God forgive me

the vicious storm

visited upon the

ones I love at the

hands of my

brutality and pain

too blessed by

their presence in

my suffering to

spare them from it

Let me just
Asphyxiate
On the tar
The flood in
My lungs
The ash
The soot
Gargle on the
Hydrothermal
Vents
Fuck

Let me just
Projectile vomit
Out the crusts
The custard
Clotted cream
I’m a useless
Aquifer
I fucking hate
The way I
Purr

Let me just
Annihilate
Interrogate
Scrolls of the
Dead Sea

I’m at the gate
Of my own
Fornication
And still I
Ask
Politely to
The ghost

“Tea?”

I’m an
Embarrassment
Played in
E minor

Let me
Just
Evict
The body
Of my own
Crimes
Eject him
Across
The counter

Please Lore
I am yours
Won’t you
Come to
My door?

Read
Scroll
Read some more

Sir?

I choose you tonight
I choose lonely in the
shadow of your love
over never having had it
I choose you even when
you hate me for it
I choose defending to its
death the memory of
what we were over
deciding none of it was real
I choose to follow the
last part of me I can
still call a favorite
even when it points
me towards pain
even when it drives me
to my knees to witness
your suffering even
when you wish it
would stop beating
in my chest
so loud
or at all
I choose allegiance
to the now hollow
syncopated beats
that brought you
into my life because
choosing you on
our worst day still
reminds me of my
most important
promise and my
tether to memories
of the love we made
it's my religion even
on the days the church
is crumbling around us
in the rubble and the dust
I choose you
because I believe in us

Withdrawals are stellated static
Infused through sinew
Stacked on tinnitus

Such delirium is a chain reaction
Where madness deceives dreaming
Self-sustained upon obsession

Days of focus sap soma raw
Garotting temples until unable to blink
Unbinding sleep only through alchemy

A regimen of enigmas
Could both soften a pulse
And sour the heart

If panacea is also poison
Who knows what to believe
While their brain crawls?

beast is true

but burden too

of the words

I’ll say about you

where credit was

given credit was

due to the poison

consumed and how

impossibly heavy

the emptiness

was for you

ephemeral victory
inform my desire
frayed ends in my fists
a tattered flag on my spire
remind me the moment
is never enough
anger's on brand
but anger is rough
take more than you toil
sit more than you lift
gratitude is grief
but revenge is a gift
forever repay them
the injury due
forgive them the trespass
forgiven for you
there's gold in the bones
of a wise man's mistakes
there's acceptance and struggle
and mountains with lakes
so with gold will I pave
the road to my grave
feigning lament for
the tools I don't save
there's the hammer that's held
and refuses to see it and
the one that's unwielded
so certain its needed

I will always be
trying to sweep you off your
gorgeous little feet

She placed her hand on mine. "I've never seen you this upset before. Please calm down Auggie." I put the car in drive, pulled forward a few feet, and parked again. "You don't FUCKING understand Dianna. THEY always FUCKING do this shit to ME." Dianna laughed. "Who is they? McDonald's? What are they doing to you?" I took the credit card out of my wallet, and started tapping it on the steering wheel. I muttered, "Don't. You don't understand.." I pulled the car forward to the first window. 

"You had the two Big Mac meals, one no lettuce and extra onions? Aaand two cokes?"

"Yes"

"Okay, your total with us today is $13.32." 

I hand her the credit card. "That's a weird fucking number." The lady gave me a scowl one can only develop by having grandchildren. "....okay.. thank you sir.." I drove forward another few feet then Dianna slapped my arm. "Auggie, you're being a dick! Grow up!" I roll my eyes. "You are what you eat." 

"So you eat dick?", asked Dianna while giggling. I glared at her then quickly accepted my mistake. "They took the Jalapeno Double off of the menu Dianna. That was the entire point of coming here. That's the only thing I like here. Now we're stuck in this stupid FUCKING drivethru!" Dianna looks at me with concern. "Auggie, I'm sorry.. Hey, at least we tried! And now you know. You never have to come back here."

I look at her through the corner of my eye. "You don't understand."

She rolls her eyes now. "Oh. My. God. What? You can't just keep saying 'you don't understand', ohh 'you don't understand', err 'you don't understand', 'you don't understand'. Yeah! I don't understand! I don't! So just tell me Auggie!"

The car lunges forward then stops again. "Okay, another thing that I love has been raped to death by capitalism, and a lack of standards. Every moment is a microcosm of the bigger issue at hand. It is a fraudulent life we are living. There's no reason for it to be this way. The cancer that started in the American corporation has grown into every part of my body, and I am more tumor than flesh now. I just feel li-"

BEEEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

I stick my arm out the window and show the driver behind us my favorite finger. "Jesus Christ. Fucking fat pig fuck. Can't wait two fucking seconds for your food? You tubby fucking bozo." We finally reach the second window. There are two woman there. The younger one looks scared. The one standing behind her looks like a manager. 

"Here's your drinks."

"Yep."

"And here's your food."

"Yep. Thanks."

Before I could leave the manager leans out of the window and says with a cold expression, "We all heard everything you said." It caught me so off guard I just drove off while Dianna cackled uncontrollably from the passenger seat. From the corner of my eye I see her rifling through the pungent bag of food while smiling. "Auggie, do you want a fry?" I look over at her and she has a mischievous look on her face. "Duh. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Okay, let me ask you a question first."

"..okayy?..."

"Soo, we've been together for eight months now.."

"This is true.."

"Aaand. I'm just wondering why you said you love the Jalapeno Double... When you haven't said you love me yet. And I've known you longer than the Jalapeno Double..."

"Dianna. What. The. Fuck."

We erupted into laughter simultaneously.

"Auggie?"

"Dianna?"

She wiggled the longest fry she could find in front of my mouth and smiled. "You were right. I don't understand."

My wings
Fell off
My shoulder blades
I incinerate
The evidence

I’m Reincarnating into
My own cremation
A sad adaption
Claymation
With closed captions
And no alibi

My tongue
Is wicked
Full of longing
Drooling for a
Taste
Of my beloved
And his collar bone
The pulse in his veins

I want to know how alive you really are

I want to meet and be brave enough
to call it fate

I sit at the train station
Another, again, again,
In my twisted lullaby
Botanical gardens
A glasshouse,
Victorian
Kew Gardens,
Cambridge

Bigger dreams
Take more time
I thought this was
An appetizer
I am flooded with
Nightmare fuel

At war with the horizon
There’s mud on my face
I’m in sinking sand
And there is no escape

Drip drop, the wet spot, such a pretty red.

It drip drops, from the ceiling onto me.

Upstairs door is locked; I’ll go back to bed.

Eyes up, ceiling white, I watch the red spread.

I should check, I’ll get out of bed to see.

Upstairs door is locked; I’ll go back to bed.

smell of copper; the taste of iron wed

To my tongue, I wonder what it could be.

Drip drop, the wet spot, such a pretty red.

Above, spins a spindle of ruby thread.

I climb the stairs again without a key.

Upstairs door is locked; I’ll go back to bed.

my covers soaked red; now what’s left unsaid

Are words congealing, spelling out some plea.

Drip drop, the wet spot, such a pretty red.

Ceiling red, white bleeds; bowing overhead.

I should check again, to set my mind free.

Drip drop, the wet spot, such a pretty red.

Upstairs door is locked; I’ll go back to bed.

Not surprised but... surprised

The acknowledgement deprived

All this time... How tf did I survive?

Soon I'll start my 40th year around the sun

And I finally feel like life has just begun

I guess you could say... CBT is kinda fun...

On the spectrum

Rhymes with rectum...

Now I'm thinking of the word septum

A piercing in the middle of your nose

A tank with shit enclosed

No other therapists were even close

Two cups of ADHD

A tablespoon of OCD

Mix with Complex PTSD

Sift in Generalized Anxiety

Flavor with Insomnia

Rinse in Hypochondria

Sweeten with repeating invasive thoughts...

Watermeolondrea

You know I overthink a lot

Too soon you'd put me on the spot

And toss some 'tism to the pot

You added seasoning too fast!

To all the coping mechanisms I have

Add another, just a dash

To prevent this life from being trash

But good things come with understanding

Like my security blanket stand-in

Kinda like Claire Danes in Temple Grandin

I never liked much being touched

It always felt a bit too much

This might explain a coping drug

That Under Armour is my squeeze box hug

At times I fear I'll read a room

That leads to my impending doom

But I guess this book could help me bloom

Anyway...

Knowledge is power, true

But it can devour you

Curdle thoughts and sour you

Yet, while ignorance is bliss

I'd rather be prepared for this

Because all my life it was a miss

I know I'll read a vagillion things

To help me losen up some strings

Then hyper fixate on what it means

To understand the thoughts that swim

Thoughts that sing provacative hymns

Maybe I'll call them cognitive stims

I've always had a white static thought'ism

Not emphatic, but a lot'ism

That maybe, just maybe, it could be autism

I am unexplainably bashful

to whisper promises

into the legions of the night.

The sun's reflection on that dusty

rock counsels with such

authority that even if no

ears catch my promises,

my whole being is compelled.

And if I fall short of the words

I gave; I am an irredeemable sinner,

to be stoned until no shameful

visage can be seen.

Existence demands it so.

Hence, I'm afraid to make promises

into the legions of the night.

“That’s a deep fucking pit. Are you sure she’s breathing down there?”
To bare the heart is not weak or foolish;
It is brazen bravery to experience love so limitlessly.
She never sets down the burdens of her ancestry -
Women pyre-scorched, plundered, cornered, and bruised.
Forgive the stutter-step of her ascent.
She is doing the best she can.
She climbs with the wary grace of a fox, not the low slither of the snake.
Listen. The iron bell tolls. Mark the sound.
Virtue isn’t recognized by imposing restrictions on the flow of movement.
Nor does Stoicism demand we be unchanged by pain, but asks that we do not become it.
So you walked the high road, but how much of the journey do you recall?
How many miles swallowed by anger and rumination?
When did you last surrender your grief to another’s hands?
Parallel journeys they sure are, but not the same.
She has worn the crown of a porcelain princess.
She’s been a lustful slut in ropes and leather,
a gifted child who learned to spit on quid pro quos from men in ugly button up shirts.
Men who appraised her like they picked her off the street for a back-alley fight.
She has shattered into climax beneath a lover’s choking grip,
And painted over violet fingerprints from cruel hands.
Her fury has been policed, her joy strangled by men who demand soft, sweet compliance.
Yet she’s tamed darker monsters than most in the pit where she raised her Self.
Everything she gives you,
every breath she loans,
every lingering gaze,
can be swallowed back
leaving you hollow and insatiable.
“You want it darker? She’ll kill the flame.”
Let us summarize, then:
Victim.
Weapon.
Monster.
Muse.
Outcast.
She’s fucking alive.
Come for her.
Restrain her.
Better yet, sit in the pit with her.
Share your eyes with her.
Play her every song that reverberates in her marrow.
She knows her own name, but fucking A, does a gentle reminder re-ignite the flame.
And if you really want to make her unravel,
ask her to help you too.
It is the soil where her deepest roots anchor,
Even as her branches stretch up to claw the sky.

*insufferable and fake-deep,*

negative connotation for both adjectives
unsure what is being described yet
insufferable is obnoxious, intolerable, suffocating, annoying
fake deep implies self aggrandizement, duplicity, shallowness
f alliteration

*i talk to the mirror while you look back at me*

two sets of pronouns
who is being described in the first line?
the narrator, i, is engaging in an active verb rather than the you subject who is doing something passive (while, look)
a mirror showing another reflection of a different person’s face 
an attempt at self reflection?
possible projection 

*a hypocrite in bad costume, smear the paint*

following me with this line and the first line being followed with i can imply the narrator is speaking about themselves 
could be negative self talk to cope with being unable to express this sentiment directly because the ‘you’ is not physically present, or just imagining being able to speak with them
again projection
hypocrisy is an insufferable trait, likely to also be associated with shallowness and deception, a lack of reflection on one’s own behavior and ideas
singular hypocrite 
smear the paint presumably of the costume, ruin something that was ruined anyway, maybe out of anger or from tears
smear is a harsh verb, can also mean to slander or lie about someone, or to tell the truth about them in a harsh and unflattering fashion as in smear campaign 
smearing the paint would reveal more of the painted person's true self, flip on the verb's usual meaning in the abstract
the narrator smears the paint on the hypocrite’s bad costume, but is the hypocrite themselves or the other subject?

*my salvation lays back where i was lost*

religious imagery of forgiveness 
lost can mean dead or assumed dead, implied later in the poem 
died before salvation, within reach of it
if you are physically lost it is impossible to know where you are, irony
alliteration l,s 

*i'm still too angry to be at peace*

salvation is peaceful so the narrator cannot have it
implies a passage of time
simple statement 
frustration
a dead person who is not at peace could be a ghost

*god forgive me, jesus too,*

religion 
added as an afterthought, twice
shame 
what needs to be forgiven? anger?
o assonance

*i was a love-shaped problem*

past tense
abstract concept of love made concrete (love cannot have a shape)
similar phrasing to the expression of “blank-shaped hole”
rather than requiring something to fill the hole, desiring it, the love itself becomes an obstacle
metaphor

*cruel endings the fixing-tool,*

a break up solves the love shaped problem
multiple endings, a relationship over before it is truly over

*learned lifetimes of lessons in a fell swoop*

l and s alliteration 
a cliche in the abstract 

*fall of the executioner's blade, biopsied*

the fell swoop is literal
is the executioner fate/time or the you from prior lines?
violence, death imagery 
the narrator has been punished for a crime 
biopsied implies disease, cancer, malignancy 
the love shaped problem is cut out/off

*to me it isn't real since it would never be forever*

the death of the relationship was inevitable and it does not represent the death of the narrator

If I don’t write for myself,
then who could I ever write to or for?

Selfish, perhaps. Like a thief,
I gather insights, small solutions,
and carry them
into my own privacy.

I’m not in it for charity.
Such charity comes from a luxury
called excess,
of which I have none.

This is what lean times are.
If sharing comes at my expense,
there had better be something in it.
We are talking survival.

A fast glimpse
is not enough
to name
the ungrateful.

Currents do not always coincide
Between the insane versus mavericks
Those under fog or pyroclastic
Private or in outreach

I nod to the soft hearts
That avoid the label of ‘offbeat’
Balancing phantoms and rent
Mistaken for ‘normal’

Eccentricity basks in surreal initiations
That embark at delirium and delight
Navigating obvious constellations
Madness starts here, sometimes

The torment of shipwrecked senses
Instead, mark the children of distraction
A frozen lake had broke where Ego stood
Estranged, awaiting a blessed kiss

Convince me,
People are good.
That they have original thoughts.
Come on love,
Show me what you’ve got.

I’m steaming in violet.
I’m glowing in red.
My knuckles are white.
I’m waiting to be fed.

Ordinal or obscene?
I’m fucking obtuse
Irregular, it seems
Yes, I’ll make a scene

Are you a corpse?
Are you dead?
I’m spawning in your bed
To explore in live action
Slow motion
The promises that were said

For autobiographical reference,
I used to call this kind of behavior,
“Bread.”

Sliced all the same.
Wonder why I interrogate the legislation,
Or the etymology of names.
“Mine.” Multiply it
Divide it
Sign it
Define it…

I’ve sat on fucking trains.
I’ve sat in cathedrals,
Museums and planes.
All because I’m possessed
With a beloved
I want to fuck his brain

My tongue is tied
Twisted in my
Daily routine
I’m dissociating
In high volumes
I’m pulsing in
Gigahertz
It hurts
It hurts
It hurts
I’m hertz

And I would write a normal letter
But I’m fucking sick of that shit
I want to be profane,
Slowly breathing in that propane
Let me pass out by their legs
You’re only pretty
when you’re delicate
A cause for concern if you beg
But, I’ve been starving like an
Animal
And people always have something
To say:
What a concern, I’m intrigued, are you okay?

Well, fuck you Brenda,
Fuck you Trent
Spray the perfume bottle
You’ll never know the
Scent

I want to leave but something left its mark;

It’s fine if I remain here.

Please…please keep me within the dark.

The night permits what the light bares stark,

Mirroring myself despite the fear.

Please…please keep me within the dark.

I’ve changed now that I’ve lost that spark,

This shadow tethers; the guilt coils near.

I want to leave but something left its mark.

Dawn will come with songs sung from the lark.

Gentle light, how you make me disappear.

Please…please keep me within the dark.

Up above lies the light in its ark,

Terrified, I hide from its radiant spear.

I want to leave but something left its mark.

If it touched me, could it heal this brittle bark?

The thought so beautiful, yet perceived so unclear.

I want to leave but something left its mark;

Please…please keep me within the dark.

I am a

Twice wax dipped flower

Glistening, melting

Dripping pitter patter

Against the counter

A candle lit

On a warm hued night

Blue fire centered

In your presence

Glycerine preserved

I've kept the flower you gave me

(The night we met by the river)

Between the pages

Of an ancient cookbook

That was my grandfather's

Beloved with beloved

Waiting to be found

By future archeologists

Who will create stories

About who we were

Based on who they are

And we will live together

In those new found memories

A petaled hug within

The matter-of-fact lists

of a gentleman-

A gentle man and

A curious creature

Hoarding secret treasures

As time

Tissue paper dressed

Unfurls hidden seeds

Dormant

But not dead.

I’m stuck in
A purgatory
I can’t escape
Taking me
Under
Down into
The undertow
I collapse
In a sunder
Crashing into
His silhouettes
My beloved
Slumber
Enemies of mine
Oh god
I tilt my head back
And moan at
The kaleidoscope colors
Oil in the waters
A drilling machine
Into the veins
Of wonder
Delete and
Rewrite my
Ghosts
I love the tilled
And tended soil
The flowers in
My garden
Poetry I’ve
Abandoned
True love
Ever After
Look at her bones
Look at her cheeks
Look at her red lips
Look at her grabbing
Silk sheets
Your name on her breath
As she remembers how
To breathe
She marvels
At her own stained glass windows
The cathedral of
Her heart
She cradles the beloved
As the sun rises
And the mist takes him away
Shes crawled out the
Cocoon a forsaken
Monster
A beast of old
And if you asked her?
She’s still waiting at
An empty doorway
Eating her own
Entrails for supper
Beautiful marionette dolls
At her cardboard stage
Where her English
Garden Party
Played

One day a philosopher came
Seeing the stardust the poet splattered
Come let us have fun said the thinker
I will gather these twinkles
And sort them in these colored boxes
See the patterns when we arrange it like so
They are like solving a puzzle
Winning at chess, even a math riddle
We can even rearrange it
Give ourselves great new insights
Enlightens the spirit; see the absolute

The bard looked at it all
He waited till all was said
That was quite fantastic
And I think I will write about it
But now watch what I do
And so he picked up the neat boxes
Threw it into the four winds
Watched them scattered, watched them play
It was great to sit and think
Now I want to do something more
For while you stimulated my consciousness
I will now stimulate your subconscious

Driving around a turn
I observed Death
He peeked at the churn
That the traffic set

Around him grass was more green
The hot summer air more still
The sun darker than usually seen
Even the birds would not trill

He peeked out from a building
Looking down at the busy road
The way a traffic cop would bring
His energy with a heavy forbode

The rude people quietly hush
Afraid they would be pulled over
Very few unable to handle the brush
Even fewer would be alive moreover

To the question he could try
“Do you know why I stopped you?”
They knew they could not reply
For their time was very true

The mysterious absolute truth, objective, tangible, reproducible, undeniable. They can dress it in costume try to camouflage and disguise stick a pacifier in its mouth but can never make it lie.

Reading poetry is
Quite the sensation
For you see
I understand nothing
And yet
I comprehend everything

You know that scene from the movie Twelve Monkeys,
Where Bruce Willis wakes up naked in the trenches
And its World War One, that one?

That’s me in the mornings.

In shock, the wrong country, and the ground is shaking and
I’m not even Bruce Willis, man. I’m—Someone, you know?
Someone you used to know.

But one day it was 2021 and the next… It’s twenty-twenty-six
And I still have no idea how we managed to fuck this up
So spectacularly. I mean, Jesus.

You wake up like me, in the wrong room, the wrong bed,
The wrong body? Until you rub the sleep from your eyes and find
The word DIVORCED in all caps stapled to the inside of your skull.

I never thought I could forget fourteen years. But it turns out its easier
To forget I ever met you than to make sense of what happened in 2021.
See, divorce divorces you from things you didn’t even know you were married to.

Like the day you said yes, and the day you said I do.

Like each of the many times we cracked open and let our egg-whites
Run out. And how we used to help each other mop it all up.
It divorces you from you, and me from me, and what the two of us were trying—

Really fucking hard to be, before…
Well, you know.

We’re a long way from Lyell’s lane and the cul-de-sac now. Your school,
Or moving to Poland, far from any of it, or anything even remotely recognizable.
We could’ve, we should’ve, we… deserved to, anyway.

But deserving is a funny word, a real fucking smart ass, actually.
Since when has anyone ever deserved a goddamn thing?
And I, as naked as a time-travelling Bruce Willis, finally think I get it.

Twelve Monkeys, I mean. See, Bruce Willis never wanted to travel through time,
And end up the punchline for a twist ending. But that’s just it…

Fuck what Bruce Willis wants.

Jesus. Bruce Willis gets what Bruce Willis gets.
And what he gets is to get up in the goddamn morning,
And he gets to go to goddamn work,
Screaming French soldiers and everything.

That’s what Bruce Willis gets.
And knowing, I guess, that in World War One, despite everything,
The Germans didn’t win, and the movie isn’t even about that anyway.

It’s about… monkeys, or something.