When I say hero you
look for Superman
Flying through Metropolis or
Batman slinking through Gotham’s shadows.
And when I say heroine
You can think only of needles
Poking through skin like the shell of a beetle.
When I say hero
Everyone looks skyward for capes and spandex
Or a symbol lighting up the clouds.
But Clark Bruce and Peter
can’t save you from yourself.
These suit-clad saviors are fantasies.
Fairytales put before us so we can have something
to believe in when the ordinary people fail us.

I have seen people around me, people I love,
crumble like weakened plaster.
And I have met people who were already lying
in a pile of dust and debris at my feet.
I’ve seen them **** asbestos into their lungs
and draw tic tac toe on their arms in crimson
I have seen someone become their own villain!
But I have seen these people get up again,
Pick up the pieces of their glass hearts,
And glue them back together for the sake of their sanity.
I have seen villains become heroes.

These heroes, MY heroes are the ones with the scars on their wrists
but no tags on their toes, the ones that heave into the porcelain bowl
but still try to eat each day.
These are my heroes.

My heroes are the parents raising kids and battling demons old and new,
the abuse victims who got out, or are stuck but still fighting.
These…these are my heroes.

Broken survivors, living despite everything that keeps them from wanting to,
Despite all their scars and battle wounds they are alive and they are trying.
The ones who are not saving others but saving themselves.
These are heroes.

Some people look down on the wounded, the broken, and the insecure
like they were the cause of their own problems and refused the simple solutions of “**** it up”
and “get over it” because they were too lazy to get better.

Don’t you dare tell me that they don’t want to fix this,
That they don’t wake up each morning and wish
With every fiber of their being that they could look into a mirror
And finally, finally, love what they see.
Don’t tell me that these people aren’t strong
Because they go to bed each night with eyes red and raw from crying
And they wake up with bags under their eyes but they.
Keep.
Going.

**** your superheroes.

I cannot watch people cry,
I cannot watch them suffer as I know I have suffered,
Begging the world to have mercy on my sanity.
With their tears falling like the
The torrential downpour that nobody wants
Onto the table their head lies upon.
I cannot ignore these salty drops
That stain faces red and puffy
Because I know that rubbing your eyes only makes it worse.
I cannot help but go over, awkward but sincere,
And ask quietly, “Are you alright?”
While hoping that I’m not coming off as nosy and bizarre.

If my comforts are not rejected
I may end the conversation with your tears on my shirt
And your head in the crook of my neck.
My fingers gliding against your hair,
My arms rocking you gently
As a child is rocked by their mother.
I suppose that’s what I am then,
The mother hen worrying for her chicks
As they struggle to survive in a cruel existence.
Most of the time I don’t mind,
I even enjoy comforting my chicks
Because this gives me purpose.

Sometimes, not often,
I have to stop and wonder,
Who will be my mother?

I walk down sugar-coated streets,
stumbling over rumor weeds poking up through the cracks
and fearing the whispers that I think I hear.

I watch the candy people walking around,
******* each other dry one way or another
like leeches with sweet teeth.

They make sour faces,
like ******* lime soda through a Sour Punch Straw,
but they keep *******, because there’s nothing else to do in Candyland.

I have to look really hard to find the sweet people.
The gummy ones, the melt in your mouth chocolate ones.
Sometimes I find them half-eaten and discarded like office lollipops
and sometimes they’re melting under everyone’s Red Hot gaze.

Sometimes I only find wrappers
and I get so angry that I think I might melt myself.
Because these people have been eaten.

******, nibbled, gulped down
like nothing more than a quick Kiss that means nothing.
But no matter how small they were, they still mattered.

They mattered to someone,
but now they’re just slick remnants on cellophane or foil.
And what hurts even more is that I couldn’t save them.

I’m not Princess Bubblegum,
I can’t protect a candy kingdom.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

Indulge in your carnal pleasures
Absorb the rich tastes from your plate
Disgust surrounds your form, no care
Don't stop if you get full, need more

Stuff your face full of fat and oil
Supersize that order to go
Keep going no, eat more and more
Soak it up like a sponge

For now.

What will happen when you run out?
Do you go mad with hunger pains?
Throw fits like an infant
Just because you cannot get MORE?

Gluttony is your mouth's machine
Processing more than it can take
Until it comes back up and out
Then the cycle begins again

Part One:

I hear music in my head
but I can't learn the notes.
I can read novels in my heart
but I can't arrange the verbs.

There's poetry carved into my skin
but blood doesn't work as ink.
It's all here in my head
but it won't come out with my crooked soul.

Part Two:

Failure to communicate.
A hunger I cannot sate.
While a poet bangs away at my brain,
My clumsy fingers inscribe only a fraction of the pain.

Hands cold with confusion.
Numb to the heart's passionate intrusion.
Searching blindly for the spark of life
To finally rid me of this desperate strife.

Beating, pacing
thumping like a drummer with no rhythm
and no purpose other than to hurt.

Once candy box red,
now black like tar
and twisted and scratched
until it is no longer the muscle it used to be.

It pounds and thunders
in ways I wish I couldn’t feel
because these beats don’t give me butterflies
they give me disease,
they give me panic and fear and
a horrific feeling of, “Please Don’t Hurt Me Again”.

I didn’t ask for this,
this broken thing you gave me,
this abomination of an *****
that calls itself a heart
but only wishes it was something so beautiful,
so excuse me for not having the receipt
but please, please, let me exchange it.

Give me something that’s candy box red,
something that isn’t riddled with scars
and beats in a way that hurts but
in the best way possible, the way that
breathes life into everything I do
and not the kind that burns.

I’m not asking for much,
maybe just a second chance
a do-over, to feel again
and be okay if it doesn’t last.

I don’t want to be afraid
to the point where thinking about trying
makes my filthy heart stop.

When you see her
walking down the street,
swaying those wide luscious hips,
you just know.

This girl
with her long cherry curls
and her icy blue eyes,
she’s the beauty and the beast all in one
sinfully delicious package.

This girl makes your heart
crash into your ribcage like a wrecking ball,
stopping you in your tracks
and stealing your breath away
like the succubus she knows she is.

This girl with full pink lips,
skin smooth as white marble,
and a stare that could paralyze and excite
all at the same time.

This girl promises beauty
but baby you’re gonna get
a lot more than you bargained for
if you try to cross this demoness.

This girl is your gorgeous nightmare,
horror wrapped up in a **** package
with a shiny red bow and stiletto heels.

With those curves in your hands,
thinking is out of the question.
There’s only passion, blind lust,
because if you let her go then
you seriously ****** up.

She’s everything you could ever want,
Begging and demanding
As she writhes underneath you and on top of you.
You never stood a chance.

This girl is a living breathing Greek goddess,
all *** and power and unimaginable beauty.
I cannot being to truly describe her,
Because as much as I hate to admit it,

She doesn’t exist.

She is mine,
my creation, my Eve.
Existing only in my fiction,
She is still very real to me.
She lives inside of me,
Breathing and speaking and loving and hating
And I just want to hold her close and keep her with me forever.

Energy, Electric
Blue, Shocking, Stinging, Fire
It burns and buzzes in my blood

A constant presence
The ******* clad succubus on my shoulder
Whispering lustful nothings in my ear

Always on my mind
Perverting and Invading
Thoughts stained with crimson desire

Heart rate heart rate
Faster faster
Harder harder

Blush, giggle
Hide the ***** feelings one shouldn't feel
Feign the innocence that's been feigned for years

Need, want
Anything to quench this constricting fire

Every day's got you down,
and like an anchor on a sailboat,
you're drowning.

Choking on the salty sea
You struggle for breath
As the churning waves crush you

No matter how bad it is,
You somehow get through it,
Missing bits and pieces of your heart.

With the dark clouds pouring on your head
Like a storm on your dreamscape
You still manage to shine in my eyes

The shine dulls and brightens
Day by Day, Night by Night,
But it's always there.

A soft glow that gives me hope
Because after everything
It's still there, holding on

Grasping at the edge
Pulling yourself up
Praying to be what you once were

Golden

When I was young, too young,
I stopped believing in beauty
and all the things that came with it
like hope and trust and
the magic of pixie dust.
I felt the light in my eyes
drain like sand through an hourglass
and no it’s not Days of our Lives
more like Nights Spent Slowly Dying
alone with only our ragged blankets
to keep us warm and breathing.

I got older, and I learned
how to get beauty back.
it wasn’t easy to rewire my brain after so much of it
had corroded and poisoned
but I did it. I learned to
look into a mirror and be okay
with what I saw looking back at me.

Now I’ve tried to share this power
with everyone I meet but it’s
really ******* hard to change
your own mind and trying to
change someone else’s is like
showering at someone’s house and you can’t figure out how the
**** their faucet works.

As I get happier
I run out of ways
to make other people happy
and I find myself choking
on words that mean **** all
to a depressed bulimic or
someone who can’t adjust to college life.
I can’t play therapist anymore.

But I’d cut out my eyes
for a blind man and
I’d give my limbs to amputees.
I’ll donate all my organs,
tear out my heart
and give it to someone
who’s had theirs broken
too many times before.

I would rip my self to pieces
just to save this world,
because how can I love myself
when the world can’t do the same?
What’s the point of being happy
in a world drowning in pain?

Maybe that is the point.
Maybe staying awake
in this sleepy universe
is the shot of espresso
it needs to wake the **** up
and finally smile a little.

A mirror is only as good as what you see on its surface
and when what you see isn’t what you want,
you start to wish the mirror was broken,
that someone bought it from a fun house,
that what you see isn’t really you.

You start to avoid the mirrors in your house,
pretending not to worry about how you look,
claiming that you’re not a vain person.
But the truth is, your vanity hides
beneath a layer of disgust
like a sheath of decaying sanity.

You want to curl up,
curl up until you disappear,
because maybe then people would look at you
the way you want them to,
they would look at you fondly,
missing your little quirks and they would say things like,
“They were so beautiful, it’s such a shame.”

But the thing is,
that’s not what happens.
That is not fondness,
it is pity. They feel bad for you,
but they feel no guilt
for how they ignored you.

Disappearing won’t make people look at you.
I thought like that once upon a time,
and sometimes the thoughts still creep in
like little worms trying to eat away at the confidence I have built.

But **** it,
I have worked too hard to go back now.
When I look in the mirror,
I no longer see that layer of disgust
that sheathed my decaying sanity.
Now I look in the mirror and I think,
“****, I look really good.”

I do it anytime I look in the mirror,
because now it’s true.
I believe every word of it,
I finally like what I see.
And if that makes me vain
then I will gladly accept the title.

I have wasted too much time avoiding my own reflection.
For once in my life, I’m finally happy with what I see.
And nobody, nobody, is ever going to take that away from me.

Look at yourself.
Embrace what you see, love it.
If you don’t like it, you can change it.
You can change the cut and color of your hair,
you can change the clothes you put on,
you can exercise and you can eat right,
you can even change the color of your eyes.
All I ask of you is that you don’t hurt yourself in order to change things.

Waking up defeated,
Unable to breathe
In this ****** up world.

Suffering under the weight
Of my own fears, doubts, worries,
My own terrifying reality.

Money money money.
I need that green,
I need that paper,

I’m a vagrant
I’m a loser
I’m a waste of carbon

I’m a ******* rebel.
I deviate from society’s rules.
I’m not going to assimilate.

I fall asleep to a thunderstorm’s lullaby.
It caresses me with rumbles that seem to shake my windows,
drowning me in the constant beating of raindrops.

Before rushing to my bed,
I rushed from my car to escape the drops
that threatened to drench me.

Before rushing from my car,
I rushed to it,
to escape the drops that drenched me anyways.

Rain dripped like tears from my hair,
as I crawled my way home,
to the safety of my bed.

Shaking the rain from the fuzz on my neck,
part of me wishes that I hadn’t rushed,
that I had let the rain drown me in its falls.

I want to lose control
almost as much as I want to keep it.

If you stare at your reflection
You see only the glossed over surface
You are painted, well groomed
And most people do not see you

Only pretty on the outside
Your hair is shiny, body a shrine
Sweet skin clothed in fine silk and lace
Hides the beast that controls your soul

Speak to your own reflection now
Ask, "Who's the fairest of them all?"
Listen to it confide the truth
"Not you, for your heart is a hole."

"Not you, for your beauty will end.
There is someone who is fairer.
For she has a virtuous heart inside.
Loving others and not herself."

You are Pride's host, a shell of vanity.

If I have a short fuse
then you are a lighter,
setting me off
and watching me sizzle and spark
while you flicker out as if nothing happened.
Staring at me with your butane smile as I blow up,
and I can only infect everything around me with my flames.
It’s hardly fair, when you’re the one that started it,
that I get blamed when the village is on fire and I’m shaking in the center,
wishing someone would throw a bucket of water on me.
Yes I may be the monster here
but I am your creation,
a product of your antagonizing heat that hides
the fiery Frankenstein that you really are.

Every time I turned my eyes up,
staring at the ceiling to force the tear drops back inside of me
with my hands clasped beneath my chin,
people might have thought that I was praying.

I’m not a religious person
but I think that in my moments of desperation
I’d pray to a ******* ceiling tile
if it would make me feel better.
I’m not that desperate yet,
but if the churning in my stomach
and the burning ache in my chest get any worse
I might just ******* do it.

I’d pray to the dead skies if the clouds would absorb my pain
the same way they absorb the moisture in the air.
I’d pray to the holes in the ceiling above my desk
if I could send my tears up there
instead of having to continually force them back
when my shoulders start to shake.

I’d pray to the jar of paper stars
given to me by someone I thought I’d never be without
if I could be with the friends that truly care about me again.
I’d pray to my car
if it could just take me back home for the weekend on autopilot
so I wouldn’t have to think about concentrating on the road
when all I want to do is go to sleep.

I’d pray to my zombie pillow pet
if it would take away my responsibilities
and allow me to rest for just one whole day.
I’d pray to the pictures of random cats on tumblr
if I could hold my own cats and cry freely into their fur.

Thinking about it,
it’s pathetic how willing I am to pray
for just a little relief from this dark wave
that seems to be rising like a tsunami,
ready to drown me in all the negativity
I thought I had been able to lock away.

Teeth clicking clumsily
Lips caressing,
Candy and dragon's blood on my tongue

Hands fumbling
Clothes shedding
Discoveries and ecstasy

All this I wish to have
And You I wish to hold
And my Heart I wish to give

A golden angel living in Hell
Pulling and guiding me through these flames
Until we're up in Earth's graveyard of decay
Pushing through with a wave of power bigger than we are alone

You keep me going
I think Life can't be so bad, so long as I have you
So I can't ever let you go

And yet...

Something's hiding, and it terrifies me.
A voice drilling horrible things into my brain,
Telling me that this is all a lie, a fantasy.

I don't deserve you,
I'm dead weight in your journey.
I'm not enough, I'm too much.

I don't want to drag you down.
You're my world, my galaxy
But can I let go of fear
when that fear is all I know?

Maybe some day I'll wake up from my nightmarish life
And by some chance you'll still be here
Maybe some day this will be real.

A curious thing,
this mass of muscle and arteries.

Pumping blood around
Holding feelings tight in its grasp

I am angry.
It beats painfully, hard, fast.

I am happy.
It sings and it dances.

I am in love,
and oh how I feel it squeeze and leave me breathless.
That one’s my favorite I think.
Beautiful, beautiful breathlessness.

I am sad.
It weighs like an iron anchor sitting in my chest.

I have been rejected.
That squeezing becomes far too tight,
and suddenly, there’s nothing
but a hole.

The beating becomes slow, labored,
Breathing is suddenly painful.

The edges of the hole ache and burn.
Shredded and torn is the soul it protected.

I gasp for air.
Christ this hurts.

This mass of muscle and arteries.
It lies to you.

Tells you to feel.
Tells you to care.

Despite the pain,
despite the agony and the broken feeling,
you continue to listen.
And you die inside.

This curious thing…
It’s a monster.

She walked in,
she shopped,
but I couldn't tell you
just what she bought.

I was transfixed
the way you are when you see a movie star,
but there was no slow motion,
no fan blowing her hair back.

Just.
Beauty.

All three-hundred pounds,
all soft features
bright eyes and pale pink lips

True Victorian lady.
Plump pale pulsing flesh
Smooth as marble, soft as silk.

Our meeting was brief,
I smiled, "Have a wonderful day!"
Even as she disappeared, she did not leave my mind.

David Samuel Nixon III

You’re disgusting and sadistically mad
The way you stab and cut and grin is sick
Everyone knows you are evil and bad
They do not think about what makes you tick
Something is not right in that brain of yours
You choke, you beat, you torture those around
It is getting hard to keep track of scores
How long before they make no more **** sound?
You frighten me in ways I can’t explain
I shake with fear when you call me to you
From you I expect only immense pain
I am sure that all the others did too
Unexpectedly I am alive still
All because of that one little white pill

Two in the morning,
Reality calls for me,
to come back to her.

Her arms wrap me up,
A blanket of bold, harsh truths,
Slowly suffocate.

No no let me go,
Don’t take me back there again,
I wanna stay here.

Bright light of the screen,
I cling to virtual comfort,
and avoid the world.

Keeping my heart safe,
from the pain drilled into it,
when I turn away.

I don’t know real life.
I only know what I see.
I see ugliness.