you're a cns depressant i
knew from the moment i met you cause
i remember tasting you before:
the bottle of white
***
i stole from my mother like
fire and bitterness and
damp cloth across my mouth
drank you dry and
felt a little less volatile
fire fighting fire no room for hurt when i can just
lie here
and count every eye as it closes i
am argus:
all-seeing, hundred-eye
and everything i try to protect
is stolen when my eyes
close
{scatter my eyes on feathers
and never let them shut again}
deep draughts of you i
remember
your taste
and the way my skin buzzes and mind numbs
when you burn my throat.
you're a cns depressant and i,
the loneliest child on the west coast you thought
the california scene
was supposed to be
brighter than this
but i've lived here all my life and let me tell you:
every morning is
chill grey skies
and fog
that tastes tonic
without the gin, or
to put it differently:
everything i don't need not
fire just
damp chill
{i'm starting to think that
every california love story
is set in death valley because here
the ocean is cold in the height of summer
and the streets are empty at 5 am when i decide maybe
i should stop
writing
and make sure the world is still there}
and for me,
a child
with an empty bottle
and an empty room,
you were a monster
that i prayed i would find beneath my bed
you are a fugue state i dropped into willingly you
let me forget
that the water is cold
let me forget that this life
is the least compelling plot I’ve ever read
and i’m tempted to skip to the end
golden state fugue state in death valley sunburn girls
shed their skins like snakes and i
lust after empty husks
but i grew gills when i tried to drown in the bay i could
never be as hollow as that i
bite my lip and hope i'll bleed this time
instead of just aching
{no more aches just fire and fog if
i bleed
catch it in an inkwell you know
black ink
is worth more than my blood
send my letters to the red cross and spill red across the pages}
no more aches just fire and fog i
always liked myself more when i was on a stage
hope this story will skip to the end
cause i don’t think I can take another apathetic word i wish
this narrator
had drowned before her gills could form
but i feel a little less alone with my hand around your neck
you’re a cns depressant you  
held my hand as i burned
you made me a chain of four leaf clovers and i swallowed every one i think
you made a bad decision
when you chose to help me survive

6 sides
Latent enabler
Counterpoint to truth, amorphic
Dada to life
Callous Birth
Islands dripped in collagen
Mystic, effortless life
Tempests laden iota in tune
Riven
Licked flat, obtuse
Crescent stench
Pagan cells
Hazard the thought
Pick the Atlantic cherry
Reach further than comfort
Pushed & consumed
Spirited paste
Jesuit told in spheres
Lament interest, matted quill
Totem, Saxon tribe
Inflections of hearsay
And Swastikas on parade
Guilt of the blacksmith, undecided
The arms of tablets
Ashtrays & tropospheric light
Another page turned
Capsules filled with perfume
Loose skin lost in relics
Temporal lobe
Cautioned indignant
Pardon the prose
Sonnets dissolved in ethanol
Caricatures of the fleeting
Of our cities last broadcast
Absorbed by times gone
Glittered pestilence
Canceling subordinates, powdered Semtex
Soup of the sewer
Lift the butcher above your head
Nazca lines
Suborbital
Silk screen with *****
Horizontal qualm toward revulsion
Incursion
Calm, cued and cubed
Lab coats coated in pharmaceuticals
Base compound, ionic bond
Covalent CNS
Sympathetic vibration
Default to nature
To theorise movement
Agitate intolerance, turbulence
Beautiful thought
Calculate causality
Passenger of licked lips
Token to latex
Croft in ear, to taste
Unlaced tips, rings of halothane
Bliss
Intrigued with obscurity

The rain is so frail, beatific
moment, dim precipitate on my bare arms
and wondrous half-light washing across the city sky.

Do I trust myself with CNS depressants, or am I just deterred
by the thought of those more eclectic GABA aftereffects.

Enough of this dark ****.
Asking me "bro, do you even know
how hard it is to **** yourself"
after taking potentially fatal doses
of various CNS depressants. I know

better than most. I cannot watch this.
Our lifelines are fragile things
and I shouldn't have to stare down Atropos
for anyone other than myself.
I wanna live.

"I want to hold on to the innocence I got".
We make our own fate, weaving stories
to tell ourselves, measuring the world
with them, and wearing our destinies out.

Her piety did not scare death
She lived ready, protecting our nation
Why are real heroes falling?
Indeed, "all other grounds are sinking sands"
From dust to dust you are laid today
Your body interned to mother earth
But your soul lingers till eternity

Thank you "Chukwu" for Tolulope
She came and made her mark
Wrote her name in our fabric as a nation
Soldiers never die, they translate
She has gone for a higher calling
She already resumed in heaven
Welcomed by Angels, sitted by her Creator

To our leaders in all spheres
Military burial for our hero past isn't enough
Bury all seed of nepotism
Tribalism, terrorism and banditory
My people, my state, let it go
Now, let it go I preach poetically!
We must be nationalistic in all things
If we hope to move forward as a nation

And you reading this piece
What shall men say when you depart?
What will be written on your epitaph?
What are you doing for your nation?
So we don't have to lie?
You only survive if all you think is your family?
Live and let live, that others may live
"My own, your own", please let it go

Good night our national hero Tolulope Aritile
Good might Nigeria's first helicopter pilot
Good night to a mentor to so many
Thank you "The Arotiles", God bless that womb
Thank you to the CDS, CAS, CNS, Presidency
Of a truth, no child is better than the other
At least, Tolu proved it with her daring acts
Following the path of least resistance.