Scroll, post, repeat the trend,
A pose, a pout … a means to an end.
Skin like scroll bait, soft and bare,
Hoping strangers might just care.

A thousand eyes, a thousand hearts,
Double taps like modern art.
But how many linger past the frame?
How many even know your name?

They see the curve, the light, the tease,
But not the scars, the silent pleas.
Not the nights you cried alone,
Not the ache behind your phone.

Why unwrap your soul so quick,
Bare your body, click by click?
Validation’s empty prize …
Echoed praise in shallow skies.

Is it power, is it pain?
A fleeting high that fades again.
Do you crave to be adored,
Or feel what love once felt before?

What’s the cost of all that showing,
If they don’t care where you’re going?
If they just stop for a glance …
Not a thought, not a chance.

You are not a canvas for their gaze,
Not here to earn or seek their praise.
You are the artist, not the art,
A whole **** world, a beating heart.
Paint your worth in your own hue …
No filter needed to show what’s true.

Life feels like a big, dark maze right now.
A dusty, dark hall full of unknown difficulties
I don't know where I'm navigating.
I see helping lights every now and then.
But they go dark after a while
Every step scares me to death
Makes my body shiver and itch
I may have the strength to reach the end, but
what will happen
when I reach it?

Have you ever been so bold
As not doing
As you're told?

To behold you're own day
in an a-maze-ing way

I'm not in a good place, it's written all over my face with a permanence I can not erase
The ace up my sleeve turned out to be a joker with my super imposed face
Lost in the twisted maze that is my head space, I'd chase the cheese but it'd be a waste
Fear infused with a terror base so potent you swear it almost has a taste
The dark haze of my past short circuits any new interface
Filled with a technology way out of date but never had the means to replace
I watch the life I thought I'd be a part of race by at a dizzy pace
But it always made time to come back 'round and knock the taste out my mouth like 808 base
Then leaves post haste without a trace before catchin' a case
Just one more missing personality cold case, chalk it up to another looser fallen from grace
They say to pick yourself up by you boot straps, I'm always breakin' the shoe lace
Bet they didn't think I'd use the bootlace to replace the slipknot necklace I misplaced
The bright young man with aspersions worth the chase now incased in blue skin wearing deaths face

©2023

I re-read the thoughts that used to plague me inside
it still hurts to see those words strung into those sentences
I can still feel the depression, I can still feel the internal divide
I can still feel like that, time to time
I re-read my trauma in a blackened ink
re-reading it making it sink in deeper, I can see clearer now
I hope that in a year I will feel the same way
about this maze, I'm in
about this cage, I'm in
maybe I will break the door down on my way back in
no longer tethered to the way that it is
instead reimagining what the day could've been
with a little more confidence, a little more trust
with a little more dominance and more sword thrusts