Sometimes I feel my own ambitions with my work, its dreams and desires are so overwhelming and possibly unattainable, that they will just swallow me whole.

(2015)

I'm ready for the jab and cut again
I'm ready for my eye to see the hole through the needle again
I'm ready to take one for my gut again
I'm ready to break apart again if it needs to

(Oct. 6, 2015)

Charlotte, Arielle & Mark's wedding, August 22, 2015

Could I be the person I need to be? I always believed so but the last couple years I've started to doubt how much I really know about anything at all. That the only thing I know is myself and what if I am no use for any other foresight or knowledge? A friend back in college talked about how things seemed to be melting all around her. I wonder what if I am melting? And if I am, what am I melting into? Why did I ever, how could I ever think that things would just fall into place because I wanted it so badly?

Slept through serpents, 

prophecies at the end of the world, 

if heartbreak makes you whole pour the turpentine half full, 

heartache keeps me human,

heartache cannot melt me into anything more human, 

becoming dangerous is a full time paranoia.

If I stopped talking would their be people helping me out of my bed or thrusting me under the covers?

It is not paranormal for me to be on a rope gazing past the end of the world.

I am much meaner than you would like to believe.

I am only concerned about my tears and rapport with others, picture me as if I turned you inside and hollow.

Please confirm the following; 

being in the right skin means not always knowing yourself as well as you would like to?

For now the end of the world gazes right pass me.

I am not part of its prophecy.

I want someone to love the shell I come in the fire I breathe

and know I have a heart that holds me choked, 

my poisonous irony, catch-22 honesty.

The best part of the mental patchwork is a ghost address.

I want someone to love being in my shell whether today my mouth is venom or if that mocking bird turns black.

No one else listens to prisoner's stories quite the same way as I do.

I want you to love me even if I have a baby that is just as blue

and know that I have a heart that holds me choked.

I want someone to breathe the same fire I breathe without scarring me or one another 

and we don't become stolen, underneath my blue, mirrors and ghosts, 

smoke, oil, ice compressing, 

my poisonous irony, catch 22 of honesty,

if today my mouth is venom and the mocking bird's songs go dark.

No one else listens to the prisoners’s stories quite as silent as I do.

Someone who loves even if the baby is blue, the fire I breathe, the heart that holds me choked, we don't become stolen, in my shell without scarring one another we breathe the same fire, underneath the ice compressing. 

Alan at Rail Trail, November 2015

I go to hell all too often

picked and primped

and scratched 

buttered and deeply seared

cause the blood is not a clot

impasse

bargain

this time instead of just being regulated to the favorite book section of the book shelf

I am the bookmark

Don’t let anyone know that you are not strong enough on the inside as your outsides might show

the inside and outside of you

how does that go again?

I imagine your teeth sinking in me 
not caused I asked but you couldn't refrain
drying out the organ
clenching the residue
clamping me raw
boiling and bursting out of our skin
slipping in and out of ambient sound
prickling, softening, hardening
elbows and thighs
nose and labia
shoulders and abdomen
flush lips and magnetic eyes
echo and unknown

Hi Dad, I really really miss you. 20 years...what is there to say? You were so cool and so smart much more than I will ever be. If that Thursday had just been any other ordinary bad day at school coming home for warmth and to be nestled when the weekend was around the corner. I looked so forward to that. I miss such a small comfort. Before the "after" occurred, the not knowing the worst was yet to come and would reverberate on and on. If I wrestle with the small comfort how can I ever feel safe among the big ones? Or is the goal to realize you are not safe? I have found most people have been able to hide and keep themselves safe. Tucked away, but that is not the darkness I need, I have a few lifetimes I've lived in this life.
Please don't try and solve me
I'm not here to be fixed
I'm not waiting for the light

Misconceptions about the things that kill you

severing the hand that corrodes the birthmarks assimilating atomic bombs

No alarms 

no crying 

no languishing

no stars

I’m pretty committed to tragedy happening to me

but this will not be what kills me

that

may

when

where

how

why

now

instant

shocking

compelling

activating

impending prism

Do I miss you or who I thought you were

How do I believe when that has never transpired to whatever I needed or desired

Listen

I can tolerate standing on one leg blindfolded carrying easily the disappointments and bad memories, I memorized them like the back of the unmarked veins on the roads that course through my hands that I used to not hesitate scarring 

what possibilities and dreams that could have been is what haunts me

not that these things would have come to be what I was hoping but the relic that I once allowed such hope to take ahold and it still has never let me go

death is the fissure that aligns us all like birds suspended to be detonated assembled in a row

torpedoed 

it reminds me there is no escape

maybe I do not long for one

maybe we don’t connect in the real world that we merely intrigued one another that we were lonely but we were not meant to be anything more then a passing chapter before we get back on line to whatever fates we have awaiting, it doesn’t seem we have the same ticket it would be comforting but I know life does not offer such comfort 

I don’t trust comfort

Loneliness and sadness that’s what I count on

I realized I wanted to expect more out of life but I don’t have trust that that is what will happen

not that I am doomed but there is not much else to expect

But how long can I live with that?

I don’t want to live with hope but how can I live without it?

I try to abandon hope but I feel it will never let me go no matter how small it withers even to a seed

a speck 

an atom

I wonder what will kill me

I wonder if it will be all at once

or one by one carefully

methodically

some restraint 

some mercy

I can’t count on that

I will try to live without hope

but I believe hope’s seed no matter how far I travel how much I abandon whatever new tragedies befall me

how much I pretend it doesn’t count

I am not as brave as I once hoped I was

maybe I no longer wish to be just brave

I wonder what will kill me

I wonder if it will be all at once

or one by one carefully

methodically

some restraint 

some mercy

I can’t count on that

what possibilities and dreams that could have been is what haunts me

not that these things would have come to be what I was hoping but the relic that I once allowed such hope to take ahold 

it still has never let me go

death is the fissure that aligns us all like birds suspended to be detonated assembled in a row

torpedoed 

it reminds me there is no escape

maybe I no longer pine for one

however long I cry and agonize 

I have endured and on and on

I will continue to reconcile that this has long ago been implemented before I was born

hope will never let me go

maybe I no longer aspire it to

I miss you so much that 20yrs cannot encompass the loss I feel/experience. I miss you so much that it can feel there are no proper words, analogies, or phrases to convey, that its trivial to even attempt but I continue because it would be unbearable otherwise. Your birthday is Monday. What does happy birthday really mean after death? I'm at a loss to articulate that but I feel that I cannot let that thought go unspoken. Though I know there's no way you could ever read this I am driven to write it because otherwise survival would be unbearable, unfathomable, too much of me would not be left in tact to keep going. Sometimes I feel that is all I do, I keep going, keep trotting, running, swimming keeping my head bobbing above the waves, that this is the purest form of existence. but I do not fully trust that statement on its own but I must say it. Its not without a cost living after death, choosing to live after death, I wish you had made a different choice but I know your choice wasn't a choice also. Everyday I make a choice to stay above ground and that is purely by willpower to not want to perish and paradoxically its purely luck given what my life and state of mind is in this present time. I wish you could have been afforded the same.