She wakes up every morning
with a frown on her face
as he stumbles from his bed
and into a chair that
he will never get out of-
there is tension in the air
as she downs another
exclaiming, "bottoms up"
when it makes her glass world
shatter
at the rise of a cup

All he can do is watch the pieces
as they become pronounced
while the shift of retreating cats
induces a pitter-patter
and more pictures fade out;
the happy memories
now stained
from her cigarette smoke
to ensure they'll die together,
yet somehow alone

He is cursed with a disease
that has rendered him pitiful
but alcohol doesn't care,
she drinks another swig,
becoming more cyclical
and deems the man’s hindrance
as sinful

Stuttering, he can't escape
a liquid she's drowned him with
by pouring it into her own veins-
maybe it's better this way,
to watch the walls as they cave in

What else can he do
as he slowly degrades
from Parkinson's?

Dead they lay
abandoned in a storm
wrong turn
precious babies
****** unturned

***** to get you loose
From this noose
Called ‘life’
Coke and a smoke
Adrenaline and hope
Popping pills
Just for the thrills
**** and speed
Cause you to want be free
Then some brown
You’ve had enough
And just want to escape what’s around
You do it to forget
With regret
But the only real drug in life
Is having life left

Vices hold me in a grip
living is a ****** up game,
I mash buttons
until I bend and flip
breakdown, take another hit:
I’ve relinquished
my prime of life
wishing it was
someone else’s fault
that I’m stranded on this island,
this is why I succumb to
vices

It started as a wild ride
that turned into the spins
a religion of motion sickness,
wanting to stop
but always caving in:
it spirals through my mind
filling damage to the brim
emotions are meant
to process here,
now they only
dissipate in chagrin,
as rueful ignorance catapults
this living hell to
greater heights
without having to lift a finger:
my self-inflicted violence,
a byproduct of
vices

Left with no
rationale to care,
only a small bend in time
where the spindle
came undone;
it's here I revel in
self-despair,
as a loser who
always failed to listen,
a captain without a vision
ready to drown in
cognitive dissonance
because it’s easier
to believe a lie
than to accept how life is:
where are my
vices?

Tired of the itch,
tired of the chase
looking for what I don’t have
while the world
goes down in flames,
making excuses about
how it’s ingrained,
when all it really takes
is discipline
mixed with a little bit of
pace

Still,
I hover in the wind,
let me float back through
the wild fields of dopamine
where we all still take refuge
inside of a haze,
fearing truth,
destroying self-worth
to secure
temporary comfort

My energy
is frozen in time,
it siphons into everyone I touch
with each heavy hearted step,
forging the very culture
I am certain
is the reason life is so hard
because I’ve seen the depths
of my own broken parts
and still hear a voice
in the back of my head
ring out:

“If reality
is set in stone by
how you perceive,
and you can see
the endlessness of it all,
then why do you set store by
any so-called beliefs?
Isn’t that just
habit underneath?”

What if all the chemicals
and screens
disappeared from the earth,
would you crawl
out of your skin
or rise to the task?
it is said that there is no cure
because answers
thrive only in silence
when one learns how to ask

Instead we accelerate
to consume noise
through wild fields of dopamine,
clawing with no poise-
we exploit weakness
for personal gain
until sincerity bleeds
from the picture
and there’s no room left in frame
for an honest work of art
because we’d rather
exhaust the canvas
with moments devoid of heart

Humility is a difficult lesson
most live in reverie
as hollow, floating silhouettes
desperate to equate value
with material progress
until one of two options remain:
convene with the
shaking breaths
or envision a hapless fate

Darkness, it looms
pleading to steer our
attention
to do nothing and sit with grace,
showing a natural way
to create harmony
while sifting through
time and space,
yet we continue to
sit upon ivory towers
ignoring balance
that only succeeds
with the fusion of light,
because in darkness
is the beginning of all life

I stabbed myself in the face today.
Not literally.
With a bouquet of flowers.
I like to smell them. It was nice.
Pumped my self with drugs.
Sugars and oils and processed blood.
I'm pretty sure it effects my functioning.
Too much and you can't move.
And when I lie there, I see the roof.
It's blank. No one looks at it because it's blank.
It's blank because no one looks at it.
And I stare at that roof and of course, it stares into me.
We connect, we understand.
And I load up the laptop and sit there for days.

Oh well. Who am I harming?

Brain fuzzed like a cloud of smoke,
Every bad thought just vanished,
I am not going to lie, it feels amazing.
Cocooned in a loving embrace,
It makes me feel safe.

Once the cocoon falls off, my mind is racing.
Every thought comes back like one massive hurricane, hurling every emotion like debris,
Out through anger and frustration.

Once it stops, I stand and look,
Broken promises and conversation like shattered glass spilled onto the floor making it hard to walk.

Everyone is shocked at my actions, my parents heartbroken and hurt. My siblings, they pretend not to notice but I see the sadness as they refuse to talk.

I still don’t care, I love feeling numb,
I love not feeling myself and feeling ****** up,
So I then again turn to my old friend,
Then the cycle begins once again.