If there are emotions I can’t
Name but can feel.
How do I tell if they
Are even real?

Be disturbed by this
Perfect mask of calm.
I’ll convince you that this
Is all I am.

All these thoughts, they plan
To get the best of me.
And here I thought  
That we’d all get along swimmingly

But instead I'm drowning in
This lake of mine
Not flying on wings
Falling from the sky.

There’s a wall
It's been hit by catapults.
On the other side things
Kept inside a vault.

The sliding scale of friendship  
Shows me where you are.
Explain to me how you managed  
To get so far.

The hurricane winds are a bore
When they’ve been pushing you around
For two-thirds of a century
There’s nothing surprising about what torsion can do:
I know, I know,
It’s real but it’s all in your head, both at once,
Your collarbone is at 227 degrees toward Polaris
And meanwhile your left hip is rotating in a
Hyperskewed dimension only plottable with
Imaginary numbers, which is a problem
For peristaltic functions dependent on
Newtonian mechanics – sigh, shiver, burp,
Keep your awareness don’t fall over
BORING.
You’ve been on orange alert since Ike.

Let’s run down the repertoire of available distractions.
Jokiness? Sometimes worked in small
Person-to-person settings (you see the current problem)
But amazingly hard to pull off in text;
Mentally mugging the innocent online?
Leaves a bad taste.
Obliterating lust? Seems to have annihilated itself
Except in pain-in-the-*** dreams, the actually-asleep kind.
Guitar, or similar toys? Only fun as long as you keep finding
Novelty – which turns into, you know, work.

Drowning your mind in other people’s stuff?
This is the scary part.
Sometimes, still, for a little while; but never for long;
Not the freshest, not the most age-old time-tested brilliance;
Metaphors fall apart – the plot devices cannot hold -
You blink twice and the wind’s whipped the page out of your grip
And twisted your neck down up inside your ******* again.

So blowblowblowblowblow, babybrainballoons,
And Crack Your Cheeks,
Coz the only shred of hope is that if we all keep
Caterwauling our pissant poetic brains out at maximum vocal volume
Preamped and reverbed by global satellite systems to some
Unpredictable transhuman force it might eventually
OutShout the drone of Earth’s idiotic entropy
Kuz krist I’m bored of standing up in the wind

The thing about the river,
is it takes away your pain,
absorbing all yout tragedies
and locking them far away.

I've got black holes in my memories
from where the river rushed.
Left behind all I find
is a minefield drenched in dust.

The thing about the river,
is it gives you memories new,
fills up with a distraction
to stop you falling through.

Because millions of fragments
are enough to peice together
a distorted crystalisation
of a time when things were better.

Yes the thing about the river,
is it's not a simple fete.
It takes your childhood in hands
and plasters it complete.

- Anisah Mariah