Picking at every scab on the scalp,
under each fingernail a thin gluey layer of blood.

pick, pick.

Just like in the old days: 16 years old. 17. 18. 19 years old. 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 and 25 and then it stopped. A few months pass and I haven't even run my fingers through my hair, maybe it was just the weather drying my scalp, or a harsh shampoo.

So much of my life is simply out of my awareness. Not in any deep philosophical sense, but rather an inane one. Can't seem to pay attention to reality, nonetheless grasp it. I thought I was a dreamer, at one point in my life. Now I see it as daydreaming, the sort of daydreaming symptomatic of melancholia. Relationships become hazy, I'm either abusing someone, or myself it seems. I feel lost in the hubbub, maybe similar to running through an exciting room; ceiling speckled with hanging multi-colored streamers that touch the floor. The intentions seem clear enough, get to the exit. I never do, though. It's more of a mindless plodder, or sometimes a frantic pacing back and forth. It's a bit overwhelming, this is a big room and it's easy to feel very small in it. The lights are bright and distracting, I cant help but feel vulnerable. Somehow I have to protect myself and blot all this out.
and just like that I become ignorant.

Friendships and well-being between acquaintances becomes jaded, confusing, misguided always missing the target.  It's all so narcissistic and self-centered: this whole scenario that could easily dote itself as a complex that esteems oneself as something that which it is not, but under all of that simply lies the fear. Fear paints the walls of this room black and the streamers are blood-red, the lights aren't so bright anymore, they're dim, and not as bright as a candle burning at wick's end. If you're lucky Someone comes along and sets up a street light in the center, and you see the way out.

But what's on the other side of that door? Is it a greater hell than this one? Are there bigger flames and more insults? Or is it peace and calm, is it Okay-ness? Surely there are more people out there, which is a horrid thing to imagine. There's surely so much out there that could harm me, and my pride. If they hurt my pride they'll all see that scared little boy, the weak one, the feeble one with the weak mind that insidiously disguises itself with pride and pretense.  The one that wasn't popular, the one that jokes were made against. The lazy, the stupid, foolish one. The one that tries to hide his deformed image with vanity and "pride."

Go ahead friend, take your light, close the door on your way out. I'll sit here with my legs crossed, it may be dark and scary in here, but at least I've kicked everyone else out.. now it's just me.

and I do believe that candle has just burned out completely.
I can't even see my hand in front of my face.

*pick, pick.

This is not a poem of things that have happened
but things that never happened
this is a poem of lost things
pushed so far down they are forgotten

this is a poem of feelings
the ones that seem to have no place at all but still twist knots into your stomach
making muscles **** and spasm while icy fingers claw at your spine
while somewhere in your mind is lurking the hidden reasons for it all

why the sound of creaking floor boards sends frantic ripples through your mind
fingers gripping at your neck harsher then a nightmares kiss
can leave you in a seconds space on your knees and feeling sick
heart beat pounding in your chest, skin beaded with the coldest sweat

yet when questioned, queried, pressed to supply some kind of answer to any sudden change of action
you can only stand at a loss mind grasping at the empty spaces where a memory has been forever lost

there was never any magic to finding my way to this place just another sleepless night
restless longing to feel, pretend that I could belong

somewhere, at least for a time

to cast my words like fishing lines in hopes of catching some fragment of acceptance
in a craft where I still fumbled
stumbled, blind as any bat

fingers grouping harsh and frantic after words that plagued my mind jerking sleep back like a rug that used to lay so still and lifeless

leaving me flat on my back head spinning with so many verses
titles for these names and faces
places, places I have yet to see but still go seeking endlessly

scratching words through coffee shops, plane flights.. bus stops
somber tones of concert halls rising higher

pitch matched only by these shaking hands still gripping pen and paper
feverish with intent and desire to find their place where two worlds could meet

if only as a passing glance between two threads of a second where I could simply fall in place and know as artists do
that I am not alone

These hands are not mine tonight
no they must belong to someone else

someone that I used to know
used to know all too well

I used to watch those hands grasping endless steaming mugs of tea
wash dishes slowly between 1 and 3 (am of course)
turn yellow pages one by one
how they could fend off sleep with every movement

I used to watch them slick with soap caressing every plate and spoon
folding sheets still warm from the dryer

anything to keep from halting, pausing
resting even for a moments time to think

as I now sit and think looking down at those hands
think how much they still can not be mine

for I am resting, sleeping
halting them from moving endlessly

so they, must not be mine

But still, here I sit
toying with blackened words seeped in sadness
thinking lines like slow decline
broken hearted
so cliche and tear stained pages

clawing my way back from the brink
while shedding verbs of loneliness

isolated desperation clinging like my second skin
slowly flaking from my shoulders leaving only subtle traces
where my new skin yet feels to raw to pick up and carry on

stamping signs of happiness across black lines of begrudged depression
as though a noseless yellow face could succeed where I still fail
to vanquish the unease slowly eating at my restless mind

give me peace from these swinging moods
catapulting me between a selection of unfounded aggression and broken sobbing

I don't want to sit and think
words of how the light seems dim despite its heat

to take beauty out of sunrise
starlit nights and humble silence

take it back and leave me be
though I might not sleep for a week or three
as least I wont sit here late at night
and write depressed poetry

Whatever happened to those days
when 2 good friends was enough
4 was pushing your ability to see them all in a week
and more then you could count on one hand meant you were that kid with more money then social skills

What happened to picking up the phone
going 24 hours without texting someone
or god forbid
leaving the house without your cellphone, tablet, E-reader... ext... ext

Where did the enthusiastic answer Hell ya! go?
when was is swallowed up by the strange awkward silence usually following the question

Are you busy?

When was it converted into a hesitant and half hearted lie

I'll message you on Facebook...

When did the world start revolving around spray on tans
because no one goes outside anymore

When was LIFE exchanged for online credit
birthday reminders for people you've never met
high scores that wont matter tomorrow, or even 10 seconds from now

Farmville, Mafia wars, Bejeweled

and loneliness...