****** Leaves My System

Others — white and dark —
Order their coffee in environmental mugs.
You don’t get stars,
Only reused syringes.

****** leaves as joy —
A nub with no shadow.
Trauma’s shadow is bright white
In my pipe.

Who says addicts are unclean?
I scrape my pipe and cooker,
Shockingly clean.
I don’t get anything.
UC tomorrow —
Do you sleep sound?

The rush — excitement.
Why wrap so tight?
Don’t break the crack in the pipe.
Sounds like joy.
Smoke fills my lungs.
Yet I get nothing.
In burning light,
Where was my life?
Vapor fills the room.
Oh, there’s a feeling —
I’m content.
How about you?

Could you ***** yourself a hundred times
Just to feel a little?

Stop — there’s blood in the needle.
You think an ****** is good?
You’ve never seen blood mixed with life in a needle.
Trust me — don’t try.
You miss all the shots you don’t take.
Ones you don’t take can’t **** you.

I wish they would —
The ones that hit hurt more than the ones that miss.
Well, ask him:
******, needle, arm —
The true holy trinity.

Just ask Jesus —
Blood of Christ, blood of an addict,
Redeem me.

Needle exchange —
Well, I need a life exchange.
Maybe something sharper.
Sorry, I meant to say spare change.

A blanket of sheer darkness spread into the heavens.

As the moon and stars light the night with whispered legends

Of the bone-chilling graveyard that is long forgotten

A swirl of the violent, howling, and biting wind

Chills my bones, disrupts my mood, and freezes my skin

I shivered in pure silence; my hands are tightly bound.

Suddenly, I heard a deep, strange, and macabre sound.

A demonic laugh comes from the skull in the lake

I ran away and soon found the safe path I could take.

I panted and asked, "Why did he laugh? Is he alive?"

My mind made illusions that drive me to insanity

I pinched myself hard and brought myself back to reality.

With curiosity, I visited the eerie place.

A once-holy graveyard that lost its ethereal grace

It is a den of doleful and vengeful spirits.

Roaming around, frightening each man who visits it

Along with the bodies buried six feet underground

The soil decayed as the leaves from the trees fell and browned.

The plants formerly known for their beauty are wilting.

The gloomy, unclean, and abandoned graves are crumbling.

Into millions of cracked and forgotten stones

Tall grasses enveloped me as the cruel wind moans.

I escaped from the blades so lethal and overgrown.

A trickle from the moss synchronised with my bitter and hot tears.

For I saw your grave; I didn't know you left me after all these years.

Here I am, struggling through the battle of life,
Fighting the monsters that live inside me.
I’m tired — I want to give up, I want to run.
But their ****** laughter still echoes in my head.
Every wound they gave still bleeds, the pain still fresh.
Something inside whispers, “Let go,” but now I see—
It was never me. It was their curse that clung to me.

Here I am, waging wars I was never meant to fight,
Bleeding from wounds I should never have carried.
The pain still knocks me down, again and again.
I escaped their grip the first time I spread my wings—
But why did I have to flee?
When my angels left, I had no one left to turn to.
My cries for help were drowned by the devil’s laughter.
I watched my angels bow to the dark — and hope abandoned me.

Here I am, looking back at the wreckage of my path,
Their voices still echo, loud in my mind.
All the pain, all the memories fuel this rage—
My heart, twisted, filled with hate.
My broken mind hates the one I love,
And loves the ones I wish I didn’t.
So I built a fortress around my heart,
Forged in hate, it shields me from life.

Now I’m alone—surrounded, but alone.
I want to break free.
But now I realize…
I have become my own captor.
And escape feels impossible.

But still, I’ll try.
I’ll keep going.
Because I can’t give up now.

Consultation With The Grim Reaper
Omniscient being of death
I seek thy comfort and solace
Melancholy monotony of days to come
Arrival of whispering entities
Speaking to me of vices and arrogance
Acting amongst their wishes of woe
A quandary of life and death
Heaven nor Hell will free me
From my soul draining enslavement
False deities tug at the rope tied at my neck
Dragging me to their individual hell
I worship only the black reaper
Save me from my ill fortune
I wish to consult the most high
Bring to me the power to take away
The death scythe gives lacerations to my flesh
Pouring salt into my burnt irreparable wounds
A broken heart incapable of penance
Mistakes forsaken by Thoth
It is time to seek my father Death
Pass down to me your robe of mire
The charnel of screaming
My new sacral burial ground
The skin on my body turns to bone and dust
A faceless and lifeless cloaked figure
Bereavement of what once was
Fortunes of unforeseen death
Become the purpose of my null existence
Eradicate the false ideology of hope
To declare a former soul deceased
Endless visions of sorrowful memories
Beaten and whipped by the angels above
I loathe the inescapable eternity to come

It's so hard to listen to a person you are undermining;
Even if that person is sacrificing a lot to make sense,
Love and commitments don't have to be this complicated,
You are build up with so much ego and pride,
You see no value in them ,
You  prefer your opinions to theirs,
You are a control freak,

It's so hard to listen to a person you are undermining,

Now, you’re alone.
Feeble, fading,
Haunted by echoes of the past.
Regret gnaws at your silence.
Pain pulses through your solitude.
You’d give anything to rewind,
But time is a door that never opens backwards.

Years have passed.
And not even a memory of them remains beside you.
You fear death,
Not for what comes next,
But for what might never come at all.

What if no one comes to your funeral?
What if you rot alone in a house no one checks?
What if…
You were the one who made it this way?

Computer spiders spin electronic webs
Everything depends on the word “grid”
It’s a cyberattack the generals say
And others say it was planned from the start
Neurons flicker and go dark
We become space a black hole a dead planet
Lightning dies on the vine the current falters
In times past a power outage lost time and food
Now it’s your mind you lose
Your network of imaginary friends
Your memes and your mined minds
Nothing left to mimic or mentalize
Step out into the dark the coyotes are laughing
The bats have pinpointed our weakness
How long will we stay in the dark we cry
Why ask--  have we ever lived in the light

And at last he prayed,
Prayed since all hope had perished,
All virtues faded and all sentiments gone.
Down the river he now floats, cursed with angst and pain.
He mourns his loss but his grief won't go away, for this is the consequence —
The consequence of action he so inadvertently did without a second of thought.
Oh, the lives he ruined, the chaos he brought.
Denial is the river, and denial is what he sought.

In denial he drowned,
And in denial he remained.

-Asher Graves

The sky seems dark and light remains far,
Light is taken by darkness and cruelty has grown too harsh.
Hope fades like a whisper lost in the storm,
As sorrow and silence together form.

Love wasn’t soft with us.
It was claws and knives,
a hunger in your eyes
that bled every time we touched.

You whispered sweet lies
but I heard the truth—
your love was a shadow
waiting to swallow me whole.

I didn’t leave.
I let you carve your name
into my skin
because I believed
that if I bled enough,
you’d finally be real.

But love,
like ******,
always leaves evidence.

And now, I can’t erase
the bloodstains
of you
from my heart.

I smiled so wide my molars got jealous.
Everyone said I looked stunning.
I said thank you in the voice I reserve for customer service and playing dumb.
That’s the closest I’ve come to a scream
this week.

I wore the dress that says: I’m over it.
(It lies.)
I walked like a question mark
straightened out with rage.

There was a man in the corner
making balloon animals.
He asked what I wanted.
I said surprise me.
He handed me a noose
shaped like a swan.

No one noticed.
Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself
to feel interesting.

Later, someone told a joke
I didn’t get.
I laughed like I was being watched.

The punchline wasn’t funny.
It just echoed
like something I would’ve said
before I got careful.

I stood in the kitchen
with a paper plate of olives and nothing,
holding it like proof
I was doing fine.

Someone spilled wine on the couch.
I said I’ve ruined better things.
Everyone laughed
like I meant it to be charming.
(I didn’t.)

A girl in white heels asked me
how I knew the host.
I said same way I know most people—
by accident,
and with the kind of premonition that wears perfume.

The bathroom mirror was cracked.
I counted the breaks like confessions
and chose not to atone.
The soap smelled like fruit
that only exists in dreams
you wake up crying from.

I reapplied my lip stain
like armor,
like alibi,
like an exit strategy.

Then I left without saying goodbye
because I couldn’t figure out
how to do it quietly
and still be missed.