When you open up to your parents
about your crippling anxiety
and unbearable depression
do not expect them to be okay
expect them to turn into fire
expect their skin to boil at the thought
of their precious child being miserable
how dare I have an imbalance
in my head that makes me
want to blow it off
how dare I have in imbalance
in my head that makes me
feel like I would be
better off in a place that
wasn't Hell
how dare I give them such an inconvenience?
do not expect them to hold you
and tell you that you will get through this
expect them to make you have
another panic attack
and make you feel like it's your fault
expect them to make you feel
like everyone else has it worse
expect them to spit on everything
you've confessed
expect nothing
because that's how you're going
to feel afterwards
you will shed some tears
in the vast emptiness of your head
that is at the same time
triggering your depression
to scream
but you will feel empty
you will feel hopeless
even though no you're
getting therapy
you'll still feel like
anything besides a
human being
so when you open up to your parents
about your crippling anxiety
and unbearable depression
hopefully you'll have
better luck
than I

Corner curtains close to encircle
souls bearing poems
scratched on manila pads or
formed on computers
to await a reading

amid clangs of ceramic cups
stainless steel utensils
and cream pitchers.
  
Carlo’s throat cracks while
he recalls running his fingers
over dry scaly skin
tolerating the heat rising in his body
as he befriends  
snakes coexisting in his camp

Mokasiya narrates adventures 

along rock mesas
formed and shaded
red, orange and tan
and how grasses turn brittle and dry
nearly dissapearing
amid enormous grasshopper swarms  .
.
A young woman sings and plays poetic
lyrics of struggles
lamenting that she should have
given in to the hot rage in her throat
to shoot and **** the *****
who corrupted her father’s marriage

Corner curtains open
as words and phrases
remain to die
among the chairs
mixing with the sawdust
on the hardwood flooring
unlikely to become
reborn, reread or recorded

There's an F on his forehead but it doesn't represent failure. It represents the Y chromosome his father didn't pass down but by some cruel twist of fate he so desperately need to be comfortable in his own **** skin. But this isn't about that. This is about that little girl you raised realizing that she was always meant to be a little boy but can't tell you because you'd kick him out regardless of how he'd plead for you to just understand so instead he hurts himself to let the feeling out. Dozens of little lines that relieve his pain for just a moment each but it is just enough to keep him going. And then he comes back to the constant fear and sometimes he can't take it so he buries himself in a reality where he can be who he is. The wrong pronouns that taste like acid on his tongue and sound like screams in his ears and just add salt to the wounds that he's given himself. He wants to tell you everything but you'd throw him to the dogs and watch as he was torn apart. So he filets his skin instead, and for sixteen years he's held it all in. Sixteen years of pain and suffering and not knowing and hurting. How many times does he need to bleed before I feel like he's had enough? How many times will he scream before someone comes to help? To save him? Because he might not be able to stand it much longer. I won't be able to.

November 4th, 2011, 12:57am.

I 'like' myself.
I like my eyes,
How they resemble a forest
After the rain,
But I don't like how they get red and bloodshot
Whenever I cry:
A forest fire
That's out of my control.
I like my hands,
How they can create art out of nearly anything,
But I don't like how they are covered
In scars
Made by pencils and pens and words that were too sharp.
I like my legs,
How they are strong,
Dependable,
A best friend,
But I don't like how they're stretched out,
Or how they rub together,
Or the way they jiggle when I walk.
I like my arms,
How there are constellations of freckles buttered over my skin,
But I don't like how no matter how hard I try,
I can't seem to pull myself up
Off the cold,
Concrete ground.
I like my hair,
How it trickles down like a waterfall,
Into the valley known as
The small of my back
But I don't like how it's made up of split ends
From staying in the hot shower for way too long
Dreading the morning sun.
Nevermind.
Maybe I don't like myself.

March 31st, 2015, 3:00am.

It has been a long road.
I have crashed
Gotten back up patched.
Added and subtracted
The Weight
The Clothes
The Hair
The Makeup
To get my answer
To a complex math problem;
A complex life problem
That I'm sure you've all encountered
On that one pop quiz
From the first day of school
That you took before they even knew your name.
#1. "What do they all think about me?"
#100. "Do I like myself?"
And with all I've experienced
And learned through self love and so
Much
Patience,
My answer is this:
I don't like myself,
I ******* love myself
And I hope you can all learn to do the same
Because nobody deserves to be caught under their own shadow of
Self Doubt.

If I go to a party, and see at least one girls ***, that day will be my best day of that season.

I’d drink myself to the point where the toilet could be advertised as a painkiller. But **** standing up, It’s not that I don’t trust my aim, I just like to keep things as clean as possible.

I often find myself apologizing for actions the morning after inebriation. It’s weird. I’ve grown old enough for understand consequences but not enough to try and and avoid them.
Old enough to regret the relationships I’ve destroyed then still find time, to break down a few more.

I’m still scared of commitment. I’ll spend 2 years learning to love all of your facets and flaws, but spend so much more of that time looking for a cause.
Exploring why I bother to love anyone when I feel so insecure. You’re affection may grow but I’ll never feel sure. It all becomes a chore. Asking you to outline whatever good in me you thought you saw. But sometime or later I’ll be asking for a redraw.

It’s a funny word ‘insecure’. It’s funny that even with all the nightmares we’ve been through. The experiences we’ve accrued. The places we’ve had to get to, Your deepest fears will always be about you.
You and your expectations you feel you must attain.
You and your image you present to those who judge.
You and your aptitude for keeping those you love happy.

Even now. I’m only saying this because I’m scared I’m far too immature for life I lead,
and I know anyone else in my position would want to hear these words.


Mistakes are as natural as breathing.
With both it is imperative that at some point you must let go. You must exhale and exorcize what is unnecessary from your body. You must learn to forgive yourself.

2. Unsurity is the siamese twin of certainty.
Before you come to a decision you must be comfortable in the knowledge you will never know what the future holds  but if you ever want to move forward, it requires that all important first step... so put your best foot forward.

and 3. Bolster yourself. Be proud in the understanding that your 2 feet hold a place in this world that no else can fill. That everyday you live is your opportunity to bend the universes will. That live may not be a continuous thrill but boy is it scary!
You have a lifetime of wishes to fulfill.
So settle down. Life is a series of small discoveries. No one expects you to find everything.
All we ask is that you don’t ever stop looking.

Sometimes it feels like I’m looking a stranger or maybe even a ghost in my mirror. Dark eyes with no sparkle stare back at me and part of me wonders when I started looking like a corpse. Meals get skipped more often than I actually eat and my body starts feeling like it’s made of glass that people keep breaking while she tries her hardest to put me back together. And when I get sick, because it always happens, it’s like my bones rattle as I shiver and each cough feels like my throat is being torn apart from the inside out and after each fit I try to be surprised that there’s no blood. When I’m asked about medical history I have to tell them I don’t know because I really don’t. I’m so stupidly afraid of getting some preventable but hereditary disease because I never knew it was in my genes. I find myself turning the same words over and over in my head while I lay in bed every night: they didn’t want you and they didn’t love you and it’s your fault. It’s gotten to the point where I believe the lies my anxiety-ridden subconscious tells me. The logical part of me knows the lies aren’t true but how do you console yourself in those lonely hours when you’re alone and no one can hear you cry yourself to sleep? Six nights a week it’s all fitful sleep and when I wake up I’m still so exhausted it takes everything I have just to haul myself out of bed to take the pill that makes it so I can just barely scrape by during school and even then it’s not good enough so I find myself failing and then I realize I just don’t care anymore. There is no in between for me, I can’t just kinda care it’s all or nothing and ninety nine percent of the time it’s nothing so I lose myself in my video games and ignore the screaming in the back of my skull that tells me to get up and do something productive with my life but I just can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to try it’s that I physically cannot make myself care enough to do anything and it’s almost like I can ******* feel my muscles begin to atrophy.

I understand you don't want me to go That's fine.
But I can't watch you dig through your car
For money for tonight's numbing.
You can't call me names
And still call me your daughter
And just because you offer me a cold one
Doesn't mean I'm playing your game.
I tried to give you a chance to prove
That your words were worth an ounce of truth
You may have been sober for months
But it's been two weeks of slurred speech
And several days of you
Not leaving that door
For anything more than a bottle.
Why the **** would I want to stay?
You keep saying that
No one here will hurt me
Too late dad, you've made your mark
In the form of six packs and cruel words.
I was better off without you for 10 years.
You have never been daddy.

I wander aimlessly,
And people say to me,
"You're gorgeous, and
Pretty, and perfectly
Happy."
But is that because of you?
You weren't there for me,
My Grrandmother raised me,
My mother was M.I.A.
And I would cry.
I understand that
you have problems,
That he hit you, and
Cussed you out, and
Drug you down.
But you kept promising me,
Kissing and hugging and
Crying to me.
But I was little,
Too young to comprehend,
Too Juvenile and naïve
To really understand.
And then it got worse.
I grew up and
Began to see.
No longer blind
I saw
What you had come to be.
My pain began.
You were never
There for me.
My Daddy died
And while I cried
You did drugs with
Men so fowl and snide
and painfully
crude.
I tried to hide
My tears
My cries
My pain.
I died;
A little inside,
Each time you lied.
You promised me you wouldn't
Leave me,
You'd choose me,
But No.
You chose the men,
Time and time again,
Over your kids.
I barely know
My siblings because
Of what you did.
I'm all grown up;
An adult of forty
At the age of fifteen.
Because I helped
Raise the only
Brother you kept
While you acted like
It was you in your teens.
And then February.
It was February,
You almost died
And you don't seem to notice.
You lost your children.
Do you even care?
Life seems good for you,
But those burdens I carry
Were meant for you
To have to shoulder.
Where am I in your
Mind's picture of life?
Me and my brothers
And my sister too?
Oh, Right,
Were right next
To the bible
Laying on your shelf,
Right next to the rest of your dignity.
And P.S.
While I'm at it,
Can you tell me you
Love me,
Just this once,
Like Maybe,
You might really mean
It this time?

I use to stand in the middle of the road, just so she'd see how if feels.. to think that you could lose someone at any moment.

Exacting this kind of revenge is impossible if your target is someone you love so instead… you must tug on their heart strings.
This… is for you...
This is for the chosen few that never knew they had a blurred view. This for all those who withdrew themselves from the belief that they were cared about. This is for all those who dared to doubt. Paint us as the visually impaired scouts send out to find something valuable in you. This… is for everyone were still clinging to, and everyone else who fell through.

Machines break sometimes. When something is used frequently it has the potential to encounter hiccups in its regular cycle... and I am yet to find a machine more complex than the human body. And as forgiving and loving individuals we understand that these things take time. But not everyone sees those stood by their side. When someone loses their heart or their mind you'll often find… they lose their eyes. This is for the human beings who live like mechanics. Fashion spare for those with broken hearts. Sewing handles on their own bodies when others feel they have nothing to hold on to. This is for anyone finding reasons for someone else to smile.

We are so protective of those we love because we understand how much of them make up ourselves. This is for the mothers who ask ‘Are you sure?’ after they receive an answer to the question ‘Are you okay?’ This is for the parents of dead youths who slipped away from us far too prematurely. This is for anyone who hears a buried name and sings the phrase ‘if only!’. Because if only we had known, if only we could have done something, if only you had spoken to us, if only you were still here… This is for Anthony... whose gravestone flower bed is still kept watered by the tears of my brother and my sister. This is for all those who suffered in silence, the victims of violence the play things of tyrants whose sadness grew like a virus. Their minds start riots.

For those who feel alone... I do not mean sound angry. But it’s not your decision to choose to what extend we will love you. We love you! Love you like it hurts! and it does hurt because finer points of suicide are… when you hang yourself, you do it by the heartstrings of other people! Whatever toxic substance you choose to line your throat with will leave an unending hiccup in the throats of those who spoke your name with some semblance of joy. However many painkillers you take in under 60 seconds will never be enough to alleviate the affliction you leave behind. This is for we. We the engineers of empathy, we the deciphers of understanding, we the overflowing, we… who just want to help.
It’s complicated. I know we might never understand. But we all have better things to do'' than argue about how it would feel without each other.
So if you know someone… who feels alone…. tell them... “shhhhhhhh”
Then….. hold them.

ink bleeds dry in my veins
the words coiled around my tongue lie still for a moment
the quiet hush of happiness settles in my lungs
and i find myself aching to reach inside of my chest and break my heart again until it remembers what it is to bleed.
there is no beautiful metaphor for the way joy feels coiled beneath your ribs
there is no sonnets written about the steady rhythm of life working itself out again.
i dont beg for his lips on mine anymore
i beg for his fingers digging into my neck
and his cigarette smoke to linger in my hair and stain me for months after.
im no longer yearning to be complete
but im ripping out my stitches and cracking healed bones again
scrambling to find whatever i lost inside of myself.
Saturday night i lay broken on the bathroom tiles
my heart barely fluttering
my eyes too heavy to hold open.
words spilled from my wrists onto pages and i cried out everything i ever felt for you.
sunday morning i woke up in bed again
and i havent felt that way since
blank pages blank mind blank heart
who knew happiness would make me feel so empty