Have you heard of the
gardens clandestines grow?

The neighbors have, although
until today the gardens were usual, not a
pastime no one would seriously guess.
The flowers are conceptual homonyms
bordered by Boxwood africans
no breadwinning cardinal would bless
with its roost.
                         Grass beneath a golden ninebark
is slightly depressed where some pistol was.
For the past few years the neighbors have wondered daily What the hell is it this guy does?
What, with him always vaguely mumbling "...lots of business trips." It's dark
now, blood spatter coagulates on the picket fence.
                                                          ­                               Four tire streaks on the road,
the responding policemen kept it hushed, speaking in code
to disembodied voices on a radio. Not much more than a glance
and shrug at the neighbors' concerned inquiries.
One consensus formed: he was deep
in consequences from promises he couldn't keep.
This was speculative, of course.
                                                         The palm trees
rustled above their heads. "Maybe he was a clandestine,"
one of the neighbors remarked
as another dismissively barked,
"Ridiculous! He kept a garden!"

Clearly I'm self-aware, copacetic with myself.
Can't help lying, slyly sneaking words in with stealth.
But if I told the truth, I'd find it hard to just continue
living each day revolving around the same issue.
There's a time and place, I'll just let it fall into that.
Slowly bleeding out though, health is ruining my stats.
I wake up every morning like I'm somehow surprised.
The hardest part of doing that's to open my eyes.

I let go of everything that gets too close to me.
It's not really hard when all they want to do is leave.
I can't keep a straight face while my heart beats,
like it's just a joke, or some sick kind of make believe.
I guess my life just likes it to match my humor;
dark, sinister, perverted. That last one's just a rumor.
I ruin lives like addictions to a bad drug,
disconnected mothers that never gave their children a hug,
accidental situations replacing limbs with awful stubs.
The only difference is that I just make it easier to love.
I provide the tools to lose yourself within the moment.
When its gone, I only have one rope, i guess i can loan it.
I need it back though, never know when it could be useful.
Youthful euphemisms hanging from the ceiling, plain beautiful.

Will I ever see the brighter days before my last comes?
Raising my standards after each and every "last one."
My life is like Detroit roads with all its holes and bumps,
dumpster diving bums searching every scrap and crumb.
I can't interpret karma, reasons why it put me here
living life as less of a person than my surrounding peers.
Clouded judgement, but my intuition's much more clear.
I can't find the road, with abundance of potential to steer.

Is it too far fetched to believe,
that I'll sometimes take a match to my fingertips,
just to make sure that  this is real.
That this is real and not some horrible nightmare.
Some horrible nightmare where everything is wrong
and I can't seem to make it right.
Some horrible nightmare where everyone is against me,
and I can't do anything about it.
Where I'm just stuck and can't seem to wake up.
Sometimes I take that match to my fingertips,
hoping that's its all some twisted nightmare,
and that it'll all be over soon.
But all the time,
I get burned.

Ask me what it feels like to be dead inside. Go ahead. Ask.
I know you're curious.

It's like swimming in circles.

You can't see the shore and you can't see past the surface of the water. You're moving but you're not making any progress and it's frustrating. Your muscles are on fire and you're hungry but you keep going because what else is there to do? You could stop and just wade but you know that if you do that you'll give up that much quicker. You wonder what it would be like to surrender and let the water wrap you in it's unknowable depths for the rest of time. You wonder how deep it is and what it's like down there but you figure you'll end up there inevitably someday anyway so you keep going for the time being.

You can change the way you move through the water and how fast you go but you never stop swimming. There's a variety of weather and waves you experience. Sometimes it's nice and the water is calm and you can forget about the emptiness you feel inside and do the backstroke to feel the sunlight on your cheeks but other times it's cold and the choppy waves smash into your face and sting your eyes and all you can focus on is your breathing over the burning in your joints. Nevertheless, you swim and swim and swim without any destination, waiting for the next change to come.

You do a lot of thinking. You wonder what it must be like to feel anything other than longing and discontentment and exasperation. You ponder the big questions and answer the little ones and you try to fill the void inside you with complicated concepts and pretty words. You thoroughly analyze yourself, coming to terms with everything that makes you what you are. You're not happy but not sad either. You're not even somewhere in between. You gave up crying a long time ago because it never helped anything but you still laugh when you get the chance. You're very practical and proud of your cognitive abilities but you also suspect that they are the reason why you don't experience emotions the way other people seem to. You once read "Those who are sensible about love are incapable of it" somewhere and you think just maybe that applies to all the feelings you don't feel. This almost makes you feel distraught, or maybe you just want it to. Regardless, you contemplate anything and everything to distract yourself from the never-ending circles.

You swim and swim and swim and swim because that's all you can do and all you want
all you've ever wanted
is to feel alive
but you don't know how.

And that, my friends, is what it feels like to not feel anything at all.
Swimming in circles.