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Claire Waters May 2013
walk into a bookstore where a poetry open mic is going on. the man previously nursing a lager in the back now has all eyes in the room on, flowin to the beat like drums to a song, this is all he has left that doesn't feel wrong.
"these words are all that matters," he says. " ’cept poetry, liquor, and the duality of man, i confess, these pages store my sanity and reveal my real friends, so i'll keep writing until these calluses have bled."

Lately I’ve been talking to Michael Larson in my head
And yeah, I know it’s a little weird to have a real imaginary friend
But we all need someone to turn to when feelin like we’re burning at the stake
To remind we’re still human and there’s no end; ending’s a mindset you create
There’s not really walls to hit unless you tell yourself there is,
just the narrow hallways in your mind where you lose yourself to negatives
See, you can always bend to be more
but you conceive a break, cause breaking is what you do
when you think you can’t create

and if you spend too much time wondering if you’re a particle or a wave
your thoughts manifest into the mental circles you repave
self fulfilling prophecies are subconscious misbehaviors
ignoring synchronicity in the universe’s behavior,
always waiting there for someone else to come along and save ya
caving in you dig a shallow grave, crawl in, and lay there,
blaming everyone else and yet expecting a savior?
from the wayward pain of exacerbating these anticipated cracks,
you still can’t seem to break, just blister and bounce back.
from this controversy in the name of your unsure authenticity
each flaw you extract from your skin is your own vulnerability
the world is not black and white, flat, or statistical see
just rife with impenetrable culpability
so everyone grows up and grows out with restless mentalities
time and age are isolated perceptions of our static reality,
cause we’re changing and flowing together, and we always will be
the only differences between us all are the ones we want to see
to comfort our dogmas and convictions as we atomize our selves obsessively
what matters are the paths we pursue and the wisdom we seek,
not our genetic abnormalities or the ways that we feel we are weak
when everything has innate duality, there’s no good without the bad
good’s an infallible syllable completely unpaletable til you realize bad
can only be in your heart if you perceive that’s what you have

there’s just your belief that you are either trapped or free
and realizing you want what you always had, eternally
if I’m gonna live this life, I will not sit and wait,
I will skin my knees and bleed and then get back up and create
In public Michael Larson’s hanging in my headphones loving the attention that I pay
Telling me earnestly not to worry, cause everyone is a critiqued critic these days
In burn fetish he tells me, “empathy is the poor man’s *******”
And now Krishnamurti is on my other shoulder repeating once again,
That “being well adjusted to a sick society is completely insane, the end.”
everyone gets nervous on the first dinner date, and everyone craves the safety of a friend who has their back
everyone feels like a literary hack the first time they take a paper to their thoughts and attempt to translate them into rap
we all feel a bit misdirected, and a little bit hated, but collective requires an equalibrium of giving and taking
while these days everyone treats each other as if life’s just about getting your own slice of the cake
and blatantly crazed by the toxic disarray
of our modern society transgressing and yet we just stand by and wait

Michael looked shy on camera as he expressed to me that, “what makes us human
Is how we’re a collection of our mistakes and the reactions that we have”
And what makes us individuals isn’t our lifestyle or to whom we pray
The stratosphere here that stops us from cooking to convection
is just a collection of perfections formed from love within the human condition
the gravity that keeps us from falling, is the art that we make
self actualized individuals, not feeling so lonely or crazed,
because paradoxically, art is also how we all relate.
A M Oct 2018
Equilibrium passes us by again as
We preach the blindly weighted scale.
Light and an abscess to fight was
An eternal human hold, the line, pale,
Drawn in the impenetrable plaster mold

Seen beyond the watery tears of mourning,
Lives a feeling meant to balance.
Yet how much must one feel and how much must
One not, to reach the eternal human heart
On its high-balanced shelf?

Mirrored first among a familiar,
Those cared for never enough,
A pillar of a rigid life in human harmony.
But to recall its blood distinction, A justice without much,
There knows that not all are deserving, of this true care such

To claim the universal right
An infinitely, divinely human fight
Though who alone is this fight fought
But by those agents of nonsense thought:
The oppressor feels no compassion and yet the rebel far too much

To hear the news, be deep in trance,
All things understood greatly
International pains of true compassion
Have no use in the mind so stately
A love instead, is better left, in the personal wastes

I care too little or not enough,
How is it not clear?
It is not truly how much you feel.
It is not truly for who you feel.
It is not truly wherefore you feel.

Equilibrium comes round at last
How is it not clear?
To find our fulcrum in compassion,
To feel just enough,
It is to make us feel better
In our hatred of ourselves.
Jack R Fehlmann Jul 2014
My mood again a steady constant
still low, always low but constant
so I seek the solutions, search for normal
I approach and offer myself over
to those, the better minds, the doctors
they are wise and educated and have magic
in the form of pills that I consume
reporting back the basics, this didn't work
that isn't helping so they raise and lower doses
prescribing cures in pills and always asking questions
writing this and that factual results down
they see errors in my mind and I feel restless
again and again changing their minds
as I consume and return the effectiveness or lack therein
all I ;want is the sky that felt light and tasted fragrant
yet so goes my search for my cure as each is different
seeking that fabled equalibrium, that balance
aiming for the land of sunshine and
the state known once as happiness
again, always where life is
and emotions can be steady,  ups and downs
continuously changing in workable highs and lows
but alas, I am unable, and I continue only to try
the new, the stronger the most documented cure alls
of more pill to be taken with water day or night
forever dosing, hoping and trying to find my life
chasing that notion of what it is to feel alright


by
Jack Fehlmann
2013
Chris Jan 2016
whispering shadows lean in for a hear
a little whimper as down falls a tear
why do people constantly **** on me
are they searching for something more
beyond the green pastures of safety
do they see something i had missed
i feel comfort in myself
that it causes others to seek discomfort
am i so in self tuned that it makes me
seem so out of equalibrium
i dont blame people who are mean to me

a toliet is made to be **** in
a punching bag gets punched
a soccer ball gets kicked
a staircase gets stepped on
a door is made to be closed
if i wasnt so busy opening the door
maybe one day ill know to close it
time to flush the toliet
it feels better to let things go

— The End —