I don’t want to go to the lake

It’s too cold
I don’t have a swimsuit
I haven’t been eating well
I don’t like swimming
I don’t like being outside
I just don’t want to

These are all my excuses
But in reality...

I don’t want to have to tell you
There are dark, fresh scars on my thigh
On my wrist as well
I don’t want you to worry
I don’t want to have to explain

So you sate your inadequacies
With excuses and those poems
And you pretend that tomorrow you will be better
But you are unstirring from your heart
And the stagnant puddle you call your life
It is your air, what once was bitter

Complacence takes hold and you watch
That view from the window forever the same
Sunsets and seasons blurring in the horizon
One more hour, another sleepless night
An unfinished day and muted uneasiness
Is this apathy the only thing you rely on?

“Life drains my enthusiasm away bit by bit”
You complain, and to refuse reality
You firmly repeat it like a charm
But you know, one heartbeat away
One step further from where you fell last
Will crash into your illusion of calm

Numb your conscience with art
Devour everyone else’s talent
And take nothing but tears from their story
Leave truths to dent your steel façade
Yet bury yourself in denial
Safe, shielded, in your delusional glory

Bleeding heart, battering in its cage
Its screams drowned under ****** veins
It’s scary silent, your shell
You’ve locked down hard
Your defences caked with dreamland dirt
Too sturdy for reality to fell

Search like a madman for something
To ease the voice of discomfort
Try to bind it to a letter
And so you sate your inadequacies
With excuses and this poem
And swear that tomorrow you will be better.

the crooked and
mishandled alleyways
of words to whisper
have always riddled
the backstreets of my mind...

i mapped them,
longer than enough
to see the ins and outs
i've known them,
more than enough...
like the palm of my hand
or the skin on my face.

it has always been
a palimpsest
of the maze i used to
be sealing myself in—
   or perhaps seeping myself out.

there were promises,
there were poems,
and of course,
there was you.

and every single word,
or every single way,
i have always been
tongue tied and
waiting and just so
so long overdue—

stuck in the prison
of a misfortunate fate...
knowing the means
and never escaping
somehow still lost

   afraid of ever stretching ways.

'hey, long time no see—'

'happy birthday! want to talk—'

'happy new year hope we still get together!'

    everything just comes out in clicks...

    'backspace'.

Pretending that your feelings doesn't exist is one of the worst punishment a man can do to himself.

...but my knees are aching
and molar is cracked
I woke up this morning
with a hurricane back!

You’re so unhappy.
And ******* but doesn’t it make you special.
Afterall no one else is unhappy.
Your pain at night is the warmest thing you are sure you could hope to feel.
It gives you your driver’s license,
And you drive right the **** over anything that throws into question what you do,
Your tire marks steadily worming beneath my skin.
The secondhand rhapsodious misery you expel into the air crawls into the threads of my clothing and lingers.
Your justify your uninspired cruelty as being something I need to hear,
Point to pain as truth to fuel your fallacies.
That’s not what truth is.
You wound because you can,
Too afraid or angry or selfish to apologise and so you spoon out excuses,
Each more common than colds.
Like chunky lemon milk,
We linger past our expiration.

When I excuse
my faults
I lose the opportunity
to improve myself.

When I accept
my faults
and evaluate my self
I can then
improve my self
towards the wisdom and virtue
I need
to achieve optimal joy and happiness.