dawn breaks
eyes open
another day
a little taller but
weaker too
they do say it gets
better
but is better
ever
enough?

as
my soul
journeyed across
the
stiff
tightrope
across
the
red river gorge
where
my
legs felt like
cockatoo green bamboo stilts
that
emptied out

It's all just numbers, isn't it?
Day by day,
Year by year,
Always counting.

Day by day look at the number on the scales.
Let the caloric calculator count until your head is filled with numbers.

Minute by minute count the seconds it takes for him to text you back.
Let the doubt and fear multiply until your head is full of him.

Term by term let a percentage on a piece of paper define your worth.

Don't we have better things to do than count?

i dont know how to make you feel this
i dont know what words in what order
but i want you to see if but a glimpse
what it is inside this skull
because there is such unending emotion
and such vast blankness of nothing
sometimes i will just be sitting on the couch
the most innocuous of places as i scroll through
nothing of any particular meaning or significance
and then it opens
the floor beneath my feet is gone and there is nothing below
there will never be anything below
i will never hit the ground i will never touch the walls
there is nothing but darkness but visceral hunger but black desire
i dont know how to tell you just how bad just how sickening just how all consuming it is to experience
there is nothing else in my world there never was and there never will be
and that is the only thought that can occur when falling
or perhaps im floating even flying
there is no frame of reference
only this black of unfathomable intensity it makes me endlessly sad, infinitely mad, and simultaneously forever unfeeling
it makes me want to scream and rip the skin from my bones
it makes me want to destroy my body and my soul
it makes me want to curl up and cry for days on end
it makes me want to light my house on fire
it makes me want to run away at night in the rain and get hit by semi truck or train
i dont know how to write it so that you can feel just how deeply rooted it is
i want you to know how it feels i want someone to know what i am experiencing but i also want it to be poetic
i want it to have rhythm and i want it to make you feel the worst youve ever felt
because thats what its like when it opens
and i cannot get out and i cannot think of anything else it consumes me
i need to make someone else understand
it makes me aggressive and destructive
i learn by example because it grabs my jaw and pries my eyes
it forces me to look
it forces me to feel
it has something, maybe a talon or a fang, and when it pierces it becomes me
it courses in my veins it surrounds me inside and out
there is absolutely no way to avoid it and now there is not even a way to dislike it
once it is inside it controls me and i cannot even say i dont enjoy it because it is enjoying this and it is me now we are one and it is in power
if i were to still exist i would dislike it
but there is only it
my body has become just an object in its possession
just a vessel for the feelings
feelings is such an understatement of a word for what it is
it makes me so angry that i cannot find a way to truly say it
but like i said
i dont know what words
and i dont know what order
to make you understand and know

an ear it aches of music tastes like splintered glass
running through an autoshop of metal broken last
on the couch the chair the ceiling flesh to reeling
the worm inside my head it writhes and twists
in pinkish pain it extorts contorts complains
wishes it were real insists the wrists were not
wrought untold to taint my mind it will own my
to the from with but then a next that we for pry
tears knitted back into the mouth of woeful lies
the entrance of a chasm barren grounds of feeding festered
nothing left completely ravished and the worm he is still famished