You're in a bar thousands of miles from home in a city that
your tongue struggles to properly pronounce
watching a seventeen year old chain smoking nicotine he bought from
a ******* the corner
when you first feel like you're beginning to settle,
a familiar weight settling in your stomach,
an old acquaintance a stone's throw from a stomachache,
so you slip off of your stool to stagger to the bathroom
where you clutch the porcelain and kneel with fingers poised
like a prayer to your gag reflex,
but you don't do it,
you just sit and feel cold tiles seeping a chill into your knees
and you're trembling.
You don't get up for a long time
but you know you have to settle and sit eventually.
When you go back to the bar,
a boy with a galaxy smile will take you outside
and buy you candy from a sketchy vending machine,
and you can let yourself believe that sweets solve everything:
sweet words and signs and cards tucked into your jewelry box,
tongues tucked between teeth in smiles and screenshots as receipts
of ten second Snapchat dreams.
But other people can't fix you.
Learn that.
Don't you dare let yourself believe,
don't you dare let yourself put something as fragile as
your happiness in someone else's heart
because it probably won't beat as hard as your own,
and it won't pump life into your joys for long,
and before you know it,
that happiness that you tethered to someone else is gone.
That's okay. You'll be okay.
You just need to learn that memories will only ever be memories,
that things only shine when you
remember that you have to keep them clean,
that the chemicals of development take white pages and make them
dark,
that photos come from negatives,
and that you've never had a predisposition
for rose-tinted lenses.

His ring was cold when he put it on my finger,
but I took it anyway,
hoping that it might warm up after I wore it a while.

I may have steamed up the inside of this car with him,
but when he leaves,
I’ll still write your initials on the window.

I might not see you,
talk to you,
or feel your touch ever again,
and my existence is absolutely crazy,
but this is my way of staying loyal to you,
your memory,
and all that you were to me.

I can't help but love you.
You are me but you messed me up.
I hate being here with you.
I just can not wait to pack my bags and leave you for good.
Yet I know that even when I'm gone I'll miss you.
But never will I miss you enough to come back, ever.
I'll move on to better things.
But you Alabama will always settle for the worst.

They say,
  You could do so much better.
  Shoot for the stars not the clouds.
The thing is, what if I want to shoot for the clouds and the birds in life?
What if I'm scared to death of failure?
I can't even handle the idea of failing.
People don't understand that I am okay with mediocre.
I don't care if I am the very best.
I just want to be good enough.
I don't ask a lot of myself because I always dissapoint.
So now when they say
  You could do so much better.
I will reply
  Yes I know, but I don't want better.

a settlement is something that you do when you go to a new place
settling down
settle yourself
settle settle settle
i've been here all my life
i'm still roaming around

You're picking at me
like scabs of my mistakes

Disappointing you
is easy;
and admittedly-
pleasing.

We're careening down the mountain
and you've cut the brakes.

Your medication give you the shakes
and I twitch in my sleep

Your love is cheap
and the wine is sweet
and I awake the next morning
with a migraine from both.

What a gracious host.


I'll try to make ends meet and
you'll half-heartedly sing me to sleep.

We'll do the whole **** thing
again on repeat
week after week.

nothing to this but the cycle
So what if there's a new season ,
time dont mean a thing

Based upon an old self /
you are a shiver and a coma
And im just settling

Starting to think we really were made
For this day and age - these lights
Your scarlet face / the waves

Hey young man, nervously idling away the fresh blood the creator sent you,
Cowering, afraid of bounteous opportunity while blood turns stale and the keen head turns to mush,
Stop lying to yourself and to your love, desist in piling worries upon her tender frame!

Whilst the blood congeals in the veins
The eyes can grow dull and sickness can mollify the restless spirit.
Open the cells to mineral impregnation,
Calcifying the legs, then the waist, then the chest…

No need for anything dramatic.
No need to open up the veins in hot bath,
And bitterly expire beside the 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner
As unsuspecting house-mate knocks patiently on the bathroom door:
“(KNOCK, KNOCK KNOCK) are you going to be long in there?  I need a poo.”
Why ruin a good door-frame by forcing said house mate into shouldering door from hinge
Only to stumble across sprawled carcass bobbing softly in reddened lukewarm water
Wearing swimming trunks for modesty’s sake.

Why face the posthumous embarrassment
Of having your rambling, hastily scrawled farewell note;
Marred with emo clichés and syntactical errors,
Poured over and scrutinised by judgemental mourners.

Nah.
Just lock that bathroom door deep within your soul
And let the childlike ambitions and desires that defined you
Sink beneath the lapping waters.
Soldier on, mourning the demise of the inner self, for now
Where the excision took place is tender and red
But it will heal.
And you will be free from the burden of self-reflective expectation,
You can dine with the servants; **** up to the inept boss,
Discard the heavy crown of ambition
And walk with a light and merry step into the silence of the grave.

And whilst this resignation is all very well
for a piece of self-pitying prose
Maybe you owe it to that guileless infant
(who art the father of the man writing this)
To do better by him than drown him,
Letting him Go Gentle into That Good Night
Simply because
In the face of unwavering actuality
He has become an inconvenience.