Was it me,
That spoiled your soul?
That took you in,
And filled each hole.

With shit and dirt,
And rotting bones.
Now I look at you,
And throw these stones.

I think I broke you,
Long ago.
I think the person I loved,
I took to stow.

But I don’t know where I placed you,
I don’t know where to look.
My biggest fear, is the person I hid,
Was someone I mistook.

You weren’t really him,
And maybe I wasn’t me.
So now we are fighting for something,
That was never meant to be.

But I hold onto this image,
Of this guy in my head.
That one that was perfect,
But the idea is dead.

I know that I do this,
And I know that I run.
Perfection is no where,
And there isn’t the one.

So I sit here and wonder,
If for you I should fight.
But now all I see is the shit and the dirt,
So I think I’ll take flight.

And you’ll kiss me goodbye,
And my tears, they will drop.
I will...

Sleep caught me,
It always works that way.
Awake, then reality slips.

Reality.

A child, in my bed.
I had to be, maybe seven.
Young, yet the memory so crisp.

I open my eyes.
The scene.

Moonlit room.
My chair, no longer tucked carefully under the desk.
No.

It faces me.
And there she sits.

Hands bound.
Legs bound.
Mouth taped shut.
Eye’s behind a cloth.

And there they walk.
Circling the young girl.
Black robes.
Grim reapers.
Death, circling the girl.

I scream.
I scream for my mom.

Enter the scene,
Mom.

In panic, another nightmare,
Down in the books.

The girl disappears, my chair, back to the desk.

Mom.
It’s okay.

But death.
Death!

As I speak to my mom,
Death mocks me.

As I speak to my mom,
Death stalks me.

In the hall,
Behind her silhouette,
Pace, the grim reapers.

I sit there,
Awake.

Scene,
Room back to normal,
Mom standing in the...

I could spend my whole life fighting the world I was born into,
Blaming a time I didn’t choose.

Or I can accept it.

I can accept this miracle of life.

Accept that my lungs expand in a society I am not in love with.

Maybe then I can fall in love with my lungs, my life, this life, this world.

I find myself seeking,
In spiritual discontent.
Seeking in a world I don’t trust, in a society that repulses me.

Yet a society I fear to leave.

I am seeking, searching for peace of mind, peace of body.
As my mind twists and turns my chest hurts, carrying a weight it never chose to pick up.

I feel alone, utterly alone.

Overwhelmed with these feelings of discontent.

Nothing, nothing, ever being good enough.

And who am I?

How am I more deserving than the next one?

The pain in my chest is back.
In hours of day, in hours of night.

It wakes me, and it slows my sleep.
I know it shouldn’t...

“The year was 1920. The hospital was light, pale; the colors (or lack thereof) created a cold space. A hospital, where people fought to stay alive but the cool setting reeked of lives lost. All of the beds were on a track. It was like an amusement park, but lacking of laughter, of life. The beds went around and around and as they approached a nurses’ station, I watched the patients lick a morphine sponge and then continue on the track. As I approached the station I asked the nurse, ‘What is this?’ Her eyes connected with mine, it seemed no one bothered to ask her this question before. ‘These are Morphs; they have nothing to live for. They will go around and around until the day that they die.’”

I listened to Dave speak. As he finished describing his hallucination I asked him what he made it mean. “I didn’t want to be caught in the cycle, I wanted to do something with my life...

You know what love looks like?

It’s falling for someone new.

I’ve never met him before, he’s wonderful, he’s out there, and I’m waiting, I just don’t know his name.

I don’t know what he looks like but I have this image in my head.

At the very least he looks like the last guy that broke my heart and made me wonder why I just wasn’t good enough.

Dellusions.

And what he does for a dollar, is super interesting, and creative, and it so perfectly matches my dollar.

His standards meet me own.

I haven’t met him, he is no friend, but I will be marrying my best friend and everyone will agree it was always meant to be.

Dellusions.

So I keep myself closed to opportunities of love that are standing right before me.

The one I connect with, vibe with, all because I know his name, and damn it we went to the same school and this does not match who I should fall in love with.

A...

She woke me.

Though I set my alarm, just four hours from the time.
She beat me.
And I know it wasn’t her, it was him, but she was next and I hated her in that moment.
Thirty minutes passed and I continued to stare.
Hating him, hating her.
Because of him I couldn’t take her down.
Those measly 10 mls.
Yet it was more in my head than it was in that bottle.
And I knew she would save me from him and for two hours I could let my lids close and my world darken.
Better than her sister,
Who lost her life to my sink.
But she still looked like poison, though her taste wasn’t half bad.
I needed her.
Hated her, feared her.
Feared falling in love.
Aw, the peace she would bring.
I look at her now,
My, “Just in case.”
Just in case…
Just in case what?
Just in case he comes back.
Just in case he doesn’t.
Just in case my mind puts me somewhere I don’t want to go.
She’ll be there.
But I...

It fell upon me,
But I swear I didn’t want it.

And they ask why did you catch it?
I was protecting myself.

What is it?
It’s pain, it’s hurt, it’s loneliness, it’s depression,
I don’t know,
It’s dark, and it’s heavy.

I push it away to look from a distance,
Define it.
But I can’t see it, I can’t hold it.
I caught it, but I can’t set it free.

They ask me,
How can they help.
And I talk, release, but the weight stays.
I can’t share it.
Lucky them.
Poor me.

What is it?
Again I say I don’t know.
It’s everything.
And it’s nothing.
And I made it up but I can’t make something up in its place.
I can’t fill this darkness with light that I can’t see.

Let it go they say,
You caught it, just let it go.
I look at my hands and it’s not there.

I can’t let go.
There is nothing to release.

But my chest, it’s heavy, and it hurts.
And it keeps me up at night,
And it wakes me...

And I have so much I want to do with life,
But you’ll never be a master.
A master.

So I pick and I chose,
But damn it, it’s true,
What I don’t practice I lose.

This is what we call civilization?
An environment that stifles creation.

That kid with all of the voices in his head,
Maybe he was born to write a play.

And that girl, yeah she’s blind,
Maybe she is meant to be creating with clay.

That boy diagnosed with A.D.D.,
God forbid he was just born to be free.

But we gave him a pill,
Because his energy was lost in translation.
And now you should see him,
If he forgets to take his medication.

Do we wonder why our society,
Reeks of addiction?
All of our outlets,
Taped off with restriction.

No, he never wrote a play,
His attempts, always interrupted,
By an extended hospital stay.

And the clay hardens and breaks,
Untouched by her hand.
Another case of stolen...

I wished for a different time,

A different place.

Less room,

More space.

Please take your fancy brands,

Your fifty pairs of shoes,

I want the type of happiness,

That money can’t buy,

And the poor can’t lose.

I want fresh air,

Green space,

But we watched it all erode.

And the beauty of the world,

Is only visible in the images that we download.

Because we invested in building,

Denying that we were investing in destruction.

And we invested our time,

Denying the consequences of this corruption.

Silently we wish,

We invested in connection.

Because all of the insurance in the world,

Didn’t give our happiness,

Any of the needed protection.

I waited, I prayed.

I held me breath, I exhaled.

In the good times I thanked,

In the bad, I repented.

Forgive me.

Show me.

I prayed.

Just show me.

You found freedom, when you could no longer deny His existence.

The irony.

I found freedom, when I stopped denying my resistance.

The day I wrote down those words.

I don’t believe.

I don’t believe.

The day I removed that cross, my chest could breathe.

The day I found freedom, was the day I found faith.

And I sat across from him,

He asked am I spiritual?

I looked back, into the eyes of a man, judgement burning from me.

Upon me.

What does it mean?

Spiritual?

I stumbled upon my words.

As I tried to define a word in attempt to define my faith.

I believe we are one.

I believe in us.

I am naive, and I believe there could be peace.

And amidst my beliefs, I wonder.

I wonder.

Why am I here? Where...