"swim with us, don't be scared." they said
so i tried to culminate courage and jumped
"just try to calm down"
i plunged in the freezing, fathoms-deep lake
"everything's good"
and a blast of trepidation embraced my body
"it's not that bad"
they all frolicked like they can't feel the enormity
"it's all in your mind"
while i felt weak and i was trembling, but i smiled
"just don't think about it"
i was slowly sinking, and before i knew it, i was drowning
"try not to drown"
so i cried for help, but fear and panic engulfed me
"just try a little harder"
but i continued to sink and my lungs were straining for air
"only you can help yourself"
and i sank deeper, my lungs tight and burning
"it's a sink-or-swim world, you know?"
i drowned and that's when i realized
i can't swim

In deep honesty,
I know that you keep to yourself.
That no one really knows you except the few you deem worthy.
How I envy their knowledge of you.
Those hidden idiosyncrasies that reveal the secrets to how you smile so big.
I wait another day, seeing your face in reflection.
Reaching out to touch you. Risking the chance that you'll disappear before my hand touches your shoulder.
How I envy their knowledge of you.
Believing the impossible.
A steady faucet that spews with the press of a lever.
I decided to stand still, realizing that I was standing on the wrong side of the sink.
Left dry, hearing only the sound of your laughter.
How I envy their knowledge, knowing exactly where to stand when you rain affection.
The taste of ****** food, left stained. Not much room to move.
Collected in an empty sink.
The clatter of spoons, forks, butter knives, and plates without so much as a cup.
I must admit. I envy their knowledge of you as I am left here stale, without cause.
Seeking you to cleanse me in purpose

It's called disclosure
Two negatives
I am opening
I am no longer closing myself
To me
Disclosure
Fighting and falling
Tredding only realize
I am merely moving my limbs
Fiercely under water
As I sink farther down
Deeper into the unknown
My last breath a memory
Attempting to keep each one
As they weigh my down
Yet I am stubborn
I am still
Closed
Crying inside
All the time
So much to hold onto
So much I choose to hide
Tears spilleing out my eyes
Escaping my inner pain
Becoming one with the water surrounding me
Drowning me
I am one negative deep
All I have to do is pick up the phone
Show up
And make it two
Open
I know what's what I need to do

I used to love
When you and I
Got too drunk to speak
And watched the stars
From my bathroom sink
In well-lit Boston
Because
Imagination is important
In times like these.

Oh darling,
You made me feel like I was floating
On the ocean
Miles and miles away
From everyone.
But now I am sinking
And the fishes are passing me by
As I think about my life
And how nothing ever seemed to turn out right

now is not enough,
so
     say
             it
                                 slow.

every syllable drops

                                    another weight on
my chest

every phoneme
another league
i continue to sink (faster)
within
.

If you are an ocean,
Let me sink in you.

so here’s the thing
about the things you think
the things you thought
what’s down the sink
and what is not
the friends you saw
who you got
who had to go
you loved them all
through highs and lows

but people slip
and then they’re gone
when you can’t keep grip
and there’s nothing to hold on
you’ve got to let go
because it’s how life goes
get past those
who aren’t worth the fight
because they weren’t right
and couldn’t be kept
although you will not forget
the times that were good
the lessons they taught you
but you really should
forget they forgot you

and it’s okay
because so few stay
there’s plenty more along the way
and yes it’s tough
life doesn’t stop
no matter how rough
alone or not
then things get better
they always do
nothing’s forever
but you always get through

I  am  no philosopher
I  am  Paul  from  The Meadows
pulled skinny  poor from the  shadows to put  a  deal of fat  on his bones

so  how  did   I  end  up   here?
what penalty did   I  accrue?

taking the  ten  point deduction for  conduct unbecoming
I  place my  attention  deficit on re-order that I  don’t  yet  forget

smothered  in the  scrim of this  Hogarthian hood every  chip toothed  blue   scriptured face
proffers  passage to a  poisonous but tantalising hook

to write the  junk  must I  taste the junk?

peddled or paddled for  a  sweeter  flight this  avenue never  taken,
hedonic ingress  unwalked,  unwanted yet  still wondered
could such  deep surrender  be   so  sweet to  allow the  most  intimate  of plunder?

am I  Dante?
corralled   around  the  streets
of a  society that  shows no compromise amongst  the  dying embers  of fallen  enterprise

eternal  damnable gyres around a  ****** **** pyre
of concrete,  glass  and  broken  humanity

with    each    uttered    breath    a    cold      cocktail    of profanity

the  bouncing soles of the  air  I  wear  may ease  me over  the  gummed archipelagos
flag  spij-speckle  guaran islands slab secure and  fast
against  the  counselled wash an  eternal  fossilised chaw
that  resists  the  fiercest chemical blast

lost in this  sea    I  cannot  be   but shaken  by the  waxy  man  with his  head  of startled  hemp and  coterie  of cracked  carbon
as  he breaches the  domestic brink

turning a key, his shoulders  hunched  in protective  shawl against

the  spittled spate
he stares  back through me
for  sightless  miles insides out,  front  to rear, then  scuffles, rattling,  townwardly

cannot resist  the  insecticidal compulsion of the  green  and  white purgatory
where  the  neatly  stacked  wash  of fluorescence makes  oven ready  your  heaven
amid the  threnodial thrum  of
a  hundred syncopated Siemens

following  that   shuffling   cortege  of  the   bussed  in dead and  dying
I  am dutiful, altar  bound, avowed and  accursed the  host with the  ghosts in this  haunted  mall lost  and  lonely  within  England’s  mountain  green
it  is no longer the  god   bothering needles and  blunts that    draw the crowds
as  flat  screened pharmacological rapture,
that  trinity  of distilled, medicated caffeination

lead   a   once   pious   nation   through   a   precocious dream

maybe Allah yet  sees  here  his
Jerusalem  and  leads his children
upon  England’s  land  of  crescent  green