I haven't been writing lately,
Can't get out of this funk.
Not sure what to do to get over this ****.
I've been driving but I can't seem to pass the peak,
I kicked the car in overdrive, but it started to* overheat.
*I took a break and had a seat.
Got angry and started to overthink,
Remembered that it could be all over in a blink.
Realized I haven't been appreciating whats under my feet.

Three nights in a row, you came to me,
And it still was only Wednesday.
I tried to help you each time--
I sang songs of my heart,
But you demanded
An orchestra.
So I failed,
Of course.
"Thanks."

Tissue Paper Snowflakes

like tissue paper snowflakes i
break easily
i
get caught up in notions of things like love
and days like tomorrow
and promises like tattoos dyed into the skin of lovers
stuck in memories like first dates and love notes and make up ***.

like tissue paper snowflakes you
are unique
you
are one of a kind.
in kindergarten they told me no two snowflakes are the same
even though probabilistically speaking
you are almost guaranteed to have a twin.

like tissue paper snowflakes you
want to be cold
you
want to be but don’t have the strength.
you could not support the weight
that is frozen water
that is imperviousness to nonphysical things
like longing and sorrow and elation
and things unlike make up ***.

like tissue paper snowflakes i
am deceptively fragile
i tear
from things that are crushing
like dreams
and lies
and arms wrapped tightly.
i weaken from over use,
i ignite from things that overheat
like cigarettes
and us.

like tissue paper snowflakes we
are from one sheet
we
once bled together
our crooked edges match to form
straight lines.
like tissue paper snowflakes we
found beauty in ordinary roots
we
created texture from flatness
and
complexity from things that were not complex
and
like tissue paper snowflakes
we are weakened only by our own accord.

trust, mine own enemy mine
i trust you less than i love you
and i don't love you much

love, my distant friend
your fingertips ghost my skin
once every couple lifetimes

hate, another's waste of time
i haven't the capacity to give
someone i dislike so much thought

anger, you abusive lover
kiss my knuckles when you bruise them
warm me from the inside

anger, you deserve three stanzas
such a permanent fixture in my life
always there, by my side

anger, warm me from the inside
'til i overheat and explode
winter isn't here but there's cold in my bones

Tube worms hellish creature
Centurion of pitch and isolation
No internal altimeter

Pressured to bake and cook life
Take energy from pressured light
Press and push and valve and close
Entrenched, in line to another world

A planet a dot, a dot a spot
a spot a rock, a rock a dot

Wiggle waggle struggle straggle
Life and death, dream and cot

It is hot down here
In passion of dream
and the brain can easily
Overheat

I am awake at midnight every night picking feathers from the wings of all the angels I have stolen,
I am being unhinged by the minute,
I am let loose, I am livid,
I am the Christ conscious abandoned,
I am losing time and I am losing friends

The ends of the earth are making a home in my garden and the molten flowers are seeping into my veins and will soon make me combust so I need to say what I need to say and make it quick before I run out of time

"We can no longer go on like this"
She is screaming at him and he is hearing nothing besides the rustling of the wind at his window

I am speeding down the highway with three cigarettes smoked one after the other and turning up my radio so loud that God is speaking to me through heaven's  radio waves

WE WILL GET THERE AND WE WILL SUFFER,
WE WILL GET THERE AND WE WILL SUFFER

Sulfur and cyanide and angel dust and complexes,
I am a ******* lunatic and I am being strung out over coffee tables and bathroom stalls,
I am a thread being pulled into hell,
I am unraveling before the ones who came before me and I am giving them hell,
I am finally understanding the difference between letting go and holding too close,
My bones yearn for something stronger than themselves,
I am absolutely destroying myself but I would not want this any other way, I can promise you that

A poet writes about wanting to escape to a world that's less crowded than his head,
A painter paints visions of a world he wishes he could own but will never get the chance to

Bukowski wrote about people finally looking like flowers at last but never was able to see the beauty in himself,
Van Gogh painted flowers that are now in museums but he used that same paint to try to poison himself

I am staying up until the sun comes out because I am no longer comfortable in the daylight

I am not killing myself, but I am suffering

This is a way of coping

This is a way of coping

It is like a ****** of crows flying to a corpse to eat their dinner,
They feast on sadness and heartbreak and they need to get their money's worth while they still can, I get that,
What hurts the most is that it is inevitable that they will come,
Regardless of anything, the crows will come and they will pick apart the bones as if the bones never belonged to anyone or anything before they arrived,
It's a cruel world and I guess things just have to be this way

"You just don't have to be so ******* soft about everything!"
He's screaming at her for the fifth time this week because she's decided that being alone is a hell of a lot scarier than being with someone who hurts you, even if they hurt you a lot

It is not my fault that I am like this,
It is not my fault that I am not hefty enough to hold this weight,
It is not my fault that fires start in my bones and heat my mind up so much that it starts to overheat and stop working,
It is not my fault that I stopped working,
It is not my fault that I cannot forgive myself for the things I did not do

A ****** of crows fly together and create a black cloud of desperation,
It's been a few weeks since I haven't seen any clouds and I've gotten drunk more times than I can count and I've smoked more cigarettes than there are trees,
I'm so sorry but they are gutting me from head to toe, the crows, the crows are eating everything I've made for myself up to this point like it's some kind of ******* waste,
Like everything I've made of myself from then until now, wiped out like it never happened,
Progress completely lost,
All sense of accomplishment gone,
This always happens

I'm sick and tired of telling myself that it isn't okay to tell myself that I love myself,
I'm hanging on here by the skin of my teeth and the tar in my lungs and it's lonely here, it's really, really lonely here

I say sorry a lot, but I'm not sorry about this, this, I'm so ******* sick of this,
I want this to go away,
I want them to go away,
The crows,
I want them to go away

I'm getting through this whether I want to or not, with or without anyone's help, I just have to keep reminding myself that these crows will never pick all of the meat away but they sure as hell will get as much as they can while they still have the chance

I should do the same

My bed has been cold
for far too long.
The empty pillow beside me
seems so wrong
and when I think about your head lying there
I get feelings much too strong.
My emotions well up inside me,
they bubble up and over,
soon I struggle to breathe,
yet I cannot hide under the covers.

You won't be there
waiting to take it all away
you won't be there
to tell me it's okay.
I know I need to deal
but these thoughts feel so real
and I don't think I can cope
with this endless lack of hope.

Yet I must laugh at myself,
for well I know
you are on your way to me
even as we speak.
You would swim the Atlantic I'm sure,
just to see that I don't freeze.
You'd rush to warm these blankets
and do everything to please.

This knowledge makes me smile
and suddenly I see,
these sheets are not so cold
and these hopes are not so dead
and I know that soon your warmth
shall overheat this bed.

tame like a grenade
that's waiting to be dropped,
hold on to the extent
as you are about to erupt.
your release is ready
it had reached it's peak.
Sizzle like a hot rod,
Extreme overheat.

"you don speek my languish"

"I'm learning. Learning takes time so leave it to me."

"I'll wait anoth ur 150 yeers, if you are not fluid it is good see yeah."

"'Goodbye.' You don't speak my language either."

"you don speek my languish."

waiting politely, Tinkerbell glow fading curiously into the overheat overwhelm of city neon and street lights, Soul's glazed eyes of hypnotic intuition begin to close.

"150 yeers. meet me everywhere."

Fading into a geometrically dark centre (dark as in far too bright, similar to when one stares incessantly at anything at all and the peripheral begins to fade into whatever greater colour scheme the senses have meshed into a Rorschach blot you've been asked to interpret), Soul fleets a smile (you feel Soul's smile, as Soul has no real face- Soul has all faces and hence none).

"Goodbye. You will find me when you find yourself."

"You do speak my language."

"I do." Soul whispered back, adding--

"It is you who doesn't."

I am everlasting nothingness
My soul emptied of all purpose
A life without meaning
Heart beating faster hoping to overheat and finally find peace
Hopelessness that begs to be broken
Icy pain pleading to be melted away
Banished by my bitter flame
Raging viciously through my blood
Crashing into everything around me
Lighting my little world aflame
All I cherish scorched beyond recognition
Broken insides as tears crash down like ocean waves
The waters of my soul washing over all inside and out
The sea's raging storm tearing away any layers protecting me
Rain and wind piercing through resolve I never did affirm
Being cleansed of more than just darkness and pain
My humanity threatens to be shaved away
As I roll upon the shore
An island and I am the new budding tree
Reaching hopefully and eagerly for the light of the sky
While anchored to ground that keeps me alive
I must continue to grow, to survive
I wake from this lost lands cursed slumber
A transition within my mind
And as my eyes are once more cast toward this ocean inside my soul
I drive into inner depth a heart crafted by willful waters
My purity is locked further within
Plummeting so far down into ever expanding darkness
Only to discover the most powerful wonders of myself
Forgotten just past the beginning of my time
Treasures of origin now reclaimed
And this is where I find my wings
Sculpted golden, sleek and shining
Formed by the softest flowing but most pressured liquid courage
I won't wait to ascend upon the clouds
Drapped in captivating colors
For my greatest day now closes its eyes
Though it no longer holds domain over who I am
The man who cannot be stopped
As I always have been
Only before I looked through mirrors
Who I was based off of reflections others bounced back
Opinions from minds that could never decipher the cryptic code that formed meNow I reflect the light of the stars I have absorbed
Mixed with a blue flame of determination and desire
A cooled focused new drive
Along with the glisten within my twilight eyes
I am a divine being composed of these new colors
And I will never again be confined
I am the understanding brought through pain
I am new life found by dying
I am peace sought from chaos
I am the God of Hope
The greatest beacon of light
The epitome of beauty
Born and breed from this uniquely never ending nothingness

C.N. / Words written in the sky that is my mind

many we bleed from our mouths,
waterfalls of cherry vitality coating writing canvas,
sinking--melting--within twisted tongues,
and they're sure to ban us.

with graphite--with ink!--juicy wrists beg no mercy,
'gainst the natives with stash minds,
for our pain melts like water over leather,
yet sinks branding upon skeletons.

for we are blessed by God to bestow eulogies for one another,
as one tips from silver seat,
another awakens his place,
with picky gums and robins for teeth.

and how the ache and thirst must be great!
for the explorers must find all 10 fingers 'tween pages,
clad with strawberries and gauze,
and lips chewed off by ages.

and hollow words are gurgled by luscious syrup,
and packages droop 'neath vocabulary scholars,
O back, O bottom, O mind aches thee!
for only thousands to endure the shock collars.

for little Alice would fear to sit with our odor,
as gears and cogs steam--overheat--with vehemention,
and nights--pray tell--pray tell,
are long and arduous drinking lobes with the devil.

for four frays fancy flights!
'til grandfather croaks your retire,
and we blood-let and let leeches sink 'neath tender armor,
and shadows usurp darker.

as we are vampires--but crave the stone light,
and pour magma into our young's bellies,
so they may inherit our plight,
and ring off their tellies.

which noose may I bind?
which hand may I lock?
which tendon should twine?
which ink should I rock?

as we let, t'is nothing but medical,
as our teeth melt from mouths,
and our eyes dismiss with ridicule,
as our wrists are slaughtered,
and minds fluster through obstacles.

our hearts are obvious time bombs,
that rush to supply our cherry,
but when will the stunning twinkle cease to live on?
and be nothing but lemon balm?

O the sea we cross is made of iron--rust--and steel,
and lusts for its named called out,
for if we delve within this eel.
it'll surely be leaving no room for elders to rout.

the drive for honeyed poison excites me,
and the ache of the chew grows more,
at the thought others will see,
spin innards at the drop of the lore.

for we are the ones that wished for nothing more,
but to be charmed by crimson, and keys, and herrings,
and we pray for the pricking ore,

so the world may finally wear the pain as our custom earrings.

She sees him once or twice a week
For services bought and sold
She keeps it all a bit hush-hush
Her friends she hasn't told

He makes her knees go wobbly weak
Her heartbeat gets so fast
She feels her body overheat
He makes her pant  and gasp

They say she's looking good these days
They all are wondering why-
Why the jaunty spring in the step-
Why the sparkling eyes

Then one night with all her friends
She said I'll tell you a thing-
This is Wil, my personal trainer
And this my diamond ring

would you sell your mother for some cash?
watch her getting stripped, misused and harassed?
playing deaf to her calls for help
while greedy men cut her wild hair,
while they dig deep into her soils,
reaching for gold and precious oils
that simply didn’t come for them
but they search all over again,
would you close your eyes when
you meet her desperate stare ?
begging for some help,
praying to be saved ?

day after day
ignorance takes over care
as her once fertile skin
turns gray,
her tears face
draught,
skin wrinkles and fades
the life she gave you once breaks
under the pressure of her overheat,
but why bother?
she’s just a money-making machine.
you take, you greed, you win.

would you sell your mother for some cash?


then why do you sell our nature ?

The question seems to lie in

Wether we are
We are the physical computer drive
Or the transferable background programs

Wether we are
Tied together in networks or an internet
Or wether we are a lone, disconnected monitor

Wether this place
Was created intentionally by an experimenting programmer
Or wether it is just a bug, a byproduct of natural binary

And if we
Have the computing power and memory storage to download the truth
Or if we'd simply overheat our circuitry

The sun went down on a Sunday night
And didn’t come up again,
The clouds above were crimson and bright
And they shed life-giving rain,
The news came on at seven o’clock
In the morning, in the dark,
And said, ‘No sign of the morning sun,
The view from here is stark.’

I bounded up and got out of bed
And I hit the ceiling fan,
My arms and legs and my head were light
So I turned about and ran,
With every step, when I floated up,
I hit my head on the door,
And when I tried to jump, I hovered,
Six feet off the floor.

The news came on for a second time,
A comet had hit the earth,
And halted the rotation of
The planet that gave us birth,
It seemed that one side would overheat
And the people there would roast,
While we would freeze on the dark side,
When the sea iced at the coast.

The temperature dropped down through the floor
And it soon began to snow,
The wife lay huddling up, and said:
‘Now where are we going to go?’
But then the news had come through again
That a second comet hit,
Deep in the Russian tundra, and
The ground had shook with it.

It seems the earth had begun to turn
Once more, from the aftershock,
With everything back to normal then,
Whether it would or not,
But when the sun had come up again
We saw it rise in the west,
The week is reversed from Saturday,
What will they think of next?

David Lewis Paget

I practice origami with the universe.
The corners kiss before their bodies are pressed closer together.
Stars overheat and I, I catch the supernova before it fades like the memory of yesterday's events.

As I did read your pretty words
My pulse it started rushing
I drank them in, slaked my thirst
My own they started gushing

Two like minds each other meet
We got on mighty fine
It made my pooter overheat
I had to make you mine

I got down on bended knee
You said yes my love I'm ready
Let's get married, I agree
With haste and alphabet confetti
                                                        ­      l
And so to the appointed time                 o      v
We gently sighed at every line                             e
The ceremony was divine                                      
Our happiest day online                                           m  
                                                                ­                         e
Now all we need is you and me
No wish to read the rest                               d
Hit me with that punch-line babe                        o
You know you're the best

it's Tuesday afternoon,
101 degrees
my car is about to overheat
police sirens blaring
stuck in a mile of traffic on the north side
I'm late and losing my mind
and then i drive by the smashed pick up truck
tainted red as the blood on the concrete,
the teenage driver getting pulled out of the debris strapped on a stretcher
that could have been my brother
etherized
and all I could think was
what should an atheist do instead of pray?

my religious best friend said that I could just hope for the best
with a smirk on her face
and I wondered why that didn't feel like it would be enough
and praying does
it's the same thing,
just hoping to some higher form above
for strength
for the ultimate matchmaker
to help you find love
never realizing that's the ****
you need to do for yourself
but praying for the ones you can do nothing about
is better than nothing,
sometimes I think faith is better than nothing,
nothing will never be enough
so where does that leave us?

I know I probably chose to be this way
my parents never forced anything upon me
despite the episcopal school I attended until 10th grade
chapel every week
I'd bow my head
clutch my hands
and pretend to pray.

in elementary school
I begged my mom to take me to church
my whole world in his hands
when the pastor came to our class
I was never afraid to sing
I wanted so badly for someone to look out for me
and I can't remember exactly when I stopped believing
as I grew up
you made less sense to me
it was always:
science
evolution
the big bang is my heartbeat
living a life of logic
neither of faith
I remember the kids protesting my 5th grade science teacher
when we learned about the Grand Canyon
"erosion?
but god created the earth in 7 days!"

you can take back my sins, but my demons are here to stay,
I'll burn all of my rosaries, I don't deserve them anyways
oh my God
(capitalized g)
I'm sorry.
maybe if my hands were clean from the start
I wouldn't have wasted so much time
getting them *****

sometimes I feel like clutching crosses for dear life
burning all of my textbooks,
this isn't how we were raised
but I still haven't brought myself
to bring my hands together
even though my soul is ****** for all of eternity
if God loves everyone,
I like to think he might forgive me
blame it on existential brainwashing
fingers crossed there isn't more to all of this
fingers crossed my fingers will never need to cross
that the burnt cross won't burn my fingers
that the boys life will be spared whether it be by you, or a defibrillator
prayer or science
at the end of this, we'll find out if this was all for you,
or if my biology teacher was right about evolution
but until then
I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

My heartbeat drops
-Fitbit flatlines-
Senses overheat,
I plummet and do not resist.

My anxiety is a large fur coat.
Its made of dead things
But it keeps me safe from the elements.
I overheat, most likely because I keep it on too much.
I don't want to risk a sudden cold front.
I don't want to ever be exposed to the elements again.

Gray suited mad man sitting
in an armchair with blue eyed
sight beneath the depth of words
lit his and hers cigarette and releases
the smoke desperately imprisoned from
its birth by mouth by lungs dissolving
in the space of sickly white walls
where it mixing with presence
it passionatly dances in ephemeral
lustfully mediocre air
He said
in the morning I was a corpse
impatiently waiting for time to
breath into me a smear of life
I washed my hands I smoked
I turned on the radio and let
the music flew its way to an end
I had a glass and then another
and another until I thought it
safe to finally put on the mask
of smiles and unchanging
incarcerating compassion that was
supposed to dwell in all of us
She smiled
suspiciosly touching her hair
as if she could not tell whether
she liked him or not
She asked
if this face of yours which is never
to be found in the sketchy mornings
is not in fact your face, then what
do you wear it on? Don’t you suffer
from suffocation
from overheat? Don’t
you want to live as free?
He smiled
raising a glass to his false lips
that taste so much of a sin but not guilt
He said
something so cold does not mind
the sunshine and that which does not
breath the lack of air
I wake up dead and leave the house living
but only to an untrained eye for
hollow can see another hollow
trying to hide itself in deceptive depth
my eyes are the mirror into which you
cannot look for you do not understand
the important unimportance of birds
multiplying each year just to multiply
or of trees that grow and are cut down
no matter the time when woodcutters
step on gentle summerbreeze
you say it is so it is
and others it is but it cannot be
drowning their lives in never changing
reality achieved by praying and LSD
they fear what I have to say
it is not and it must not be
He fell silent
reaching for another cigarette he
realised she was puzzled
She said
but isn’t it you who drink all day
just to forget the scenery of pain?
He smiled
He said
and isn’t it you who give yourself
to all those men to hide before
an unreal reality of nothingness
She shrugged
for he was right that it wasn’t
disarable to drunkenly watch
and name the colours of the rain
Nothing else was said
he paid and they left
afterwards they lied in his bed
he smoking a cigarette
She said
don’t tell me that there was nothing
you have felt for your heart was
racing with your breath
He smiled
thinking
but have you seen my eyes darling
O you poor deceived woman
only they tell the truth hidden in
the hollowest corner of the blue
that lifeless soul cannot be fed
that simple mask to put on in the morning
cannot enliven the dead

every night
i lay on my side
as miniscule tears
leak out the corner of my eye
stinging the skin
they seep down.
it's 3:51 am
and I'm realizing that
my body
is correlating
itself with
your vacant heartbeats.
i think of you
and all that you promised
and wonder if
these promises
remain,
and my body reacts.
i begin to overheat
and get worked up;
my veins jump and
my fingers twitch.
i distract myself
long enough to cool myself down
(to a more appropriate for the mood
frigid temperature)
but just as fast as
a rubber band
snaps back into shape,
you creep back
over the threshold
of my bruised thoughts,
and i begin to heat up
once more
thinking of how
the sun shines out of your ***
and that to me
the stars are
in your eyes.

In summer I always long for Winter.
I want to wrap myself up into an indiscernible shape of scarves and shawls and pretend they aren’t just blankets that I’m wearing.
I want to sit inside while it rains and knit for hours.
I want to cuddle next to that specific man who will let me read and pour me more coffee when he gets up.
I dream of sugar plums and wooly tights.
But in the winter the novelty runs out quick. I get tired of wet socks and dry heated rooms.
In Winter I always long for Summer.
I want grass between my toes while I lay under a tree looking up at the changing negative space between branches.
I want to play in water under the sun with a paddle and a boat, in a current, on the sand as waves brush up to my manicured feet.
But summer looses its appeal as I overheat in the humidity.
In summer I always long for winter.

With the taxing Heat,
The cold-blooded sun,
In my mind’s eye I see our last meet,
Right before it all was done

You had a high potential,
Was unsure of its worth,
Now connection is tangential,
With everything on earth.

Persistent follies, teachless,
Sense & sensibility, notional commodities,
Consistently speechless:
Can’t explain your own philosophies.

And what’s more,
In that wild imagination-
What do you think you’re looking for?
Self-actualization?
Positive disintegration?

You said you want to travel,
You’ll never leave anyway.
You’ll let yourself unravel,
And live from day to day.
It’s so plain to see,
Just how you will regress,
How else could it be?
Living in that excess.
And in the scorching heat
You’ll be left dried out,
I bet you’ll overheat,
Consumed by all that doubt.

Took a walk today
days are hotter.
Gramps belly is bigger,
Cali seems to be stranger.
The weather seems like a killer.
And my crop is being scorched by the overheat of the valley winter.
I think this years going to be a bad one for crops.
Farm shock.

Glass room in a school?
Yes it may look cool
But in winter we freze
In summer we overheat
And there's no cool breeze
'cause the windows open in
when did it begin?
In 2012, well Air con. Would be good
But you can't and if you could
You would
N't.

Males of Dynastes bear two long horns, one on the head, and the other on the pronotum, forming a "plier"; the pronotal horn has reddish setae on its underside. This pronotal horn is absent in females.[3] Some species have an iridescent colouration to their elytra.[4] Certain species of the genus Dynastes also have the ability to change colour.[5] Specific species have been noted to occur with either black or yellowish to khaki green elytra.[5] This variation in colour is due to a spongy layer below the transparent cuticle;[5] this spongy layer is a network of filamentous strands made up of three-dimensional photonic crystals lying parallel to the cuticle surface.[6] When the cuticle is filled with gas this layer can show through, presenting the yellow to khaki green colour, but when filled with fluid the cuticle appears black.[5] This is due to the change in refraction index allowing us to see the difference in colours.[6] This system is known as a hygrochromic effect.[4] Female beetles can change colour but not as completely as males, which is not yet explained as the mechanisms for the colour change is still not completely understood.[5] What is known is that changes in humidity affect the levels of moisture in the cuticle which leads to a change in colour in most cases.[5] Since the change is due to humidity it is a reversible process, however, it has been observed that after multiple colour changes or high stress the beetles will maintain some dark spots on their cuticle.[4] Some hypotheses for why this colour change occurs at all are the ability to blend with surroundings depending on the time of day (black for nighttime and yellow for daytime) to best avoid their main predator, the tropical screech owl (Megascops choliba).[5] Another theory has to do with thermoregulation in the sense that a black beetle heats up faster than yellow and then once they have warmed up theoretically there will be less moisture in the cuticle which leads to changing to a colour which does not heat as quickly so they won't overheat.[5]

A warmth named security wraps over me.
   Don’t let me overheat, I’m sensitive, ya know!
It hugs me close, my heart skips a beat.
    It whispers sweet nothings, promises meant to be broken, lies upon lies, filling me with false hope.
          And yet, deep down, I know it’s right.