Can't sleep.
Bathroom.
Fill it up.
Bubble it up.
Get in.
Intrusive thought.

*

You'd be surprised.
Used to the purpose of cleaning
And pleasured times.

And I fantasize about suicide.
The sense of quietness and structure,
What most of us ambitions in life.

...

I am from

Moments that felt like holding on to something that is slipping away

I am from Christmas mornings
Heart leaping
A child’s excitement
Pulling my father down the stairs
He is all scattered gray hair
Pointing every which a way
And a soft Scottish accent,
Chuckling,
And my mother is all smiles,
Eyes bright and laughing

But always, the smile is pulled tight
And behind it all,
Pain,
Pain resting upon her
Like an invisible cloak

And I am cross legged on the floor
Eyes bright with the reflection of Christmas lights
Pushing away the too-old-for-my-age knowledge that
One day
One day
my mother is going to break

And I am going to lose her.

i enter the river
later the woods
tour natures suicide spots
snub them for a man made bridge
snub the bridge
    because i find life pretty today
    too pretty to bend deaths ear
                             and suspend

if I told you I died 5 times today,
would you believe me?

now,
in the horizon there,
my passion hangs on
a weak branch
stained of copper.

oh,
so timeless is the upset of ruin...
feeding the crows who leave
their feathers upon me,
making me black...

every single line on my body holds a memory
i’m usually embarrassed
the weird stares i get or the occasional questions from elders who don’t understand
sometimes people will even joke about it
or this one time a girl from my class told everyone i do it for attention
and at one point it might have been for attention, because i wanted someone to notice, to save me from my anguish
i always did have this obsession of being able to turn my mental pain into visible hurt
now i simply try to put it into words
and so when the sun comes out and the heat strokes start i try to cover them up
but at one point it got too hard to hide
and even though i’m better now, i’ll always be marked for life
i’m branded by my nightmares
but the monstrous marks tell a story
i’m alive and i’m full of memories
and even though most are bad, there’s a reason i’m here to show them

i burned out like a fire
can anyone reignite my last spark
i think im turning to ash

Virginia,
bathed in the misty Ouse
overcoat pockets filled with the hard grey stones of life
dark rocks to match the shadows
of the mountain heaped upon her back
until she could not bear the load
so she swam, and did not leave a forwarding address
or bring a towel and sandwiches for a picnic

Breeze bellows,
leaves echo in
quivering psithurism,
dithering like
unbroken smoke,
this approaching omen goads.

Dozing crows
slumbering in rows,
droves of locusts'
silenced drone,
almost comatose in repose;
nighttime overtones
choir of toads'
raspy croaks
answered by alto
of crickets' orchestral strokes.

Gust encroaches;
robed boughs
cloven open,
bring into
scope and focus
me juxtaposed,
suspended apropos.

Although motionless
and petrified in stone,
provoked by zephyr
coaxing to and fro;
swaying pendulous
and no longer frozen,
locus gently thrown.

Death rattle moan
evoked from throat,
reflex can't say no
to rigor rigidly posed,
final sigh in silence,
awoken vocal,
expelled and disposed.

Smote by
morose emotion,
gun loaded then exploded
by neurosis,
now bloated
necrosis decomposes
into gross ochre.

This trophy
and this ode
both an opus to
my inability to cope;
romanced i proposed,
eloped and betrothed to
my own
inappropriate composure.

Pocket full of posies
plucked when luck bestowed
and tears in a cup, a toast;
crying copiously,
tempest runneth overflowed,
eyes swollen and soaked.

Dipped my toes
in the coast
of this ocean's
amorphous folds,
gripped by undertow
holding control of my soul;
swiftly shipwrecked in
shallow shoal,
an old atoll.

On sandy floor,
water burrows roads;
digging, carving, roams
through unmarrowed
silica and sandstone
eroding into a cove.

A host for
opal geode trove,
enclosing a
technicolor rose,
from the depths
a glowing mosaic shone

Unopened lotus floats
on foam
of lapping waves,
a boat;
prone to no
grandiose notion
or motive,
adrift as wind stokes.

I suppose
this only shows
the total corrosion
into which I dove,
the only foes to oppose
are those of burdens, so
only weightless can I atone-
I must let go.