Poem: Fools Errand

​Paranoia dripping from words

That spin out of control

Caught off balance 

By foolish thoughts

Of course you’re wrong

Right?

They tell you nothing exists

As panic starts to rise

A hateful parasite

Attacking sunlight

Ushering darkness

Falling on knees

Gasping for breath 

An assault of the will

Held at the point of a gun

Loaded with lies

Cocking back insults

Like they’re at the range

You’re the target

Tied up with red strings

Once tying you to yours 

And yours to make believe

Poem: Normal Isn’t Mine to Hold

​I no longer want love.

Once upon a time

maybe

but watching the internal collapse 

of my entire world 

snapped me out of the thought 

of living here happily ever after. 

I wish for the peace 

that being a living ghost 

of who I used to be 

can afford me. 

Slowly shrinking away from those 

I once knew

glancing back at memories 

Of living silently in my thoughts

And dancing in my dreams.

Let me live in my land of make-believe

just a little while longer 

where my heart can’t be broken 

by loving 

Or by living.

I would rather live in peace

live in the made-up world I create 

Instead of giving myself to someone else

Just for them to break.

There’s no beauty in the breaking 

when you’re used to being broken. 

There’s only so many times 

you can mend the wounds 

That someone else gave you

until you decide you rather live 

vicariously 

through made-up characters 

in the books you read 

and the worlds in which you create. 

Poem: Here Lies the Summer

I guess I had to die

To lay it all to rest

An unmarked grave of yesterdays

Memories scattered

Like wildflowers

Around my wounded hopes

Pens slicing into dark thoughts

Disguised as pretty poetry

Set to the tone

Of hopeful and healing

I guess I have to cease

For the words to die as well

That stabs through me at odd times

Opening wounds and lancing boils

In an attempt to heal

Something I didn’t break

Hurled like insults

On a cloud of fake concern

A cruel reminder

That I can’t take a positive turn

Your words burn through skin

Thin from the war

I rather be buried under sarcasm

Then, repeat them in the mirror

Reopening the chasm

I guess when I depart

The voices might stop

I hope

From its endless tirade

Of remembered slurs

Spoken out of turn

With pleadings dried on my tongue

From trying just to hold on

I hope in the end

I’ll go out with such grace

Without the blood of the past

Smeared on my face

I guess when I perish

I might get the chance to grieve

In silence

For once

For everything

I once loved

And lost so dear

By employing my voice

And losing all trust

So that maybe in the end

With the final push of earth

Beneath my weary feet

My dust will learn to settle

And I’ll learn to speak

Short Short: Darkside

Writing prompt: May the force be with you
Song: Darkside by Alan Walker/Au Ra

--

            It's like I had tripped and fallen into a pit of my worst nightmares where their talons and claws poked into my skin, made thin by savages disguised as those I loved. Their dead eyes stared back, accusations like the tongues of Christians burning me with blasphemies saved for devils and demons. The poisonous gas filled my lungs, bruised for holding my breath and voice, waiting for safer days. 
            I gasp.
            I claw.
            I break the skin.
            Trying to climb out of the grave leaves me shrinking to the comfort of the dark; instead, here I am, fighting for the light. With shackles around my ankles, cuffed to arms that drag me down. Each act to save my mortal soul saves no one in the end. I heave, pant, and transgress into worry that my war-weary soul will exist no more. As I'm dragged further down, I tug and pull, my faith in living failing under the weathered woods—the knocking of nails again of the coffin, hammering hard against my aching head. My neck was sore from looking up, my head bent back, gasping for help, but no one was left. 
            Maybe they were right, to shun me and set me down through the floor for the atrocious, salacious worded whore I turned out to be. Rejoice! In my silence. My tongue cut from knives I pulled from my back. I bleed my truths left unheard, the pools of regrets I drown in nightly, pulling me deeper into deaths entirely unknown.
            For years, I had slunk in the shadows, no friends or foes alike; my demons played me like a harp and left me alone at night. Now they had faces, and this was by far the cruelest joke by far; when the demons plucked my strings, it was to slowly tear me apart. I unraveled in the hands of those who once lifted me up.
            No longer dark faces looked back at me, but the faces of the savages who were once those who loved me.