Do you see these nails that are bitten and torn to shreds.
Do you see my hair that is mangled and tangled, it hasn't been washed in days.
Do you see this acne on my face, I pick at it till it leaves scars.
Do you see the clothes I'm wearing, I bet I haven't changed them in weeks.
Do you see this room, I haven't cleaned it in months
Do you see my teeth, they bleed because I haven't brushed them in awhile.
Do you see I go on binges of eating or not eating, cause I feel guilty.
Do you see I go on benders if drinking or smoking.
Do you see my eyes and face are red from crying recently.
Do you see my texts I never send cause you wouldn't care.
Do you see when I say "I'm ok", "I'm fine" that those are just lies.
Do you see my smile and laugh, it's mostly fake.  
Do you see how I sleep all day and wake up and go right back to bed.
You don't see but you should.

This list could go on for infinitely.
It's signs like this that should be noticed.
Depression, anxiety or any mental illness is important for learning the signs.
Your story matters just as well as your voice.

we always want to re-invent ourselves when we feel
rejected, unwanted, left to the side.
we dye our hair or cut our hair or style our hair
so differently, so drastically, so unrecognizable.
we pack on make-up or strip our make-up
or pierce our faces, belly buttons, get tattoos, choose a permanent mark
to remind us of something solid;
something that represents
self-sufficiency or this too shall pass,
because we know we are gonna feel
rejected, unwanted, left to the side again
(and again, and again).
we buy new clothes, give away old ones to our friends,
new shoes, new bags, new look.
and we’re always picking up new vices, new habits, new addictions.
cigarettes, alcohol, razors,
all the late night reckless binges on wine, narcotics, food, cutting ourselves.
sometimes we pick up healthy ones too,
like running, swimming, dancing, yoga, meditating, resetting sleep patterns, taking vitamins, treating ourselves to the spa, eating regularly, getting out of the house to see friends.
we either avoid intimacy at all costs because we can’t fathom
the concept of trust anymore
or we dive into it with practically anyone, just to feel something real
because we are so ******* lonely,
but we never really feel anything real at all.
we make resolutions, goals, plans for our next relationships
so that they won’t follow the same patterns as our last crumbling ones
(they usually still do).
some of us change what we like, what we want, what we need
to impress people so that they
fall in love with us and will never leave us.
we begin disregarding ourselves for another person,
or disregarding everyone else for ourselves,
both because we don’t want to get hurt again.

and then somewhere, somehow after weeks, months, maybe even years of
the full fledged wavering of
destruction meeting recovering meeting ignorance meeting shyness meeting loneliness meeting accepting meeting fear,
we start to see the intricacies of the pattern much clearer -
we make all of these sudden changes because
we just want to feel better,
we just want to be better;
that’s all.
it’s taking charge, which is healthy.
it’s also making fact and point that we need to change to deserve love,
which is unhealthy.
all of it is like learning algebra for the first time,
some of us take a bit longer to understand it all; the formulas, the variables, the balance.
and once we understand the formula, the variables and the balance,
then we can welcome back the beautiful,
real version
of ourselves we’ve been trying to
cover up.

I envy those who can eat without conscience
I long for the infamous day when "things will get better"
I strive for an impossibility that I can feel within my reach
I expend the necessary energy to achieve a negative net
My mind rattles with number and limits
Counting the minutes 'til my next meal
Portion control and restrictions
Fighting the urges of binges
They say I'm just skin and bones
But what I see is all I'll know

i don't want to
have these
bipolar
conversations
where i threaten,
and apologize,
and demand,
and apologize
again

i don't mean to take you
through the ringer
to make you see violence
and mood swings

i don't mean to scare you
when i don't take
my medicine
i don't mean to scare you
when i cry
for hours
i don't mean to scare you
when i scream
and punch things

i never meant to
do those things
like keying your car

i never meant to
drop everything
and go across multiple state lines
with no plans
at all

i never meant to hurt myself
until my arms
were coated in scars

for all of the times
i self-medicated
poked myself with needles
and drank away my pain,
i'm sorry
i shouldn't have taken so many xanax
you're right
i was wrong
again

i never meant for you to be
my caretaker
i hate those words
caretaker
i should be able
to take care
of myself

i'm sorry i am not managing this illness
i am very
very
ill

i'm sorry for the times
i couldn't get out of bed
couldn't eat,
couldn't move
couldn't go to work

i'm sorry for the times
i made tons of post-it notes
filled journals with ideas
bought calendars
and organization tools

i'm sorry for getting your hopes up
i really thought i could do it this time

i'm sorry for my diagnosis
i'm sorry i didn't understand how serious this is

i didn't ask to be bipolar
i didn't ask to be born

i make cases for myself
in my head
but they're all filed as
crazy

i'm sorry i was delusional
paranoid
and afraid

i'm sorry for the drug binges

i'm sorry for melting
fading
burning
and still coming back
alive

these low lows
and high highs

you've been through the ringer

when you're only supposed to be
support, a resource of compassion...
you had to be a caretaker

you didn't ask for this
and neither did i

i sometimes questioned if it was harder on you
to live with someone with bipolar disorder
than it was for me
to live with bipolar disorder

you wanted to save me
but you realized
that i can only save myself

now i'm drowning
and my lifeline is gone

i'm trying to learn to swim
i just hope i do it
before i sink

i'm sorry for all of the ****** poetry
i made you read

i'm sorry

The beaten path is hardest to go alone but it makes one stronger. One never wants to admit to oneself that misery is the predecessor to change, ushering it like the pilot ushers the plane down upon the runway.  This is a new destination you'd never have known. That is why we go up and then down, otherwise you wouldn't care for clouds. They'd be like stop signs posted on every street of every town you can't escape from. Don't you think whales like to take a dip in our atmosphere with the same exhilaration we dive down into their ocean? Marine life has it's trials, it all seems so buoyant and peacful, but its another jungle down there. Beautiful until you live it and predators lurk every corner and algae field. Everyone eating the next guy, if its your residence, it is no vacation. Its not so simple just cuz they've not got rent to pay and corrupt politics. Babies on the way while no financial burden make most species crazy. Try being a single mother just trying to keep your kids well enough hidden just to go off to find good eats for them. They have very emotional lives out there, full of pain and suffering. If whales could get drunk, mermaids would charge and set up breweries. But the ocean would dilute any profits, and two tons of blubber each would call demand too high and so whales throw themselves into our world just to escape. They could gulp the air so low key, surfacing like submarines, instead they splash mountains with their ferve, the same way we get down, tossing cares across dance floors. And we wonder why when  they take a breath, they reach for the sky, they just want to be free, where nothing of their world can touch them. And we wonder why when it's not enough, they just give up, just like us. Massive escapists desensitizing to the joys in the depths of their waters. We wonder why we find them so sad layed up on our beaches, you see it in their despondent eye. They just want to die in that memory of exhiliration. One. Last. Time. But they're not happy. Cuz they were always chasing a high that fleetingly springed them from all worry. They lay knowing its the last time and they wonder what's gonna become of them when its all over. They just figure what lays on the otherside, or even nothing has got to be better. Maybe they're right,  or maybe all the off kilter chemicals got the better of them. Full moons got them all emotional just like us, gravity pulling all their painful memories to the surface, pulling them up out of the ocean all hopeless. Shoot maybe some of them dont even mean it, they were just so tired of the krill or baby seal murda life, or sharks poaching their babies and needed longer and longer til oneday they got too sleepy and the tide snuck down too low. Like when I pass out in the shower when it's hot enough, I swear I was about to get out..then, ****. Maybe that's why they're so ******* sad. They didn't mean for it to be over, they just got caught up in that feeling. I bet the old ones though go on purpose, just to spite the sharks that took their babies out they'd rather rot in the sea breeze they loved. Or maybe they're so depressed at the loss of their child they just want it to be over. They carry their babies in their bellies just like us, I bet they get depressed like us or the smarter dogs. Being a whale, or any sober creature can be very hard, but at least if you're not running from it, you might see through the storm for the beauty of its strength, releasing fear to just stand in awe of it. You can learn to cope with pain in at least better measure to sprinting in laps, without intention, you're just on the track, even if its as vast as the pacific, adriatic, atlantic, doesnt matter all the waters you cross, they all just ran back into themselves. See, the whale can only cope, no emotional escape route, so no matter what comes, whale is miles wiser. Their calls sound a little sad but so hauntingly beautiful. Do not beach yourself humans, in your little ways everyday. Stop feeding this disbelief in yourself. You were given this brain to choose to overcome this pain, to communicate in new ways. If you get tired of something just cuz you're used to it, you've done fell off your rock, you slipped to drown in your own riptide, to get pummeled to death. Or as my Papa woulda said, you're not playing with a full deck. You drown in intoxicant, whatever your vice, liquor, uppers, downers, shopping, food, flirting, ******* to numb life's beating. You're running from sobriety, from reality, from those people you don't love anymore cuz they can't jive with your illusions. You'll look for every reason why your psyches not the problem. If you'd not only accept but seek the need to heal,  you wouldn't need constant change of scenery just to feel something, to feel snippets of sanity, mini vacations from your daily miseries. New people, places and substances are just so exhilarating, cuz you can't handle yourself. If you could, each listed above would be blessings of oneness, not necessity. Running is only blocking your life from mattering as much as it should. You squander potential wandering in circles inside yourself. I smoked **** habitually since I was twelve, it didn't really hurt me right, just my dump trucked loads of brain cells? Wrong! Sobriety is the hardest but most rewarding excursion so far. I delight everyday in the opportunities I can receive just cuz I can think so clearly. I have an occasional shot or glass of wine with coworkers and think God I feel good. Then go home and think and plot, how can I attain that joy without consuming a dollar, compromising my body?  How can I be so at home in my skin that I don't need that just to feel like this?  I'll let you know if I ever figure it out. It's the big ******* mystery, isn't it. I THINK my point is,  we would never know what's so good to be cherished if we always had it made. They call it a beautiful struggle, and i really think they're onto God with that one. Wherever your feet lay, next time you look down at them in dismay, remember your pain is the best teacher you never had to pay.  It makes you great, it makes you an epic ******* trilogy of the past present and future.  You'll get through this day, I promise you. Whatever it proves to be to you, I pray oneday you hold the kingdom. Oneday you'll praise yourself for holding on. Oneday you'll stop running. You'll just wake up and feel at home inside yourself how the wise whale makes peace with the ocean. Tempering the binges to the surface. As above so below. You just have to find the thrill within the hand you're dealt and make yourself better for it.

eyes like little seaglobes
glass spinning in circles
so wide and unwavering;
a smile that stretched
real tight over
rugged english teeth.

you laughed at the darkest
of my most self loathing jokes
manic words of bulimia
and blow binges.
i fell in love with you second
you fell for me first.
did you think you could save me?

in many ways, you did.

I am free
Free as a bee
Free to be.
Whoever I say
Is me.

I can be by myself

I am strong.
Stronger than the gust of wind trying to knock me down.
Stronger than the comments of society that say I can't do it.
Stronger than the fear within us all try to rip out our hearts and tear through us.
Stronger than I ever needed to be,
Because I wanted to be.

I am content.
Content with my life and the way I'm living it, which is probably different than yours.
Content with my body so that when I walk by in the dress that I bought because it was on sale and cute as hell and you make comments, I smile and say it's great isn't it?
Content with the family I have, and the friends I surround myself with.
Content with the job I have, whether or not I have people who treat me like a dog because I'm a server.
I'm content with my late night Netflix binges, and my early morning runs.
I'm content with life.

I'm mentally independent.
Independent enough that I know at the end of the day I just need me.
Independent enough to know that I can be there for myself.
Independent enough that being there for others is a great joy and privilege.
Independent enough that I can go eat at a restaurant alone.
Independent enough that I can spend my own money on myself.

I don't NEED anyone.
If you're in my life, it's by choice.
I WANT you there.
So don't lose that privilege.
I've gotten rid of people who didn't appreciate me and who left me out to dry.
Don't think you're an exception.
You wanna be in my life?
Show me.

I.
The people look like flowers at last - sick thoughts of dead men strike the clock winding backwards and ignite to illuminate my approach,
The people look like,
Cigarette burns,
Bullet wounds,
Casualties of Rollins' war with himself,
Of Ellis' numb utopia,
Of the Bukowski cynic suicide,
Of the thoughtless progeny of deadbeat generations desperate to push back,
Every street corner is holy, baptized in the blood of those who died believing,
A thousand fists moved to release a thousand frustrations, and a celebrity endorsement for each overdose death,
Angel mine, abate your gutter wars and mob mentalities,
The tattoo ink has dried and the clubs are closed for the night,
Where are the revolutionaries to go now?

II.
The revenge of the skinhead minority,
The born again soul of a fallen brother,
The madman defiant in publicized rage, the faces of the enemy painted with crosshairs on TV screens,
And the damaged finally able to stand on their own,
Damaged and unrepentant,
Damaged and brilliant,
Damaged with criminal record eyes,
with paranoia brain, with X's tattooed into calloused knuckles,
with track marked arms,
Damaged, the unstoppable tide of the righteous youth - caricatured in the spray painted stencils of their testaments

III.
The spoiled children of an undefinable zeitgeist with nothing to lose,
In ecstasy binges these angels hallucinated manifest destiny through non prescription lenses,
Studying traffic patterns I remember how people are afraid to merge and everybody is looking for just the right amount of trouble,
A fire dies and another is born almost immediately,
Careless ramblings in careless county - a land I'm sure was promised to someone, somewhere, sometime
But after the gold rush nobody could cash out fast enough,
I can't cash out fast enough -
Every girl has got the guilty smile of a teenage runaway living out a Janis Joplin fantasy, and all the boys line up like addicts itching to cop,
The air is so heavy nobody can hold a thought - and when I speak, It's the accent, they say, they can always tell,

IV.
Taxi rides in laser show utopia,
Sicilian saint newly minted tells me about the ******* machine and it's ravenous posturing -
be present & be seen,
Fake it till you make it,
Cop killers singing confessions for beer on the street corner,
While the socialist manifests itself in mispronounced beverages and faux-marked Russian volumes,
avant-garde hyperrealism & ritualistic sacrifice,
There was something about *** and dying on the radio I couldn't be bothered to hear,
A drunken brawl over a bad bet made, disappointing street race, police sirens distant growing moreso,
In ****** bars where ladies always drink free, I rewatch the fall of a ***** old man from the penthouse to the street all over again,
If you haven't figured it out by now,
Don't try

V.
In dreams I walk the Pacific Coast Highway dead of night, barefooted soul alive and naked in the Western night like a Jim Morrison poem, the traveler that never arrives, watching the sunrise form halos over the Sierra Nevada, like a girl I know back East who talks a great deal about plans, the best of which never even have an aftertaste of freedom
There is the same sublime anthems playing on every radio and palm trees forming crosses for any messiah who is willing to claim them,
Last train out of Anaheim as the tessellating California skies swell and give, catch and release,
I see the roofs of tenements lit up by Disneyland,
ocean reflecting the glare from Heaven,
faces of the impoverished reflecting the glare from Heaven,
everybody getting sunburned from the glare from Heaven,
I watch the lovers depart for Santa Ana,
Elderly Asian tourists for Irvine,
Hipsters for San Juan,
and the rest of the destitute ******* for Oceanside en route to San Diego,
There but by the grace of God go the drunk kids spilling out of greyhound buses, sitting till dawn contemplating skylines reflected on the bay, finding romance in every moan of living Earth,
wide eyed at possibility of removing themselves from the equation and finding the answer,
Neil Young harmonicas drift listless above Spanish villas,
Everybody talking like something bad was gonna happen but I couldn't see much thru the windows past the tourist burly shouldered slumbering beast,
I think it was somewhere between Yuma and Dallas, with Mexico stretched out like an invitation to an anarchist rally where I was haunted first,
I'm haunted by El Campo Santo, paved over restless Indian graves in the shadow of the hanging tree,
By La Calavera Catrina blessing the sinners as they pass, hollow faced and sunken on the ***** Spanish streets of their ancestral Apartheid home,
I'm haunted by Calvary, 3000 spirits hanging around unsure of what comes next,
I'm haunted by the faces of the beggars I couldn't spare a cigarette for,
In dreams the Western night releases me and I leave California a shade lighter,
And the handful of stars that manage to burn through the haze seem to promise me:
"You may be gone, but your shadow lives on without you"

i'm sick to death of this stinking routine
perpetual day time TV,
petty bickering
afternoon pub binges
hopeless job hunting morons everywhere,
i return to my hometown
to the place i was made, molded
created
and it suffocates me like never before
i think of the many reasons i left
they circle my thoughts for a long while
and then i'm left with one
one that overrides the lot
it takes a while to spit it out
because it's corny, it's stupid, it's not how we work
but
it's love
and the lack of it
the love here is in the mundane
the easy,
the norm.
it's not in the heart
the love around here lies in
television sets
and pirate DVDs
reduced chicken and new coffee machines
gambles on abused horses
saturday afternoons in the local
cheap holidays to Benidorm
a day trip to lidl
a weekday evening watching the soaps
a phonecall to a family member you don't care about
hours playing candy crush
the love has lost on us humans
the love here, it was lost on me too
it missed me out
they missed me out
it has instead transferred in this
reality tv, selfie indulgent zeitgeist
it has left our silly bodies
and i'm still clinging on
trying to dissapear from that
new century bubble
trying to pick up pieces
of that porcelain mosaic
that old style bric a brac
so long ago forgotten
pressure is everywhere
notifications beep
this tiny block of perspex
waiting to be touched
waiting to be in communication
with someone at the other side of the city
the other side of the world
oh what a sad existence
when all we love is through the inanimate
and not ourselves
but hey thats the way of the world
and we have to accept it
or hate it
because we can't do both
we have to accept our fast paced tumultuous society
always moving through space and time
at times, difficult
painful
hard
sore
but consumerism, capitalism and cronyism
it all exists in this big society
this 'we're all in it together' society
and it cant be ignored.

today i woke up and played animal crossing. i ate ice cream and i binged. i microwaved salt and water, it didn't do anything and i felt stupid calling it a binge. small binges count, shallow cuts count too. it's about how you feel while stuffing your face with three cereal bars at the speed of light or storing sharp objects as a panic button.

I spent the day self-loathing and wishing I had a prettier disorder. one that doesn’t get you called a ***** when you just need someone to tell you what is real and what is not, one that doesn't make crawling out of your bed an impossible challenge. I remember how forgiving people were when everyone suspected I had adhd. I would hurt myself whenever i couldn't focus and they thought that was worth a hug, mania is not even worth a kind word. I remember my ex handing me ritalin, I remember not taking it because I was paranoid about being poisoned. there was “you can do it” written on the box with a smiley face. he had the same grin as he f!cked me and spat on me minutes away. I scratched his back as bad as I could so the other girl would notice and ask him if he was treating me right. he thought it was arousing. it was a cry for help.

now I sit on the edge of the bed I spent the past few days in. it got me missing my old bedroom, the cocoon i lived inside for eight years. i sit here alone and unlovable by the standards of controlling neurotypicals, i still can't focus for the life of me and I've never felt so close yet so far from my dreams.
if i'll have to take a step back from my ambitions once again, then so be it.
my only hope is that death feels like going grocery shopping and exiting the store knowing that you checked all of the boxes of your list, I hope my grandma felt safe as she passed.

if heaven is real I hope my hym3n grows back to convince myself I was never in danger. I hope I can be something other than life's mixed, blonde, green-eyed f!ck doll.

record breaking amnesia,
don't remember how to love you,

screaming,
  you aim for my face,

I strike for the gut,
where the misery
has nestled in disguise,
symptoms
come in binges,
don't think about
it stretching,
    lasting,
    coming back again,
anger,
pain,
hatred,
     you are blood,
      and I still can't pretend,

  record breaking amnesia,
  don't remember how to love you,

you provide strings
with your support,
meanings
checked at the door,
meaning,
you attach and consume
before we go forth,

  and, I
  just asked for help,
    not a third hand to feed me,
    not a list of nasty names,
    not a knife in the back,
    not another family member trying to bleed me,

honesty, clarity, hope:

record breaking amnesia,
don't remember how to love you

It got to the point where we just ******.
No snake oil arguments,
No cookie batter eating binges, no street corner improv,
No cold, crazy, middle of the day, psychopath silence,
No clink, clank sulking,
No cuckoldry tears over the kitchen sink.

It was as if we secretly decided,
To pound each other to death,
Or die trying.
Why is this so enjoyable.

I want you so bad I can feel my heart shudder and jump in my chest whenever we stand close together. I can still feel the burn on my lips and your tongue on my teeth, but I wonder if it’s already out of your mind, forgotten. People do that to me all the time. Forget me, leave me, and I drive them away. I’ve never figured out what I’ve done exactly, it must be different for each person. Maybe for you, it’s because you see I’m unstable. You see I’m a desperate little girl and you don’t have time for that.
Maybe it’s because you don’t want to save me and I’ll always need saving from sleepless nights and crying binges and the streaks of red I’ve put on my flesh.
Maybe it’s because I’m not good enough for you; the newness has worn off enough for you to realize that I’m not pretty enough, or old enough, or calm enough, or good enough. I’m never good enough. 

But I want you so bad that I would do anything to be good enough for you. I’d starve myself, I’d dye my hair and buy new clothes, I’d stop drinking tea, I’d stop reading thick books, I’d stop worrying and get rid of my wrinkles, I’d start sleeping and get rid of my sleep bruises, I’d change every single detail about myself…

If it meant you would want me too.

give us this day our daily
emotional breakdown
and forgive us our
blackout binges
as we forgive those who
starve themselves for perfection

and lead us not into
inherited obesity
deliver us from
the mental ward

FOR THERE IS SO
MUCH ******
BREAD IN THIS
HOUSE I CAN'T
TAKE IT ANYMORE

on mlk day i shut my eyes
and see scenes of
squishy white rolls and
pats of margarine

bread
leaden
deadened
feeling in my stomach

i can't eat any
more bread

but here it is
in baskets and
coolers in
toasters and
cupboards

my daily bread
made to sustain me
but turned into
the enemy

deliver me
from risen
yeast in
third degrees

a flour coated
tyranny
mind control
through sesame

swallowing
emotions
down
down
down

quietly settles
until spring
somewhere between
my hope and skin

you can see me
smile and stand
straight and tall
but what you can't see
is this shouldn't be
my body at all

*give us this day
our daily bread
and give us the strength
to chew meat instead

On the ocean of life I
Dropped  thought-pebbles
Resonances in winds
Rebounding in ripples
Actions born in countless waves
Triggering counter-actions!

Cataracts of wonders, suddenly
Vomiting volumes of gold
Pouring golden flames
Into life ocean purities
Bouncing up hills and valleys
In voyage of expectations
Creating realities in emeralds!

Tumbling air in blues
Skies beatific glory binges
In endless waves in azure skies
Echoing sounds of depth
Deeper than the deep
Launching into the Deep
Harvesting immortal gold
Reaping eternal glory!

As the **** of a 12-dollar cigar
touches the tip of the tongue,
the nervous system shoots a signal to the brain,
to process the sweet tinge
of delicious poison
that hits the back of the throat.
Slow suicide, baby,
really doesn't get any smoother.

Human bodies may desire health,
but it’s the mind that struggles
and tests mortality
as the heart races
for the best ****.

Hipsters and their vapor pipes,
their overpriced organic groceries,
coke binges and ****** addictions,
gym memberships and spinning classes,
they’re socialized to believe life
goes on forever.
They behave as if death
is a kind of curse.

We can run from sins,
wash our souls in the rain
of fresh lovers in new cities.
Sins, however, collect.
They grow in strength.
All we have in the end,
is the sweet tinge of satisfaction
that comes from killing oneself
in style.

To the princess trapped in the glass bottle.
Take a few steps back, I'm going to bust the glass and catch you before you fall.
If all else fails, at least we'll have this memory to stand  above all else.
I've walked passed you once before,
I never thought to stop.
Reason,
Your lips turned up right, eyes quick to roll.
The silent treatment of turned backs. Ill gotten tempers.
I never once thought through all the complications that the glass was actually dingy.
That you actually could have been tired of being passed up because of how high up you were, the trouble of broken glass.
Jagged grooves. Smooth binges, blind understatements.
I applogize on my behalf,
The labels aren't anywhere as good as they use to be. but I promise.
If you make that silly face one more time.
That one face that equates to "duh"
I'm throwing this rock right at your head.
If you were anymore transparent, I could swear you just rolled your eyes again

My life as of last has been and eye opening, head first dive of exploration interrupted by one, sometimes two day long binges of unpleasant sobriety.

Three long years after writing the first stanza,
The drugs still being explored
This has led me to a more beautiful understanding of myself and my few remaining friends
However it seems that I have taken a significant tumble down the socioeconomic ladder
At least my writing has gotten neater
No longer shaken by the withdrawal of a still desired drug

Alcohol has a way of calming and inspiring me
Bringing forth the thoughts I cannot make into sound
My few remaining friends cut down into a seemingly impossible smaller number
I now awake in the night with cold sweats that interrupt my slumber.

Dreams of panic and anxiety, Now clouded with past faces.
Personifications of things inside me
Faces made of thoughts and feelings, Taking over occupied spaces
Forcing out the beautiful and imaginative
Subconscious taking charge, So the conscious may live.

at curiosity’s urging
he found haven in haiku
a safe place where people listened
without judging
a thread to test truth’s waters
and tell his story
a 5-7-5 sequence as larynx
giving voice to childhood horrors

beaten regularly with a rubber garden hose
that left no outward evidence
bleeding so badly
he lost a kidney
too terrified to tell the doctor
with his father standing right there
it was a secret kept in the family
her verbal belittlement inculcated
“you should have never been born”
“we can’t afford you”
when he brought home all A’s
they said, “your classes were too easy”
his older brother mercilessly joined the chorus
and the torture
with parental approval

still, his eyes saw beauty
they saw river rocks as hippos
submerged in a backyard creek
they watched in awe at the flight of owls and hawks
swooping down on their prey
they described a “sapphire lake”
“so blue it was almost black”
“a jewel in the belly of the Sierras”
they captured trees and blades of grass
and fallen giants in petrified forests
they found a wife who loved him anyway
despite alcoholic binges and blackouts
his poems told of years of loneliness she erased
they spoke of her as sole reason for sobriety
he found peace in poetry
and used the internet to vent his wise *** ways
at times he even spoke of his family
as if they were decent

but every November remembered
his birth month dredging up the past
he wrote of whispering demons haunting his heart
and scars on the soul that never heal
I can’t imagine his pain
or sense of normalcy
they killed this kid when he was little
but it took him four decades to die
last Friday my friend took his own life

he called me a gentleman and a scholar
and formally thanked me
for encouraging his writing
he defended me in the face of trolls
even though we never met in person
I hope he knows how much we all cared
and I hope there’s a heaven
where he can rest in peace

Flippant polymaths exude the frippery of travail for lapsed inordinate surgical gains in temporal but temporary acclaim that owes its provenance to the gullarge accentuated by the guttural tempests of silent windfalls that wrestle with sharks and snarky cagamosis with pilfered fame without rulers for rules that own the profligacy of a cineaste game

We cannot surpass our talents with ease when the treecheese of inevitable distance between equipoise and insanity is a tantamount inanity of prolixity for the sake of freedom rather than servitude to the slow meandered steps of trudged verbigeration that needs to be exorcised from the seat of authority for the plodding inconvenience of time earned that shakes the listless yearning people who lie and spurn

Demagogues are trifles because they are anoegenetic and care not for the abligurition that consumes the energy of a dismal life lived on fringes rather than reaped with grimaces for binges that continue to absorb the painful pangs of twinges that hedonists are of interest

We cannot exorcise the demons that give stygian weight to exchequers beyond the gamut of money but rather the currency of velocity of thought that owes its weight to weightlessness of spaces between the spacious and the limited tract of isolative territory that many mendicants looking for sustenance travail in insolence and in perjury of their solemn duties for self-serious honesty they lack a vista to see their crimes as more than just a pettifoggery of disputatious wranglers that wrench and then contemn the objects of their moral scruples to contend with nothing but the vacant expanse of a limitless injury for a momentary slip of cultivation and countenance

Frippery is hard to cobble with lapidary wit because succinct grievances are fallow ground for the permanence of atrocity and the temperance of felicity to conform to the desiccated pathways of limpid but livid excoriations of willful ingenuity met with aleatory rambles that sprawl incalescence with words as a dying occupation that is resurrected from the abeyance of its pragmatic utility to distinguish class from crust.

The triadic fatuousness of snarky sharks recruiting the gullarge of paranoiacs to deputized alacrity lead many strident vocations astray as they pilfer the nullibiety of spectral ignorance and defy the gravitas of the primiparas of a swollen technocracy, an outrage that scarecrows with prevenance have adumbrated against with strident accelerations of sublime velocity

So we swim in perilous straits against the demiurge of inclemency in fated rittles for the turpitude of wraiths and engineer every aborning day a new foofaraw of unalloyed atrocity
Now more than never should be deployed to ensure that the castigation of scoundrels and guttersnipes that exert a rip tide to those stranded on the shores of littoral desiccation might find the pristine beachgoing public an amenable treat proffered by exorcised sheepishness in reiterative bleats that quarkswarm only the antinomy of sentient masteries by shoveled civilizations proctor to horological insistence in design

So we designated an abeyance of heydays to create a rippled nostalgia that creeps in the winter storms that singe even glabrous ignorance with the twinges in absentia of the regal crows that circle the sun as the sustenance of the alighted moon as we reach for the heaved Richter teeming with ablution for venial commination of prolix croons that exert a Palo Alto rhyme

Phenomenological fields distal to the cephalocaudal origination of limber and the ironic counterpoint to that strife in excess rather than dearth of the henchmen behind the exchequer showcase that fluid thoughts surpass the limits of the dentistry of cosmetic cosmology simultaneously a scientific boon but a coarse albatross

We are criminals in a world stranded by ****** apostasy because of the sincerity of minstrels meets plodding human ignorance as exemplars rather than the apotheosis of divine excoriation of wastrels and flattybouches who webdoodle their way into the extinction line in some computer file swiped from eccedentesiasts who often in uncouth barbarity forgetfully abide without the temperance of floss

So what are we to make of magisterial wits of wiseacres who pilot tenable objectives like Indiana Jones flexing his comical whip when the gunfire of cacophony inundates our ears with a lisp of cockalorum imposture rich in chewing tobacco and its ungainly gripes and tenacious grip

Should we seek salvation from the treecheese of arboreous terrain amenable to the newfangled windfall of agricultural whims that dare now with caprice but not quixotic disdain to reconfigure the parsimonious levered engagement of melliferous fungible transaction between sabbaticals and chief financiers dubbing the vociferous limn of the primeval fulgurant incandescent ethereal quips?

We strive for palaces issued with dimes, dozens and scores of retinues that retain the patina of sophistry as the gullarge makes the vangermytes cozy in their defensively mechanized citadel buffered against the unheralded malversations of mammon intersecting with primordial chemistry that give the philanderer a guise of philanthropy despite professed gainsay that perjures because hucksters are winsome with fiduciary risk

So we calumniate with lapsed puns and Potter’s Spells as we dredge the indemnity of bustling heydays that extend beyond the bailiwick stated because of the prolonged trace of nostalgia that frazzles our voluntary expeditions with misanthropy as each libertine instinct becomes subject to stop and frisk

How to balk at such a garrulous repartee as proffered by swanky intransigence that shakes it off in a quaky town that hates the Swift refrain that endangers the fatalism of recuperated foresight borrowed from the armamentarium of corrupted killjoys who swim in a dalliance with the itchy myths that drift from powerlessness to voguish debauchery of insouciant internecine fringes frayed by the tomes that decry Stygian drift

Shiftless and rooted in rintinole absolved by plackiques that enchant the voyeurism of repined squalor of industrious frippery deracinated from the aureate complicity of largesse calibrated to mobilize the skittish mercurial yuppies to a dance with divestiture, taxes and an earthen death, we sprint the evergreen mile toward the scrupulous invention of enthusiastic euphemisms arbitrated by the procrustean silt of the leaky faucet of enigmatic timelessness etched by chiselers to beat “Us and Them” and warn the vanguard of the front rank about the thespian rift

Exhaustive rescue squads prepared for the dearth of monetary heft in times of perilous drought denigrate the authors of famine to the indulgent parents of inordinate sabotage of narrative for riskless arbitrage that is the outrage of sciamachies between platonic indifference and the tantrums of the feckless in the dangerous hearth of the cavernous wilderness of limitless imaginations that stagger so far beyond orbit they become satellites to vagrancy and whittled paragons too distant to dissolve in the ethereal chemistry of incalescent uproar sadly flanged by the Dopplers of ephemeral fate

Squandered by the desuetude of a snarky intervention I issue invective at the proctors of deafferented limbs for barbarous swine meeting expediency in demise, bemoaning the placid distaste of rectified cries that issue candles for each acrimony beyond the permutation of the staid inflexible limit of 88’

Bashfully we careen through argosies of curiosity to fossick the stalactites of timeworn intuition and reckon with their converse ironies that drip faucets of mildew that remain hidden unless poked by plucky flashlights to inspect the paragon of erosive filigrees of a bewildering paradox of polarized design that one meets the ceiling at inception and the cousin strives to clamber empty space to know with faint certainty the bulldozed irony of superordinate coexistence

Now we return to the majesty of a spurned wiseacre that evades the snappy parlance of a wrenched friction between the physical and the metaphysical elements that constitute a commensurate reality so supernal that its ostentation creates lifetimes of reiterative growth that spawns crimson red and bloviated blues to find a fulcrum of balance between the malversation on one hand of criminal sinister machinations and on the other hand the execrable self-righteous ignorance of a hidden vehicles of dexterity that are subsumed by a subtlety of legislative graft that owes its forbearance to the sanctimony of perseveration without the laurels of persistence

Now we wed the concepts between the ambidexterity of a monolithic titan who wanes rather than waxes himself because his glabrous head already exposed requires nothing new because the empire that struck back is denuded by the thorny imbroglio of a sunken Rose

Timmynoggies are perfect for haberdasheries of saccharine and glib excellence as measured by the ****** cacophony of unmerited applause that strains the resourcefulness of the silent mastery of magistrates in mellifluous alcoves surrounded by the soundproofed rigors of an execrable dereliction wilt into the imaginations of the few that watch movies with errantry rather than pleasantries of gaudy nonsense enchanted by a striptease of the wanton zeitgeist that some balk at but everyone knows

Time earns the spangled banners of sloganeering because of the fastidious creations of pole folders that maneuver between quips borrowed from antique movies and swindled affectations of yearning of many of all fears inevitable with the malevolent passage of the technocracy from cheers to vehement inveighed jeers

We should fear the watershed because it necessitates the evaporation of winsome ambition and implores the subservience of a guiltless fascination with abominable regress concomitant to the acceleration of money preceding a whipsawed downfall ensured by the funereal spates of requiems to oneironauts who plunged to their deaths on headlong flickering whims past the craggy landscape of lunar concordance and through the abeyance of qualms to flabbergasted self-importance in the eradication of provident fears

Memorials exist encoded in the temporal twinges of agony that straddle the cardiovascular throbs of impermanence that sweat with each simple beat to blather about the repetitious nature of a livid nature scrambled in exodus of the emigration of senseless blather to the subroutines of regimented sleepless paragons of travail in every pedestrian feat accelerated with each passing foot traversed by vigilant and eager feet

Tempests crowd the cluttered hamartithia of dredged incompetence leading to the foreclosure that precedes the simple derelictions that amount to grievous uncertainties that squawk in the plumage of the frippery decay of an autumnal fall from gracile riches landlocked without room to sprawl rigged against every track that is a surefire gleeful keepsake to meet, greet and serenade the claques adorned with the monikers of the Greeks

Trembling beneath the weight of mellifluous sauntering dingy designs that exude the anguish of our provident but incidental remonstration against the plodding indifference of the artistic clerisy we sputter against intransigent annulments of the emotive human engine calibrated with creaky pistons that rumble with furor of abrasive protest in timely haphazard elemental designs for vanguard ears

Tridents shed the fossicked leaves that are divisible by two but not inevitably glue that solders the identities of people congregated around a situation of gleeful sprees rather than wistful regress into a temerity without regret that gets dangled in the purview of the spiteful wings of armies that drawl when they sing vapid songs for vaped bongs but not the soberly cheers because of the deafening din of conformity oblivious of the honorific crescendos that still peak after so many restless years

Confederates line the avenues of bustling caverns of cumulative human disdain so willfully flouted by the wrenched corrosive frictions of vibrant deformation of the cultural narrative that encapsulates the collective bubbles chewed and jettisoned like bandied candy and then defamed without justice because  hurricanes churn up the reclusive emergence of protective vanity chased down as a sunken cost for a siphoned glory of tribal pride despite the strictures of logic

Creeping with insistence is a subaudition of governing gravel that entombs many steadfast lies that embodied people living delusory lives under a paradigm that has been subverted by the feats of science into a morass of irrelevance and the chances are many of those so deluded still breathe the air now more polluted but balk at the memories of the fallen passengers on the convalescent train that accelerates sunblind but respectfully toward a systematic engrossment of swollen intellects whimpering about the tautologic

We finance our prescient rodomontade with rodeos equipped with zany clowns who spurn the tridents of Poseidon because of the iridescent gloss of sheepish and flippant zealots who churn against the wrestling match of televised irony with accentuated eccedentesiastic disdain amended by a tolerable diversion of ennobled gallantry zip-zagging among the many valid quodlibets and missing the mark entirely on purpose to vacate the possible raillery of those who balk at time’s chosen serpentine tracks because of limited pedagogical tracts

So lets solder a forceful brunt against the senseless regalia of modern omphalos and return to the plenipotentiary fields of resourceful human inquiry into the chagrins outmoded by convenience but amplified in vociferation by the prosthetic extension of a grangull humanity outfoxing itself into a zugzwang inevitable in the future with collateral losses because of senseless invidiousness orchestrated by the immiscible dermatology of divisive facts often about race and ineluctable tax

We conclude with the optimism that refineries become gentrified by the superlunary squadrons who bask in beatific beams of anonymity and that the pollution preceding our evolution is just adventitious rather than central to the amelioration of wavy screens ennobling so many upstarts to teach themselves the majesty of lucid dreams and to capitalize on ludic ideals divorced from the urchins of radical idealisms that ironically poach rarefied air with smug pollution of narrative scares

Without trepidation we can muster the largesse of civility to create a progeny that has a recursive progeny of heirs that defiantly imagine a world bereft of specters of the soporific imagination enforced by the lapidation of insight from termagants who stride with ursine acrimony naked bare and envision a global meliorism that is careful, picaresque, pragmatic and filled with meritocratic care

With those ornaments of an aureate measure in mind


We leap beyond the enumerated infinity in time's proper design

welcome to my life
full of glitz and glamour
**** and clamor

stipper poles and alcoholic binges
dark holes and ***** syringes

happiness then suicide
smiles and selfish pride


i get so high
and fall so low
i get so happy
and then i just dont know
what am i doing here in this god forsaken place

the guitar helps me get through
the words help me make sense of it all
melody flows through me
the butterflys churn endlessley in my stomach

waiting for the crowd to assemble
waiting for the silence to rumble
waiting for the stage to go dark
waiting for the spotlight and the spark

and then i sing
o
i sing
to everyone and to no one

and then all my glorious, decadent **** for a life somehow shines
when those empty sea of eyes meet mine
and i sing a song
and i sing a song

We sat there hung over and out of are minds in some no name dinner just outside of Austin .
Are thoughts ached from the party we sat there nursing lukewarm coffee no words spoken between us said more than any burnt out conversation could ever express .

I viewed my friend a madman who's spark had left him with  far to many vices and they had consumed his thoughts he no longer was the man behind the character he was the god dammed character.

I can't say where he lost it maybe between the ****** and ******* or the constant drinking binges the ******* seldom was clear and I learned I was no match for the train that was bound to leave the tracks at some time.  

Where to next amigo?
He asked looking at me through those sunglasses that seemed to never come off his head it was like a weird mask that was a permanent part of his self indulged existence .

I got to head back man , I found myself saying in a almost apologetic sense even though 'for my own mental health I truly had no other choice .

The drugs the nonstop train wreck existence of a candle burned at both ends wasn't in my cards and I had no desire to view this stranger I once called a friend crash and burn before my very eye's let alone take me down with him.

He simply looked into his black as night coffee and laughed to much for you is it old bud?
Hell John it's to much for me pal but I only understand full throttle and I been doing this **** to long to stop  now .

It's not all that Gonz I'm just ******* spent my minds bleeding from the last couple of days you ******* can't keep this **** up or you'll be dead you and I both know it .

Gonz just shook his head man your getting soft.
******* to much of that home cooking and regular ***** will warp you amigo not my kind of scene brother but I understand .

As he said those words I knew this was as close to a farewell  as I could ever expect he was going down the track and off the rails no matter who stood in his way or expressed there concern it truly didn't matter .

We finished are coffees tipped the waitress and said are goodbyes well as close to a goodbye as you could expect from this real life character the last of the true outlaws no matter how much I wished he would slow the **** down I knew in some ways it just wasn't the way **** was supposed to play out.

Standing there in his worn sports jacket fedora and shades he seemed a force of nature not a broken down madman most would consider him to be .

So where the hell you heading now you crazy ******* ?
He laughed that big laugh of his as always.
Opening both arms yet another gesture as big as the personality that truly was him .

Mexico brother!
Some crevasses some tequila some good well good in a bad way women it'll be a time that would make the devil himself blush sure you don't care to tag along drinks always on me brother.

In that moment I had to admit he could ******* the best of them  but considering my liver was already bleeding and my thoughts were burnt from a scene that would surely shock even the most jaded of us all I had to pass .

Maybe next time my friend .

I said knowing full well this would be the last time of course I could never count this madman out but I had to view from afar for my own sanity's.

Well brother your going to miss a hell of a time ,He said as he turned to head towards his car .

Some many outlaws rode of into the sunset while it seemed this walking circus of debauchery just preferred to stagger in the sunrise
Don't know what kept him going guess the ******* drugs helped .

He never bothered to wave goodbye as he squealed his tries  bound for hell and a last good time.
But as he always said there's nothing more corny in this life than looking back my brother .

Are farewells were unspoken and that I knew was the last I would ever see of the friend who had become the character again.

Adios brother.