you fell in love with
late nights and soft kisses,
holding hands,
phone calls ending in
“i love you more.”

you fell in love with
someone knowing you
as well as you know yourself,
being seen when you
thought you were invisible,
comfortableness

you fell in love with
sparking short fights and
make up “i love you”s,
silent car rides and
quiet understandings

but you did not
fall in love
with me

Breaking water, diving in with my body, head first.
Rippling seams and leaving stitches unfinished.
I dive in to let the purity envelop me.
Cleanse me and my pores,
return me to where I started from.
Release me from wars, unopened doors I wished I turned.
Forget wounds of battle on my skin.
Open me.
Cut me open and leave me bleeding.
Let my blood sink into the earth until there is nothing left,
let me walk this earth for miles and miles, let me feel the pain in my lungs,
the hoarseness of my being escaping from my throat. 

 Let me build a moat around my princess castle and then tear it down. Lightning strike me and rip my particles, rip the matter from me like guns on glass. Crack me and tear me.
I will get up again.
I will rise.
And Let me Sing,
Sing 
sing
  sing
until my prayers are whispers.
Forest water, reflecting green, serenity. 

 I have dreams of black claws like raven glass closing in, scratching me bare.
Howling and deep long nails and witchy eyes cackling like the darkness overlapping. The demons within closing in.
I hide from light, unaware of how I’m blocking out love from my life.
Is it just a dream what my heart has seen?
 Now I walk like wind or stones in snow. I trudge along trying to remain strong when the forces pull and tear the ramshackle down to the ground.



I’ve been breathing and living, seeing so many things and it is this compilation of stories that warms my belly
yet it also tears my flesh.

The happiness is what breaks me.

Suspending the never-ending.
I am so close to the grave that I dug but I must keep walking past that linear line that I set for myself.
It is lines within circles. So many flows, I thought I chose the whole. Breathe. Pouring myself out into you. I wonder if I give and give it will fade into the soil and the bottle will empty. Melt like wax. Feed you and leave me. Is it releasing or is it unhealthy for me to give myself away?

I gave myself away.

I have strewn pieces of myself into everything I have touched but I am afraid that one day there will be nothing left.

Nothing left when finally I receive pieces of someone else.

"Excuse me," I would say "I'm not myself today" except that is a fools excuse, how obtuse, how can we not be ourselves, just being is being ourselves.

  The process of seeking deeper is breaking that boundary and that un-comfortableness.

Where did our love go? It existed between skin and bones. It was a facade or something else. I am not sure.

Not lust but colour, it was dewy green like steam from a coffee cup in the morning. Or the rain on the window pane while I slept in your arms and refrained from needing you too much,

It was in you're stride and the way you dressed in the morning it was in our hands when we held them or the way we danced together like two old lovers.

I cannot write about you without tears, write about your skin or your smile, and I am in a confined environment as I write this where such things are not acceptable. I am hiding on the paper,
escaping my heart.

I cried this morning because it was all too perfect.

I am cut open
perfectly imperferfect
I laugh at myself and this funny hole I am in.
Oh the pathetic-ness and the hilarity, when we slip in mud and are covered in filth
when we have nothing left but to cry and to laugh because we are crying because nothing in this world really matters or it matters all too much. Because I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t think anybody does.

We just muster our determination and passion, build up our bones, and we roll with it
Still there is an element of unpredictability no matter how routine we have gotten. No matter how far we have fallen
from our roots.

Excuse me for crying this morning, don’t worry I laughed it off after. I laughed because of life and laughed because I cried, and I cried because I love you.

And now I walk like wind or stones in snow. I trudge on with all my strength. Wisping like whispers caught from the ears of children and passing through the world. Cold like ice on swing sets and little hands clasping them. Red fingers, red noses. Snot on mittens and sharp pain. Winter.

I Wisp like wind in water. I crack like stones of sand and rock. I break like waves on the shores of life. I cry like the trees who fight. Howling to the moon. I open when you call me. I close when I’m falling.
I hide like children at night. I am under the streetlight, orange, alley cats in shadow homes and grey cement, dead rats, broken bones. My eyes are bare, sunken in the light. I suppose I should muster my might. Find peace beyond my fight.Take my fists from sunken floors and instead beat on unopened doors.
Escape distress.
I wish you saw
something more.
I
   wish
          that there was
                        something else.
                                                    =====》Speedi­ng on.====》

Sometime, I'll have a dream
A dream in which I'll be engaging in ***
With the loose folds of skin and cellulite
Around Maya Angelou's neck
I use the word engage b/c I don't think
It'll be  my idea or if I would even want to be a completely willing
Participant
You know how dreams go:
You're able to detach
So anyway, all the while she'll be reciting her verse
In that overly inflected, pretentious and annoying grandmotherly Huxtable
Tone she uses and
Right as the nauseousness becomes unbearable
And I fear I won't be able to keep the contents of my
Stomach from forcing itself out and onto her face
She starts to devour the entirety of my lower abdomen
The sickness I was feeling quickly dissipating and the
Realization that she's no longer speaking and merely
Gnashing, ripping and eating my viscera
I return to an almost homeostasis
A comfortableness



Copyright © 2009-Present

A dream in which I'll be engaging in ***
With the loose folds of skin and cellulite
around Maya Angelou's neck
I use the word engage b/c I don't think
It'll be  my idea or if I would even want to be a completely willing
Participant
You know how dreams go: you're able to detach
So anyway, all the while she'll be reciting her verse
In that overly inflected, pretentious and annoying grandmotherly Huxtable
Tone she uses and
Right as the nauseousness becomes unbearable
And I fear I won't be able to keep the contents of my
Stomach from forcing itself out and onto her face
She starts to devour the entirety of my lower abdomen
The sickness I was feeling quickly dissipating and the
Realization that she's no longer speaking and merely
Gnashing, ripping and eating my viscera
I return to an almost homeostasis
A comfortableness




Damon Michael Garrett
Copyright © 1972-Present

the world is screaming at me,
no, no, no!
it's screaming at me to die,
to leave because i should never have been here in the first place.
so i call myself names in my head
(over and over and over.)

the world is screaming at me,
why, why, why!
it doesn't understand why i'm here
it thinks i'm good for nothing
it thinks i'm a waste of time
(i am.)
so i hit myself and i punch myself right in the face.
(over and over and over.)

the world is screaming at me,
you, you, you!
it thinks i am bad
it thinks i am responsible for the terribleness,
and i am.
so i hate myself
hate, hate, hate myself
until i can hate no more
until i fall asleep and dream of more terriblenes.

the world is screaming at me,
die, die, die!
and it doesn't stop
so i hide in my bed and shrink instead of growing
and in that darkness,
that dark comfortableness,
i quitely go to sleep.

trying  bad  knew  day  think  fight  feeling  know  annoying  ly­ing  time  months  tell  like  sure  observe  afternoon  particip­ant  folds  pass  iron  ask  realization  neck  conversation  pai­n  poetaster  tuesdays  busy  night  lung  sake  sickness  movies­  gets  body  reason  turns  incessantly  awakens  doesnt  ones  ­lifes  gnashing  try  despondency 
 way  pretentious  idea  cellu­lite  strewn  years  fallen  finally  given  stomach  qualify  sp­ectacle  necessary  watching  christ  harbinger  unconsciously  t­hing  girl  loose  walls  unbearable  start  reach  smile  needin­g  violent  mean  slowly  engage  engaging  cell  face  sung  str­uggle  tone  shes  song  cheaply  correct  contents  normally  qu­ickly  asleep  close  plea  dark  personality  overly  devour  ac­tions  viscera  completely  eating  list  attractive  liar  power­  does  figured  use  morning  suffer

  saving  shadowscasting  ­abdomen  leave  verse  sun  comfort  screaming  stay  lift  forci­ng  worthwhile  sleep  reciting  sets  written  broken  semismile­d  dysthmically  movingriding  supp  uses  help  pieces  poorly  ­lied  reading  blunt  fine  returned  groups  refractory  fiber  ­eyes  read  word  puts  say  absorb  force  detach  message  unno­ticed  died  block  clock  wish  possibly  late  aghast  fear  re­turn  chum  caused  daily  involve  thanks  grandmotherly  hope  ­unheeded  twice  starve  maya  enthusiasm  heard  hunger  comfort­ableness  homeostasis

  nauseousness  huxtable  inflected  angel­ous  angelou  itll  dissipating  impress  giving  lower  relent  ­articulate  poetry  doldrums  wise  left  alot  hate  cheeks  ent­irety  perceived  result  willing  mild  speaking  concedepretend­  skin  alive  shell  death  tantamount  everytime  ripping  aflo­at  worth  adamisdronicus  succession  press  hang  jeanpaul  spe­ak  dysthmic  means  dinner  dreams  sobriety  bones  repeatedly ­ ***  pang  bc  painted  reallythat

In our world of innocence and light,
We live amongst demons and sinners,
In our world of silence and comfortableness',
We have lost, and they become winners,

But we are the beautiful creatures,
The timeless souls of verse,
We can nourish and feed ourselves,
In our script we self immerse,

We can make all the bad disappear,
And write of a life surreal,
But alas our open hearts fail us,
For every word, we feel,

But we are the beautiful creatures,
We bring life where there is none,
We can word away from the demons,
And the sinners? Well there is only one.

Over the years I've noticed that I feel differently about life than most people.
I've noticed the way I look at the stars just before midnight when they seem to shine the brightest, with a desire in my heart to know what it's like to be up there.
My entire perception of the world is shaped completely around curiosity, a curiosity to know the completeness of things that exist within a vast emptiness.

Like space; I desire to know what it is like to flow through space, live in space, be a part of space. Maybe like being the moon, living calmly alone in the darkness, lonely and unbothered.
Or perhaps maybe a star, surrounded by nothing. There is a certain beauty in nothing. I find there is a peace in nothing. I desire to know what it is like to live within nothing, to be nothing.

Most people, I'd believe, look up at the sky in an amazement, almost an awe, for what they can see only as a beauty to the eye, and nothing more.
I look up at the sky, however, with a longing in my heart, feeling separated from where I truly belong.

I have began to realize the meaning behind my admiration and utter jealousy of the universe comes from the truth that I feel I am meant to be above the secluding, limiting, unbearableness we call the world. That living within it I feel subject to only a small portion of everything, everything but nothing.

I feel living upon this world minimizes my true worth, my true meaning in the universe. Where life upon nothing, within nothing, is impossible. But a life of nothing, is truly the life for me.

Not only do I see hundreds of stars with just one glance upon the night sky, I see a home, somewhere where I can just be, my home.
A home that has been formed from the comfortableness I find within myself. Each star and each comet, the beauty marks upon my face, my imperfections- they are symbolic of the bright dullness I find in being alone, completely alone.

I have come to know the reason why I am so attached to the vast, empty universe composed of nothing, surrounded by nothing, filled with nothing, and only nothing. The universe is the sole recluse of who I am, what I am.
When I see it, I see myself; a clear mirror exists between the universe and I, along with all of the vast emptiness and nothing, surrounded by nothing, filled with nothing, and only nothing that's been used to create me.
That mirror a wall, with no real barrier, yet preventing me from surpassing the life I live- one yearning to touch my other face, my true face, made entirely of the beauty I find true peace within, the beauty of nothing, and only nothing, the nothing that's been used to create me.

looking around this square room
silently observing
end to end
corner to corner
measuring the width
the depth
with my eyes
of what i call
'my peaceful place'
it looks like me
   smells like me
but there is still something missing
i can't put my finger on it
but i can feel it
in how the room echos slightly
when i cough or sneeze
it brings a coldness to it
it doesn't feel exactly right
what can i bring to this place of solitude
that will warm it
give it that womb-like feeling
i want to feel hugged when i enter
wrapped in the cozy warmth of comfortableness

i've got some thinking to do...

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

The only time I fall asleep in your arms are the nights we sit by our empty glasses. The bottles lay askew on the floor, they are cold and dripping with the last drop of our day. They were filled with the fruits of our labor and the sour bubbling laughs. We filled each other in as we filled each other's glasses. The comfortableness, the ease that we feel are not because we are comfortable with each other. It is because our drinks push us out. You might as well say that we are introverts by day and extroverts by night. One bottle is empty and one hour of our day is complete. We move on continuing to fill the silence that we both cannot bear to see. To us being in the clear is seeing our glasses empty. It does not provide us with any relief, just anxiety to why our glass is still empty. I fill up the glasses as we fill up the room with our conversation. Two bottles down, then three, then four, and now we are on the floor. Laying there finger to finger, head to head, leg to leg we discuss our future plans and our ***** secrets because we know by morning we will forget we ever spoke. As sad as it may be, when we wake up in the morning feeling the pain of last night. We will just sit and stare. Not say a word. Our glasses that lay beside us this morning are as empty as our conversations. I just want to be able sleep with you after a night of not drinking. Because maybe I can actually speak.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.
© Matthew Goff

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

‪I'm at my highest with you‬
‪feeling so unbalanced without you.. ‬
‪but for you its a wall of chemically made malice for you‬
‪It's because of you‬
‪Why I feel like I cry most with you‬
‪You're the person who could make me die with you‬
‪But you're hiding too‬
‪You make me confide in you‬
‪And I feel as if I am one with you‬
‪But you‬
‪Are you only alive when your inside of me?‬
‪When we're laughing.. do I make you feel that comfortableness to reside with me?‬
‪When you hold me do you feel like we're one in two?‬
‪Or am I just here for you?‬
‪What am I to you?‬
‪You have the darkest sides to me‬
‪The sides no one is ever allowed to see‬
‪You have all of my secrets I trust you to keep‬
‪But is my vulnerability ‬
‪Too much of a responsibility ‬
‪That makes your passion into passivity?‬
‪What can I do..‬
‪To make you not alone..‬
‪To be more than just your play zone..‬
‪What can I do?‬

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

© Matthew Goff

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.

One becomes acquainted to a certain way of life if lived in long enough
The most tragic of these circumstances being a found comfortableness in misery
When tears become routine and shaky hands are a custom
This is where home resides.
Light and love turn into foreign enemies against our comfort as we push away the people and things that mean to help
Ending in our personal isolated hell.
We find ourselves having rather cried ourselves to sleep than feel an ounce of joy rip through our walls
Happiness is so stiff and awkward it becomes an unwanted dinner guest and we are forced to realize that if we choose to get better we must feel quite a bit worse
And this is far more difficult than finding content in our cold misery.
The sum of the former is surely greater in value
Though it comes at the cost of our comfort.
We must trade goosebumps for smiles and tell ourselves it’s worth it
Even though it very well may not be.

Are you anxious, my dear evening? Are you not my closest friend? (Where is your cousin, my memory?) Can you not wait until that one afternoon, when we will pounce upon the horizon, like cats in heat, and tear the sun apart limb from limb? We will leave its sensitive shine to sweat upon pathetic days no more! Yes, the evening is a villain I’m proud to call my friend. Her ways allow much more room in the playground for mischievous  lovers, than those dull afternoons spent thinking about breathing. Where is your cousin, my memory? She has served a type of convulsively appreciative use for my feelings and continues to parade around my daydream swing set. Nonetheless, she has always remained a spectral participant in my life, pregnant with regret, and punctures my comfortableness with the sweetest of stings, leaving a taste with me she knows I’ll never forget.