I've spent too much time taking.
Too much time breaking.
Too many nights in the cold, alone,
shaking.

I've spent too much time keeping,
long hours weeping.
Fighting off demons that are constantly
creeping.

But I will do this no longer,
I can be stronger,
Now's time to toss the junk that's making me
somber.

It's a wholesale clearing,
an escape from the fearing.
There's a new me a-coming, my spirit is
cheering.

So now I'll stand and surrender,
Move from hoarder to sender,
and open this new chapter in all of its
splendor.

I am a writer who hates whiskey.

I feel that I should love it like a writer's only friend,
Like I should sip it from a glass while I scribe with broken pens,
Like I should clink the ice against the sides and swirl it, deep in thought,
And take it neat and raw, in admiration of its steely course.
It should lubricate the mind and guide the flow of words to page,
And since a nervous age I've yearned to say I love the way it burns and maims,
And maybe on a certain day, I'll glug it without choking, breathless,
But for now it hurts my brain to even think about its... smokey wetness.

I've idolized an archetype, a writer with a harmful life,
Sit alone in bars at night, lament the fact that art is strife,
But recently I'm thinking more, and honestly, this can't be right,
I love the pen and paper, and I love the fact it's hard to write.
It's the way that I've romanticized it, fantasized and glamorized it,
Like I could just forget about a novel, let Jack Daniel's write it,
While I sat and focused on my magnum opus, penning parts of it in prose,
I viewed my present like it's hindsight, through glasses tinted rose.

Inside a forest of my own making
where the vines are merciless and though dreams may die the evergreen awakens

I must be patient,
and follow the voice at my core

through these arches, roots, through the self-made distrust
that manifests as branches sharp enough to divide me
so I’m on guard like a sentinel

You think you’ve been starved of serenity
well I have a Chimera’s hunger and a sage’s mind

a lethal combination
and I'm killing more than time
I’m after my former self
since I need a rebirth and some revenge
because that man wasted centuries caught in vicious cycles

when the key to escape was right there between two temples.

I’m watching
My happiness
c
   r
     u
       m
          b
             l
               e

and

F
A
L
L

a  p  a  r  t

In front of me.

is ignorance bliss or not?
i don't know
but i have a gun to my throat and
i'm wondering whether i should close my eyes

There are days where I sit on my porch
And watch the sun hang in a low,
Lazy bauble with
Spun sugar lacing the sky

There's a day I've set up a lamp
I've bought for myself
And then wash the dishes
Where pomegranate scented bubbles
Soak my rolled up sleeves

Days I force myself to do laundry
Because I hate the monotony of it
The necessity of it
Even though it's a breath of fresh air
When done

Days of filling the silence with
Gentle croons of blues and jazz
And the feeling of wet, cold paint
Between my hands and a canvas
Or the stickiness of cookie dough
Between my fingers
And the wash of heat against my face
When the oven door opens

In these small ways, somehow,
I am healing,
Though I do not know what from

Just that these scars are paling
If only a little
And the pain in my chest settles
Into something like an echo
Or a memory
Something tolerable

Something bearable.