1.Ruined ／ Wasted
2.Long Night
The day I learned you tried to kill yourself again,
my stomach
shriveled up
like a dead fly left out in the sun.
It hurt so much to realize that I have no say,
that I could never save you. But I guess it was always that way
and to think otherwise is selfishness.
Like how when people die and
everyone makes it about themselves
Yeah, Pity me for all your pain.
The pain I could never understand
despite my
I was the last person
to talk to her pleas.
I could never shake you out of it,
like so much rattling of your cage
when you just swallowed the key. And no finger of mine can reach
back in your throat and take it out.
It's not enough, it never was. No words can make things alright
again. No choir of angels, No golden rays. No one to see you
through these dark alleyways. Maybe death's like the ocean- and
just like the ocean, we just return to the shifting tides.
If I could only
breathe you in,
o try to keep you close
You won't ever know
you were all I could
think about
when I was fucking
the last girl I slept with.
This can't be fixed through
long talks and late nights.
I need to run away
and cut off the pieces
of you that can't be
diluted through my
piss that's laced with cheap
whiskey and lack of sleep.
3.King of Tricks
Sometimes I question my ability to write, think, act, or do.
Either way I just want to go back
to not thinking of you and moving on
like a breeze that lifts a leaf off its tree
But who's this me？
This mess of bones and blood that just won't stop knocking on
the door of misery,
just to act all frustrated when he answers.
Another poet party crasher, a mess of so much wasted breath and
ugly mistakes.
Only a footprint left on the dirt of the world.
We all argue, We're trying our best!
In which case, how pathetic
our greatest attempts must be against such trials,
indeed innumerable.
But maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way.
That this puzzle (if even a puzzle) is not meant to be solved,
but instead observed.
Like the fog driven ships from the docks or the autumn trees as
they undress in preparation for their slumber in icy beds.
And how their scarves and waistcoats bat about in the breeze
All quiet now.
Silent, yet not seething,
at once simple and deceiving.
Because a reflection is a conception is not real,
a shadow of a puppet on the walls of the mind.
Take down the shade but don't turn out the light.
Undress, undress for me and bare your body
so the light and the shadows may hit just right.
I wish to be contained in you
as we are contained and consumed in night.
I'm only a cord of wood waiting to be spent in the blossoming
light that crawls into the cool air cutting through a fevered
haze
4.The Buried Seat
I find myself followed by the unassailable specter of
depression：
a mournful black dog that sits beside me always, staring.
And like having a scarf wrapped too tight about my throat, my
wrists bound behind my back I lay in thralldom.
To be tossed into a river, gripped by the current and choking
for want of air (and movement, and mirth).
I lay thus entombed
in sheets
of fabric
and coral, ever
wondering when
my bonds shall
be cut loose.
Be a bridge
unto my weeping
so I can cross
over this valley
without being snared
by the machinations
of my mind
and weary heart. For a maiden sits upon my chest and I know not
how to move her.
5.Blood Tongue
6.Disease Artist
Years pass notes fade and fall away. Days long erased
disease artist's played you to waste. Listen and focus on old
song forgotten. Teeth-rotting memory of a mouth-breather
singing. B-side insecurities and sweating anxiously. Words once
preferred now just empty space between lines. Lack of strength
dictates my time. Wasting and wasted, waking to nothing. Pulling
on my heartstrings playing through my mind. Fingertips are
bleeding voice is shouting out, Death's sweating black-cloud
raindrops down on me. Chest is feather light mind's starting
to lose. Instruments of time make the final move. Disease
artist's played you to waste long erased. Magic tones
crackling ancient twenty-three-year-old bones. Ghost muscle
aching, pavement fitness failed weakens hopes. Drunk off the
drinking that just spills out of my mouth and down to the floor.
Stained carpet caked with every last stolen cigarette smoked
when I'm bored.
7.End All Suffering
A walk through my head brings all sorts of memories. The lies
that I tell myself so I maintain a sense of identity in spite of
its irrationality. A cell is born in time and splits in two. My
mind wanders and wraps in on itself.
Illusion, illusion, fount of all fiction. The outer world
collapses and shatters into eternity.
Angel forms and rings orbit around each other to sing in distant
fever songs. A somber portrayal, the shapes that shift all back
and forth and replace me in my mind, cast their shadows on the
water and rise and fall like the barrier of my breath as the
world bears down on my chest. (Refracted through clasped hands,
tumbling back into void. A filter through which I speak vedantic
tongues. Am I not simply an array of patterns with grids of
bodies in empty space biting at my heels like the ghost of the
flame of god？)
Unrest made manifest like ancient threads borne of a barren
loom, grim chance and shaky hands to tease knots from loose
ends.
It drips down upon my memory. Old passages of time forgotten but
yet remaining. Locked away deep within the varnished hull of my
chest. Lurking behind every breath or just sitting, asleep and
permeating my mind with restless waves of dreams, collapsing
into puddles, bearing my reflection in their ripples like the
answer to a riddle I've since forgotten.
8.Blame ＆ Aging
9.Appear, Disappear
An attempt at giving up
losing every strategically placed memory
that I'd swear I'd forgotten. Considering distance considering
the chore of an empty room. More space to keep clean than
before.
Like the water glass before me
filled with water that tastes a little muddy
like it's unsure of what it really is
Refilled multiple times with uncertainty
so full that it spills out over the top and ruins every single
moment.
Settling dust becomes my body. Outline appearing, despite my
disappearing interest for anything at all. Remembering
reflections of myself in puddles where I seemed more real than I
ever have before.
Life doesn't feel real anymore.
A cloud of dust resembling what once had seemed to be something.
A glass of water with no water is just a glass you wish you'd
filled.
10.Slow Death
It's a slow death waking off the road. Endless highway lines
pass the time.
You only think about it when you're back home.
Never going back. Never turn around.
What's in front of the headlights is fidelity. You only think
about it when you're back home.
Lovesick for a memory
our city still holds. Our city
holds a dead end road.
People that you never see without confronting.
People without reason words with no concession.
No.
Losing sleep stationary, still. Sweating it out over nothing.
You are stuck on some shit that just won't come unstuck.
You can't think of it to make sense of it. Struggling to focus.
Don't get stuck on this.
Losing what we had.
Living what we lost.
Breathing empty words.
Leaving restless nights back home.
11.Tremors
It's all so subtle, still so subtle, the way that storm clouds
gather around me.
At first sight, the sun still mutters, so softly mutters through
the screen doors.
Now the hour of growth and death
is upon my spoiled
and rotting body beset by electric shocks rattling through my
nerves
Muscles that sit as weak as falling rain
And my joints they're snagged by snares
and snap back like rubber bands and rolling tide
Today I don't feel like doing much except
sit inside maybe waste my time
unsure of where I'm going
or if the direction even matters
I feel the beginning tingling of weight on my chest
the prelude to smothering anxiety to cut through the boredom
but there's work to be done so much work to be done
I can't move
I can't even sit up in my bed anymore
Every day I have visions of myself dying the next
a collapsing old man
An impatient future that's beckoning me
towards wheelchairs and hospital beds
Twenty-one and always aching
I still don't know what's wrong with me
Weakening, staggering, trembling
I can't expect you to understand
12.Pain Is Not the Cleanser
13.Haunting the Ghost
Pale skin fading away underneath midnight-blue sky.
Your dress with flowers blending in with the trees grass
beneath a hopeful gesture. Smoke from your lips making me sweat.
You're disappearing with the light panic sets in. An image
still exists beneath the veil of the night, barely focused.
Your face is familiar,
but is it only because I think about it all the time
the sun burns bright the image in my head？
Or do I really see your face, just pale
and blended and faded, for what it really is？
It only looks how the light wants it to look. You've become a
ghost. You haunted me, now I'm haunting you. Holding on to every
word you said and every look you gave, but still never enough.
Skin like an atlas. Read every page. Followed every map. Coming
close to you was like coming close to the truth. Lost myself
inside myself, but I can't stop looking for you.
Broken mirror
inside my head reflects
hallway photographs
of you in a white dress.
Your body of
terribly beautiful memories
that shape of our history. (x2)
You had better reasons to be afraid than I ever did.
The way you look at me. Exhale the words you breathe. You don't
say it enough. Just say it out loud.
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