you know how the song goes:
a stitch away from making it
and a scar away from falling apart.
holding on gets hard when
the light at the end of the tunnel
goes dark.

my friend told me he doesn’t purposely
befriend actively suicidal people anymore.
so when a 14-year old friend
was hospitalized for an attempt,
he was shocked.
I’m not fourteen
and i don’t go to the hospital for anything,
but when i was fifteen i
asked my mom to start taking me to therapy.
she told me,
sweetie,
you can just talk to me about anything.
so i started writing poetry instead.
but poems can’t diagnose me,
poems can’t prescribe me meds to
fix the chemical catastrophe in my head
poems can’t cure me.
but neither can people.

there was a boy that i used to call sunshine,
but he told me that he would
rather be the moon.

i deleted your number from my contacts
once you stopped using mine.
you don’t keep me up at night.
i’ve stopped losing sleep over you.

i haven’t broken the habit of checking
people’s wrists when they move
because of all the girls i knew in grade school.
i have a friend with the first letter of help
permanently scarred on his stomach.
we’ve never talked about it.
i don’t know if either of us know how to,
or if either of us really want to,
or if either of us really need to.

when my brother was 18, he was convinced
that he wanted to go into psychiatry.
i think the closest we’ve ever been
was when i had a mental break over
orange juice at one thirty in the morning,
watching him play GTA on his Xbox 360.
when my brother was 17, he was convinced
that his future was in professional photography.
i’m 17 and i don’t have a ******* clue.
I’m 17 and i don’t think I’ve ever felt so much
like I’m just constantly drowning.

they say a captain goes down with his ship
and I’ve set myself up for losing all my friends.

she’s got year-round summer skin
and winter has never been my friend.

i sleep seven hours a night
and i wake up exhausted.

my cat has all his claws
and when he crashes through my bedroom
when i’m on the brink of extinction
it leaves me haunted, hearing
breathing and footsteps that aren’t really there.
so i’ll put studs in all my jackets
and wrap myself in blankets.

i wish you were here,
i wish i was there.

the first rated R movie
that i saw when i turned 17
was that one that brought back ryan reynolds,
starring a moody teen with
the best superhero name ever,
a CGI man who acted as her mentor,
a pretty girl like a damsel in distress,
and the bad guy called himself ajax
but his real name was francis.
i cried
a lot.
i’m not sure why, really, but when the credits
started rolling and it was everything that i’d
been waiting for in a movie for the anti-hero
that I’ve been in love with since i was 13,
i sat in those velvet seats and started sobbing.

when i was six, my dad took my
9 year old brother and i
to see ‘revenge of the sith’ when it came out
in 2005.
the scene on mustafar, the volcanic planet,
the downfall of anakin skywalker
stuck with me until i was 12 and rewatched
all six of those old movies,
stuck with me until i was 16 and rewatched
all six of those old movies.
when i was a kid those scenes were scary,
now i see a mimic of Shakespearean tragedy.

i pick things apart until i know that they’ll scar,
but scars have always faded for me.
the first mark that ever lasted for
more than a month was when i
burned myself getting a cake out of the oven.
i remember my brother telling me
that he wouldn’t care about the burn
if i ******* up the cake.
we laughed about it because it was a joke.
i still think about it.

i still check to see if you
watch my Snapchat story.

i rip the hems out of all of my clothing
compulsively. I’m sorry.
i’ll pick up all the balled-up threads from
the carpet eventually.

i keep ticket stubs and scraps of notes
hazardously strewn across my bedroom,
because i’m too sentimental for my own good
but organization has never come naturally.

solar systems are borne from my fingertips.
supernovas power my lungs.
stardust glitters in my veins
(i tell myself these things in order to
keep thinking straight)

hey, look at the moon.
see how she reflects the sun for you?
it’s because she’s got nothing
of her own to give away willingly.
i gave you everything willingly
i spent too many nights
shredding notebook paper into pieces
of white birthday party confetti.

i swallowed six painkillers today.
I’m passive like aggressive,
letting my liver slip into uselessness.

it’s really hard to write poetry about bruises.

There's comfort in discomfort
And love in being lost
There's thinking and there's knowing
There's fire in the frost

I find myself at the end of a short journey
Most everyday, these days, if I'm honest
And I find I don't remember the journey
Soon, I won't remember it happened
Even forgetting the ending to it
A journey to my friend's house or the store
It's all sand that was washed away
By the ever-forming tides in my brain

I wish the tides were more effective, obviously
Wash me away as a whole entity, cleanse the world
They say there's pain in forgetting
Which I guess would explain why I'm like this
I have a friend who used to say they were a cancer
It was when we were younger and I didn't get it
Maybe it was because of their zodiac, I thought
But now I'm older and now I get it

After about a week of deliberation, I see it now
This, in a sense, is a song or a tale
That, if you look closely, debates the ocean
A frightening and dark depth of immeasurability
Would it be a pop culture reference now;
If I were to say I'd see for myself
Or would it simply be a pretentious reiteration
Made in the poorest of tastes?

My best years are behind me, I tell myself always
Thinking "oh, how I've wasted my time upon time"
But I've been telling myself this for my whole life
So when the **** were my best years, really?
I am perhaps the most attuned I have ever been
Rather than a teen singing opera in the streets
I am an adult screaming into metal tubes
Pretending that one day it will make me a living
Stretching my body thin and disappearing under pools
Pools of sweat, blood and tears, in a manner of dramaticness
The sun burns my skin off and the salt in the waves irritates the exposed muscle

That previous line was too long and it didn't fit the scheme
But I think that sort of helps with the deranged nature of the prose I present
I say to myself as I keep writing lines that are almost as long as that one

What the **** is rock music?
People tell me "oh I don't follow what goes on with rock music"
Or they ask me "what kind of rock music do you enjoy?"
But then we're counting Elvis Presley and Les Rallizes Dénudés as the same genre

Rambling on as usual, which presents a conundrum, do I finish the poem yet?
Or do I expose more of the thoughts with no connection?
I guess the connection is these are the things that keep me awake in the dead of night
And these are also the ones that I wake up for
Here's another one: Why do I love?
It comes so quick and stays so long and pains me to say that it churns my stomach
It makes no sense and though it's an impulse I cannot control I wish I had some modicum of understanding
And there's an even longer line, to show how strongly I feel about this!

You know, the reason I switched subject materials (or maybe I didn't even do so)
is partially because I forgot I was writing this, which fits in with the subject to begin with
It comes and goes in waves and threes, triumvirates of pathetic hasty fugazi deliberation
Ill-considered and hazardously conceived, murdered at birth
In a video game, that'd be called "spawn camping", and I for some reason felt the need to point this out

The time I tried killing myself (or succumbing to these waves, if you will)
It was the very waves that prevented me from it
I stood, perched, completely naked but for a pair of underwear, on my desk, looking out my open window
I felt the need to jump and I didn't even think about who might miss me on that day, I could think of no one
But then I kept thinking and things came up, musical concepts or scenes from films or random thoughts about historical figures
And before I knew it, I was sitting.
And though I'd felt it just as strongly as before, I could somehow even procrastinate suicide
Now if that isn't a superpower, I don't know what is!

The waves, they crashed against my open skull and my exposed brain matter
And before I knew it, I faced both the predicament of pebbles and skin
My amygdala and hippocampus were both as flat and smooth as the skin of a newborn
And yet as wrinkly and terrifying as Willem Dafoe in the Lighthouse
And there I was, a trembling infant, wracked with grief, paranoia and the shivers
And there I was still yet, I was Methuselah and I forgot what made me so

If I have to be honest with you, frank and earnest, as vulnerable as I always am...
I forgot why I wrote this by the time it was completed
But that is not the only thing I've lost
I look in the mirror and I see an ocean, formless, unending, ceaseless, hurdling ever toward
Toward, toward, toward
What is your identity, oh great one of the waves?

"No mom, I'm not coming home tonight."

What kind of ****** up world would we live in, if we could just be honest there would be no- fun.

"I'm doing really ****** in school Dad, and I know I'm wasting your money, but I don't really care."

If I could pay someone to teach me about living...well I doubt I'd need a degree to help me get the job so why would I do that?      
                                                     ­                There are shortages in that industry.

When you dance for me I get that special funny feeling like you're my masterpiece performing yourself for everyone around me, but really just for me.

It's like your eyes weren't blue until you looked me in mine, and when I let you take that with you, you put a spin on me that no one could handle if it was me dancing.

As far as I can remember, my mom made empty promises. So sarcasm was my first language.



"Trust me, I make all this up as I go along and sometimes my mouth doesn't move as fast as my river but I'm tryin' now."

For as long as I can remember knowing what you look like, I've wanted to talk to you.
Just to have your voice soothe its way into only my ears for at least one sentence...oh man that would be heavenly.

And one day I saw you trying to speak...to me...but you couldn't remember my name.

It was because I'd never told you my name. You'd heard it from some faraway place. And I hope what they said about me was all good and that it was true. But there's about as much chance for me to get lost as there is for you if we look for each other.

...just listen.
I'll call you soon.



I saw a glove on the ground walking home today. Someone had forgotten about it and left it on the street. It reminded me a lot of you.

"It never would've worked."
That's what you heard yourself saying.
                                               And.

You probably lied to yourself a lot. and I'm happy for you.

"It's ok. We can love each other. Even when people are watching."
he said to the sky. as it wept, deep in thoughts of a better time.

Time is a system.



"We need to go to the mountains and sing to the owls"
"There ain't no owls in the mountains"
"I seen't um!"

We've all been drunk on something or other.

"It’s like the fright I have to say what I want to say is gone but so is the intelligence"

I'm glad it was on you.



Son, there comes a time in every young boys life...when he must be beaten. Mercilessly. With many malicious matters and masses. Until he becomes beautiful.
"...yew ***** *****..."

He was so concerned about becoming a man, he forgot the basic human emotions learned in childhood.

Without you, I would never know what it was like to stop going. And then race myself to the end because I was the only one left with the stamina to finish. the performance.



Time is a system.
"I feel like people will be hurt tonight."

At times you crossed in front of me, at times behind, sometimes in reality, sometimes in my mind.

When time was busy, cleaning the house, performing menial and necessary chores, you were nowhere to be found. Probably out at play in the poppy fields, or the fields of yellow tall grass or the forest by the brook.

And when time was at dinner, entertaining friends, enemies, lovers, and other times...you were nowhere to be found, but you left evidence that you were around. Muddy boots by the front door, toys hazardously placed at the top of the stairwell, careless giggles from down the hallway at obscure thoughts.

And when time was running out...and it was raining...you were right outside. Under an umbrella, with room for one more.




Matris silva , incubo vestri liberi.



We're all waiting for heaven. Looking for that band of angels come to take us away. Hoping they'll notice us with the things we don't do, the way we don't act, the people we don't talk to.
But the angels...
      
                                                ­           they're all around us.
                                                           lookin' for each other.


Swing low, sweet chariot
Comin' for to carry me home.
Swi-i-ing low, sweet chariot
Comin' forto carry me home.

and If you arrive there before me
Comin' for to carry me home.
Tell all my friends that I'm flyin' free
Comin' forto carry them home.

In the incandescence of this empyrean nocturnal rhapsody

A remarkably rare yet, aureate creature appeared before me

From nightfall until daybreak she smoothly crooned an infinite array

Of enamorous symphonies to which I naturally could not abstain



A subtle spark of ardency was cast upon my sauntering pneuma

Inundating me into a catalepsy of which I zestfully fancied

Her charisma suckered me in with ease, illuminating my euphoria

Masquerading my pervasive mourning, cauterizing it to ashes



Each lyric alleviates the suffering that I have so hazardously acquired

Every note speaks to me in a language unknown to the community

The tasteful euphonies that perspire, carefully assuage my heart

I raised not a finger nor did I enunciate a single word or syllable



Her musical prowess completely squandered me with passion

Jauntily I danced to the cadence of the beat scouring my veins

Ceaselessly I could bathe in the essence of her bubbling sound waves

Never shall this finely crafted music pause, It shall remain on replay

I remember,
When I was young
I was a princess-
Not in the conventional sense
However.
I wanted to grow up
And become-
Not royalty-
Especially not
The Queen.
No, what I wanted to be
Was the vicious and coldblooded
Dragon
That can destroy everything
Without worrying
About someone greater
And fiercer coming along
To stop me.

Even if
You just went back 5 years

You would clearly
Be able to observe
That I was a fawn-
Still just a little princess.
Who can say when
This drastic transformation
Transpired?

I must have started sleeping
With my limbs dangling hazardously
Over the edge of the bed
Near the void-
Because I know well enough
Something profane did
Creep up from the darkness
Into me-
And now there is
No
Going back.

I mounted
These vapors
And took to the atmosphere.
I soared
Up
And up
And up
Until my problems
Were no longer my problems
And I ceased loving.

You’d better believe that
I am
Gulping these flames
And these infernos
Are, in fact,
Licking away at my insides.
I am a great serpent  
Borne from something unholy-
Guarding my heart
In a haze of smoke.

There was surely a time
When I was light
And morality
But
Somewhere along the way,
I stopped caring
Took in the dark
And the fire
To fuel my own desires.

But evidently,
I am not the merciless drake
I so anticipated becoming.
Because just the other day
I was terror and dread-
And today
I feel no larger
Than a teacup.

Here I was,
Deluding myself
Into thinking
That I am a fireball
Capable of extinguishing cities.
When lately,
Every night
I contract into myself
Fighting to keep warmth
In my heart
Before I freeze solid again
Because they tell you
To light a fire within yourself
In order to keep warm
But
They never tell you
That sometimes
It can scorch pits into your ribcage.

I sink into the claws of my floor
Rain crawls across my cheeks, scalding from a second before
My bones are unable to support the boulders
That have made a home on my scarred shoulders
It’s funny how the words that drip from your jaw always end up slapping me in the face
The bruises on my brain make me microscopic and you the callous king of this place  
The walls in here are graffitied with gruesome traces of your vicious venom
Urgent, ugly, and unrelenting
Shadows howl and holler, hidden beneath my burning bed
The beaches of barbed wire clutching my floor boards bite my moon skin
My eyes drip with onyx after looking into the ebony gaze of the weary windows, heavy with traces of haunted words, hurled hazardously in my helpless direction
My room mimics the madness moving along the corridors of my consciousness
Darkened, desolate, and destroyed
The dead sunflowers sleeping soundlessly on my pillows smoke cigarettes and my lungs become rough with rubies
thump, THump, THUMP
The sound of your titan steps set my nightmares on fire
My soul shakes when the echoes of your shoes and my fears collide
My blood tastes your fingers teasing my doorknob
And all I can see is the shaky symphony of my staggered breathing.

When problems arise in my life
i tend to boot my best mate
and make poetry my best friend
cuz' when the size of my strife
is this big..
i find letting a sole piece of paper
Carry such a boulder
works much better

so recently
i've tried to let paper carry everything
and recently
Mr. Paper has dropped a lot of heavy things
because paper is tear-able
water soluble
burnable
breakable
and a list of other things
that make it absolutely terrible
for carrying physical
objects not summed up in grammatically
and emotionally
ordered sentences
or words hap-hazardously
strewn against a milky white canvas

Paper really is only good for catching
the thoughts that are weighing
your head off to one side
so they spill out of your ears
   it gives you some pride
in your heavy ****** up thoughts
and your slightly lighter
but still ****** up head
by laying the weight out in front of your eyes
and not behind them

But the words don't just fall out
of ears
and onto paper
coated with ink
and stick like good emotions should

no

if they're too heavy they'll rip right though
and then you only have a gaping hole to try and make sense of
try making them run behind your eyelids
have them lose some weight

i know the pain is unimaginable
heavy feet stomping on your nerve endings
that exist right behind your eyes

makes your stomach hurt doesn't it?
makes you cry, makes you scream?
it's worth it
i promise you just hold my hand
and allow these thoughts to lose weight
running on your soul
ironically shaped like a treadmill

you'll know they're ready to leave
when your heavy head sulks
over a blank page
and they spill out of your ears
and leave you light as a feather
to think and breathe easy
again

and you're left with a beautiful organization
of ****** up
nearly obese
thoughts and feeling
caught beautifully onto a piece of paper
and the most beautiful thing to you
is that those thoughts are there
and you are here

trust me
i wish the words just fell out
i do
but the words don't just fall out
until they're ready to

I half-hazardously hold onto
The soft edges of my comforter
It lining me from the chill
Cold ridged fingers of loneliness
Gently caress my shoulders
Pulling me into an endless way of thinking
My warmth shrugging her off
How dare she lay her hands on me
And I flee to a new place of darkness
Ware I dream of warm hands
Sliding down my back
Pulling me in
She appears, sliding in-between us
Her coldness wakes me from my day dream
She always seems to find me
I mean us?
Alone
Cold
Alone…
Leave me alone in loneliness
her hands always finding me

Flailing about hap hazardously, I writhe as I suffocate. I was swimming in my own pond until I was plucked from it. Now I am high and dry in an emotional waste land. A world where I do not know which direction the current is flowing. I cannot get my bearings so I am drying out and withering as I struggle to breathe. Flopping about I flounder as I work hard to get back into my emotional pond where it is nice and safe.