Morning risers
No surprises the days begun
Come freshen your mind
Present yourself and
step outside with sharpened tools
To help the world

When light withdraws
Slow your thoughts
Reflect and heal to
recover from another time

You died already,

The thing came and got you,

You're dead bro,

And this is the first thing you've read bro,

In your new life,

You should do right,

Trust in others and yourself,

Do well by the company you keep,

Don't stop at the beep,

Keep counting sheep,

Don't ask questions or the answers will surely make you lose sleep,

Just you be you, let me be me,

But inquire on me and I'll let you see,

The beast that killed you in your last life is the same one that's going to do you in,

If you keep losing focus on this moment, THIS moment you're in,

But if you can somehow keep it, ******* keep it I said, did you win?

Probably not cause I forced you to try and hold on to what you had not,

You can't hold onto a moment if you're really in the present then move on,

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving,

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving,

Don't stop moving, never stop moving,

Move forward,

Backward,

Sideways,

******* diagonal, your way or my way,

Just keep moving.

When the air is crisp,
the smell of late autumn and early winter heavy in the air,
crackling leaves and tree pollens thick,
the light begins to slip away earlier each evening.

I peer into the meringue-streaked sky
through the rectangle frame of
my windshield,
and just like that,
my senses take me back
as if I had never left.

Stumbling home on sidewalks
stained by sick from too much fun,
or not enough,
the fun I had was nearly always the mask I wore
to conceal pain.

I remember the way the air smelled as I cried;
I remember the sound of pumps on asphalt as you screamed at me;
I remember the sensation of wood on knuckles as I struck the front deck in anger fully broken open,
like a mallet had cracked me from within my chest.

When I hear the first few notes of song after song,
together their own playlist of
memories wanted to be forgotten,
I'm the audience to a fade-in flashback.
Sometimes it happens so suddenly that I feel nauseous,
as if my body was physically ejected
from present to past,
from the totally inconspicuous to full-fledged trauma.

Even now, trauma is a ***** word
for the clash of happy smells and sounds
against their violently depressed
and repressed sentiments.
I struggle to understand how
my rapid fire of shells and casings,
my broken limbs and oozing wounds,
my PTSD ignites
within a glance at an orange horizon,
an inhale of firewood,
an echo of windy gusts shaking folded leaves from trees.

Autumn is a battlefield,
but so is winter, spring, and summer.
Every where I go,
every season that sneaks in
and fades away,
every night's sleep,
every new anxious thought;
you slither in the moments,
in between the trees,
circling round and round
waiting for the right sound or smell,
anticipating the sights unseen,
hiding within my senses,
eagerly springing to life
when I least expect it.

I exhale sharply
at 70 mph,
and I wonder when, if ever,
I will be
free.

We've truly done it
We've sold our future
for the useless millisecond
that is the present

We've gift wrapped our dreams
and sent them off to space
in hopes that one day
maybe they'll find their way back

We've sold our hearts
mass produced our compassion
and felt the void within our chests
we're heartless and we don't care

We've sold the future
to bathe in the pettiness of the now
the pathetic present
as putrid as it is

We've sold the future
like it was ours to begin with,
for something so worthless
even we don't want it-
                                        We've sold the future.

As a child growing,
time was my loyal companion,
Holidays coming in the perfect moment
Annual Birthdays never failing
Weekends always showing up.
But.
As an adult growing,
time has become an antagonistic companion
Never allowing me
To recover from
The past or
The present.
now there is another year gone
that includes
moments in which
I was drowning in mistakes
and seconds in which
I was floating in euphoria.
I want time to stop
For the ability to process
the gulps of bitter water
or sweet sensation of hovering in joy
as they happen,
Not when the ball drops
and we all scream,
For time has not ceased,
to show the world,
to show us,
to show me,
who is in charge.