Funny
They can tell
When my
liver's working too hard
But they can't tell
When I'm on
Drugs

Funny
They accuse
me
of mischief
and mayhem
but they don't know I'm high
till I tell them

having the audacity
to accept the duality
of man, of time, of life
rather a causality
in itself
of things, of people, of emotions
you can finally let go
the loss of innocence
before you even know
not hopelessly muddled anymore
like the grey colour
in the middle of black and white
no more under the pressure
now off to where the air is fresher.

The pressure cracks my bones
like a lofty barrel
Weighing a top my tormented back.

My rib cage once housed a humming bird
That half dead, plague ridden thing
flew away long ago.

Sometimes my heart aches, with a pressure of an ocean of tears I never shed.
Not because I don't want to but maybe because it seems too precious to lay upon shallow ground.
My pain, my mind, my love, my grief. All things mine in a confusion and desperation unappreciated by others and therefore unnecessary to anyone but me.
I'm desperate for connection in my own nihilist way of being miserable and forlorn. I don't trust anyone, not the ones I love, not me, nothing. But I want to want to. I want to be able to. Always mid-sentence though, always reticent, in a never ending/never blooming hope.

The way they describe you,
In the complex analogy,
Speak of you as an object,
Sitting here I remind quiet,
A part of the problem,
Rather than embracing your personality,
They embrace your figure,
Rather than embracing your kindness,
They embrace your figure,
Rather than embracing your strength,
They embrace your figure,
I continue to drink,
Staying to myself,
I acknowledge the problem,
That makes me no better than them.

it's funny
how i build these walls around my heart:
strong, resistant, resilient;
they protect it from the sharp edges of slipped words from your tongue,
they shield my heart from the harshness of spitfire.
and yet

they. always. break

even after how many times i rebuild these tall walls,
even after adding multitudes of obsidian,
it always breaks under your words

and i'm growing tired

the once overflowing energy in my veins are slowly diminishing,
the nerves building this wall around my heart are slowly losing their light

and there will come a day
where i don't have the energy to rebuild these defenses,
where my heart will lay beating but vulnerable

and there will be a day where your words hit just the right spot,
and then there i will be,
slowly bleeding out, color draining from me as i find it harder and harder to get up

but today will not be that day,
i will continue to build these defenses,
only letting those worthy to enter,
my heart will still beat and it will beat strong

today, your words will simply bounce off these obsidian walls and fall to their demise

The rice cooker broke
because I turned it on
with no rice inside to cook
And its empty clay
couldn't take the heat all alone
So it just cracked, all spiderweb
Almost pretty.  Useless.
And I hated myself for that.
I felt pretty useless for that.

What's funny,
I think it's funny,
I want to think it's funny,
is that it's been years
but I remember, and I still,
and I am still pretty useless for that.

Once Upon A Time
Pressure cooking was exciting
It was Hot,
It was Tense,
Leading tone to tonic
Tugging me towards...

But I'm bored with that now.
I'm bored of stress.
      (but I'm stressed when I'm bored.)

I'll just go to sleep.

And in the morning

I'll remember to add rice.

My mother's been asking me
about where I've been.
But I'm a younger version of her
with my father's eyes
and a tongue of my own.

The sun painted my skin
the same color as the history
of skins before me.
The same stretch insecurities carved
too lightly; for now.

My name is from the people before me;
Am I supposed to carry their ghosts when they leave?
How heavy does a name weigh?
Especially when it sounds like expectations?

force, punish, burden,
insistent coercion, and threat,
compulsion, tension.

Stressful stranglehold,
urge, force per unit area,
fuss, influence, duress.