hilary Clinton Naked Network.

Seek refuge in the present tense to
escape the interrogation of mirrors,
the crafted answer, dacryphilia,
remedial rage, landslides of therapy
and memorizing each month's horoscope.

Consider that mercy is on back order from God.
Remember the best lines of an unread book.
Nap on a battlefield; haggle over imaginary debts.
Set fire to the umbrellas of passing strangers.
Stop to watch the loudness and burn the recovered dead.

Call up new magic for a dying world.
Find beauty in the irradiated glow of burning cities.
Try not to bounce existential checks or notice
the crumbling of distant walls, ruined outhouses,
and the immense bleakness of forever and ever.

Take up training small rodents and lighting holy fires.
Ignore the broken stars, long dead and beyond grief.
Discover the pleasure in erasure, enjoy the biology
of strangeness. Walk many miles without a map
beneath innumerable ladders carefully detouring
around immense flocks of rabid cassowaries.
Throttle the recalcitrant blue sky's silent throat.

Listen to the melody of car wrecks and smashed guitars.
Abandon assumed corpses to dreams of endless cold.
Appreciate futures you cannot believe in but never visit them.
Learn to diagram sentences in Esperanto then speak with toads.
Ignore the slot machine odds against your deepest desires.
Hide beneath the ravenous trees from time's famished maw.
Seek sanctuary in toothy optimism and complete amnesia.

Follow these impossible instructions to the letter
and you will become non-valent, invisible, immune
and no longer notice the world is ****** up
beyond redemption. Go on, give it a try.

  ~mce

It is a known fact that:
Humans are born with two fears,
The fear of falling
And the fear of loud noises.

The fear of falling in love
And the fear of saying "I love you"

Soupy slurred words slide from her lips and drip to the floor,
Mixing in with the pool of regurgitated gin and tonic.
Her mouth is bitter but her thoughts are true;
Only the drunk can tell the truth.
Her incoherent words fall to the floor followed closely by her slouched figure and salty tears.
She sleeps on the bathroom floor,
Soaked in the mess she's created.

A ceramic cup pressed to my lips
Hot tea steaming below my tounge
A breath of warm summer air fills my lungs soon followed by green tea
The season is joyous
The cicadas sing
And the lightning bugs mate
But my throat is tight
I grip my tea and take another sip
Three months of relaxation by the pool
Yet the only thing I can worry about is the looming fall
68, 67, 66, 65... And the numbers continually drop with every sunset
Fall draws closer everyday
But instead of the warm welcome of school time once more
The changing of the seasons also changes my life
Senior
I sip my tea as the anxiety grows
College college college
That's all I can think of
All of my friends will leave but it's alright
My cup is empty
He's leaving.
I have to face real world problems alone and worry about what his school will bring at the same time
He's changing for his own good. He's following his dreams
I'm happy and envious of him
But I cry because it's all too much
It's summer and I can't even enjoy the night sky
He's going to find someone else
It's okay I tell myself
It's okay he tells me
What will happen will happen
But memories of all the good times shared burn my mind
And the tears stream down my cheeks
It's okay he says
We can make it he says
Part of me wants to believe it, he and I have talked everything out
But another part of me says to break it off now.
Why risk getting hurt when he leaves you for someone else?
No other college relationship works, you're just a stupid high school girlfriend

My conscious fights over this endlessly but he still tells me it's okay
I just want the anxiety to end
The lightning bugs fade
And the cicadas go silent
Tortured sleep comes to me once more under the beautiful night sky