I lived my half dictionary life before I could
comprehend compulsory compromises.
Collectors arise, disguises and devices beeping,
chastising my blindness.

Gather geography from Afghanistan and Myanmar
graciously growing gold gilded gift horses,
gleefully gloating about floating far away.
My hoof beats above concrete match my heart’s defeat
across borders and mountains
embroidering cardboard cut-outs
calling deserts, decorating front covers.
Exhaling handcrafted letters for my missing half,
half demanding highest caliber commanders and half commanding completion.

Jade jays joyfully lay arrays of bouquets
fragile flowers decay faraway
in jawbones and jail cells.
Begging farewells in a hotel’s lobby
began my hobby,
early morning coffee and carbon copies
concurringly cocky around his dead body.
Gang ciphers for cartels are
Christmas bells hissing at collars,
half dollars embellishing bar crawlers
godfathers hollering at car haulers.

Atrocities across cities attack,
attachable atrophies audibly ambush arthritic anthologies.
Anomalies begin apologies between apostrophes,
advancing autonomy arousing ancient animosities.
All eluding Antarctica,
giant frozen crests, multi-coloured ice
hidden in my illustrations
anxious for my distant half.

Friday cassettes and cigarettes
deliberately making bets following “M”.
Breaking bindings and finding “beta” in alphabet,
may feasibly end in debt.

the voices of the sea
the whisper of the symphony
are calling out your name
and you just turn your head in shame

your hopeless hands are tied
and everything you love has died
you've thrown away your pride
and giving up now, means you never tried

you're still pulling out the arrows
of your former atrophies and perils
fulfilling this discordance
with your future purpose and importance
pulling out the arrows.
pulling out the arrows.
pulling out the arrows.

Reaching for the Surface
but you're on the ocean floor.
Praying for a Purpose,
hoping for an open door.
Scratching at the Surface,
but it's harder than it was before.
But what's the Purpose?
what are you praying for?

and you say
God, please don't let me die.
but you're
Reaching for an Empty Sky.

No one else is there
to hold you're hand and say they care
No one else will come
so give it up, you're on your own.

the forces of the sea
have trapped you in this tragedy
your belief in all their lies
has done no good, open your eyes

see the world as it is
your existence within this nothingness
as worthless as the sea
another useless commodity

you're still bracing for the arrows
of your distant atrophies and perils
fulfilling this whole prophecy
by decoding all their sophistry
bracing for the arrows
bracing for the arrows
bracing for the arrows

Reaching for the Surface
but you're on the ocean floor.
Praying for a Purpose,
hoping for an open door.
Scratching at the Surface,
but it's harder than it was before.
But what's the Purpose?
what are you praying for?

and you say
God, please don't let me die.
but you're
Reaching for an Empty Sky.

the sum of my parts
is not greater than i am as a whole, no,
i am not simply a collection of scars
and ******-up storylines, oh,
i
am more than
the gristle and bone
the fibers interwoven through my arms
my lily-white striped clavicle
this corpse is my throne

i am not simply a ******
i am a ****** with a history
i am mauve valleys' majesty,
i am more than just my regrets
and my atrophies
and if it's not commendable, well, at least it's a story.

i,
simply because of my condition,
have lived through more than you could imagine
i have burned down in the depths with fire-skinned demons-
with messes deeper than your credit-card sins-
and i
have managed to get through it

these are my battle scars
i've fought ******* wars
and yet you shun me as if i'm not a hero
as if i'm not honorable for just making it
but i know you simply don't possess the tenacity
or the strength of wit
to deal with my ****
there's no reason to reproach
the type of behavior which keeps me alive
when i've done greater things than you ever will

stop staring
like i'm some sort of reject
like i'm something to pity
like i'm something worth nothing
like i can't recover
this is just a bad habit
and though you may find it disgusting i know i
can find worse dirt staining your mind

even if i leave this life
without a square inch of me unscarred
i have never backstabbed
i have not given in
while your inky secrets stay unspoken,
mine are imprinted upon my skin
and darling, that's all there is

if i am hateful, i will show you so
i have nothing to hide
my mouth isn't lipsticked shut

so what
if i cut
i'm still a good person
and though my battle is visible
there is nothing more around the corner
i am here to stay
so are my scars
and that's all there is to say

A person will make a mistake
And mistakes will create the persona.
A person will wear this fake
Guise to musk the odour.

The scent of an imperfect idea.
A spontaneous thought so mighty
As to command action without fear,
Yet atrophies in the absence of sovereignty.

The fearless becomes the fearsome;
Tactful and timid we conceive a new face.
From the angst of letting go; we succumb
To duality, tightening the noose

Around our inner gumption.
All this for an artificial reputation.

My brain atrophies
And still I wait
As if someone will
Come carriage me off
The curvature of the planet
And bestow upon me gifts
I have no title to.

I walk between the aisles
Quietly admiring the mass of produce
Bared fruits eagerly poised
Waiting to drive home in the back seat
To be manipulated and munched
And hastily shoved into lunchboxes
While the coffee smugly percolates

But the engrossed bins prove
Too bountiful to harvest—
My appetite no longer yearns
For the gifts at its feet.
I swear not only did the price go up
But the loaf got smaller

That’s all dreams turn out to be
An amalgam of juxtapositions
So we stand on both sides of the river
While trying to swim against the current
And we know
It’s much too late to still be awake

bipolar dreams
you think you know about these things
how they go from right to left so seamlessly
how i go from up and down
and you’ll ever notice the change in the symphony
my instruments plays melancholy and the next a beautiful sunrise victory
some days i can laugh when nothing is in front of me
then another i'm crying until my heart atrophies

they put my on theses meds that made me my feel like my skin was crawling
my eyes appeared dry but i couldn’t stop from bawling
i feel like i have whiplash from a rollercoaster at six flags
its funny because when i'm manic my favorite color is yellow but when i'm sad its the most disgusting thing ive ever seen
i'm stuck living in these bipolar dreams
they say nothing is ever as it seems
but have you looked in the mirror and seen a black void where your brain should be
that your serotonin isn’t mixing with your dopamine

this is how your life is when your neurotransmitters don’t work properly

Once there was this little tree
Whose soul was completely free
Branches like willful souls
Fill them in tropical bowls

Whisked onto a sea of pristine canopies
The world itself slowly atrophies
Every word itself an apostrophe
Not even trying to avoid a catastrophe

Wondrous flights shape the continuum
Swallowing speech by disarticulating consonants
What will be the clouds departure
To see that the rain falls through the aperture

Come to see the creations so dexterous
With a resonant jewel in their necklace
Underplaying the quickness of the wind
Just with a dash of feeling chagrined

Love isn't a feeling.
It's like a muscle, getting stronger the more effort you put into it
Flowers on special occasions are just empty calories
Because the protein of love is being vulnerable
Cannot grow without this
When you left I tried so hard to stop loving you
But even bodybuilders know; you don't just lose muscle mass
It atrophies the more you neglect it
Got weaker the more you pushed me away
And though I've been building myself up
The stretch marks of us will always stay with me
To remind me of how mighty we once were
A cautionary tale they don't write songs about

Seal this poem in a sheath of black and red lurex.
Attend a Hamar bull-jumping and seek whipping. Preserve scars in honeydew and kykeon.
Walk your familiar for at least an hour. They’ll be tired and won’t try to eat you while you sleep.
Drink a brew warm and entheogenic. Leave space in the morning to feed visions that may have spent the night.
Listen to a soft but attritional piano to wear down the centers of ennui. Satie works best.
Assemble a snack of pomegranate and snow. Shun sleet! This atrophies the gyri and leads to flower amnesia.
Arrange one’s hair into a Fresco.
Follow the pentagram of Venus through a telescope of Zeiss lenses the colour of blood.
Recline on a sofa upholstered in chintz patterns of Low's pitcher-plant.
Settle all debts in this life and the next.
Light beeswax candles and let the moths in.
Unsheathe and read this poem aloud through a conch dipped in soy paint.
Note the hour of Saturn's return.
Burn this poem.

Some days I feel a thousand years weary. Trapped a forever-teen, frozen core and angst-riddled.

Outsider. Isolated. Incapable of translating the aches of my forearms, clawing at my sternum, or distress in my gut to make any sense beyond feral screams.

The fear, wildness, confusion clothed in apathy and tumbling forth as tears, grey palor, an appetite gone astray.

Distraction deflects for a time but the reality check becomes all the more bracing. I cannot fathom ever feeling different, even if yesterday was opposite in every way.

Evermore I am trapped, concrete resolution and in my final form - - how could I possibly be wrong when these days last a thousand years and memories, physical remembering, atrophies as my tears dry and hope evaporates with my breath, hot and laden with worry.