I'm filled up to the brim again.
Mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually
although they may end that way,
these things have not felt like an ally to me.
For as long as I've been awake, they cause a flurry
of mental puking, physical fatigue, emotional suicide,
and spiritual confusion.
It's one of those nights where sleeping
would be as pointless as waking up.
True, I could pass the time by going for a walk.
but it would just end with me
sitting next to the road saying, "Just a few steps.
It shouldn't hurt for long..."
I can attempt to explain everything
but I simply grow dizzier and my stomach twists
When I kissed you again,
with a year and a half of not speaking behind us,
My lungs simply shut and my heart sank into my stomach.
It was a long day, but it was the best day I've had in a long time.
I'm sure I know you.
You always seemed a lot like me.
We both had out fears.
It felt like it was you and I against the world
But now it feels like you're a part of the world
Yes it does bother me, But I can't tell you how to live your life.
And if they ask, just tell your friends,
"He's an over-thinking, depressed, **** who's losing everything he was hoping he would still have."
Knowing that it's you is different.
It shouldn't bother me as much as it does.
You shouldn't worry about me, you shouldn't be sorry either
I'll just save the words for when you come down.
Go out with your friends, it is Friday after all.
It took everything I had to keep from screaming.
But then they would know for sure.
I'd rather have a true reason to be depressed
rather than just saying "I don't know" when someone asks
I'm not sure if the spiders are keeping me awake
or it's the lack of an "off" button on my mind.
I can't remember exactly what I dreamed of
but I can tell that it was a nightmare.

Sorry I can tell I got off track there
If no one is going to help, just give me enough to numb me
for the rest of summer

Benevolent, blurred and undefined:
cocooned within eloquent dispositions
linen nightmares
threaded fingertips

escape to dizzier stars
tightened, suspended,

a constellation of misplaced stars
burrowing for warmer skin,
slack.

I was put on this merry go round. I did not coose to take this ride. Now we are spinning. Faster. The World is spinning and I am still. The kids push harder and the world whizzes over my shoulder. Shouts of joy and laughter. A boy is crying and clinging the bars. Faster. Spinning spinnning out of sight. The boy cries louder. I want to get off, but the world is dizzier and dizzier the louder he cries. Spinning. Life is twisting. I want to get off. I didn't ask for the ride. I desperately want to let go of the bars and jump into that swirl of the world. I want solid ground. I will jump. My focus fades as quick as the flashes of the world around me. Spinning. Now I'm dizzy. So dizzy and the spinning is... I want to get off. I am going to jump. I brace myself but the boy is crying. So much crying. Why won't they STOP? And I just want to jump off the spinning circle but he just keeps crying and they are laughing. I want to get off but I can't stop crying. The world is spinning and I can't even move.

Oh! How like you, I long to be a singing lark
Who among the fleecy clouds like a tiny speck
Remains hidden, drowning the air with music sweet
Rising higher and darting up with movements slick

In our ears, falls your song like peals of chiming bells
In clear, crystalline notes on this radiant day so bright
Why do you stay unseen in the far fringes of heaven?
Oh! Come out from the veils that cover you from our sight!

 Are you warbling of love in inextricable lays
Or chanting hymns to the God of greater heights
Diving up and down like a mysterious sprite
Are you trilling of the charms of enchanting sights

Soaring and swaying like a flitting dot of light
You ascend higher and higher to dizzier heights
I guess your wings brush against the sailing clouds
As you reel round and round in ecstatic flights

Have you bade farewell to the verdant groves beneath
Have you flown for good from your woody nest?
Why do you dwell in the heights, solitary and alone?
Have you made the firmament your haven of rest?

Hovering over unseen, you pour out melodies sweet
That fills our gloomy hearts with euphoric delight
Sweeping away from weary heads all sullen thoughts
And flaming our souls as ever blazing beacons of light!

spinning around and around
getting dizzier every step
don't know up from down
it's all just a blur

marshmallow clouds
float in a caramel sky
as lemon drops fall
into a chocolate river

nothing is as it seems
reality drifts away
as fantasy kicks in
perhaps to provide safety

safety from emotions
that whirl around the head
all seem to be morphing
into one big ball of chaos

the chaos leads to
tuning everything out
so thus she creates
her own little world

they are called brain waves because my thoughts are made of oceans and my mind is crashing in on itself
i'm a flower planted into the soil of a sad earth, who prays to be in the night sky but i'm rooted too deep to the ground
now i'm the moon and i'm lighting your face, as you kiss her under a tree
the leaves fall for you, a season named after the very action

now i'm presenting the carnival in my bloodstream
here are my carousels
"what are you doing?" he asks
"i am spinning until time rewinds and brings you back to me" i reply
"i am so **** dizzy i could die"
life wouldn't grace me with such a luxury
i'll keep spinning til my thoughts aren't even able to form

i am stars, you are stars, we are destined to be
it's written in the stars

but i will never form a constellation

i swear i hear him whispering against my hips when i am laying upside down and i don't know which makes me dizzier

Spacetime
underneath a veil of perfect midnight
velvet, you kissed me,
had me thinking I’d lost my mind
growing dizzier, dizzier, even dizzier,
I felt myself spinning out somewhere
lost in spacetime

I was born 6 lbs. 9 oz. with blond hair and blue eyes.
I was also born gay
Soon after my uneventful birth
I was given the name Ember Hines,
but this wasn't the only name I would be called.
As I got older,
and came to terms with my sexuality ,
people started replacing Ember with ****** or *****.
Constantly ridiculing me for something I had no control over.
I am anorexic.
And you would think people would ridicule me for this instead of me being gay.
Surely they would see how unhealthy it was
and see that in comparison liking girls was no big deal.
No, they applauded me complementing my toothpick wrists
and porcelain bones peeking through my too thin skin.
How could I not fall in love with my illness?
Every calorie I counted
and every pound I dropped made me feel prettier.
Every meal I skipped,
every sip I didn't take,
got me closer to perfect. 
Every day that I felt fainter  
was a day that I could celebrate being thin,
And forget that I was gay.
Halfway through my freshman year
I had come out, recovered, and collected my being once more,
but
By that same summer I relapsed.
Riddled with anxiety and pain, realizing I may not be the gender I was born as, being home alone for days on end,
I sought after an old friend who brought me comfort even in my own bruised skin,
anorexia.
Everyday I felt dizzier,
was a day my mind couldn't  register the gay thoughts.
Instead of spending time with my "boyfriend" or friends, I spent hours googling how many calories are in a stick of gum and how many calories you burn chewing that gum for an hour. It burns 11 calories while the gum is only 10.
-1
I became so obsessed with that negative number, because something in my mind had changed.
Positive became negative.
Being gay stayed in the back of my mind   And as the number on the scale took its place in my focus
Anything I gained soon became guilty cries
Anything I lost became a celebratory glass of water.
And I got lost in the victory, because who doesn't like to win?
In between my nonexistent meals I watched anorexia documentaries like church sermons.
I wasn't supposed to go to church anyways, I liked girls
I watched them over and over
Not deterred by how unhealthy these people were,
but entranced by how their bodies  were so sharp and how they seemed so frail.
How each of their pale figures were slim enough to wrap an arm around
In my time at private school I knew what loneliness felt like.
I was the poorest and
Weirdest.
I was the only one without a dad.
So I got bullied, by middle school I had thought about killing myself
In 8th grade things looked up
But when I looked down,
I saw a chubby body destined to be with another girl.
I never forgot how alone I felt
Now I feel that feeling in my stomach
Stomach acid accompanied by small morsels of low calorie foods.
Small body shaking from the cold of emptiness.
A lot of times anorexia has a nasty side effect of depression.
In most cases one causes the other
You feel depressed and not good enough so you starve yourself to feel better
Then comes the brief happiness of accomplishment
Then tumbling fall of
"What have I done to myself?"
So now I ask you, would you spend your days counting your calories just to see your bones?
Would you starve yourself to forget you were gay?
Would you lose yourself to be perfect?

LOVE

A word made up to bring pain

A dizzier to create suffering

Why do we love only to be left behind

Why do I fear to love

Does love know it hurts

Can love bring happiness

Have I entombed myself in a invisible bird cage, where there is no exit, no freedom

I watch my fragile life from a distance, knowing it will dissolve into dust

I still dream of places I once explored, where the sun never sets and the darkness never comes

My mind so strong, like iron horse men advancing into battle, knowing there is no return

                                                                                LARRY STUART 09

you felt like a new texture, a fabric i'd never slipped through before,
but darling,
you and i are merely old habits gussied up in
tulle and a paper mache artifice - ghoul masquerading as prima ballerina
fouette for me baby, twirl me dizzier than a whirling dervish
and flounce me on my head to spin out over this choreographed failure.

i've shoveled so much chocolate in my mouth-hole this weekend
i think i'm rotting from the inside out,
made of only sugar blisters and quicksand sores
that are bursting new caverns to life
crafting a base relief depiction of my longing into my throat,
how deliciously destructive!

i'm loony-eyed swooning over this 90-watt moon replica
and these reflector paint stars!
oh, i think i'll trade the entire night sky for this masterpiece
and a macrame bandage for my chest,
much more utilitarian than the atmosphere i drown in these days.

my reckless howling and witchcrafting whimsy
have loosed my lungs from their cage,
wheezing out an incantation into the far-reaching wind,
Everest is ablaze under my spell
sobbing it's ice into the earth and
melting it's bones to ash in my palms.

some men just want to watch the world burn,
i, however, merely want to reconstruct it
from the bottom, up
shoveling all of its innards to the surface
and making the unseen
known.

We were on a roof, dancing, twirling, and getting so close to the edge a slight error in movement would send
us plummeting to the sand a hundred feet below.
I held his hand and we progressed like a current of illuminated pearls bouncing on a trampoline.
An old man sat against the building and stared off into the distance.
He reminded me of my great grandfather who had passed.
Only this old man wasn’t smiling, and I didn’t love him or miss him.
He began glaring at us like he wanted to rip our hands apart and split the energy we created within one another.
I pulled away from the boy and left him standing there.
He froze
when I let go of him,
turned black and white,
and became a motionless statue.
I knew if I lost sight of him for too long he would disappear, but I felt compelled to comfort the old man.
I went and sat next to him and asked what was wrong.
“Just need to find a purpose here, before I’m gone.” He grumbled, pulling a cigar from his front shirt pocket. “You got a light?”
I lit him a match, and asked him if he cared to dance.
“These legs don’t work like they used to. I’m not sure if I want my end just yet.”
I promised I wouldn’t let him fall.
“Just trust me. This is my dream. I won’t let you disappear. I want to be here as much as you do”

He hesitated, but slowly arose. I placed his wrinkled hands in mine, taking one last glance at the boy I left a statue. He dissipated into the air, his body blowing away like dust.

"You didn’t have to lose concentration on him, I’m not even supposed to be part of this dream." The old man felt guilty,
he knew I felt bad for him,
but I couldn’t help it.
"It’s alright, just tell me what you want to be. I won’t let go of you."
He told me he wanted to be 30 again, with silky black hair, a smooth forehead, a white suit, and a soft face. Everything else was up to me.
The cigar fell from his hand as he transformed into either his own fantasy, or one I created for him.
I cannot say for certain who decided what he would look like.
Perhaps he wasn’t just part of my dream, perhaps we were part of each others.
We started to spin in circles and we couldn’t stop.
    Dizzy,
        full of light, and effortlessly,
                we spun- my right hand in his right hand,
                      his left hand in my left hand.
I can’t even put into words the joy that pulsed through me the dizzier we became, tears growing in our eyes from the wind we created.
We spun so rapidly the roof began to drop from our feet, or else we were starting to fly. I lost sight of the building, I lost sight of the shackled walls, and they began to fade.
I knew something else had to change or else I would wake up and lose the old man forever.
He would die.
I knew he still thought we were dancing on the roof, so I had to convince him to jump off the edge with me.
"Are you crazy?" he sang,
at least it sounded like a song,
his voice was velvet chords.
"Yes!" I screamed and pulled him higher and higher and over the edge. His eyes clasped shut and he started to panic.
"Please, please look at me I don’t want to wake up!" I yelled shaking my arms as he became limp.

We fell.
We fell into warm thick water the color of pink cotton candy.
We were underwater when I remembered I could breath there without dying.
It was too late.
I was concentrating too much
   on the water,
     on the warmth,
          on the light hitting it’s surface.
He dissolved, and I had nothing else to hold on to. I had no choice but to wake up. Losing him forever.

The delusions have begun
Random thoughts, day dreams
Every word she spoke
has been etched in my mind,
she commanding her presence
in every thought, every action.
Her voice in my head
Reverberating in my ears
even when she is gone.
Nights have become longer
And the days dizzier.
Nothing interests me, except her thought
She has become the source
of my passion, motivation and creativity.
Its her thought which fuels my actions
I feel so helpless, so captivated
I close my eyes and I see her
Its getting hard with every passing day.
Its like pleasure has disguised itself as pain
If this is love, it is too much for me.
But does she feel the same?
This thought leaves a chill in my bones
Every time she passes by the hallway,
avoiding to look into my eyes.
I know she is the ONE for me.
But this thought appalls me
'Am I the ONE for her'
I wish I am.
I just wish.

there is ice cream in your hair again, it's strawberry like last summer and pink like broken plastic
there was a pretty boy on 38th street, he made me laugh because i used to think i could only love a six-petaled rose or a green garbage truck. but there he was & i think i might grow old
you hate when i complain, don't you, but that's okay because she'll always kind of make me want to die, or move to venice. either way i wouldn't get to see you again & i guess that's supposed to be sad.

hey isaac, it's good to have you back. i think we both changed a lot, you're a little dizzier now and im a lot less purple. i still can't give you my address because they repainted the old house. isaac, it's such an ugly shade of (beige?) now- it makes me want to forget the last four years. they cut down the juniper trees, too, i saw the dead flowers and i didn't cry
i don't think ill ever grow out of the shower or the floorboards. ill sit here forever, waiting for cement blocks & burning hair & suffocation

Someone once told me
That there was a body found in that river.
The river down the hill
from my home.
They told me it belonged to
a black boy
and was put there by
White men.
They told me that they
Beat him
and
Ripped him
and
Shot him
and
Choked him
and
Drowned him
and
Murdered him
before they were finished.

And as he told me this,
I felt a lump in my throat
and I realized how dizzy I was.
The lump got larger
until it turned into
Searing pain,
And I got dizzier until
My vision went blurry.
My entire body ached. . . .
Before my vision went completely and I'd fall,
I looked down
and saw my blood
And realized the boy
Was me.

And what of ghosts haunting ghosts?
I see her dancing when I close my eyes
She twirls to the thrum of violins playing themselves
Spinning, twirling
Until the bones peek through her feet
And her skirt has beaten itself to tatters

I dreamt her as a child
And I wonder at that feat
I saw the future then, when now
I see nothing at all
Just the world spinning beyond my eyes, dizzier for my life
Twirling, endless
The music is endless
I am not.

I remember when she finally stumbles
Her ribs, her collarbones glisten pale in the lights
And the music tries again to drag her to her feet
But she is beyond its reach

Her corpse, cradled in Death's arms,
knows peace
I dreamt this, a child
The past living in circles
A prophecy, almost
That ghosts will come for ghosts
And that only corpses are beyond the music's reach.

And every touch makes me weaker,

every cigarette makes me dizzier

and every breath, it feels like my last.

Oh, dear love

I’m begging you to stop this uncertainty

just take my whole **** soul,


but please make it fast

when you die in your head
you only think about the things you once said
not
the things you are saying not the things you are doing
not the way you are being not the things you are seeing
it is about the old days on rewind
chapters folding unfolding refolding
always on your mind
always on your mind
but you lost it long ago
so why is there an ache where there used to be thought
why is there an ache where there is supposed to be no feeling at all
why is it light and heavy all at once
foggy light still clear enough to blind you with
and you thought you were staring at a savior
but you were staring at a thing that would prolong your longing
to go back to the old days
this time you're blind this time you're dizzier
this time you don't know any better
but you can remember that you once did.
isn't it weird to make a mistake you used to know to avoid
is it a mistake if it's intentional
is it a mistake if it's intentional
is it a mistake if it's intentional

like an insomnia this blood thirsty demon
controlling my urges
the pulse rages the want surges
reality falls off the edges
and the earth spins round making me dizzier
addicted to so many substances and abuses
right round if I ever get
to that corner and turn
then I will be
I swear
a good human

there’s a strange dance with the past:
blurred visions.
if only i could’ve held on a little longer.
swinging back and forth, faster and dizzier, my sunken eyes can’t erase this hazy torture.