18 is a hard age
to be black
and dead

tear-gas in our eyes
burns, baby, burns.

r ~ 8/14/14

Be you.
You be.
Be me.
Me be.
What else should we be?
Except what we was meant to be?

I know love is the answer
But what is the question
In the world of today
I can't help but keep asking

Is it comforting a crying child
Or giving a homeless man a hand
Is it telling your brother no matter your color
We can still be friends

Is it helping out the widow
When loneliness is all she sees
Or nothing more than a simple smile
When you pass someone on the streets

Is it valuing that someone
When they feel no need to live
Or giving the last of what you've got
When it's the last you've got to give

Is it stepping out of your comfort zone
To speak the loving truth
All with the full knowledge
That the world will turn it's back on you

Is it proclaiming the name of Jesus
That puts heads in a spin
When he is love and he is the answer
To all of life's questions

Seize each golden hour
Living only for today
Cherish each moment


~Hilda~

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines