Sitting here waiting.
For what?
For a sign or a chance or an invitation.
I don’t really know.
But maybe it’s time for me
To become a sign or a chance or an invitation.

To stop waiting for the world to love me,
And instead learn to love myself

Self love is not love but anti-love
Parts are but to be mutually fitted
And imperfections only seeming
Ceasing to be in the perfected whole
But is not if any part seeks its own

A lot of you
Would agree
That this world 
Would be a
Better place
Without me

I don't disagree 
In fact, I've been
Wanting to leave
It behind
For as long
As I can remember

So this is
The part where
I'll never recover,
The part where
Life takes me down,
And the scene
That scars
Forever

What's the fear that feeds the ink?

Who holds the censor pen?

Blacking out lines before they're uttered?

It's my dad, calling my mom "dramatic".

It's my mom, hurt in her eyes, saying "how could you". When I didn't mean to, or I didn't know, or I didn't properly gauge her reaction in advance.

It's online misunderstandings, always assuming the worst intentions: that I'm bad, or bigoted

That I'm dumb, uneducated or boring, redundant or mean.

It's previous partners and broken hearts

When what I couldn't give was mistaken with cold-heartedness, or stinginess or uncaring.


The good news

The truly good news

Is that I am non of those things

And I'm watching, as I speak

I'm watching that pen run out of ink

Doubtful of Self, of Realness

Fortified by others' knowing, or preferably- admiration

Like being constructed out of sets of other peoples' eyes

Like being made real by propagating in more minds, many more minds, specific minds. In countless beating and virtual hearts, Likes, thumbs up

Not wanting to be forgotten, while alive, while dead

Taxed by maintenance and constant imminent collapse

Identity is a social construct

Awareness is not

My horns of tree trunks; Lift my fragile head,
Born in the image of Venus; I live my life to regret.
Delicate locks of golden brown; They'll flow like a river downwards,
As leaves will begin to crowd; Hiding my own *****.

Hidden behind the willow tree; Shall stand both a woman and girl.
One in each other, just simply in different worlds.
A desperate glance of despair, falling from eyes of the young,
A hopeful glare of happiness as the woman looks towards the air.

Laying amongst the dirt, the rough ground and grit,
it dirties my hands and covers my fingertips.

I sprawl outwards like a cat, relaxing below the sunshine,
I close my eyes as the sun becomes nothing more than a nightlight.

Sweet Taurus; It's whomst I am;
Sweet Lady of The Lamb.
I live this life as a mortal being,
but dreams of becoming a deity within my mind.

In prayers,
I capture your heart.

Still more, in words

In experience

Confusing Familiarity with Comfort

Confusing Comfort with Peace

Reifying confusion, but not successfully

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Forgetting

Seeing through, a single pinhole in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Pinholes everywhere, more than can be contained

Not containing

Torn all over

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand very still and very quite so I can feel, hear, sense

Perfect realism

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Agitation, but only conceptual

Feeling tight

Feeling rehearsed

Feeling like an imposter

Wanting to impress

Wanting to be convinced of Self, of Realness

Fortified by others knowing, or preferably- admiration

Like being constructed out of sets of other peoples' eyes

Like being made real by propagating in more minds, many more minds, specific minds. In countless beating and virtual hearts, likes, thumbs up

Not wanting to be forgotten, while alive, while dead

Taxed by maintenance and constant imminent collapse

Compassion, like collapsing into a safe lap

Relinquishing

No pretense

Bare being

More naked than when unclothed

Total exposure

Outed, in the light of knowing

Self forgetting and glimpses of freedom

Trusting sighing

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence, visceral

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, brief equilibrium

Reifying stability. Gone.

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also, sometimes, just plain humorous

And absurd

Crying

Loving people

Grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Encountering this, intimate, me, indistinguishable being, but everywhere

Ouch

Awareness

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like the last wring of that silk dress you weren't supposed to squeeze dry

Feeling like I shouldn't know what I know, like I couldn't. This must be illegal, cosmically illegal

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong softness

Loving with understanding

Loving with teeth and nails

Music, lacerating

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. Like physically with my body.

Knowing I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

Sleep deprivation

***

Guilt

Sense-making and maps of meaning

Revisiting memories

Crying

Staying away from scary corners of my mind

Deliberately going toward scariness

Not resisting

Yes resisting

Respecting resistance

Compulsive tv watching

Dropping or letting go over and over again

Exploring

Curiosity

Forgetting and then remembering that it’s all happening on its own, noticing this, knowing this, realizing this

Realizing that realization comes and goes on its own

Being in love with everything

Crying

Playing with time and concepts

Craving emptiness

Love

Catastrophizing

Ranking what "works" (i.e. sleep deprivation is effective), noticing that the metric of “effective” and "works" is = resulting in greater illusions of "forgetting" with a capital F

Loving everything

Being everything

Self-flagellation

Not really believing any of the stories or narratives

Procrastinating

Being irresponsible

Getting off on self-loathing

Forcing intimacy

Compassion, large, whole, unrelenting, everywhere

Oversharing

Falling in love with a homeless person at a traffic stop

Being bored and sad and hopeless and desperate

Remembering inherent wholeness

Being stubborn

Getting out of the way always feels like dying

Loving dying

Loving mourning dying

Dramatizing dying

Wanting to be seen and loved

Self-loathing

Intensity

Craving intensity

Hating craving intensity

Knowing that nothing is a problem

Suffering

Being impatient

Being very very patient

Feeling like I don’t belong in the world, like people and things and money and social media are alien, foreign and scary

Feeling like I am the world

Forgetting that knowing how to verbalize isn’t the same as knowing

Wanting knowing with words to be the same as Knowing

Wanting knowing to be a Real, solid thing

Fear

Mortal fear

Bewilderment

Constant background anxiety

Hating this body

Not caring for this body

Being burdened by this body

Feeling trapped in a body

Feeling more trapped in a mind

Wanting knowing to resolve everything

Wanting to be saved

Thinking that I probably don’t need to be saved

Thinking or knowing(?) there’s nothing to be saved from

Knowing that I can’t be saved

Feeling open

Feeling vulnerable

Feeling exposed

Feeling bad

Feeling like I'm doing it wrong

Believing it all

Wanting to both believe it and have a choice about when, where, and to what extent I believe it

Not knowing where the edge is until I've fallen off

Feeling violated

Feeling like existence is non-consensual

Somehow trusting all of it, totally, exactly as it is

Watching the panicking

More crying

Being one

Being very very aware

Noticing and letting go of effort in one swift move

Compulsive clenching

Compassion

Dissolving

Disillusion

Dying without the novelty

Being ok vey very briefly and for no apparent reason/because of no reason./?

Wanting distraction

Respecting needing distraction

Getting out of the way of intelligent coping mechanisms

Villifying coping mechanisms

Understanding only in retrospect

Frustration

Compassion, deep, like warm water

Compassion, hard, like being ****** vey very slowly

Torture

Life-giving torture

Never wanting to stop

Marveling

Abundance like grace, like not deserving, like not needing to be deserving, like deserving is perverse language

Tasting everything

Endless kaleidoscopes of being and tasting and knowing

Non visual seeing

Clarity, brightness, nothing is a problem

Being alive

Being sososo tired

Wanting to rest, to die into void and nothing

Wanting to hibernate

Wanting to still

Dying to get off

Begging to get off

Finding the edge more thrilling than the center (because then the center can be anything at all?)

Loving all the previous versions of this being

Needing to hate, loathe, earlier renditions of this being

Hating repulsion

Trusting repulsion

Getting stuck because resisting repulsion

Knowing that there's no way out

Knowing that the way out that I'm seeking isn't a way out

Not wanting to do the work

Dancing around the center, constantly

Feeling dizzy with chaos, with knowledge of power

Feeling comfortable with mediocrity

Hating mediocrity

Waking up with jaw tension from the enormity of my own suppressed power

Telling stories about sensations

Relying on self-bullying methods I know don't work

Perfecting the art of pretending

Perfecting the art of self-deception

Wanting to make the stakes higher

Being overwhelmed by my own storytelling

Not wanting to give stories credibility by dispelling them

Naval gazing

Loving philosophy

Feeling dried up, tired, stagnant, disinterested, not engaged, not here.

Sleepwalking. Sleep writing. Sleep talking. Sleep caring

Not sleeping

Vivid dreaming

High weirdness

Questioning my sanity

Romanticizing insanity

Wanting to blur all boundaries

Wanting to smooth the edges of reality

Questioning reality

Destabilizing reality

Feeling destabilized

Feeling irresponsible

Guilt

Feeling sick and tired

Feeling scared

Feeling hopeless

Wanting to reach out

Feeling like everything is inevitable

Feeling like suffering is inevitable

Recognizing kindness

Discerning well (properly? Clearly? Well.)

Fearful trusting

Thinking too much

Not wanting to love my dad as much as I do.

Chasing the intellectual high

Disappointment

No need for resolution

Feeling caught in existence

Feeling caught up. Like in a potato sack; I can explore the exact measure of my confinement, the sensorial elements, the scratchiness, the filtering light from the outside, the stagnation, the wanting to stretch.

I love this being.

This. It's not a problem.

Confusing familiarity with comfort

Confusing comfort with peace

Reifying confusion, but not really

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Seeing through, like pinholes in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand still and feel

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, so so brief

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also just plain humorous

And absurd

Loving people

Feeling grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like a violin solo in a forbidden song

Like the last wring of that silk dress you're not supposed to squeeze dry

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow
hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small, nowhere to go

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong soft body

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. With my body.

I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

when I reached the age of reason I hit the ground,
running. the thought flits
across compact mirror smudged from years of overuse &
abandon, left behind
in purse bottoms and backpacks every time I switch up my style &
move on to something:
new/ fresh / else.  

a glance into glass &
I'm transported: a babe on white lambskin,
a second-hand nostalgia never wholly mine.
a missing, another memory removed,
a down-to-the-wire tally
added to the roster, unexpectedly
the emotional prodigy, ostracized
alongside destined veracity: as in my absolute
devotion to                                                               ­            TRUTH!
the time skip, a box-out, a blackout, a kindness.
a comfort over the desk chair where homework            completes itself
after countless 'mixtape playlists' limewired maniacally
alphabetized, rearranged & revised until dawn/

another decade/chapter: a bookworm,
a blockout, a maneuver 'round roadblock,
a machination, a manipulation, a deadening, a defeat,
an assistant Mother only a child
self, the intrigue... yet

here I am, a spectacle,  
a miracle, a smashing, a light on an island out at sea,
an accident, a ripening survived.

can I trust myself. to dive in. for/by myself?
when I lift the stretch of lambskin from an atticked brown box,
a painted porcelain plate hits the ground,
shattered.