I am my own worst sabotage. I put myself in the corner and am surprised when I run into walls. I throw myself off bridges and the shock of it all hits me after the water does. I pull at my own skin and am surprised to be unraveling. You cannot kill me as fast as I can.
You cannot hit me before I feel the knife to the heart that is waking up and realizing I do not have quite enough love left to give without splitting apart- or worse, I have too much. I think I have too much love to feel right. I feel wrong for breathing out all this love. I exhale it like carbon, I can’t see you for all the smoke that’s in my eyes. I have so much skin touching the air that I feel it like needles. I fall asleep thinking, what’s the difference between gas and solid anyway?
There are all these snippets I carry with me and I’m not sure which ones are real or not. To rearrange them I get wine drunk and fall in love with strangers I think I know but never myself. I tell everyone they’re beautiful in my head, I may be wrong, I may be going against all the rules of social interaction by staring too long at places I shouldn’t and not saying anything, but I do know you have to learn the rules to break them.
You cannot split me apart because I never learn the rules. Clumsy but still I sidestep them, an inconvenient thunderstorm. I want to overdose on the different but I do not need to anymore, I don’t want any more of these midnights. It feels like midnight even when it isn’t. It feels like lying even when it is. It feels like the mud pouring into me that I am coaxing with both hands. And sometimes being human, poison doesn’t seem like the worst way to go.
I never learn the rules. I learn them like my sharp heart, taking pinpricks of everyone’s ink, burnt coffee smiles and dirty compliments, I am there but we are apart and together, memories splitting the silly little happenings from the way I am writing rewriting editing it, they must be so different and I still know you cannot kill me.
you are easy.
we are easy.
it’s the mess in me
that makes me messy.
it’s the chasm in me
that leaves me stranded.
the world is there
if I just don’t get burned.
there is too much excess here
not enough growth
not enough real.
I float through the days
not counting the times I use my voice.
I spend all my change
on the edges
and don’t look at the picture
don’t learn the life.
I run but I’m too careful of
the ground.
I wish I could
sprint without looking.
I
wait for every sunrise,
think
how has this not already been named
poetry
I
jump start
when your shadow flirts with my skin
I
spend too much time
drowning in my own head
so saltwater kisses
feel like liberation
I
call risks the worst option
as if I don’t take them every step anyway
and yes I am supposed to be your wings
but I have never been cleared for takeoff
and yes I am supposed to be your savior
but I can’t get off the ground
I
abandon ship
at a glimpse of sunset
I
hold your hand through
the whole world
we dance in
every biome
every skipped rock
worrying about how my skin feels
and forget to take
all the pictures
I
don’t want to call this
a swan song
but I keep hearing
the damn birdcalls
I
make a patchwork out of all the what ifs and if onlys and could have beens
and throw it over us and maybe
I bet
then we will be enough
The hate, hate, hate
Is here to fucking stay
You're irate, irate, irate
It's time to fucking fight
Bring the fists
Leave the guns
Let's end this like men
Run full force into the gates of hell
Bring them down
To their knees
They will pay with blood
The hate, hate, hate
Is here to fucking stay
You're irate, irate, irate
It's time to fucking fight
They can beat us down
But not take our pride
We will rise again, again, again
Let the anger take hold
Bring out your demons
Bring out the pain
This world will know true justice
When they hear my name
The hate, hate, hate
Is here to fucking stay
You're irate, irate, irate
It's time to fucking fight
We beg them to stop
They laugh in our face
You wont feel the same
When you're in my place
They beg for mercy
It's one on one
Every man for himself
But we all stand together
You will fall to pieces
YOU!! WILL!! LOSE!!!
The hate, hate, hate
Is here to fucking stay
You're irate, irate, irate
It's time to fucking fight
It Gets Better
January 27, 2021
Several years have passed, but it feels like only days.
Everything in my life is foggy, nothing has changed
since I was younger and had more time to write.
I've grown into an adult, but nothing is all right.
I've hoped for so long that I could find a place
where I can be myself and not have to chase
validation and acceptance for the thoughts in my mind.
I've searched, I have, but there is nothing in sight.
I have love all around me, with my family and friends.
They assure me I'm safe, they'll be there 'til the end.
I don't doubt that, but they seem to misunderstand
that these problems I have are out of my hands.
It's three in the morning, I'm working at eight.
If I go to sleep now, I'll still probably be late.
I'll get through the day, pay the bills, go to bed,
just to have this cycle repeat itself again.
When the night gets darker and my mind is awake,
there is nothing I can do but hope I don't think
about the forks in the road- which one I'll take.
I could visit the skies above or pretend I'm ok.
The medications, the drugs, and the alcohol
have never helped me feel better at all.
The only thing that's stopped me from leaving forever
is telling myself at night, "I promise, it gets better."
It helps for a moment, but soon my mind persists
that it isn't true- it doesn't get better than this.
I have tried to change all the errors of my ways,
but to no avail. This may be the last of my days.
To everyone who loved me, to everyone that cared,
I don't want you to think that any of you shared
a part in this self-destructive game of my life.
In the end, everything will be all right.
Nothing will change in the world outside my own.
Everyone else will have a place they call home.
My only hope is that by relieving my pressure,
maybe for the others, it actually does get better.
and then there are the days
that are no more than impossible
they feel like something the world wrote down for me
as an outline or a moral
I should treat them as experiments-
if I can write this word I’ve made my own day
if I can make this doorway I’m coming home
wrestling with my mind as if
it is the one that belongs to me
I can almost hear the laughter
silly little girl
she thinks she knows what she’s doing
she thinks she knows who she is
and that autonomy isn’t a rope
I will rip out of her hands
as the seconds slip by
and she realizes how wrong this is going
I still miss you as much as I miss who I could have been
I know there has to be a state of mind
somewhere,
like when I stop moving and my body
disconnects,
a place I can’t feel this
//
there are the days
I have a mind that is taken over by these arms this heart this monster of a skin
sex with you is deliberate
a pattern we pick out
and is it too much to ask
to not want to know you’ll want me tomorrow
so it can come as a surprise
so something strikes deep in my chest
when you walk this way
and I don’t have to call it regret
I don’t think I know the way to make someone want
and I keep losing the way with you
leaving pebbles and pepper and heartache every place I think I should kiss
letting my eyes wander and losing my center of balance
I leave already in lust with you
I have all of the burning but none of the rules
no compass for this world of body
//
I want to be someone’s bright and someone’s story
I reach out to every hand and dust slips through my fingers
I don’t think I know the way to separate my mind from what holds it
to carry myself the right way and still carry these thoughts
when no one is here
all the words slip through the cracks inside me
gray matter turning toward the light
and you would think
I should love my brain for that
but there are too many unwelcome visitors
that have named it as their walls
you are still scratching me but you don’t have claws
I can feel the scars I don’t have yet
like they’re the only way I will survive
silver linings found on gold-plated lies
if this is the only thing I ever know
I will never wear that jewelry again
you said no strings attached?
well
now I am tied up and choking
The urban air weighs heavy on my chest
like my hand when I try to press my anxieties back
into my sternum. Outside the blue jays call to each other
in a pitch that leaves my fingers pressing to my temples
as I try to stop the throbbing that pulses with every beat of my heart.
This used to come easy;
my fingers relishing in the tactile press of the keyboard
would lull me like a baby gently rocked in its father’s arms.
My father held me more than my mother —
or at least that’s what I remember.
Bipolar is genetic. Did you know that?
I am different than she is. A different type.
More subdued.
Second string.
If you stare through the screen your eyes will focus
on the squares caging you from the vines creeping up the window
panes,
but it won’t save you
from the smell of the neighbors smoker
that makes you hunger for the food beyond the fence.
There the songbirds serenade each other
like the waves do to the sand. My ankles
ache for the steady rhythm of the water to soothe my heartbeat,
the salt air to expand my lungs,
the vastness of the Atlantic
to steal away the panic burrowed between my ribs.
You poor little porcupine.
It startled me that you jumped in front of a moving car.
I wish I could be there for you and help in any way I can.
But your quills pricked my heart when I gave you a hug.
I cannot pull them out or I would die.
So I had to tolerate this pain and let it suck the life out of me little by little
While I think back to when our affection for each other mended every obstacle we faced.
The future was bright for us.
You couldn’t stand by to let me sink
So you taught me to swim.
I wanted to return the favor badly.
But I didn’t know how I could, sadly.
The possibilities were endless when we spoke of our dreams.
You could picture yourself coming to my rescue and growing old with me.
You couldn’t wait to hear my voice as if your favorite show was about to air on TV.
You made every effort to show that you loved me
Even if I have nothing to give you in return except my own.
A year passed and the storm clouds were brewing.
The weather grew colder and attitudes turned sour.
I was working hard and I felt out of breath.
You were studying hard and you turned inflammable.
“Where was I when you needed me most?” you asked “calmly” one day.
“I’ve been fighting my own battles all this time.” I tell you. “Life hasn’t been kind to me lately.”
Please, please bear with me. I’m tired and I’m scared. I’m going to be left to my own devices.”
“You need to make more time for me.” You scream. “Anyone would have abandoned you ages ago”
“If you’ve been gone for as long as you did. Is several hours with me too much to ask?”
“Answer me, you ignorant, pathetic excuse of a child!!! Grow up!!!”
I couldn’t with you leeching off of my aura.
You made it seem like the world hates me now.
So I packed up my things, spread my wings, and flew off into the rain.
It doesn’t matter how badly you are suffering yourself
If the prospect that I need to take care of myself too slips your mind.
I never asked you to help me.
You did so at your own volition.
If you didn’t want to in the first place,
You could’ve answered, “No thank you.”
We could’ve gone on with our lives either way.
But here you are.
You called me immature.
You called me a teen in an adult’s body.
You said I never bothered to do my share.
But my dear porcupine, have you taken a look at yourself?
Or better yet, look in a mirror?
You don’t see the newfound greed in your heart, but I do.
The scholars in my inner circles do.
Whose leg are you trying to pull?
My loved ones know exactly what you said.
They know how selfish you’ve been acting and what I could’ve done.
If you think no one can love me the way you did, you could not be more wrong.
I can admit when I am anyway.
You went to town on me like I didn’t know how to count.
And my only response to your passionate rave was goodbye.
In the blink of an eye, you disappeared from my mind. Your quills in my heart decomposed.
It was like you were just another customer that treats cashiers like their punching bags.
I wish you the best of luck with your own hardships.
And I hope your own wounds heal entirely.
But I am done with you.
I am done letting your vitriol take up space.
I am done listening to you disguise your resentment as facts.
I am done hating myself for what our love has come to.
My love for you was just practice for the next person.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Demeter was wise to tell me to stop getting involved.
Because I discovered that what you don’t know
Was how amazing it felt to give you up and do her work
Without a care in the world. After all, you don’t know me.