Obsession is a gun.
It points right to your head, willing to shoot.
It either glues your heart together or shatters it through.
You feel ecstatic, yet you feel blue.
It's an addiction, you were brought to.
Nobody gets it, you feel alone.

Your mind is scratched with a name that repeats itself endlessly,
It hurts to your core, it's also your ecstasy
No you can't grasp it, they're fake, they're souvenirs.
And by souvenirs, I mean they're *******,
You like it for a while, then put it on a shelf and in the end, dispose it.
It drains your time, you think it's real,
then in a month, you're done, it's sealed.
It starts confusion, you swear it's love,
you think it's happiness,
well, you are wrong.

Saltwater Poet.
Waves washing over me cleanse my soul.
Salt-soaked sand glues itself
to my skin,
it clears the cobwebs in my cluttered mind.
Anchoring back near the coast
is my ultimate goal.
Reaching others through my words
with the help of my
Nautical Muse.

My life is a brilliant and vivid mosaic of failures. If depicted horizontally, it would span countless walls, each with its own tapestry. Intertwined in each image would be a visage of myself in yet another battle of me, metaphorically David, and the vastness of the woven problem, here named Goliath. The only difference however, I don't succeed. My slingshot, as it were, isn't good enough.
     "Almost" is a callous and cold word, however it is the most veril word I know. It shouldn't just be something on my body like a tattoo, but rather etched painstakingly into my hardest bones. Always. Always "Almost" is not a fulfilling way to live.
     My Father once said something along the lines of "The only way I wouldn't be proud of you or that I would be disappointed in you is if you did something or made choices that lead to your unhappiness." With that, I feel as though he couldn't have been proud of me in quite some time, and further, there is no evidence that it will change. I am unhappy all of the time. I am disappointed in myself.
     I am afraid, fearful, of the hatred inside myself at times. I try and use it to my advantage, to prove my "worth", to try and do better at the current task (whatever it may be at the time). But as it usually happens, I get so angry, even vengeful, with no explanation. I sit and think about it, come to nothing, and am scared of what I am becoming.
     I am breathing, organic garbage that, because of sentience, assumes too much of, and from, my existence. I am a ******* paradox. I am realistic but full of wishes, longing for what I know does not exist; I am pessimistic, yet full of hopes, or false hopes rather, that I know fullheartedly are hubris and lost time. Whenever I need logic, emotion takes control. Whenever I look for my heart, my mind conceals its help.
     I believe in absolutely nothing but who I think I am, but I doubt myself to my bitter, black core.
I have achieved nothing with what I have been given (everything) and therefore deserve nothing that I have.
     I Am A Fake. I Am A Lie. I pretend to understand, to know, to help, to listen, but I have no idea what the **** I'm doing, who the **** I am, or why the **** I'm even here as undeserving as I am. With that, what right have I at all to "help" anyone else when I, myself, have no idea where my words will lead them? That itself makes me worse than half of the people that have killed others because at least they know who they are and what they were doing.
     I find it hard to believe that I, personally, was crafted in the image of God because I can't imagine that I resemble (in spirit, mind or matter) anything like the Perfect Being that I love and pray to. I am handcrafted debris, trash, attempting (out of place) to be something more.
     I was once told by someone I truly loved, "How can you love someone if you don't love yourself?" It's pretty easy. You first look at them, think of all the things they do and all the things they represent that lead to them making you happy, and you fall in love with that. it isn't a choice, you just do. I do nothing that makes me happy successfully, in the end, I try and fail consistently whereas someone I love is victorious repeatedly just by being them self. Why wouldn't you love someone for making you happy, yet love yourself in spite of your inability to do so?
     I don't believe anything I've ever encountered or experienced in my, as of yet, short life has prepared me for the utmost feeling of loneliness that creeps like the most dark and shadowy oppression. No cigarette is long enough, no vat of bourbon deep enough to escape that thought. Even in upbeat company that fact lingers, and of it, I am afraid.
     Why must I settle and "stay the course"? Why hold onto a sinking ship? I don't mean in terms of living versus dying, I mean in terms of living in insufferable struggle versus changing the reality. Why is this made to seem so impossible?
     Why am I in constant debt before even being old enough, experienced enough, or brave enough to even make decisions with that debt as a possible outcome?
     Since I was old enough to formulate my own opinions of the world I live in, it's been the epitome and meter of one resounding conclusion: "I will try my best and fail, suffer, but in doing this, I will have no choice but to think one day it will get better, and I can hope in my time of struggle that when that day comes, I Might Be Able To Be Happy.
     I'm in love with someone who is half a country away. She even knows, She might even feel the same, but it is for naught. I justify this by telling myself every "writer" needs a Muse.
     I lack the natural talent required to achieve my dreams in this current world. I was born with a gift I should have kept the receipt with; something I could have traded for something more realistically useful.
     Those closest to me have no idea who I am. They are the only thing that glues my sanity, and I'm fearful if they fully knew what I am, they'd leave.
     I've condensed some of these thoughts and feelings into spoken words to those I trust the most, hoping and praying they might say this is normal, that everyone goes through this, that we are all fighting the good fight. Their deaf ears betray their silent mouths.
     The rhythm in music, the voices in plays, the words to poems, the flow of my pencil, are all I have to escape this solitary confinement. But upon realizing the only things I have to help me feel "normal" are inanimate and incapable of understanding, it only further drives me into the chasm.
     I have become everything I hate. A petulant, assuming, and undeserving child ******* about his life when it's not even fully begun, and worse, has been given everything along the way and pitifully has done nothing with ******* any of it.
     I look at my Father and my Mother, and mouth agape, am stunned at their character, their perseverance. Compared to the two people who made me, I am grovelling ****, with absolutely nothing to complain about.
     I have never made a serious decision in my life unless I fully knew the only outcome before the decision was made. This makes me a coward. Logically it might make sense, but this is real life, you shouldn't do that, and **** logic.
     I always have an excuse, I'm not a real man, I'm afraid to take a fall because it's just another piece of the prosecution's evidence pointing to the guilt I possess in relation to my long record of failures.
     I'm cast outside "normalcy" because I don't believe in society. I'm not afraid to die, death actually intrigues me, a lingering curiosity. I adore the macabre because I believe there is truth of humanity in the darkness that everyone ignores exists. We profit and capitalize on procedures that **** thousands, but because it's not us they target, and usually not until the long run, we pay no mind. I believe that more than half of our so called "society", myself included, are no better in most senses than Dahmer or Panzram. At least they were honest about the monsters they were.
     I'm obsessed with thing that don't matter; theories that wouldn't make a difference in the world if proven true, questing for a Love that I rightly don't deserve and that likely doesn't exist, searching for acceptance of anyone but at the same time and equally, in paradox, caring about none of it, especially myself.
     Most nights instead of praying to God as I intend to do, I find myself wondering if I deserve His forgiveness. I know, on some level or another, if the Holy Father, Himself, came to me at any time during those sleepless nights, I would not have an even close to decent answer arguing for His forgiveness, but rather, a full of tears and chopped up, pathetic plea for it anyway.
     I dream of someone to love romantically just for the sake of being able to love someone for exactly who they are and because doing so makes me happy. It has been so long passed of this being even close to a chance of reality, that the thought of ***, or even intimacy, without that love does not even interest me anymore.
     I'm twenty years old and every job I work wants one-hundred percent of my soul and time. Is this normal? Am I not allowed to be a responsible but stupid kid for a while before I have to settle with the reality of a mundane and mind/body numbing job that takes so much of your day that at night you can only imagine the freedom of sleep rather than having a spare few precious seconds for thinking that dying has the upside of never having to show up to that ******* place again? I have no problem with working at all, in fact, I appreciate anything that has a general task and goal that is monotonous enough to keep my mind focused just enough that anything I've written here, the things that upset me, don't leak in and ruin the day, but realistically, how can I give my soul to cutting lawn? To stocking a ******* shelf? I am part of the worst generation on Earth so far, I have potential to be better than ninety--nine percent of the drooling unfortunate vertebrae we call "society", and this is what I'm supposed to wake up for? If this is what I need to accept and I'm just going crazy, fine, I accept it, but in doing this, you need to accept that if I'm crazy, you're batshit ******* nuts.
     I find myself not ever wanting to wake up. I'm not even close to suicidal, I don't want to die yet, I just can't see a logical point, or an emotional reason for any of this nonsense to continue. Can anyone identify with that? Don't misconstrue and worry yourself with me being honest with myself, I DO wake up. I wash my face, but I look in the mirror afterwards and ask "Why?", and I get the day over with anyway so I can hurry up and get home to get ready to do everything over again exactly the same the next day the exact same way, the only difference being the date on the calender and the minutes of the one life I get slowly building themselves into hours and days that will now be an empty black void of memory in my head that could've been used for something worth remembering. Why? Why settle to sulk and squander in ***** and depression when you haven't even tried to bathe in gold and happiness?
     I hate almost everything. The way things are, have been, will be. I hate the faceless sheep that complain yet attempt nothing to change their circumstances. If there is one thing to look on with pride, it is at least I'm better than that. At least if I failed, by default it means I ******* tried.
     I lack the capacity and the capability to voice these kinds of thoughts. As well-spoken as I am, I choke the hardest when I try to speak about any of them. I have to scribble and usually type them, and further, put them in a format a possible reader might be able to understand. Alas, I have failed at that as well. I put my heart and thoughts into my poetry, but anything resonating from within me that I've pounded into the countless pages I've written is lost in a sea of meter and rule-abiding rhetoric as well as aesthetically and audibly pleasing metaphors and rhyme-schemes rather than just blunt structure. No one reads anything with nothing left to the imagination. And justly so, why would they? Why try to decipher someone's heart if it doesn't also apply to you? Why read an ending if you know you won't like it unless it has "happily ever ******* after"? Why not emulate the thoughts and endure the cramping in the thumb an forefinger if it's not something you already know or something you clicked "like" on to impress the friend with the independent mind that was the one who told you to read it in the first place? I may sound bitter, I am, and hateful, but at least I am not a liar.
     If I had one absolute thing, one pure thought, one controversial heading, one cry to all who have ever asked me and I have failed to explain it better; If I can leave you with one thing; If it were possible for me to speak one line to the empty church at my funeral when I die someday and move on to peace, it would be this:
The Words I Seek With Which I Wish To Express My True Misery Elude Me.

The knife cutter calls in the summer noon
on his bicycle he pedals his wheel
sharpens all that rust too soon
knives past prime too blunt to ****!

Glues his hair the sweat of roam
his cheeks bear long uncut beard
pray he finds a wanting home
that needs to sharpen not just word!

If comes his way a timeworn knife
he sits to roll the clunky wheel
works to feebly sustain life
bowing to the smallest deal!

He is no poet no skilled scribe
an old hand from a vanishing age
belonging to a losing tribe
that still gives knife cutting edge!

I’m going through a phase where I put glitter on everything
I went to a craft store and I bought like five different colors
And some brushes and glues so I could just paint ******* everything with glitter.
I don’t want to just paint some pencils and notebooks or some shoes and headbands,
I want to paint my **** walls with glitter
I want to paint YOUR **** walls with glitter
I want to sew glitter into your clothes
I want to sew glitter into your skin
Get a bunch of sewing needles dripping with shiny blood
Get red and sunshine under my fingernails
I want to have *** with a boy
(in his car or wherever, I don’t care)
and when we’re done, I’ll throw the ****** away and then toss some glitter in the air and cover his torso with sparkles
Because then no matter how fast he moves on
He’ll have to deal with me for just a little bit longer
And he’ll have to give me just one more thought,
at least when he’s washing the glitter down the drain of his shower.

Men who look like ferris wheels
every color representing different aspects of their personality

The first three words don't have to be beautiful
they just have to make sense
like connecting dots on paper

men who love with their fists
and hate with their mouths
who once were boys taking things apart
like remote controls their own fathers used to beat     Obedience into their small bodies.  Left them with a fury tattooed across their hearts
Just to give them the challenge of putting themselves back together

They buy their wive's flowers after
a four day bruise isn't so glaringly purple anymore
not so accusing-
kiss her broken ribs
and tell their children midnight stories

children trained as mood detectors
human robots
know when to shutup
speak when you are spoken to*

Men who speak like cutting boards
Every slice of the knives in their toungues leave
hollow aching missing parts
just to teach their children that not all
things can be put together once taken apart

whose daughter glues together the parts of old telephones
to spite the missing pieces
so every welt he beats into her bones
she sings herself unbroken
until she stands robust and imperfect
there are holes in her armour
but she holds it together

with her fathers fists.

a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs*

my woman, she's a
snuggler and spooner.

burying herself on my,
no, in my
double barreled chest,
her blonde hair,
my field of gold.^

she landscapes my life,
paralyzing me with the
simplest of gestures.

she sleeps holding my thumbs.
locks me up.
locks me down.
so I cannot transcribe
the lines of poetry mindful,
landlines shut,
land-mines of verse
unexploded,
till these now,
hours later.

a few notes ago,
a few days ago,
heard an octet,
eight voices singing of
five letters, five vowels,
a  e  i  o  u.

you can hear what I heard too.

after you listen,
better understand
vowels are the butter of language.
the anointing oil of connectivity.
more than a line of code,
they are the keys to the code,
that make words and life musical.

I suppose we could mange without them if we had to.
spsz v cd mng wthot thm ff v hd t.

but not so well.

I suppose we could manage
without opposing thumbs.
learn to type with my nose,
paint with my toes.
but not so well.

here is how it comes all together.
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs,
never give them more than a
never thought, passing over, assumed.

oh yeah, on some tv show,
you can buy a vowel.

these glues are the things that
give me the chance to tell this:

this poem it is a bit about me.
this poem it is a bit about her.
this poem is really about you.

I could live without
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs.
but I could not live
without her landscaping my chest.

but
when I share this knowledge
with you friend, it becomes a
verified, realized, acknowledged truth.

So you see this poem is about
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs,
but really about you.

In fact, I am thinking,
that if I did not love the title
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs
so much,
would entitle it instead,
a wholesome democracy of love.*

you, a registered voter,
vote then with both all the
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs
at your disposal.

I hate the way it curves up
Each muscle in your face aching to be released
I hate your smile
Only because I know its fake
You don't even realize it anymore
You've become so accustomed to it
Nobody can tell the mask from your real complexion
Not even your reflection
I hate your smile
When you hide the frown
I'd rather you let me try and make it real
I hate the way that bright red lipstick
Glues it into place
The way the mascara seems to stain the edges
From every midnight love attempt from your pillow
Ending only in failure when the sun reaches your window
You can't hide from me
I can see through it all
I hate your smile
Mainly because it resembles mine all to much

A drugstore pallid in waning light, always illuminated in halogen halos.
I am earless with music.
Black metal loud in clanging sets and blows-
foreshadowing the smell of cleaning solution,
air freshener and the outside
sweet at my back
all steeped deep in the rip roaring undertone torrent of cigarette smoke
blended with cheap perfume until I cannot tell the difference.
There is a limp familiarity to the underlying odor
born partially of personal encounter and-
nestled in the hive mind of social experience.
A distillation of regret and remorse,
of lonely,
of irrelevance;
this black hole swallows my voice the way of my ears,
eaten by rust.

Four cans of beans,
kidneys,
in cans squeezed without any power against sagging swells
melting into other curves
and I swerve close and around guiltily,
noting you only as the source of this pungent spring.
You are smiling apologies
ignorant of my apparent inhumanity-
blind to my selfish hands..

Pinioning belly flesh,
flattening,
reaching
and gaining attendance from a better man
retrieving every dropped can.
I’m retreating,
shaken,
tense to alternatively slacken.
My sweat slippery palms with whitened red sharp fingers feel foreign
and I am surrounded by razors then shaving cream,
moving from shampoo to conditioner,
the whole store is infected with smell.
Staring at nail clippers/snipers clipping touch smooth sooth my tense mind-
don’t look
don’t
look
I can sense little else but dread
drawing closer
you are now crouched so close I’m gagging,
taken forcefully-swept away in an olfactory flood
roiling in rot,
currents of solitude exude from your smiling sullen appearance when I turn to you
fumbling
with my electric ears,
surfacing
in a breath of Amish silence
broken with simple request
and I want to scream at you that I am not a man to ask opinions of
that it does not matter what fake nails she glues to her body
that she is excluded and I don’t know why.


I choose swirls of cream suspended within watery milk,
over childish lady bugs framed by yellow
or dots of red alternating to black,
an epitaph to a lifelike effigy.

Clear, simple blue skies.
Unnerving negative space.
A girl decorates.

She stitches and glues.
Flying machines of all kinds.
A girl must create.

Colors shade sunlight.
Wind gifts them the breath to dance.
A girl must hold on.

She pulls a heart string,
Knots this to her creations,
A girl unravels.

To the skies, she goes
Free in flight, she whips and spins.
A girl, so rootless.