Death takes many forms.
He can be harsh and cruel and cold
Or kind and merciful.

He takes people away,
Usually when the time comes.
Sometimes, the people even gave their permission for him to take them away.
Some even initiated it. Some were unaware of it.

Those were the ones that he truly mourn.
He mourns the absence of a bright-eyed child
In such a deep dark world.

For when the death knell strikes twelve,
A new world begins.

He watches as others try
to manage without the one taken away.  
He watches as they try and save
The ones that were taken away.
He watches as they call upon divine intervention,
Going so far as to ruin their lives,
Just to give the ones they love a second chance to live.

He wanted to wipe their warm tears away.
He wanted to hug them and feel as the fight in them went out.
He wanted to take them away to a faraway place where they won’t hurt no more.
But it was not time for him to do so.

He waits until the end of time.

He is inevitable and yet he waits.

He may strike suddenly, but still;

He waits.

I find myself angry with life.
A low, simmering rage
only too close to a boil.
Once, my mind was
the sharpest of blades,
nothing could stand before me.
Now, it is but a vestigial sort of thing,
a relic of times better remembered.
I am rusted by the monotone
my life has become.
The repetition of every day
comes on as a flood;
I will succumb.

I've lived in the outskirts all my life
I've met in the outskirts my friends and my wife
I've built in the outskirts a comfortable hive
I'll make in the outskirts my kids, four or five
I've been here in outskirts both night and day
I went to school, college, work in the same place
I've never been made aware of any other way
Than the one I've been using in outsirkts again and again
The outskirts are comfortable, the outskirts are safe
Nothing's ever going down there, neither good nor bad
There is no grand ambition behind its bland face
No life goals or life to love behind its made bed
In outskirts I've lived, loved, ate, ******, slept, dreamt, hated, berated, been bored and amused, adored and abused, depleted, exhausted, destroyed and rebuilt, encouraged and spewed, all encompassing comfort of life's dullest views
The outskirts are comfortable, they are always secure
In outskirts I've lived my whole life and more
All outskirts look the same, but mine is the best
For my outskirts is where my humble home stands

"I hate American late stage capitalism," my Spanish roommate says.
But what can I say to that.
He's right; every second spent here is paid for in gold
or in crimson blood.
Reality pulses with stimulation,
but still,
the clock's hand lazily wanders, lethargic, about its face.
This pathetic, white-haired professor,
lectures on coding in the front of the room.
"American's only know how to tell the time by looking at their phones," my roommate says.
But I think to myself, now, computers are the only way we bother telling time anymore. Time has become precise,
But it used to be clumsy, more art than discrete mathematics.
The professor informs the class that we have to pay for the textbook,
and again for the software that will grade our code,
and the class doesn't even blink.
"Class dismissed," says the clock. Ironic, I know.
The blue light of our phones,
the kind that keeps us awake at night,
is turned on as we step outside.
"It's noon," I say, and I hear the echoes of gunshots in schools just like this one,
Where someone got tired of paying in cash.

We write as to not be bored. Bored out of our minds, we start to see & feel & think things we never hoped to see & feel & think. Thoughts of death & sorrow haunt our minds when there is nothing else to do. We start to forget who we are & where we came from. We are lost in our own internal dialogue, escaping what we feel we cannot handle. After just moments of our boredom, we are gone & lost to the secret world within, & perhaps, there is no point in trying to find our way out.
- Z.B.

Here I am sitting on my college armchair
numbing my **** for the sake of waiting.
Spoiling my breath for there's no one around.
Hearing my own pulse for it is too quiet!

Sometimes I wonder why you love me.
I used to think it was my own selfishness begging the question forward.
But today I wonder because when I get on a roll
(and I do, often)
I can start seeing the impatience develop in the corners of your eye.
I don't know if it's always been,
or if just now it's become obvious to me,
but I can see it beginning to irritate you.
All my highfalutin recitations of my latest reading.
All of my internal cross-examination.
All of the stones I turn over and over in my hand - at you.
It's getting a bit much.

But you see I'm just too chock-full of existence
and you are the only vessel to pour it into.
I crave novelty and I can see that you,
instead,
crave peace.
You've watched the world worry over itself for long enough and you want to rest.
I never let you rest.

So then comes the questions again,
why is it you love me?
I am so restless and so curious and so mean.

eating fast food as I watch you wear your old Hawaiian t shirt you adopted from the bottom of a bin at the local thrift shop because everything has always been comfort over style and you can't change now
a fry falls onto the lap of my thighs and you ask me when the last time was I used my kitchen floor for dancing instead of pacing around but my mind falls short into the drops of condensation sweating into a couch that I hate sometimes and admire for the sturdy way it always manages to **** up my back
I'm already what I want to be but I pretend that I throw around my identity like a knick-knack hacky sack and I'll always blame you for the aftershock effect of feeling like I've been spun in a tumbler and left to be drunk by the gnats you breed by never throwing old fruit away