Jump.
     Well, no, actually.
            I don't want to jump.
I want to leap
and skip
and dance into a new sunrise.

It's time to turn off the light
and close the door,
Because it's really getting dark in here.

Close your mouth,
mute the babel,
bare your ears.
****** I'm speaking to you.
Not with my mouth,
with my heart
and my soul
not my brain.

These aren't feathered words.
This is my distress.

I'm sorry,
I'm going to turn off the light,
  close the door
    and dance.

YOU ONLY EVER KISS HIM WITH THE LIGHTS OFF. YOU RUN YOUR HANDS THROUGH YOUR HAIR; IT WAS CUT A FEW DAYS AGO AND YOU'RE NOT SURE IF YOU LIKE IT. YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE JUST KEEPING UP THE PRETENSE OF THE PERSON YOU USED TO BE. YOU'RE NOT SURE IF YOU'LL EVER FEEL LIKE HIM AGAIN.

HE, AS USUAL, LOVES YOU AND SOMETIMES YOU WANT TO RIP OFF HIS ******* CLOTHES AND TAKE HIM AND SOMETIMES YOU JUST WANT TO SCREAM AND RUN AWAY AND NEVER LOOK HIM IN THE EYES AGAIN (AND SOMETIMES YOU WANT TO RIP OFF YOUR ******* SKIN AND HOPE YOU NEVER BREATHE AGAIN). YOU NEVER TELL HIM THIS. YOU ADD IT TO THE PILE OF SECRETS. RINSE AND REPEAT;;;

AS THE DAYS GO BY THE BLUE EYES START MIXING WITH THE KIND OF REDNESS YOU CAN'T SCRUB AWAY. YOU TRY TO LAUGH BECAUSE YOU'RE LIKE HIM NOW (RED WHITE AND BLUE YOU'RE A ******* BANNER AND HE'S AN ICON). IT COMES OUT BROKEN. YOU DON'T TELL HIM WHY.

YOU STOP SMILING AND THE CIGARETTES PILE UP AND THE BOTTLES PILE UP AND THE SECRETS PILE UP. HE'S STOPPED LOOKING YOU IN THE EYES AND YOU'VE STOPPED PRETENDING NOT TO NOTICE. HE DRAGS YOU OUT OF BED AT TWO IN THE MORNING TO YELL AT YOU AND IT TAKES ALL THE ENERGY YOU CAN MUSTER TO LOOK AT HIM.

HE STOPS SMILING.

WHEN HE SAYS HE LOVES YOU HE DOESN'T MEAN IT. THIS IS OKAY; YOU HAVEN'T SAID IT BACK SINCE HE SAVED YOU. WHEN YOU SAY IT BACK ANYWAY YOU MEAN IT. HE LAUGHS AT YOU.

YOU TRY TO STOP BREATHING ONETWOTHREEFOUR TIMES. YOU STOP RETURNING HIS PHONE CALLS. YOU DON'T BELONG HERE THIS BODY HASN'T FELT LIKE YOURS IN SEVENTY YEARS BUT YOU STILL WISH YOU COULD CRAWL INSIDE YOUR OWN SKIN.

HE SHOWS UP AT YOUR HOUSE AT TWO IN THE MORNING AND ******* SCREAMS AT YOU. THIS IS THE MOST ALIVE YOU'VE FELT IN AN AGE. YOU TELL HIM THIS AND YOU LOOK AWAY WHEN HIS FACE CRUMPLES.

HE KISSES YOU WITH THE LIGHTS ON.

if I was a light switch
would you leave me on
to always feel this way
to always feel as if I do not matter
because the sun is wandering and that is leaving me alone
with nothing but windchill to keep my company
and that is okay
I am okay with that
because it means
I can get closer
to the rain.

Insomnia is not the, uh
End of the line or some transcendent sign
That tells you that happiness and comfort are reserved for other people only

Take a deep breath to ensure the cheap death of the sleep theft
That robs you of your right to not dim the lights and go unconscious tonight
Stay awake and aware
Put foot to the brake and delay your despair

Mourn the loss of a fate that did not graduate
Into all that you’d hoped for and tried to create
Life is never translated perfectly from your grandiose dreams
To what actually seems to be the case
That the world is confusing and unforgiving place
Don’t cry over a book shedding some words making the leap from page to silver screen
Rejoice that you even have source material

For me, it was getting caught up in the fantasy of a girl
Who, for a little while anyways, redefined my entire world
My life's atlas is still undergoing edits, so she gets some due credit
And like an inquisitive child testing out his hypothesis on a lightswitch
She’d disappear without a sound and wait around to just be found
Awesome, awful, top of the world, bottom of the barrel, there, and not

And... not.

...

I was foolish enough to be a rollercoaster seat who genuinely believed that
The person who chose me wasn’t merely in it for the ride
But for something inside
Some kind of feeling
Only I could have supplied

But at the end of the 60-second 60-mile per hour loops and swoops
The bars come up and the passengers leave
And the seat is left there wondering
“Didn’t they like having fun with me?”

I’ve been brainwashed
to this strange spot
of abstained thoughts
there’s been days when I praise God
But today’s not
I gotta claim faith debt and hit rock bottom
And do to my demons what the so-called faithful don’t
Talk about ‘em

So for now I’m gonna let her light go dark
Because I’ve been blinded to the fact
That when I’m attacked
I can still create my own spark

I can climb outta the hole and
Get back in control and
shrug em all off and
the only thing she deserves is a scoff and
a few verses dispersed with perverse curse words

...*****.

I’m diagnosing myself with fictitious symptom syndrome
This apparent disease squeezes by my dilating eyes and disconnects my
god ****** diaphragm and derails my dialect

But as long as my skeleton stands up straight
And I have stories to create
Then yeah, I think I’m okay with putting off sleep for the night
In exchange for believing that everything is all right
Because tomorrow morning, I’m waking up at 100%
With the intent to reinvent myself and represent myself
As a glasses free Clark Kent

There's something to the thoughts in my head that build a wall
right in front of
me, it screams

love love love love love
love love love love love
love love love love love
love love love love love

and seems to pulse with all that time has said

my hands reach out to touch it but I'm already on the other side

through apparition or self contradiction?

what did I feel at that time.

I turn to look back but all I see is darkness

there is a lightswitch in my eyes but a voice in my head says it's not yet the right moment

I turn back to look in front and there's more darkness ahead

there's a lightswitch in my eyes but my heart says

" let's rest instead "

so I sit down and look around,
there's wind but I feel nothing.
All there is that's burned into my mind is the wall that could've made me feel something
where I shut off the recorder in my brain and refused to let myself feel
maybe because if I had, I'd be sitting here with pain bleeding from my brain
I make out to be strong, but I know I'm the weakest, that's why the fight never stops and I'm always left lying in stills
A light comes on and I look back at the wall and it's not there.
What is reality and what is fantasy when both ceases to exist when I'm the most in despair

Where the emotions are the realest and it's hard to even take in some air
Where the world is the brightest with flashing colors of reality mixing with messed hair
everything is broken and needs to be repaired
but I turn my head to what's in front of me
light switch still turned on
It's still dark, there's not much of anything.
it's time to get up on that stage and sing

Sometimes I sit, 18 and overheated
in the front room of the men's heritage house, where I
play someone else's guitar and twist my hair in my
palms like
yellow bundles of uncooked pasta I  might
break or
bend or
eat out of restlessness.
Tonight my sandal worked idly, pressing
its shadow into my leg when your electric
warm gaze flipped on
my lightswitch
and clicked. Out of my beige office boredom
came you - toothy.
But in high school you hit on my
best mate's sister, so, perched next to me on the
only plastic chair at the loudest bar in town, I crouched
down in a puddle of beer onto
raised toes and mentioned your name and he,
being British and emotionally constipated, muttered
something about you between football shrieks and cigarette drags,
sipped his Guiness and saw.

I don't quite know where the lightswitch is, but I know that the dark is much more friendly.
    
      Sometimes I dance with a ribbon lacing my body, and it feels like the last day. The string gets tighter and tighter,

and I am cut into a million pieces, but it's so dark. So have I really fallen apart?

          In the dark, all sounds the same, and the whispers.  Yes, the whispers. They're hushed and urgent. Like water rushing into my lungs, they take root, and evaporate.

              I've been going up, up, up

and I still haven't see light.

Silence.
The typing of a computer.
A piano next door.
The clicking of a mouse.
The tap running, the toilet flushing.
Distant chatter from the house across the street.
A car on the road.
Footsteps.
The slow ceasing of a motor engine.
A dog barking.
The setting down of a briefcase.
The removing of shoes.
A chair being dragged across the floor.
A hand, patting another hand.
A man, singing in the night time.
Bare feet against a staircase.
The door opening.
The lightswitch.
The door closing.
Silence.

This aching churns within me where happiness will bubble
T-minus 5...4...

My writing is ****. There's no art here anymore.
Sob
******* onto paper.

Everyone relates to interpretation, but inkblots have no soul.
Stains, waiting.
Sunlight cannot creep where darkness cannot grow.

Coin-flip. Mind-trip. Sad rag-time beat out, off beating
beat poet beats drums no one can hear.
There's nothing here.

Jeckyl wishes Hyde would hide, run away
never come back--
I'll never forget how much I lack
I've cracked, back fractures breaking
too much ecstasy--not enough--You're shaking

is that me?
can't be.

This desperation
this need to cling to SOMETHING
it's worse every time--it's cheap when I rhyme
I can't ride out these mistakes, can't fake that I'm ok

I seem to be doing fine.
but its one
or the other in my mind

-NOT SO YOU COULD THROW LIGHTSWITCH RAVES-

can't be saved
keep repeating
I wish I could be saved but
they never let me have my pony.
No white horses
No dreaming

So obsessed with this wheel I keep spinning
the only thing I seem to be able to do is change direction.

tedious, no?
It's what we're working with.

All I ever wanted was somebody to love me
now...when it comes to be
it just makes me more crazy
how can someone love me?
it doesn't make sense.
I go to rip off your mask and I take off your face--

surrounded by rotting skin
searching for a way to end
so how can I begin?