It's the 21st century
But I'm still suffering from bad humours
Where you lay in bed because your chest is caving in
I guess that's why they call it depression.

It's okay, just put on a bird mask
Fill it with sage and breath in the fumes
While the memes tell you you're the bad energy in the room

It's easier to go to internet strangers
And admit that maybe you might be in danger
Than to tell your mom that you're ready to leave her
"I'm fine because I always am."
That's not really an answer.

Everyone gets sad sometimes
We don't take it seriously anymore
Because death doesn't scare us
What scares us is 60 more years
Of wondering what the point is
Working at a job we hate
To buy another mocha latte with
Six shots of espresso
Just to stay awake through the ballet performance
Put on by our children
That we felt obligated to have
Through pressure of society
But yeah, it's just depression
Everyone has it
Its fine
There's always someone who has it worse
Just grow a pair
Cowboy up
It can only go up from here
Right?

I watched as your webbed nest grew
In the branch of the front yard tree
A plague of squirming brood
Not that a web of a spidering

Yours was much too thick
As I braved a finger, fear quelled
Skipped on using a stick
Strong and sturdy she held

“Are these caterpillars?”
You asked, I replied
“I think they are.”

You asked for the destruction of civilization
“You need to cut these down.”

“I can’t, I been watching them grow,
Watching this web slowly take over.
Now I see on every tree
When I’m out driving
Their villages
Where they live
Feeding off the leaves
If these are so common
Why are butterflies so rare?”

You responded with no care
“They are ugly, I don’t like them.”
  
I watched the rest of that tree
Be consumed
I hope that plague
Becomes beautiful soon

Doctor,
mask with a long bird's beak
looking like a horn,
checks out

what's hidden under
the grotesque version of
scales, that colorful and
wiggly fishes own

- abscesses.

A green-eyed girl
face still frozen
from the horror of the plague.

Doctor takes a deep breath
coveres the patient,
who sometimes was called -

he can't say it
but still feels the first time
when she was on his
protective lap and she cried
like the world was too
big to handle in the first day.

Now, The Doctor
feels the world is
too cruel to handle

in their last days.

I know a girl that piles on the necklaces
“Makes me look pretty,” she says
She’s all nervous, high-pitched laughter that jangles
as she fidgets with her armored collarbones

Rose red rashes bloom around ivory flesh,
She scratches at her skin inflamed
Ring ring ring around her pretty little neck
With those posey necklaces and gemstones

She smiles fondly at each reflection
of chains and rocks entangled
Wrung wrung wrung of beauty is she
Bitten so fiercely to her ivory bones

Her laughter hacks into little cough spurts,
and the metal winks dully as it strangles
Ring ring ring around her rosy little neck--
she piles on more necklaces.

"To Arms"




a call to arms

           how used up the words

    perpetual plague

           turn the other cheek

                       99.9 %  dream

         where is heaven ?

                   when ?

         where is woman ?

                    man ?