Smoke roars out of your mouth

but you’re no mythological creature

You’re muscle fibers and pure rage

as simple as the digits our leaders made you,

but only sometimes.

Other times your callous sigh calls to the poet in me

asking to decorate your voice with more ornaments than the first weddings

to celebrate your existence the way countries celebrate war victories

screams and pride, drinks and cries, stories beneath lies,

o why?

Because inspiration.

Because ***** needing a reason.

Because the moment is justification enough.

how lovely
that depression is acceptable only until the breakdown.
it must garner sympathy but must not inconvenience,
look pitiful but not be unproductive;
like you are allowed to be empty
but only until the deadline,
will receive prayers and patience
only until your sadness translates into lazy;
they will claim to understand
only until you have stayed days in
without seeing sunlight,
fallen behind on classes,
missed projects you cannot return to.

your education
and your government
will allow you to be suffering
up until it ties you to bed,
makes you miss days of work
and drown in debt
and lose yourself;
afterwards
it will call these faults
the folly of an able,
merely careless mind;

mental illness
is a ghostly disease —
it exists
and everyone fears it
tells you to check in regularly on your friends for it
speaks of it only in respectful tones
a hushed whisper
about the rising death toll
or buried in a joke about the great
millennial existentialism
(how wonderful
that we have grown close enough to darkness
to be able to laugh at it)

and yet you cannot call it real
cannot claim it as an excuse
for not sleeping
or not eating
or not waking
or —
worse —
not working.

how stupid that we
are allowed to be hopeless
so long as we are not tired.

Finding love is to find unfamiliar beauty, noble and true,
pure in the eyesight, throughout duration before death,
a beauty that demands indulgence and conquers one’s
personal soul, their total being, consumed in every
pocket of essence. Stronger than the Devil. Oh lover,
I’m being torn apart beyond violent sobs in the corner
alone. In genius ways, it's like I’m being applied to evil
for when I’m cursed to be not around you. I vowed to
never write poetry again, if you accepted my hand.
Until then, I’m sure you’ll enjoy master of this world.
As the Devil runs riot and commits himself to his
own death, no longer able to rule earth.