Oakes-photo, hypocrisy and flagrant mirky plateau. Brimming celestial warrants overcrowding public housing systems. North-South lights, sell costly iPhone Apps; and then there are Social Societies of non-verbal delight. Password protected non-profitable and over-costly educations of no reward or biblical synonyms. Catastrophizing hash-tag dot.com. Weary party going poster children with glowing anemone guts, fruity looped cantlings, ravenous scattered supper clubbed coughing up ******* on their strange and central affairs unit. Overcome the candisation and sugary affairs of any of the ***** and pops that erstwhile matter less and less. We are speaking of nomenclatures that don't arise. Promises and by which confession aloof romanticizes every Tom dicking Mary that carries the theory of sustainable energy, prussian blue, and irregular browsing.

Sleep deprivation

***

Guilt

Sense-making and maps of meaning

Revisiting memories

Crying

Staying away from scary corners of my mind

Deliberately going toward scariness

Not resisting

Yes resisting

Respecting resistance

Compulsive tv watching

Dropping or letting go over and over again

Exploring

Curiosity

Forgetting and then remembering that it’s all happening on its own, noticing this, knowing this, realizing this

Realizing that realization comes and goes on its own

Being in love with everything

Crying

Playing with time and concepts

Craving emptiness

Love

Catastrophizing

Ranking what "works" (i.e. sleep deprivation is effective), noticing that the metric of “effective” and "works" is = resulting in greater illusions of "forgetting" with a capital F

Loving everything

Being everything

Self-flagellation

Not really believing any of the stories or narratives

Procrastinating

Being irresponsible

Getting off on self-loathing

Forcing intimacy

Compassion, large, whole, unrelenting, everywhere

Oversharing

Falling in love with a homeless person at a traffic stop

Being bored and sad and hopeless and desperate

Remembering inherent wholeness

Being stubborn

Getting out of the way always feels like dying

Loving dying

Loving mourning dying

Dramatizing dying

Wanting to be seen and loved

Self-loathing

Intensity

Craving intensity

Hating craving intensity

Knowing that nothing is a problem

Suffering

Being impatient

Being very very patient

Feeling like I don’t belong in the world, like people and things and money and social media are alien, foreign and scary

Feeling like I am the world

Forgetting that knowing how to verbalize isn’t the same as knowing

Wanting knowing with words to be the same as Knowing

Wanting knowing to be a Real, solid thing

Fear

Mortal fear

Bewilderment

Constant background anxiety

Hating this body

Not caring for this body

Being burdened by this body

Feeling trapped in a body

Feeling more trapped in a mind

Wanting knowing to resolve everything

Wanting to be saved

Thinking that I probably don’t need to be saved

Thinking or knowing(?) there’s nothing to be saved from

Knowing that I can’t be saved

Feeling open

Feeling vulnerable

Feeling exposed

Feeling bad

Feeling like I'm doing it wrong

Believing it all

Wanting to both believe it and have a choice about when, where, and to what extent I believe it

Not knowing where the edge is until I've fallen off

Feeling violated

Feeling like existence is non-consensual

Somehow trusting all of it, totally, exactly as it is

Watching the panicking

More crying

Being one

Being very very aware

Noticing and letting go of effort in one swift move

Compulsive clenching

Compassion

Dissolving

Disillusion

Dying without the novelty

Being ok vey very briefly and for no apparent reason/because of no reason./?

Wanting distraction

Respecting needing distraction

Getting out of the way of intelligent coping mechanisms

Villifying coping mechanisms

Understanding only in retrospect

Frustration

Compassion, deep, like warm water

Compassion, hard, like being ****** vey very slowly

Torture

Life-giving torture

Never wanting to stop

Marveling

Abundance like grace, like not deserving, like not needing to be deserving, like deserving is perverse language

Tasting everything

Endless kaleidoscopes of being and tasting and knowing

Non visual seeing

Clarity, brightness, nothing is a problem

Being alive

Being sososo tired

Wanting to rest, to die into void and nothing

Wanting to hibernate

Wanting to still

Dying to get off

Begging to get off

Finding the edge more thrilling than the center (because then the center can be anything at all?)

Loving all the previous versions of this being

Needing to hate, loathe, earlier renditions of this being

Hating repulsion

Trusting repulsion

Getting stuck because resisting repulsion

Knowing that there's no way out

Knowing that the way out that I'm seeking isn't a way out

Not wanting to do the work

Dancing around the center, constantly

Feeling dizzy with chaos, with knowledge of power

Feeling comfortable with mediocrity

Hating mediocrity

Waking up with jaw tension from the enormity of my own suppressed power

Telling stories about sensations

Relying on self-bullying methods I know don't work

Perfecting the art of pretending

Perfecting the art of self-deception

Wanting to make the stakes higher

Being overwhelmed by my own storytelling

Not wanting to give stories credibility by dispelling them

Naval gazing

Loving philosophy

Feeling dried up, tired, stagnant, disinterested, not engaged, not here.

Sleepwalking. Sleep writing. Sleep talking. Sleep caring

Not sleeping

Vivid dreaming

High weirdness

Questioning my sanity

Romanticizing insanity

Wanting to blur all boundaries

Wanting to smooth the edges of reality

Questioning reality

Destabilizing reality

Feeling destabilized

Feeling irresponsible

Guilt

Feeling sick and tired

Feeling scared

Feeling hopeless

Wanting to reach out

Feeling like everything is inevitable

Feeling like suffering is inevitable

Recognizing kindness

Discerning well (properly? Clearly? Well.)

Fearful trusting

Thinking too much

Not wanting to love my dad as much as I do.

Chasing the intellectual high

Disappointment

No need for resolution

Feeling caught in existence

Feeling caught up. Like in a potato sack; I can explore the exact measure of my confinement, the sensorial elements, the scratchiness, the filtering light from the outside, the stagnation, the wanting to stretch.

I love this being.

This. It's not a problem.

Confusing familiarity with comfort

Confusing comfort with peace

Reifying confusion, but not really

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Seeing through, like pinholes in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand still and feel

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, so so brief

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also just plain humorous

And absurd

Loving people

Feeling grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like a violin solo in a forbidden song

Like the last wring of that silk dress you're not supposed to squeeze dry

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow
hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small, nowhere to go

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong soft body

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. With my body.

I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

A crisp spring afternoon,
curled face down on the kitchen floor
oxygen struggling to exit ribcage,
remind yourself to breathe,
to perform.

Find your phone,
tell him you think about killing yourself
a lot.
He tells you he has a weekend to plan.

I still think about how wrong it is
to expect language to work like TV.
To exist as something you have to see.

The more literal you are,
the more metaphorical people will think you are being.

When the identity of another
depends on an extension
of your own invisibility,
every minute is spent
catastrophizing. Counting the steps to an exit.
Knowing to find quiet and dark
when breaths begin to quicken,
but before vision goes cloudy clear.

The order of this sequence is subtle
but profound.

Involuntary entering of fight-
or-flight mode indicates
some type of trauma. An
inability to talk yourself down
from ledges placed beneath you,
independent of will.

Lungs, larynx,
and tongue corrode,
claiming aphonia as sanctuary.
While a darkened frame lies atop you,
as if you were everything.
But not to him.

on bad days,
i'm found in my backyard kicking dandelions.
on good days,
i feel like i can put them back together again.

(similar physiological phenomena
affected yours truly
exactly one year ago),
yet nevertheless hunger,
not only for victuals
but peace on Earth
and goodwill to all men,
women, children, animals,
plants, et cetera

Mine corporeal complex edifice
unleashes convulsions of anxiety
less so regarding mine kampf,
one paltry existence among bajillions
of **** sapiens, but rather
indiscriminate violence of war.

Wanton aggression unleashed
upon defenceless civilians
caught in the crosshairs
of abhorrent, indignant, repugnant...
pillaging, ******, trespassing,
violating, xing sacrosanct boundaries
against humble people.

Said encroachment upon Ukraine
major reason lack of appetite
prevails to savor even smallest bite
unlike Pavlov's dog,
I neither salivate nor excite
at prospect (parking) body
against table not low but fahrenheit
unfair punishment fates did indict,
whereby yours truly decreed
to suffer wraith inflicted

akin to ghastly revengeful Jacobite
asitia struck with vengeance
sucker punched pit of stomach
with furious dog forsaken might
unsavory predicament figuratively
eating away me passion
to relish comestibles day and night,
hence feeble effort to craft poem quite
lame rhyming for no reason right?

Yours truly cannot remember,
how many days, weeks, months... ago
elapsed, whereby with voraciousness I ate
(above mentioned statement veracious -
food for thought) I plainly communicate
hoop fully buzzfeeding, dishing out quandary

in fortified effort to elucidate
thee dear anonymous reader great
if newfound (albeit tenuous) intrigue
awoke courtesy mine artful ruse to initiate
reciprocity, cuz regret iz the stealer of joy
thus verbally athletic, cryptic, enigmatic,

generic, idiotic, kinetic, magnetic, opportunistic
quixotic, solipsistic (ha) troubadour
who heartily hales within
southeastern keystone-state
dares himself to reach out across cyberspace
in an cautiously optimistic effort to mitigate

and extend his metaphorical (albeit empty) plate
maintaining netiquette, an amorphous,
yeah flirtatious nebulous groovy savoir faire,
which mine body, mind, spirit triage
suddenly seems restoration of natural craving
toward sustenance doth oscillate.

What relief long starved taste buds to appease
cuz methought (courtesy obsessive compulsive
worst case scenario catastrophizing)
one garden variety guy
acquired some generic disease
A deep sigh of relief he dryly heaves!

Mine corporeal complex edifice
unleashes convulsions of anxiety.

Lack of appetite
to savor even smallest bite
unlike Pavlov's dog,
I neither salivate nor excite
at prospect (parking) body
against table not low but fahrenheit
unfair punishment fates did indict,
whereby yours truly decreed
to suffer wraith inflicted

akin to ghastly revengeful Jacobite
asitia struck with vengeance
sucker punched pit of stomach
with furious dog forsaken might
unsavory predicament figuratively
eating away me passion
to relish comestibles day and night,
hence feeble effort to craft poem quite
lame rhyming for no reason right?

Yours truly cannot remember,
how many days, weeks, months... ago
elapsed, whereby with voraciousness I ate
(above mentioned statement veracious -
food for thought) I plainly communicate
hoop fully buzzfeeding, dishing out quandary

in fortified effort to elucidate
thee dear anonymous reader great
if newfound (albeit tenuous) intrigue
awoke courtesy mine artful ruse to initiate
reciprocity, cuz regret iz the stealer of joy
thus verbally athletic, cryptic, enigmatic,

generic, idiotic, kinetic, magnetic, opportunistic
quixotic, solipsistic (ha) troubadour
who heartily hales within
southeastern keystone-state
dares himself to reach out across cyberspace
in an cautiously optimistic effort to mitigate

and extend his metaphorical (albeit empty) plate
maintaining netiquette, an amorphous,
yeah flirtatious nebulous groovy savoir faire,
which mine body, mind, spirit triage
suddenly seems restoration of natural craving
toward sustenance doth oscillate.

What relief long starved taste buds to appease
cuz methought (courtesy obsessive compulsive
worst case scenario catastrophizing)
one garden variety guy
acquired some generic disease.