Visions of mystics that I surely didn't see,
But genuine was the mother of an ancient love—
Funny to think of it all marred in equal parts spiritualism and consumerist *******,
And all of them ignorant to the Kansas City memories they conjure.

It was 7:26 and there wasn't a **** thing better to do than just give up on the day and listen to Charlie Parker.

It was 7:26 and I was feeling sick of how solitary I could feel in early winter, with no one to keep me warm.

It was 7:26 and I wasn't wearing my best sweater.

It was 7:26 and I hadn't taken my migraine medication, but I'm sure that's fine, everything's fine, everything's dark and the music is getting quiet.

It was 7:26 and I was having the hardest time sorting through my sins while that good saxophone sounded like bright light shining through my disappointment.

It was 8:30 on the dot when I saw your face in real time for the first time in ages and I had not a clue how to react...

So I let Ginsberg do the talking.

32,000 feet above the lot of you and examining the strands of cloud, looking down and wondering just how safe I could be.

When can you start to discount coincidence as no such act of random encounter,

Instead start to look at fate and decide that this is a risk that needs taking...
///
Cutting through the grounds of sacred legislation and mystic men in Brooks Brothers suits,

So far from Hollywood, but matching 1929 *** appeal and romanticized images of gilded ghosts of America.

How do you keep all these agendas upon the people who claim to be the freest on Earth?

You making your living on collective barriers—

Has never stopped me from taking to the skies and leaving my confusion in the clouds,

All my worries absorbed by the cold cotton ***** I have no option but to soar through.

Pushing through my mind
In the form of swirling stigma,
My life of such defined shape
Is slowly losing form.

My world of pain
Is hurting far more
And I don't give my time
To hypothesize
How to turn this all around.

I'm ******* myself,
But this world requires
A rough exterior to survive.

There's absolute sorrow...
The purest collapse in reason
Locked deep in my cathedral.

/FORESIGHT.

I drove down a road
Paved with asphalt as thick
As all my good intentions.

I swerved right into the traffic.

Death felt like a warm embrace
Riding the coattails of your words.

So devious now to think of you
With that halo.

/DIAMOND.

But that's all abstraction
From the roots of my mind,
Cracking like fire
Seconds from meeting its fate
On the end of the extinguisher.

And that's how I hope to vanish
From this Earth...
So bright and then nothing,
Shattering any illusion of my worth...
I'm just another diamond
Held under your sledgehammer.

/GAMBLER.

Pour another shot of your venom
Down my ******* throat.

I love how bitter
You are at your core.

I'm begging for those eyes
To turn into mirrors
As they take the last of my life
With that last cherry kiss.

My charity is death,
My donation isn't evident.

Spin that wheel again for me
With my soul on red
And yours on black,
And see if my motif of lucking out
Can recur so flawlessly once more.

On the Day of the Dead
I felt remnants of my soul
Make their way back to me.

This hurts with tremendous magnitude.

I considered you irreplaceable
While you were turning the cogs
To push me aside.

I've been gone ever since.

I'm spiraling into the edges
Of where depression used to lie,
And I see clearly how the guilt
Has taken its place.

I'm sad all the same.

I guess I cannot blame you at all.

I only wish that you had loved me
Like I was loving you.

I wanted to build a future
With blueprints
That looked like you.

I wasn't thinking about the benefit
Of only investing in me.

Don't say I'm not the pinnacle of humanity
When I know all too well
The full spectrum of emotions
That I must endure daily.

This isn't how I was expecting
To begin my November
But I guess that's how it was prophesied.

Don't we all feel the cold now?

Isn't the severity setting in yet,
Or is that only for me?

You dismantled our plans,
Not God,
Not Fate.

How can we lie to ourselves now?

Why am I so below you?

I'm asking the questions
That I already have the answer to,
I just can't bear the truth
To take hold of my mind.

I gazed upon the sky today
And that hint of gray
Looked like all the beauty
The Earth arrives at
When it needs to be purified,
And all the while
I knew I could no longer ignore
The Hell I was storing inside me...

Maybe Milton was on to something,
Or maybe my understanding of paradise
Is getting twisted,
And only now is becoming clear.

My foliage is burning
And that seems to be
The only climate
That I can survive in.

I have to take hold
And forget that you exist
If there is to be a world
In which I can strive in.

You broke me with a single blow.

I never thought it would puncture
Quite this deep.

You have your demagogic president-elect,
Dreaming in shades of Mussolini
And will sit in his downtown skyscraper and laugh that all the populists
Were not in on the joke,
And thus could not be in on the punchline.

The progressives hotboxed the shower the night we handed the country to Trump.
Pennsylvania, the center of the cataclysm.

The vortex has opened and engulfed all the steel,
All of the illegal immigrants have been scooped up and swallowed,
Reproductive rights will be voided in a stacked Supreme Court validating the opinions of white male legislators.

Tensions twisting to contort and ignore the onset realization
That all progress is halted to return the country to the era of segregation,

Deportation Gestapo formed with the lone intent to displace the children of those who dared to dream of a brighter life.

America, look what you've done and face yourself with your objections.
Look dead in your eyes and see all the minorities, tears in the diaries of closeted teenagers,
And the judicial dread of the gentleman who only wants to live comfortably with his husband.

You've made stepping stones of the counterculture, all crying in dorm rooms or next to their gardens,
All together in sorrow.

Underground America has been sold out,
We're a social experiment for what can happen when sulfuric acid is poured upon the voiceless.
The silent majority has shut us up.
We've been yelling to change history and now are tracking back.

Bigotry is back in style and I'm terrified.

This end of the trail is where Christian values drive up social status,
Tell you your friends,
Who not to glance at.

I'm not one for all that purity,
And no one else in my shoes could deny the *** in the air.

Crisp and new,
Shining like the grass in the rain,
Remarkably less discussed.

I feel no need for forgiveness tonight,
Which makes me happier than usual...

Typically, I will count the days with
Input to the last time I felt like I had direction— spend an hour telling Rothko I almost relate.

I admire you, but tonight I hope you're miserable.

My bones went hollow, the mood went heavy,
And the bridge went to ruins...

Can't say I'm surprised.

I'll fall asleep with ambience tonight, and wake to all the correspondence I'm not waiting for,

But I'll be of use to you.

I'll be of use in the North,
So odd to imagine my purpose,
Replaced as I am
Or even just looked over.

It's a downpour,
Yet I'm having the strangest drought,
Feeling like I need more light and far less space,

Who now will be at my sickbed?

I stumbled into you via modern technology,
Shot out of an atom smasher with endless chances
To spark some debate on space and all that lies between the moon and your window.

I like to believe in the odds of random probability,
Taking extraordinary circumstance and crafting it into friendship,

A testament to innovation, modern socialization,
And classically, it's boy meets girl once again, and she's sitting on a fortune of intellect.

Thinking for yourself has unlimited *** appeal behind it, and you're glowing with charisma.

You're my drug, my very own antidepressant.

I thank every God for the atom smasher that made it possible to collide with you.

There is a curious case of nature
In how it seems to recede with the winter.

It's all fine and colorful,
Sun washes in,
Feelings are vibrant until life is halted,
All is still and time is waiting.

Guessing in your mysticism,
We were in harmony on that wavelength.

Where has the communication gone?

Do you know it's Christmas time?
Do you know I'm aging
   and in that fashion, feeling my weight in years?
Do I need to remind you my contribution?

Is my fault, my burden now, that I am not the charitable
   entity that I once appeared?

I am tearing at my stitching, I cannot expand my portions.

Cut me some slack,
Ease up on me.

What is this,
I'm not naive,
Or at least as naive as you must think me.

How under my psychotic depression are you painting me
   to your handler this evening?
Am I the next to go?

I know it's approaching Boxing Day, and that fact
   has not once brought me comfort.

This restless spirit is turning into anxiety, I'm scared,
   and you're indifferent.

This is grave, and I'm not blowing this one
   out of the slightest proportion.

This is killing me and I feel so replenished.

Slid my hand down the gentle back of memory,
Entering back into the realm of vile yet given consent,
Weighing the risks of tasting the salt on your lips and knowing that it has already bitten me in the ***,
Feeling sick to my stomach for knowing this is the most adrenaline I've had in my life...

And isn't that sad,
But we'll consider that in late night/early morning mid-April, and not now in hotel sensuality.

It's dawning on me early because my hand is cold
En route back and thinking heavy about everything between here and Independence.

Forward three years on and it's all still a mess.

I've been held down
And lied to.

I've had to realize
That I'll never break free
Of the introversion that binds me,
Into a world clad in gold
Meant for daydreaming poets.

All the assurance
That I would one day
Escape from my personal
Cobalt Hell
Is diminishing day by day.

I was never meant
To be happy.

I won't be
A success.

My poor decisions are blossoming
Into nightmares so eager
To transition into reality...

I was always told,
I'd have to live with my choices,
But I have no choice
But to take on this depression
Once more.

I always knew
You'd be out of reach.

My Cobalt Hell
Encompasses me completely.

In this kingdom of dread, she straightened my hair and advanced my thoughts on my own insufficiency.
Never does it spawn out of the soil that you fit perfectly between her sheets and smell like peppermint,
The way we all sniff herbs in the garden,
How she now sits awake at night and will inevitably kick me out.

How much was I faking drunk to spur conversation

And how much is this...

Destiny, and all the pun that lies between here and idiosyncrasy.

I'm not whole, it's the way I always crack, thinking life has ran in circles and spit spheres into orbit.

Humor, humor, I wish I'd burn.

Tell me, girl,
That you're coming home,
And that the stars we wished on
Won't be falling
On our heads tonight.

Tell me I'm not meant
To cry my eyes out tonight,
And that tomorrow
Is going be better
Because you'll be coming home...
And back to me.

All your life
You're taught
To keep your composure.

All you've ever known
Is to be grateful
That you didn't die...

That you've lived through
Your crucible and now
You're free.

Like the past was all
Just a painful series
Of bad dreams.

I'm lost in a world
Built on lies
And false composure.

You've grown on me very symbiotically.
You've entered my blood stream.
You've raised my heart rate.
You've shown me a crystal lattice of beauty in your eye sockets.
You've convinced me I'm so much more than the average emotional man.
You've shoved the silver spoon into the jugular vein of the patriarchy.
You've never seen your potential in any mirrored distortion.
You've heard my idea of the conceptual us while I was vulnerable and sitting in your car.
You've become my sentimental 3am worries.
You've taken on all my meanings of wonder.
You've absorbed your fair share of sunlight and in your kindness have shared it with me.

On the crest of the water and looking at the mainland...
God, I hate the beach, so I'm floating in my bathtub.

Cool climate, no sun...
Most importantly:
No sand, no social interaction.

Appreciate the small things and it'll keep you comfortable,
Or at least farther away from anxiety.

I have a looking glass (because sometimes software is a *****) and you really make me want to stay indoors...

But I have two major cities to see in two weeks
And frankly, I have no time to feel bad about you,
Or for myself.

It's time to start floating and breathing above the water,
Because there are no sharks in my bathtub,
But dozens in my shallow mind,
And it's time to drain the pool—
It's appropriately spring cleaning once again.

There's a conflict of interest
And it's conflicting with perfection
And reason.

Distance would make this
All too simple a decision,
If it were a matter of choice,
But it isn't.

It's a matter of my split
Affection.
It's a game of amazing chance
And weighing out lonely nights
Against the opportunities to luck out.

There are outcomes that I
Can only dream about.

There are bigger aspects of life
That might as well
Not even exist,
As I am blind and ignorant.

There's a case to be made
For experience, I'm sure
But I, surely,
Am in no shape
To make it.

Carry me out
Of this hellhole.
Take me
To your side of heaven
Where life is long
And beauty is so much more
Than skin deep.

You understand me,
And you comprehend life
On my wavelength.
You can crawl under the surface
And tear out the wires
And you can make the clock
No longer tick.

I'll never doubt you.

We're cut from the same cloth
Only your strands
Were probably more expensive.

I'll wait outside
Of your side of heaven
Because admission
From this distance
Is ridiculous.

There's no reason to try.

When did you tell me that the sunrise was unwelcome, that the hallways gave you such anxiety and that I should just as well stay in?

I told you once that you looked young, yet sixty years had passed since your death, and you, Sylvia, were beautiful...

Said the vivid tulips ate your oxygen.

Poets have great sympathy for you in the way we gasp in sorrow and strive for beauty.

I know exactly why I love you.

Wrapped in electric Christmas sweaters,
Apple cider morning holding whiskey
Feeling nervous.

I watch average people out my window,
I see snow, unique and frozen.

But who cares that everything outside is dying?
Here inside it's a rave, we're all alive and close,

Sweating, comfortable.

It's the only thing tethering me to the Earth.

Staying awake is only fun when there's ecstasy involved,

Depressing news on smartphones,
Roofies and ice cubes.

So much excitement, so little time before death,
Might as well live in excess,
And then stop, suddenly.

Your new side was fake
And covered in all the rust you need
To start a war.

There were springs sticking out
From holes in the mattress
The night you told me
I was void of form.

It must haunt you now
To think that I'm such a good abstraction.

Lacrimosa,
Lacrimosa...

My dear,
I'd prefer to sing alone.

To think of you washed
In all the colors falling
Like Whistler's Rocket
So far below the moon...

I cry away any sanctity
Placed upon me in my youth.

When I am stricken
With all the words
Uttered over the silence
Of our modern, beautiful
Communication...

I will fall silent.

I will fall still.

I will be quiet,
But I will be swift,
And I will be void of mercy
To all but myself.

The muse of poetry gazed into the eyes of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom,
Walking through the books for inspiration or simply to **** the time.

I found myself happily at ease knowing I had love in my heart,
Love among the words of dead poets and dead Roman Emperors who dared to dream of philosophy,
But it was thoughts of treason stirring beneath the planks which built the staircase,
Winding five stories up and you in your feminine near mythical beauty.

I spent a short time in the library where I thought back only a minute on Allen Ginsberg's infatuation with the human construct of language,
How I would yell my lung's capacity of air out and scream at the stoics for their wasting of their one chance at emotion.

Will it ever be helpful to better learn the placement of the Swiss Alps, mountain line of scars on every globe, when I'd rather trace the placement of your spine, holding you in place, keeping you sound in your structure...

Walk with me through the centuries of words.

Don't just lay above me wasting your day as I'm sitting here wasting mine,
Wasting money that neither of us have to spend.

What time do we have between here and England, to return all this art to London?

Morning Glory has come to nightlife Kentucky.

Calliope, you've matched my curiosity.

Closing in on what looks like new
    beginnings.

I'll listen, momentarily, but do the same for
    me, because I'm starting to develop an
    independent sense of worth.

Isn't it a strange occurrence, with this warm
    air, that you told me that the weather
    would never change?

It will change by definition.

We each sell ulterior motives, the prices
    vary, the markup may look sinister, but all
    is considered to pass things along.

Profit isn't your only agenda, or anyone's at  
    all, with the world trying to get ahead, and
    I too... manipulative.

I'd rather not be thinking about your
    shattered mirrors, promises, and
    friendship on the first hours of my  
    adulthood.

The Flowered Bearer told me that livers hold
     importance — I'm inclined to agree.
With that in mind, restrain yourself from
     pouring your toxic filth into me.

Not tonight, at very least.

Earned under great spell of segregation,
With luster grand and blinding glimmers of false hope,
Standing like Trajan over his land, twice the spoils of war.

We must now thwart the hatred,
We must now look our brothers in the skin and decide if we can shoot them in the mouth.

Where lies the liberty in mysticism?
Why is this culture facilitating our schism,
And how now will we draw our party lines, or be done with them for a line in the sand?

Let us not fold in the face of dictatorship.

Trading your morals for a supporting role,
Holding hands with upstart actresses while you hold the syringe
And swear this is all genuine.

This emptiness is the feeling of fame,
Waking naked on patios used as makeshift churches
Where the last of your secrets are sold for another half gallon of limelight.

I'm in the backseat, speeding out of my comprehension,
Down the road in the darkness
With no choice but to trust you.

You had one request of me:
Play ****** pop music,
And I obliged to heighten the mood
But we're all either melancholy or medicated
So it made no difference,
Except that which was on the surface.
///
Muse of Tragedy, enter...

I have no need to scratch out stage directions,
I inserted myself into the situation.
Because it wasn't you that needed to inspect my dramatic ways.

I hungered for all the calamity you could carry, all the companionship and all the trial.

It's been deep and you've been quiet in getting comfortable with me.

Have I grown familiar to you in how I'm a bumbling mess?

Recognize my form as something better.

I'm desperate for you to see me at the base of my spine, not the top where it connects to my poorly formed brain.

Lying on my back and needing a few hours to myself,
Elliott Smith was singing that familiar line in my ear as he did so often when I reached this same threshold of sadness:

"Dreadful sorry, Clementine" ,
And you seemed to know just how dreadful all of it was to me,
Slipping out of my comfort, which is shaky at best in the eyes of the public,

But the tempo did change, Elliott...

And I confess that I don't think I'm killing her,
She won't let me give her life,
She thinks she's glowing right now...
Does it mean she can't comprehend?

Someone should be ashamed, Elliott.

I'd love to sing into her some life she's yet to discover,
Replace her doubt for continued existence with nothing more but yearning for foreign lands, hand in hand with me,

Yet I digress and can only sigh.

There are spades in my chest
And arrows in my back,
Both a pleasant reminder
That pain spawns from life.

And isn't it a pleasure to be breathing
Or so they always tell me.

Isn't this walk across broken glass
More exciting than the tightrope?

I could always still fall,
I'm assured,
But are the heights ever a reminder
Of just how alive
I really am?

It's all so blistering and grand,
And that's exactly
How I'd have you believe it.

I wonder if you could set me ablaze tonight...

I'd wager it'd be harder than usual.

You wonder in sequence...
I'd give my life tonight
To be first on that list,
Because I've got a smoldering sadness
Tearing holes in my sanity
Quite rapidly.

I couldn't even claim
To be deteriorating now.

Limbo has renewed my residency
And there's Hell to pay
If I am ever to relocate.

I.

My blood was glistening meteor glows after
        the modern jazz I spent all night trying
        to carve into genius.

Hanging on the the blue notes of
        saxophones like a madman hooked to
        his syringe, and then you petrified me...

But I began to shake.

The spirit of all my ballads has returned to
        me at last.

Dug yourself out of my past, into the
        bedroom thought fractures — I call
        them modern art — but plugged into
        your Dada spirit, the abstract turns into
        star clusters,

And I'm burning for that cosmic wishing well.

Just hoping for your radiation to spread over
         our lightyear gap, that gap that always
         made coexistence so impossible.

When Calliope calls,
     I'd advise anyone answer...
      But you're twice as golden
       And thrice as red
         As Calliope has ever been.

Torn in your sandstorm.
Blinded by this vision of your second  
        coming.

Back in one piece, one whole, one complete
        consciousness, and all after I tried my
        damnedest to rip you apart, poetically.

Only in reflection and confrontation did I see
        how wrong it all felt.

That is not poetry
There was no peace.
That does not spawn Justice,
And you did not warrant my contempt.

I idolize you for you are what I am not.
I am mesmerized as we are exactly the
        same.

II.

The things you do not know.

I must have started typing you fifty times,
        never hitting send since my dark
        Crispin's Night.
I never hit send.
Not once.
I built imaginary worlds where you were my
        abuser, with my loneliness a
        pawn, but a crucial one.
Those thoughts that latched on to the back
        corners of my insecurity, and reassured
        me I was void of worth most every
        night...
I turned those thoughts into you—
Spilled those ******* thoughts into reality,
        and it took your shot of venom to place
        it all back into perspective.

If you're wondering what I've been up to
        since you left, my calendar hasn't
        hasn't moved a single page.

III.

The mythos never told me that Erato could
        address me back—
Muse that I pray on.
Muse that I mull over with Whitman.

I take this chance to lift you up, as you've
        been floating me over this rural skyline
        for months now.
Let me see the city.
I only wish to live.
I see governments toppled in the tint of your
        face, with the lights low, the air quite
        heavy for me.
You had to feel like a Goddess,
Even your distant screams had your mark of
        perfection.

IV.

You're the one I envy.

Dozing off under the anger of conservative
         politicians talking about life...
Erato, darling, what do these guys know
         about life anyway?
To lie as profession
Lie for the masses
Lie for the wealth of corporations
Lie for self-justification
Lie for the war effort
Lie for the public spectacle that can be
        reduced to little more than fetus magic.

I'd rather be haunted by anything else.

Emigration sounds so lucrative.

V.

It's time to cut open the system.

I wish society, when cut open and guts
        hanging, strung up in a gallery, looked
        like the spirit of a Scrabble screaming
        match, less like estimations of
        "necessary" civilian casualties.

It's time to piece in your abstraction.

Let's flip the script from faith-lit sketchbook
        into reality.
Let's show the world the graces of speaking
        in comedy, the asset we lost when we fell dark under our lack of communication.

Blessed to reestablish what we cannot take for granted.

Iris bonfire to highlight your drive,
But it's only determination,
Your gift of beatitude.

You can move through mazes with such precision and grace.

I should have never let my admiration pull me under a tide of greed.

As much as I value the ability
        to cut away at masses of abstraction,
Still covered in their vague seal of illusion
        you don't condone,
I'd submit to trade for even a bit of your  
        structure,
And let you have the absinthe that coats my
        soul.

VI.

Drink on how we are in harmony.

I'm already drunk on your hesitance.

Everything about your being is skewing my world.

I feel the changes, while the cold sets in,  
        across their javelin flight path.

These aren't the kind of thoughts you can't
        damp down with epilepsy medication.

I'm nearing clarity.
I'm inching in on human purpose.

VII.

I locked you away on my nightstand,

Next to Jailbird, in great irony.

I never let you argue your rights.

I wasn't just being inhumane, it was
        borderline unconstitutional.

Anger from hate, as always.
Coping in flawed fashion, yet smiling at your
        likeness.
Condemning you at public displays of
        Satantic litany,
Fell broken when you were in attendance.

Never again will I carry that false prophecy.

I couldn't escape your sway if I tried.

It hit me suddenly that I had seen this room in a dream,
The concerning part being that I can't remember the nature of it or how it ended.

Was the crowd overtaken by pandemonium,
Or was my past spilling out into the future
Realizing that time was in fact not air tight?

Maybe some deity miscalculated my timeline...
Who can know for sure,
Yet I know how to navigate the gray tints of the room with not one moment of needed adjustment.

///

I never wanted to be back in the grind.

Routine wears at the creative mind like a weathered rock,
Rendered beyond repair.

It's ****** up if you think about it:

Wake up,
Slaves to the system sharpening the axe of the upper class,
Go to sleep,
Repeat,
Die.

And somehow, that's the accepted way of things.

We're perfectly okay with our fate
As long as we remain distracted.

Two days into being back in Van Lear upon onset emergency,
I feel trapped in my childhood home and engulfed by jingo lobbyists who have posters of Ronald Reagan,
And I read about Pascal's Wager in an essay by William Buckley to realize how anyone, in annoyance, could fall into conservatism.

I come home and all the farmers are talking Communist uprising,
But back in the university the Mormon professors are talking up our structure and that we should roll with the punches.

Noting that everyone disagrees on something,
Everyone back home is too sessile to talk or debate the issues.

I must leave at once and argue with tact about the grander schemes of life and money,
I'm just getting started.

///

This is not a place where you can accumulate *** and alcohol,
And thus not a safe space for creative expression and thought...

In the dormitory halls I would put on my Aztec print sunglasses and parade the hallways declaring myself the most immortal of men from third to fourth floor.

And then you inevitably get trapped in a two story country house,

Cry for the fact that the sky is too calm.

Nothing happens here.
Nothing happens here...
It makes me uncomfortable.

Let me sit in the corner of room 403 and meditate with more excitement than a shouting match here,
Or how everything is so quiet and we're waiting for a phone call of awful news.

They all must think I eat nothing,
I subsist on nighttime ghost stories, or something,
I'm a creature of the night,

Then who are you,
Man of American with your European jaw,
Or King of all men who dare to call themselves free,
Why is it that in a decade of invention and creativity
That it's the appeal of brawn that wins out continually?

We are regressing.

Eastern Kentucky is the center of the wound,
The eye of barbarism and I am not welcome.

I will move west to spite my family and then become successful to spite society.

Russian Duchess of Glory,
Chilling precision behind every turn,
And here I am cracking a joke because I can't even waltz.

Anna Pavlova,
Can you see yourself in the full scope of your beauty tonight?

Can we both stand to be witty,
Or find it easy to live past thirty?

Why is it always more elegant in the moonlight,
Regardless of the action,
From East Europe to the sad blue East Kentucky...

Have you once looked me in the eyes to judge how honest I've been in reading your history...

Oh, Anna Pavlova,
If you only knew that beauty would hold weight in modern reincarnation.
///
Still I wait for your autograph.

You who I dare to look upon through seldom borrowed books.

And if you pay regard at all,
To any of this, that is,

Then how much will you take hold of,

How long can you maintain your balance...

And are your pirouettes more acts of orbit

Or simply spinning out and away from me?

As always, you want to sidestep the pain
And let it take residence, staying there until it rots,

You say you can’t face what was once effortless
But the most effort you ever invested in
Was mindless cruelty
That very easily could have killed me.

When I start to forget it,
I miss you despite the circumstances.

But it’s been ages without you
And it’s not as painful as it was.

I hope you get better about compassion
And less hung up on vendettas.

Maybe the blossoming of the new year
Will change you completely
And no one else ever will want to **** me like you do.

We talk to fill a silent void,
But never more.

It speaks volumes.

I haven't been discreet
That I've always sought
To prosper.

I've looked opportunity
In the eyes,
And I always seem
To falter.

I've been building barriers
Along walls
That I forgot existed.

How do you expect me
To claim to be okay,
Or resemble the image
Of someone
Who has their **** together?

I hardly expect
Any miracles of you,
So why do you expect
Any compassion from me?

Love seems seldom placed
In the heart of opportunity
Or convenience,
And my advances will all falter
As they've all been in vain.

You'll never fail to falter
When you have the chance
To be humane.

You'll default on your promises
And forget the fact
That you claimed you couldn't leave me
If you tried.

This is the last time
I will ever write about you.

You've basically won
Since I'm sitting up
Thinking about you.

So horrible to think
I probably did love you.

I was enchanted and I was vulnerable.

You couldn't care.

Well, I'm finally drawing the conclusion
That I'll always care.

I'll always care
If you're hurting in some way.

I'll alway hope you are.

You deserve it.

I'm well beyond the point
Of caring if it's cruel.

I want it to hurt.
I want you to drown.

Get caught beneath
All your self righteous *******
And struggle for air.

I'm begging you.

Get dragged beneath the current.

If these are my last words
I don't want one to be unclear.

You're a *******.

I think you're a cancer
To any decency
That may exist on Earth.

Narcissism wouldn't be the least
Of your many worries
If you cared to reform yourself,
But you don't.

You hold yourself so high.

You are higher than God,
But so numb to reason,
Half as ****** to sanity
And void of mercy.

So get caught beneath the current
Of the blood that my heart
Is pumping without you.

It never needed you anyway.

Witness one more time
How I am forcing my own hand.
We are burdened by the dilemma of sight
And I see you at every turn...
I'm buried beneath the quality
You told me I'd never achieve.

Depression has felt like
Gymnastics here without you
On the other end of my phone.

When did being obsolete
Require such a high degree
Of technical mastery?

I'm holding my head up still
Because ******* and moaning
Won't stitch up our schism
And you told me I was not
A priority to you...

I've got to admit
That's a statement
That I'm growing quite sick of...

And if I don't matter to you,
After continued comprise,
I won't continue to lie to myself
About my preference in geography,
And I'll let my conscience step back
Into where I've walked recently...
To where Angels can glare
Without scoffing at the arrogance.

Mercy was on your mind
When you marched me to the guillotine.

My affection fell short
And our future wasn't good enough...

For you could not love me.

For I cannot blame you.

When I'm looking through the pinholes,
That adorn the ceiling like scars,
And I take a deep breath
To hold it in like the supernova
Of a dying, burning star...

I'll learn how to feel again.

I'll shake off the morphine
That you coated me in
When the curtain came down on our future
When the sun fell black
On St. Crispin's Day.

For you could not love me.

For you are not wrong.

You look upon me
From your high ground,
And you fill me full of spades.

I'm crushed below the amazement you inspire,
And and you're grinding me into dust.

I will cease to be in this enchantment.

For you could not love me,
So I peeled back your veil.

I thought to take you to old Glory Ridge,
A place among the clouds and void of worries.

We could share an evening with the foliage,
Lying on our backs with our self-deprecating jokes.

Soon, the stars will pierce the daylight,

Just lets in more privacy for our shaky conversation.

Turns to cement when the words start flowing...

God knows what I'll say.

I'll take you to Glory Ridge for more than the view,
The scenic trail lined with countless jesters
And I, their king,
Must admit you're right at home among the natural beauties.

Were you simply a ghost, walking your way from coast to coast,

Spreading beauty like the sunlight and being the apparition of striking perfection…

Unreal how you made me curious,
But it’s pretty face, brains, gentle inflection,

Same equation as always.

God blessed Colorado when he placed you there, and laid out retribution by way of your departure,

But their lack of fortune is my insomnia ridden insecure daydream.

Because you sat next to me,
You sat in all your undeniable conquest of Eastern Kentucky,

And then vanished back into the crowd.

Send my soul back to Europe for this night of excitement.
I wasn't thinking in plain terms, I had already read this in Santayana but I was only noticing that you were soft and pale,
My neighbors treat me so much better than you seem to (try noticing that they're people too sometime),
You complain and put up your false barricades to lower at moments notice,
Momentous when I'm out of sight and still carrying the remnants of scent and dreams of morning candles.

Turns out you aren't very unique and you major in manipulation, honing your skill and your art isn't to be displayed in public.
Will you say I broke my own back, or admit you were taking my head and changing your voice, ignoring what was right in your eyes?

I was already agitated.

Our last supper was in the front seat of your toothpaste green Ford, no mint on the floor,
To rub your collarbone and then wish I could take it back because you ended up in my bed...

But you made it clear that we were just friends, absolutely.
You said to stop, didn't you?
You told me it was wrong?
You didn't, I asked.

It was a game of consent and I lost.

Sprung from forced pleasure
And the repression of my stress,
Half conjured and half spawned did the perfect angel I cannot move past throw me into ecstasy when I gained knowledge of her detail,
How real she truly is.

Weak do I fall,
Curves adorn your lips...
You had no fault,
You were right in catching on to my myriad ulterior motives,
I was only wrong to doubt your abilities.

Where does beauty end,
And where does it begin that I'm filling you in, and you don't have to try?

It's blurred as it's been for months and it's time I realize
That you were only ever as real as you were tonight.

I look good in the background scenery,
It's just as sincere as the rest of this *******,
This styrofoam party that I had to dig my claws into
Just to feel alive for a few hours,
Just to blow off steam.

I'm as lost as I could be in this dark room
Where we touch each other
To make sure we're still real.

Would anyone look at the light in my eyes?

I see great constellations,
While some random guy holds his stomach in pain.

It's only genuine if you believe it is,
And I'm not buying.

But this pretty girl by the fence caught my attention
And was afraid in that moment,
And so was I.

I ran to anywhere that would accept me
And I happened to blend in,
But I entered the dance floor with a full bladder, a migraine and thoughts of no anxiety to worry about.

Through miles of nighttime wind on the highway and secondary remarks that meant nothing,

I barely remember what you look like,
But I'm sure you once left me breathless.

The terribly natural position of making poor choices,
And missing people
Even the ones who don't exist.

Am I the reason you’re so silent now,
Truth be told and not your version, or mine, of the truth,
Write the same poem again
Or tell me, in truth,
That we’re both worth saving,
That you ran for a good reason.

Will you stay gone forever this time,
And is it any different?

You wouldn’t know how much’ve change I’ve endured,
Or the shape of my beard anymore
Without you to convince me I should shave,

I’m healthier with you here, believe it or not.

I hope you’re safe,
No matter what I wrote.

I wish you’d say hello,
If nothing else.

Isn't every human a poem in motion
With varying degrees
Of depth and complexity?

Trapped within your sunflower eyes
I see the distant glow
Of all the rivers that cross the globe
Like turquoise scars
With velvet leaves,
And my mind in chains above them.

My pen is broken,
Leaking ink,
Bleeding dark thoughts all around me.

Show me the joy of emotions
And humanity...
Hotwire a smile out of this frown.

Lost on stars of styrofoam or plastic
(Nothing natural to burn me now)
I gaze back to the irises where I've found belonging,
And old rose light washes over me
Like holy deliverance, in a darker fashion.

Middle Eastern snake oil turns to Middle Eastern alcohol, and the venom you pour in will flare up your crystal eyes.

Don't lie about your cancer.
Don't tell me you're okay,
Because I know **** well you're not,
And now... I'm sure of it.

I knew you to be serious.
The shadows whispered "Tempest".
I trigger these warnings, and I have to confess that I should have confessed my love in the light glow of that restaurant.

I would scream my love to God,
But now I scream out in the air.

Still, it seems I'll write to thee,
But so blind now, Calliope,
But you knew it was you,
As you led me back into that bag of ***** tricks.

*****, *****,
Mischievous to put it lightly.
Calliope, I know at least a few secrets
That I'd bet you're still hiding,
I get no closure from screaming so loud,
Awaking nature yet no one to hear me.

I want you to scream back.

I am deserving of my Holy Litany now, am I not?
Just look how arrogant I can become
With a few stripes via ballpoint pen.

Admittedly there's real allure in the way the past doesn't die.

I'm sensing you feel this as well.

I love the way you're playing pious,
Playing dumb,
Playing into my hand,
Making me frustrated.

It's not that important and you know better than to think I'm a perfectionist,

But I like to have you in my column and address book.

It's all for fun, after all.

I will spill every drop of my pagan blood in burning my world to ash.

There will not be mass calamity,
For I am unimportant, typical—

I'm planning to commit a ******.

What will they have to say about me,
Reduced to dust and only partially remembered?
///
I'm fixing to die,
Highest spire of Reims Cathedral.

I'll miss the girls who drink themselves into dehydration (if the dead miss at all),
Stuck like pin cushions with medical stickers and needles...

But don't miss me, it's a lonely endeavor
And one I cannot advise.
///
For the lonely soul who once spit venom at me in a dream,

Pick yourself up from the wreckage of the parking garage.

Keep laughing at the patriarchy's agents of the night,

And find fame, love, honest devotion, anything you could hope for.

All lost upon me.

Not worth the time to worry over.
///
There's nothing inside me worth saving, I've decided.

I am to throw myself at the Leviathan and into the pit,

Rolling in the abyss and into the bottom.

I'm not about to waste one moment's effort on repentance,

There's a great revelation that I'm troubled with: drugs only cloud your judgment.
///
My connection to God in Heaven, all narcotic illusion.

I mean to be eulogized by the poetess of beautiful sorrow,

That her melted caramel eyes would lead me to the grave.

Be my priestess one last time,

Then let me down to rot.
///
Who will care for Gothic Architecture when I stain the edifice and hit the pavement?

For no one cared that I struggled like Sisyphus with my demons,

But will love me when I hit the ground with tremendous velocity behind me...

Vibrant girl in colors vivid and bright,

Teach me how to stay afloat.

You said, as if that is the only aspect necessary for preserving humanity.
There's a sense of decency in all the things you choose negligence:
Sincerity, honesty, acting with someone else's interest in mind, thinking without malice,
Walking outside and onto the patio at your grand pity party.

What would you do with no attention at all?

You'd shrivel up and die.

Just be nice to people, it's as easy as that,
If your portion of sweet words are honest,
Yet yours are meant with such fake intent,
I look through your Saran Wrap smile, synthetic *** appeal,
To know your ex-bestfriend has great understanding and ****** insight,

It ends up that you were seeking my vulnerable brown eyes and not my cheap wine when you told me to come share with you,
But what I shared were a few too many buzzed secrets.

You, on the keyboard struggling to play songs of romantic tryst in no sense of irony.

Our last communication: road to Huntsville, called to yell at me one final time. I didn't need it.

You drove to play with rockets, the kind you'll never be entrusted to operate,
And the high you can only use to escape your pitiful exhibitionist existence.

This is the portion you're getting of my blood.
Simply a leech...
Don't you know I'm full of poison?

You, the ever-brilliant astrophysics girl, you failed to research me and my contents to know that I am coming down, down from vindictive respite...

I told you at the Bell tower that I once thought I was God. And I am.
I'm the Old Testament God who you never should have ****** with.
I will hang you with your manipulation and feel all the remorse you cared to show everyone,
Plotting for the spotlight.

But, "Just be nice to people".

This one time, I'll pass.

Back to when I was so sad, and still am,
Reflecting on Mexico City Blues,
Making time for love and feeling sinful,
Seeing the world turn, and spring coming into view,
Feeling left out when it was the women of my fantasies who were consequential,
Diving into the Ohio River to clear my sinuses and finding only pollution.

Well, the solitude is getting deeper and heavier.

Can't get a **** cheap, meaningless rendezvous, but I know how true dishonest devotion can feel,

And I'm sending in a request for no one's solace or sympathy tonight.

I feel your sermon of restless ambition, I can smell your beer soaked soul, in its elemental glory, on my collar.

Jack Kerouac, in his 94th year, is still bustling and full of life in the retinas of poets and dreamers,

And I won't sell you short,
You're keeping me afloat.

Drove her car into a river just to spite me,

Saw Christmas ornaments among the garbage and proclaimed that signified her life,

Who with no immune system at all contracted every disease around her,

But upon my asking if she was sick announced, "Actually, I'm Alex."

Told me I was less than gallons and was not wrong at all,

But I'm pumping about ten pints of blood in hopes that you'll continue to do the same.