My tongue moves
as metaphors
washing up against sandy shores
to gently break and build
the beach
to how it stood
just years before.

Will this be my last climb?
Will I make it past the last hurdle?

Walking up to the last place that felt like home,
I began to shake with trepidation.
The past is my hurdle to negotiate
As I now face old memories.

Seeing the path ahead I was, somewhat happy,
Yet, something stopped me from the enjoyment
Which once fed my childhood memories,
But now leads to my anxiety.

How can I make it to the end?
How can I climb the last hurdle?

I am ready to make my final trip to
The place where it first started.
To the home that brought me this unease
To the place where the hurdles began.

The descent before me was long, but doable.
The path was old but still evoked memories.
I recall falls that caused me pain
And hurdles I could not overcome, then.

Will I make it to the end?
Will I survive the obstacles?

The boulders in my way want me to stop.
They thwart me with their solid form,
Yelling at me in their stone-cold voices -
‘You can’t make it past us. You’re too weak.’

The trees block my path with their long arms,
Using their branches to scratch at me.
Their roots try to trip me,
While prickly leaves attack me.

Who can understand what I’ve been through?
Who can help me overcome my hurdles?

The storm is one of the millions of challenges I’ve had to face.
Its rain couldn’t care less if it is drowning me.
The wind is blowing hard, hurtful whispers,
While the thunder screams loud abuse at me.

This storm is one from the past.
I fall through it towards the pain.
Nothing is giving me joy.
And I’m so tired I don’t care anymore.

Will I get through this storm?
Will I find my way once more?

No! The morning fog is hard to penetrate
And my path is covered in confusion.
It’s another hurdle to overcome.
I’m lost again but still I need hope.

My mind is making me question my choices.
Thoughts are racing and tearing me apart.
The path is now rocky and uneven,
But I keep going hoping it will become easier.

Then the path splits before me.
Which way? That way? What way?

A physical indication tells me where to go,
The last hurdle is about to be leapt over.
I see it. I see my childhood home,
and all the memories begin to rise.

Memories evoked
Hurt fully provoked.

Hurdles old and new
All hard to get through.

Oppressive memories attack
And I begin to crack.

They’re blocking my path.
And showing me their wrath.

Their punches cause pain,
And cuts appear again.

Dark clouds of memories
Surrounding like vultures.

Tears falling firm
Making me squirm.

Confusion lying
As lost thoughts start prying.

As bad choices rise,
All making me unwise.

Why did I try climbing the hurdles?
Why did I come back to face this hurt?

I realise now that I should have left the past in the past.
It is too much.

Death and sorrow
For me there is no tomorrow.

Bullying, Depression and suicide.
They are all just too real.

Anything, I have written at all.
May never be seen
Will never, be shown.

My words, will go un-spoken,
from generations that are,
unknown.

But my existence, will be, recorded,
through paintings, on
cave walls.

Curled up into a ball in the corner of the room,
Surrounded with nothing but bleak walls and the echoes of my breathe,
Staring out from behind the bars as I ignore the flickering light,
Hoping that a moment would come I could finally taste the freedom.

I couldn't remember how I got in this prison,
But the counts of my failed escapes are scarred on my body,
Every whisper is my shout, every tears are my untold wishes,
And every tick of the clock madness is feasting my mind.

Every move I make synchronizes with the sound of my chain,
Reminding me that my steps are counted as the walls around me,
Reaching out the bars, struggling to pass through them,
Yet all my endevours always go in vain.

The ghost of courage remains unseen and unheard,
Eyes on the laughing bars while I'm slowly shrinking,
As every strength fades into oblivion, this place turns into something worse,
For without a single sanity ever survived in a solitary confinement.

I am words left unspoken, unwillingly trapped in this place,
I am ashamed of how will I sound like to their ears,
Will I be accepted? Will I be rejected?
Will I be a curse or a blessing to the world?

I always try to blame others but it's me who trapped myself within these walls,
With no possible escapes I am willing to discover,
Loneliness is hunting me, holding the bow and arrow of despair,
But why? I'm just a voice longing to be heard.

i was at work this evening
sweeping back and forth
back and forth
and back and forth
...12 times
mind plagued with compulsions,
ocd, anxieties
i hear the whispers
muttered by those who think
that u were the one
who did this to me
wow, u really drove me mad,
drove me crazy!

but back to the scene at hand
i hear the opening notes
of that band
i know and that song
that became so comfortable and
oh so familiar
...zz top, sharp dressed man

i’m taken into a trance
this image of you smiling on this couch
oh so deceiving,
yet so inviting
i give in and sneak a glance
of you
playing your own one man air band
drums and guitar
with you’re long hair flying everywhere
like a crown around your head
...before those toxins turned your hair
as thin and frail as you

there’s a tug at my heart
and it hurts a little
what’s this feeling?
i haven’t felt this towards you in a while
but it comes by sometimes
hand in hand with that deceiving smile
for a fleeting moment
...i miss u?
before i remember
what lay behind
that venomous grin

then i’m angry
for once not at you
but at myself
i hate you!
i hate you
i’m supposed to hate you
right?

i didn’t know what to feel
before i felt that familiar sensation
a heavy weight in my chest as
my heart rate speeds up
and i have to pull myself back
into reality
quick! before i lose control
thoughts spiraling around me
focus on something else
anything else!
anxieties, ocd, compulsions
maybe it’ll ease the weight on my chest
i grip the broom in my small, sweating, trembling hands
and begin to sweep
back and forth
back and forth
and back and forth
...24 times this time
1/22/2019

I see you-
With your wide eyes,
And your hands stretched out,
Ready to catch the world
At the tip of your fingers.

You're searching
For a reason to escape-
To hop on the next ship
To God knows where,
And make metaphors
Out of all the wrong places.

I see you with your casual grin
And your nose scrunched up like this.
You're sniffing out danger-
following all the red flags,
And searching for a story-
One about the line between
Staying alive and living.
It looks a lot like
A crime scene
And your hands are painted bright red.

I see you with your
Too thick sweater
And hiking shoes.
You're preparing for the worst,
Whether the weather
Or the rickety trail ahead.

All you want to do
Is run until your feet
Leave the ground.
Your soles are a little worn in,
And your hair
Ruffed up from the hood.
You're afraid to let the raindrops in
Thinking you might catch a cold,
Or an excuse to latch
Your feet onto the bedroom floor.

Not you.
You were made for moving.

I see you
Looking at me-
Every instinct telling you
To walk away.

Just stop.

Hold on a little while, darling.

There's a cup of coffee
Freshly brewed
On the table downstairs.
Set down the baggage
And step inside.
The door's wide open,
And the cold is creeping in,
But right now,
You can keep warm
By the fireplace.

I may only have two hands
To hold all your troubles,
But I will gladly share the load.
All you need to do
Is stay.

And in the prohibition the US government poisoned 10,000 of it's own citizens. Slipping cyanide into beer bottles and arsenic into wine caskets lying on bedside tables. And people still kept going back, despite swollen tongues and heaving lungs. 10,000 people lying in unmarked graves, and people kept drinking their lives away.

And I keep going back, drinking from the same poisoned chalice in the hopes it will **** me quicker. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And I don't know if I've ever been so picture perfect, so dictionary definition.

I go back over and over again.

They say you can get addicted to a certain kind of pain.

Pain that licks up your spine and dances in your lower belly.

Pain that forms a crown of thorns, a daisy chain, scrunching your stomach until you can't breathe.

Oh how can something so beautiful, so lying on the grass outside of school under blue skies and wispy clouds, be so painful?

You ******, you ruined daisy chains for me.

And yet I keep going back.

They say, you can get addicted to a certain kind of pain.

Pain, that is screamed, pain that is hollered, pain that is whispered.

Pain, that makes you want to put your entire hand through the window pane, glass be dammed.

And people say pick your poison, and I wonder if it came from the 10,000 who kept going back.

I wonder if they know that I picked mine a long time ago.

You see,

When your world, is black and white, because someone forgot to turn on the light. When all you feel is numb and exhaustion, pain is nice. Pain is a comfort, a red warm blanket that you huddle beneath as you pretend that the storm raging out side is not somehow your fault. But why wouldn't it be, after all everything is your fault.

Pain reminds you that you can feel.

So yeah, you keep going back.

If the only way to remind yourself that you are not a robot, a well-oiled machine is to go back to mustard yellow walls and the pungent smell of sorrow.

Than let's just say you have a knack for picking out the sharpest knife to fall on.

They say you can get addicted to a certain kind of pain.

You say to me never to inhale **** or ecstasy or LSD, you tell me they are poisons people wilfully put in there bodies between gulps of the bottle clenched tight in your fist.

I wonder if you know that sometimes I imagine my neck, between stubby fingers and bursting veins.

I wonder if you know that I picked my poison a long time ago.

Kiss of life?
More like lips I've never touched because I had about as much Appeal as a rotten banana during my formative years
No tears now cause that was ages ago and as time goes on unstoppable like an Amtrak train
I'll maintain something close to esteem of myself while not holding too much for anyone else
What else can I write complexly laid rhymes about besides lack of esteem and crippling self doubt like Nathan Peterman after 2 pick 6's during another buffalo Bill's rout.
Kiss of life?

What's a kiss even like?