I smell like cigarettes
and a really bad week.
Between barely passed midterms
and a ****** twin sized mattress,
Advil PM tastes better in the morning.

My eyelids are the heaviest things I've held.

What do you do when the voices start to agree?

That burn on my leg.
Was it an accident?
Or a scar of my sins?
A scarlet letter
of my wrongdoings

My head is heavy now
very cloudy and dim
Surrounded by thoughts of the past

Every now and again
I stop and I think
about trivial things that inhibit my sleep

What good has been done?
And why should I care?
These splinters cut deep
from this cross that I bear.

The last piece of a puzzle
that just won't fit.
Or a paper cut covered in salt

It's not inherently bad
but it does it make it tough
to simply get up in the morning.

I wish you were nicer, for both of our sakes.
You're impossible to deal with,
so I'd frankly rather not.
Yet something about this
just keeps pulling me back.

I can say I don't love you
at least not anymore.
So why is it so hard,
to have a simple conversation?

I didn't ask for the world,
I just wanted to come along for the ride.
I'm not asking for a dictionary,
just what you have to say.

I can't comprehend
your apprehension.
Considering all that we've been through,
and you can't
be ******* nice.

I thought we'd make a lovely mess.
You thought that's all I'd be.
I'm on sinking ship,
with no way off,
and it's getting hard to breathe.

I can't believe how huge a fool
I was to even think,
I had a chance
with you, my dear,
and now I'm at my brink.

It strikes me strange
how even though
I never pressed it at all,
you stayed until the very end,
was it just to watch me fall?

"So what. Whatever. ***** the lot.
It all ends up the same",
I lie and rasp
for we both know
it stings to hear your name.

So sickeningly bitter you can't speak your lover's name.

The scars of a working man.
On his hips hang his tools,
on his back
his family.
His wife
and his sons.

To be the backbone of America
the men in a dirtier uniform.
I'm not above the dirt on my boots
but under a higher calling
in a lower place.

I write
because every time I tell someone I want to be an author, I get looks of malcontent.
I know I won't be as rich as doctor
because I don't want to be a ******* doctor.

I write
because every time I tell someone I didn't play football in high school,
but instead played bass in a band
and wrote poetry in the back of my classes
I get looks of confusion.
I didn't waste my size and strength
I used my mind and heart.

I write
because I've found more solace
in words
than in the world around me.

It took me a while, but I think I finally see
all of the cracks that lurked beneath your skin.

I can't believe I ever saw you as perfect.

732 miles away
and I'm looking to get further.
I'd like to say that I miss you,
but I'd be lying to us both.
Thank you for the pain.
Thank you for breaking me
I'll pick and choose these broken pieces and rebuild myself from scratch.
I'm not the same man you knew in high school

Address me accordingly.

I'm living in Augusta, Georgia now
working my hands to the bone.
The first night I was here I shaved my head,
to cope with the Southern heat.
You didn't seem to like it, nor the way it looked with my beard.
Good thing I don't have to look good for you anymore.

I told you that when I come home,
I'll be a different man.
You didn't seem to know what I meant
nor did you really care.

I found myself so far from home
and realized the man I've been for far too long
was never me at all.

When I opened the door, I hardly expected you to barge right in.

How dare you waltz through these halls,
like you've been paying rent?
It took me months to fan the scent of your perfume out of the air.
Even longer to wash out the stains in the carpet.

If you're so happy to be home

why did you leave?

There's a hole in my chest.
I hate the way it whistles in the wind,
singing its song of emptiness to the world.

There's a hole in my chest.
I hate the way I nearly drown every night
when I take a shower.

There's a hole in my chest.
I hate the way it looks like everyone
who has ever left me.

There's a hole in my chest.
I hate the way it stings.

Mark my words, this isn't the end.
You broke my heart, not my will to persist.
I'm only a person who's covered in cracks.
but I'll be ******* if I break because of you.

I like to believe that I'll wake up,
and it won't cross my mind.
That I'll go all day
without it burrowing itself into my head.
We both know that's a lie.

I like to believe that you'll wake up,
and it'll cross your mind too.
That I least once, you'll stop
and think.
We both know you won't.

I hope to be done with my work
before it starts to weigh me down.

Just
another
*******
Monday.

“I hope I keep you up at night,

with spiders in your head.

Crawling through your tired brain

with all the lies you said.
Did you hang me in the closet?

Did you bury me in dirt?

You and I, you see, we share this beating heart of hurt.
Some of us are tossed aside,
sun bleached on the road.

A lie, a broken skeleton, to lie without a home.
A serpent twists through empty eyes,
winding through the nose.

I will live forever

in the ink  of written woes.”

3:27 a.m, Thursday, March 26, 2015
- j.d

“Is it the nicotine, or the Svedka?

It’s barely midnight, and I’m already exhausted.
I’ve been up and down 309 about a hundred times today, and I’m looking to go a hundred times more.

I got an English paper due Friday, but I’m still drinking Thursday.

A friend is eight shots in, with eight shots to go.
We are the harbingers of our own demise.

Here’s to the nights we remember.

And here’s to the nights
we’d rather not.”

12:07 a.m, Sunday, March 22, 2015
- j.d

2 years ago we were in love. Never parting from the other.

1 year ago we were in trouble.
Never wanting of the other.

6 months ago we were in love-
or so I dumbly thought.

Today I'm rather lonesome, wondering where you are.

Should I pick up the broken pieces,
or pretend they're not even there?
Right about now I'm dying for a cigarette.
Maybe I can smoke out all the words unsaid from my putrid lungs.
There's a sick satisfaction, knowing no one can save you.
A friend told me that every fifteen cigarettes causes a mutation.

Good.

Maybe I can smoke myself into a different person who's okay without you.

“I want to buy a pack of Marlboro reds and smoke them one by one.
Twenty little friends to calm my nerves.
Twenty times I’ll count which memories I’m burning away.
I’m dizzy from the nicotine, but thinking more clearly now.
There’s a sick satisfaction
in killing yourself slowly.
I want to understand the songs
about needing a smoke.”
1:34 p.m, Monday, March 9, 2015
- j.d