If every day I wake up is filled with new inspiration,
Shouldn't that be enough?
It seems this lack of motivation has left me feeling tired and numb
I think I'm worthless and dumb
Used to run with my imagination
Now I'm leashed and chained to a stump
This constant pacing in a circle has created a rut
That's been dug by my own hand
While I'm trying to understand
How the Sandman could forget about
Adding a stop at my house
On his midnight route.
But that ***** would probably just cram the entire **** bag
Of Sleeping Powder down my throat,
Sit comfortably at the foot of my bed
And laugh as I choke
On all the sleep he's been selfishly keeping for weeks
And I can't decide if he's doing me a favor every night
Or if his revenge is keeping me up
Until the first sign of light
While I lie awake exhausted and hating my life.
See, the Sandman is full of animosity and anger and spite.
He skips over my house while I plead
Just a pinch of sand in my eyes,
One night of half decent sleep,
I can feel myself going insane
And the Sandman's to blame.
That grudge holding monster will only have it one of two ways:
Either I fall asleep for good or he'll keep me awake.
So I choose the latter, I won't allow myself to fall apart
And I know that we're so much more than just the sum of our parts
But my mother keeps telling me I've got a heart so huge
It'll swallow me entirely
And if I can't put the pieces together from the start
I'll never see the big picture in its entirety.
I'm a black or white thinker,
Wandering through the gray areas tiredly
I don't understand the in between
And I'm still starving for sleep
Eyelids heavy, I've been dying to dream.
I need a plan.
I'll climb to my roof, I'm making a stand
With revenge in my gut and a rifle in my hands,
Wide eyed
The only thing on my mind
Is the relief I'll finally feel when I shoot that Sandman out of the sky.

You and I were introduced as the wheels left the ground
And we angled towards the heavens.
Hundreds of miles per hour,
South bound, towards the Florida Keys
And you mentioned the  unusual serenity
That lies at forty thousand feet.
I memorized a trusting face while turbulence
Interrupted our peaceful flight
And you found your first opportunity
As you played in on my fear of heights.
You ended up following me, something I never expected
And like an unwelcome pest,
Like a moth or a spider,
You took up residency in the cold dark corners I neglected.
You so intricately spun your web of lies outside my home
And when you introduced your bait,
You let it dangle above my doorframe,
And I didn't hesitate.
I sunk my teeth into your tragedy and you wove me in
Leaving me tangled in the silk you manufactured,
All along that's how I let you win.
I let you tear open my stitched up wounds
And peel back my flesh and expose my interior
I let you examine how my brain functions during REM sleep
I let you study my neurological system,
And I gave you a private screening of my dreams.
While I was busy over analyzing your past
You were rerouting my neurons
And creating malfunctions within the synapse.
You rewired my entire nervous system
While I let you research the functions of my cells.
You're nothing more than the insects and the pests
With too many legs that crawl along my cellar walls.
Like a daddy long leg spider, I never saw you as a threat
Until you tangled me in false intentions
And left me for dead.
I learned the daddy long leg spider
Has a poisonous venom, lethal if injected
But it was cursed with a mouth and teeth too small
To leave any human the slightest bit affected.
But I was the one who allowed you
To shrink me down and make us the same
So your tiny teeth could penetrate my skin
And leave venom in my veins.
And it was only in that moment, finally standing eye to eye
That I noticed the lack of conscience in your irises
For the first time in my life.

I feel like I should be more bothered
By the current amount of debt I’m in
And my desperate need for more income.
But my anxiety can only be blamed
On another loss faced
And what you’ve all left behind.
It was too heavy, I get it,
And I know that I’m small,
But you’d be amazed at the weight I can carry.
Instead of asking for a favor,
You doubled the weight and you threw it at us.
You didn’t care how heavy it felt
To anyone but yourself.
Wherever you are, don’t ******* me,
There’s no heaven and there’s no hell
But wherever you ended up,
I hope you retained your conscience
And I hope you’re shown the mess you made.
I don’t know if ghosts sleep or not,
But you better find a new late night hobby.
You’re taking up the room in my skull
That should be rented out to something else
Like the student loans I owe,
The fact that I drive a beater,
The fact that I still live at home.
If I could choose, I’d decide to rid myself
Of any anxiety to cross my mind
But my brain’s not wired like that.
You’ve made it impossible to focus
On the present.
I should be awake at night worrying
About my future
Not our past, or where you’re at
Or why you’d just up and leave.
Forget it, I'll never say that I hate you,
Because then I'd have to also admit
That you don’t mean a thing to me
And we both know I’d be lying through my teeth.

Call it quits if you want,
Call it whatever you want but it's left me feeling empty.
Say it's better with you gone,
But even as you say it, know that I'll always be angry.
Not that you left,
Or that you thought you had nothing left to lose,
But for taking away my say,
And for putting our friendship in that noose.
Call it useless as can be,
Say we're what's important but still keep us safe away
Say you'll always tell me,
Yet never let loose the demons you keep at bay
Not the jokes about never reaching thirty,
But how you believe everything about you
Is toxic and *****.
What happened to that third story apartment
Where we watched B movies
And smelled like stale cigarettes?
Northeast Ohio winters are always reminiscent
Of that two bedroom home.
And this holiday when my family asks
"What have you been doing?"
I'll tell them I write ****** poetry and think about you
And how the seasons so routinely changed,
And no one noticed you had too.
You always used to tell me,
"We have to play the hands we're dealt."
It's not like you to throw the cards down
So tell me stranger,
When did you decide you didn't feel like yourself?
You took a chance at finding heaven
And you left behind this hell
Of bone chilling anxiety,
And endless nights without sleep
Spent counting every chance I missed to save you
Because I ran out of sheep.
I've racked up nights spent with stomach knots
Wondering if your spirit found a home
And did you ever once consider
You might still end up alone?
Unanswered questions create insomniacs,
I haven't been the same since they were introduced
I'll find a cover story for the circles under my eyes,
I haven't slept well since I got the news,
But I just cant bring myself to hate
The problem at its root.
So mark it down as another statistic
Some of my dreams feel so realistic
You cross your legs, your laugh alone
Is enough to turn my heart into stone
When it sounds, resounds, vibrates my ears
I start to remember all my darkest fears
But they're fully realized in the empty space
You left behind, and I had to face
The fact I'll never see you again, not at least
If there's no heaven. ******* it, rest in peace.

I can only identify Autumn as entirely bittersweet
I cringe at the sting of it as I breathe it through my teeth.
Isn’t it ironic how it’s viewed as beautiful in most eyes?
The season when everything transforms and withers away and dies.
The leaves changing colors, the forests in flames
And the vague sense of comfort in the shortening of days.
It’s underneath the ocean of stars I overanalyze my place
And I realize I’m just one out of the entire human race.
There’s something about Autumn, when everything dies,
That nags at me, insisting that I acknowlege I’m alive
And that no one can take that life away from me but me
I am not like the forests and the leaves and the trees
And I do not need to engulf myself in the colors of the flames
And I will not wither into nothing in Mother Nature’s name.
It is not neccesary for me to die once a year
Or hibernate all winter just to dismiss all my fears.
So why is it when I breathe Autumn into my bones
I become hyper aware that I’ve constructed people into homes
That have long sense been forclosed on, windows boarded up
And I’m the last to understand that the doors are locked and shut.
"That habit causes chronic homesickness," the doctor explains,
"I have no cure to give you, I just have something for the pain."
It’s in a self-medicated stupor I re-evaluate and say,
"I’m the only one to blame for why I ended up this way."
And in my cloudy mind state I think of what I’m fighting for
It’s been years of battles, mostly won, but I fear I’ll lose the war,
For overnight Winter will creep up to my window and make its way inside
And the tired worn out troops I have left will be taken by surprise.
My mental health will grow sleepy but I’ll push it to stay awake
And I’ll cling to that last dying ounce of comfort Autumn gave.

It's midnight in September and above me all I can see
Is every word I could never come up with
Formed into constellations I could never articulate.
Perhaps if my mouth were as vast as the sky
I could spill out my mind without second guessing.
Even after choking down a spoonful of ipecac
I can't manage to regurgitate
The paragraphs I swallowed an hour ago.
I still haven't grasped the concept
Of translating from Emotion to English
The meaning always gets lost somewhere in between.
My stomach remains forever tied
In the bunny ear knot my brother taught me.
At five years old I didn't realize
The pain I was putting my shoelaces through.
And I still remember when my mother told me
"You've got a heart so big it'll swallow you whole"
It's taken me all of my nineteen years
To fully understand what she meant.

I’ve spent an eternity comparing me
With someone I’ve never met;
I’m not even finished yet
Anchored by this absolute uncertainty
I’ll let the person I will never be
Define me.
And I will sink to the ocean floor
There’s not much else I’m looking for
I will drown in my own misconception
That I won’t amount
To anything.
I will fill my lungs with self doubt
Before I finally plunge down
Tired from treading waters of malcontentment
And when I close my eyes one final time
Losing my breath but finding my mind
I’m finally sure of something
For the first time in my life.