Usually, waking up is
Like trying to crawl through
Razor wire while every
Bone in your body is screaming
At you to take a breather,
Because no matter what you do,
You will not be on time,
Ready to survive another day-
In five minutes.

I'm not sure if you understand
What it is like to have every
Single neuron in your brain
Speaking so loud you would think
You were at a show standing
In front of the speakers.

Living with depression and anxiety
Is difficult, my lack of motivation
Is only ******* by my fear
Of letting you down.
I am sorry that I can't
Show up smiling
Every morning.

I'm tired.

Everyone writing
Now who is there left to read
No one understands

I sat with my hands
On this awkward holly leaf
Forcing its yellow-green spikes to pierce flesh

Passing my fingers
Over the points so pretend real
Peeling off each limb one by one to make it ordinary

Reading the tombstones
All lined up in morgue fashion
Imagining those souls who were one day transformed

Into stone-carved letters
Names and dates and flowers
Slowly lessening visits from moved-on people

Who try not to think
Of their own temporary selves
As ticking timebombs testing every limit until one day

I walk diagonal
Accross the road to the redness
That catches my eye filling my head with metaphors

Those church wine petals
Scent as sweet as the Eucharist
Having been inside for so long I am drunk on the sight

I am born again
Brushing against plants for contact
Suddenly noticing the life energy contained within them

You can take all the right turns
You'll end up where you started

10 degrees west, swiftly falling south
Things go downhill

You become the things you longed to be
Create the truths you're dying to find

Always looking forward
Leaving more of yourself behind

Go ahead and write all the right things
And remain a non-entity to me

The darkness like a thick mist surrounds us
Until we choose to forget

We wallow in involuntary  thoughts
Of the things we choose to regret

The bets we decide to take
Say that's how it's going to be, and go

I was blind but now I know
I will never see

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.