It was Halloween and I kissed him
On the sidewalk outside that cheapskate bar.
It was Halloween and I was seventeen.
And the scariest thing about all of this
Is who I am becoming.
I hit the ground rather running
I've always been smart and cunning
But I am getting a bit out of control.
I hate myself
But I hate him more
And I hate God most
For letting me turn out this way
When I told him to make it all okay
I told him so many times
Six empty shot glasses
and bitten limes
Before I said amen.
And morning felt like coffee grinds
And night lingered like orange rinds
Beneath your fingernails
I locked myself within this jail
I told you not to let me fail
I told you not to let me fall
I told you how I'd get lost in it all.
And I was right.
And where were you?
Where were you to win my fight?
When you left you took my light
Where were you when I ****** up last night?
It was Halloween and he tasted like nothing
But who am I to judge.
It was Halloween and the scariest thing about all of this
Is I loved Halloween
With a love so pure
And I don't know if I can do that anymore.

Maybe if you let me.
(I'm telling you to let me)

Black box breaking
Slowly breaking
Slowly
I saw the cracks
I saw them ripple down her back
I saw the freeze and thaw of nations
The renaissance and death and renaissance
I saw the wealth and worth of world powers
I saw them crumble
I was there
And I am here
I read it all and wrote it down
I saw it all and wrote it down
I kissed the survivors and wrote it down
I saw the earth in its entirety
I fell in love and vomited and fell in love
I saw her in her emptiness
I saw her sway in the winds
The winds grew cold and colder
She grew old and older
And so distraught
Mangled
Destroyed
Derailed
Demolished
Stripped of poise and polish
Stripped of it all
I saw her disintegrate
I saw her fall
Still I,
I still
I always standing
Watching still
Always seeing
Standing and seeing, I
Drinking tea
Calm, cool, collected, serenity

Now your turn
You see me
See me walking down the street
See my waist-long wavy hair
Blonde and sparkling in the sun
Lipstick smile
Hipbones and cheekbones chiseled and deadly
Long leg strut down the runway
Of center town sidewalks
The world is my oyster
See my backpack full of alphabetized books
Handwriting neat and perfect
Pen behind my ear I’m ready
For all of this
See me smoking cigarettes out my dorm room window
Listening to Mozart
And smiling fully when the strings jump in
See me on the park bench reading
Long Russian novels
I inhale the pages like heartbeats
In-hale
Ex-hale
In-hale
Ex-hale
Breaths and beats fully synchronized to the flipping of pages
And to the Metronome Mozart wrote me.

Don’t be deceived
I made my world and destroyed it and made my world
Independent to a fault
I made my living off stitching together broken bones
And melting old forgotten thrones
Sculptures that said I needed no one
No one could keep up anyway
I ran too fast
I ran all day
And kindof expected someone to care
But no one ever has
I was never worth the trouble
Pull me out from my own rubble
And kiss me if you can
No one knows my secret plan to live an embarrassing convention
All this glass is just pretention
I glued it together myself
I wrote my own pamphlet for self help
I pieced together my own face
I sculpted my own form and adorned it
I broke my own heart and mourned it
I arrived and left and arrived
And here I’ll stay
Black box breaking
Slowly breaking
Slowly
I saw the cracks
I saw them from the start
Death and renaissance and death
***** and love and *****

I was sad for a while, quite a long while.

And i never felt beautiful.

I couldn't sit there with myself without letting my thoughts destroy me, without wanting to destroy myself.

And that caused me to almost destroy the most important relationship in my life.

There was nothing beautiful about it.

But now I'm happy.

Now I'm happier than I've ever been.

And I kindof do feel beautiful, for once in my life.

Because I look at him, and how happy I can make him now, and i can see the beauty in me that I think he sees.

I can see it reflecting back at me in his eyes, in his smile, in his voice.

There was no beauty in my sadness.

But this, where I'm at right now,
This is beauty.

i got this crazy kind of head case where i swear on my life, my head is spinning round and round the room like some kind of never ending rollercoaster. i’ve been straightedge since august and i’ve been taking my pills regularly since july but it feels like i took a hand full of oxy and downed the ***** that my mom left in cupboard, left over from the cottage (jello shooters, appletini, orange juice), enough to get me and my friends drunk and i know for anyone else this would be a tease to get lively and drink with friends but for me this is a tease to end my life once and for all and it’s been pondering around my mind since we got back but darling don’t be narcissistic this isn’t because of you and i, no, it’s just about you and the way you felt the need to rub your near ninety in math or your eighty five in french and how your worst grade was a low seventy eight and i start to wonder if you realize how some people would **** for those grades. it took me almost six years to realize that the reasons my grades were so low weren’t because i was stupid because no one’s really stupid. it wasn’t about missing cells in my brains or bad memories, it was about scars on my wrists and never ending thoughts about the afterlife, pondering about whether there was a heaven and a hell and if i would make it or not. wondering if anyone would stop me if i cut up the razor my mom bought me for christmas and used it to tear through veins (frail and lonely) wondering if i were ever going to make it past your low low seventy eight in any given class or maybe i was just stupid (can’t count the scars from feeling dumb on one hand any longer) and maybe the reason i don’t like you anymore is because you did this to me and you don’t even know it but darling don’t be narcissistic this isn’t because of you and i, no, it’s about the way you make me feel like i should hang my head in shame for being me because you acted like you were embarrassed to hang out with me that one day in the cafeteria and the image of you covering your face and walking away as ifyou didn’t know me will forever be etched into my eyelids, i got quiet for six weeks and started becoming another person because i said i needed change. but change won’t pay my way to university or give me the confidence i need, it’s much more than that. chane will let me fake a smile for a while but on the inside, i’ll still be the same (loud and bright) even if on the outside i’ve become a copy of everything i’ve never wanted to be (lonely and shy), claiming, “it’s all right, social situations just make me feel uncomfortable.” even thought they don’t and i know you can feel it, the way i want to walk up onto that stage and let everyone see who i am (different, me, not you) but i know you won’t let me and darling don’t be narcissistic this isn’t because of you and i, no, it’s about the way you make me feel like i should be alone and i don’t deserve to have anyone like the way you left me to hang out with someone else and i slumped against the wall next to the main office and stared at my hands and wished i had someone else to have lunch with but i didn’t so i sighed to myself and put my earphones in (no i don’t have a gun) and stared at the clock on my phone until lunch ended (from 80% to 30%) and afterwards i ignored you for letting me suffer for an hour (my heart raced every time any one walked by in fear that they would know i was alone and laugh at me) but you never knew why and i never told you because i feared you would be upset if i did and you would end the friendship and i would truly have no one but truth be told i never had anyone to begin with — you were never really my friend you were never really anything (well, you were) but i was never really anything to you which makes is that much easier for this to happen and darling don’t be narcissistic this isn’t about you and i, no, it’s about me and the way i let you crawl under my skinand take me over like some kindof parasite that makes doctors scratch their heads and run unnecessary tests (eeg, cat scan, x-ray) while i lay on the hospital bed letting myself die but not allowing myself to tell them why in fear of being locked up for being insane (please, in this society?) they can see my pain is real but they can’t see why so they send me back home and i’m never alone, not with you whispering how worthless i am in my ear (i wish i were as crazy as i felt) your whispers turns into screams as soon as i take my seat in math class andi’m so focused on your screams that i’m staring blankly at the test on my desk like i have no idea it’s there and i’m so confused (why doesn’t anyone else hear you) (how are people writing so furiously) but darling don’t be narcissistic, this isn’t your voice, it’s mine and they take me out before math class is over and drop me off at the hospital and this time it really isn’t about you because they’re diagnosing me with schizophrenia and keeping me in the hospital (so i don’t hurt myself or anyone around me) and when you come to visit me you drop of flowers and i start screaming and they kick you out (they tell you not to return) and for the first time in my life i feel okay

I hate poetry.
Not for the same reasons you probably do,
I don't hate it because of the massive amounts of cliché love poems,
I don't hate it because of the over-used phrase "crime of rhyme",
And I don't hate it because I have something in common with Kanye West.

I hate it because it means I have accepted who I was.
I hate it because I hate who I was.

Today I stand before you as the "Anyone who's Anyone" kindof guy.
I consider myself to be the most important person in my world.
Everything revolves around me, and I know it.
Thats not an ego talking, no, it's more who I am.
Call me an ***, but to me, you will never be more important than Thomas Strout.
I am the Mr. Right.

But once upon a time, there was a poet.
A beautiful poet who's words were poison and had looks to match.
I was in love.
But I made a mistake.
I was really alone.
I relied so much on a different universe that mine got lost in translation.
Reality broke and I blamed everything besides her and myself.
I was my own personal chaos.
It lead to a broken heart beneath bottles and blunts.

My excuse?
I had none.
I was proud of who I was.
I loved living like that,
As everyone who does should,
But it was wrong.
I went through every kind of self mutilation possible,
And then laid in a hospital for 3 days, not remembering what went wrong.

I was no longer my own personal chaos at this point.
I was chaos.

So, I hate poetry.

Am I perfect?
No.
But at least I can speak now.
But at least now, after months that have felt like years,
I know who I am.
And I have a voice of my own.

And ****, does it feel good.

When you look into the mirror
and you are unsatisfied with the fact that you cannot see your ribs,
unhappy with your lack of a thigh gap,
ashamed of your extra (ugly) curves,
missing your hipbones,
wishing for dainty, feminine hands,
wanting the stretch marks to vanish,
praying to feel beautiful.

When you regret eating, but also regret not eating,
you're kindof ******.
When you only get relief after throwing up the contents
of how little you ate.
When you feel like everyone is watching you eat,
terrified, in fear that if they stop you,
you'll eat them too.

When you hate the way your thighs jiggle excessively with every step you take,
how they accommodate the size of Russia when you sit down,
how your love handles aren't so lovely,
how you can't wear clothes that flatter you appropriately to others
because you feel so disgusting in your very own skin,
and you wish for nothing more than to be skinny enough to be loved...

When you regret the scars you claim to love sometimes
because you can't wear those cute short-shorts,
like you would anyway,
but it just eliminates the option.
How you are terrified to wear bathing suits because of your deep pink and purple scars, even the faded white ones,
and how they litter your thighs, and aimlessly hope
that someone could find a way to love them, if possible.

When you can't wear short sleeves or a sleeveless shirt,
because of the dark pink scars scattered across your arms,
the burns,
the cuts,
the deep ****-looking scars,
when you hate yourself for making them,
but still eventually accepting them, only to
end up hating them, again and again.

When you feel like a stranger in your own home,
because your step mom doesn't want her daughter to see your scars,
and yells at you for every choice you make,
and your dad doesn't even ******* defend you.

This isn't healthy, but you can't do a single ******* thing to change it.

I'mnotreallysurewhatI'mwritingabout.
MaybeifIstartto slowdownitwill startto
makesome kindof sense.
There, that's much clearer!