Your eyes.
I can't stop writing about them.
I can't stop dreaming about them gleaming like sunlight beaming into the windows of my soul.
And I've been meaning to tell you-
Heighten the blinds.
I can't stop fiending to be the reflection in your infliction
The mirroring of eyes, my line of sight in your line of vision
Our pupils don't just collide, they cause a collision
And uh,
The precision of your gaze fogs all coherency to a haze
And it's seeming
There's a thousand words teeming off the levees of my lips
But you got me in a daze and the waves crash silent
See inside I'm screaming
They say the flames radiated from desire are the fires most violent
And I feel your vibes like radiation;
Hazardous to both mind and body.
Detrimental to the soul.
I believe in whole this is not an illusion
They say the eyes never hide from the truth
-and the truth never lies-
See, I've already eyed your eyes
I'm not convinced this is confusion
I've come to the conclusion that
If I confided in you,
Could you agree it's a delusion
You've been opening the window;
You want to be
Inside.

I notice it, I notice it's flaws. I see its texture, I witness the shapes and metamorphic coherency's. It's all aligned in a wild pattern. Like walking in a catastrophic maze and never finding the ending.
But to really observe profusely, the maze has its own pattern, agenda.
Screaming to myself, aloud, I express myself grandiosely.
It all makes perfect sense
The missing piece is not missing, it never was, it was merely detaching.
Detaching from all life forms itself, like a cell that does not belong to another.
The maze was juxtaposed in its own creation.
People were too simple to understand it.
The jagged puzzle doesn't need another piece, it just needs a new formula, a new path, a new perspective, it needs to stay jagged in order to create more purposeful moments and inventions.
Complexities reach a higher peak than ever before, if you try to straighten the puzzle and find a piece to fit in it, you destroying its true and only purpose.
You cannot mold or fix something, you cannot sand it down.
You just need to let it be.
It's shapeless, it doesn't need a form, or a label.
It just is what it is to be.
And that is the secret. The contradiction needs to stay as the contradiction in order to invent the expedition.

Pertinaciously vituperative irrefragable determinism.  Inscrutable axis of spontaneities’ imaginative.  Perplexity’s prognosis to prospectus.  Elan vital’s preternatural perpetuity.  Cohesive coherency’s opaque opulence.  Space-time continuum’s natural induction expressed as identity.  Exponentially tangential imagination’s immaturity.  Entropy catalyst blonds.  Spaciotemporal telemetry tactician’s tellurian terrene.  Protractive analyses dimensional delineation.  Reflectively refractive positional empathy.  Prophylaxis protocol.  Objectified manifest's self inductive diminutive minutia iotas of interstitial edict.  Graspy greedy stingy frugal mingy minions.  Manumission’s indentured servant sail.

I'm sitting in a bar. A place where they all collect. They come together with smiling eyes and open hearts and sit, drink and just shoot the ****. They are all noteworthy people, not a boring or reserved soul among the bunch. And they share stories of their highs, lows and purgatories.

One of them, his name's Jimmy, tells the story he always tells when he's teetering between coherency and slop-talk. He tells of how he died. He hopped in his car one day, and boy did he love his cars. And that particular car, the one his heart stopped beating in, was his favorite. He sped down the road, his hair blowing in the wind and his hand beating the side of the door as he sang "Strangers in the Night" as it blasted through his radio speakers. He wasn't drunk, he never really was fond of drinking when he was still breathing (he says being dead is depressing and alcohol is the only thing that "assures" him). His car swerved sharply, it was raining, and he just couldn't control the hunk of metal. His head hit the windshield before he even knew what happened.

Jimmy looked down at his Jack and Coke and smiled. His eyes, now drowning in salt water, glistened off the cheap fluorescent lights. He told me he never got to tell his mother he loved her. Never got to tell his girlfriend that he thought they were meant to be. Never got to show the world that the man hidden behind so many layers of insecurity and recklessness was a man that was going to span time, generations. And I look back at him, my mouth curling a little and told him that he might not have gotten to talk to his mother or his girlfriend... But he **** well made his mark. After all, he's in a bar filled with dozens of people with stories not unlike his own. And he's talking to me. Me, with my chest inflating and deflating as it filled and emptied itself of sugary oxygen. Me, with my eyes alive and blinking and shining with life. Me, who is alive.

At least, I hope to God I am.

Dream/wake
dr
  e
   a
    m
wake
suddenly
there's no difference
stand in front of a mirror
stare at your reflection
until nothing
means a thing
repeat your name
are you real?
is this real or
are you
s
  l
   e
    e
     p
       ing
sleeping?
ocean waves of oblivion
crash wash away
coherency
hollow chocolate bunny
mechanical robot toy
"big brother is watching"
Big brother
evil eyes
of microscopes
and lasers
wrap barbed wire around your chest
douse your eyes in chilli sauce
in desperation
to feel something
or anything
failed
sadly
you are
awake.

SUNDAY
had a go at hating you, first
found it wouldnt quite fit—well
things like this never did suit us
we're really not the right people for it
not those dark-eyed shark-teeth people
who could craft art from the wreckage
of one another: split each others atoms
open, and maybe find beauty
all the way down
i know we're far too ugly for that
and it occurs to me today
that you likely know it too
so again i'll be the fool, will i?
that's alright; i know you'll get your turn
and i know its always good to have
a little mystery left

MONDAY
i found some old pictures of you
private things, badly-lit:
spent two minutes thinking about
how you almost got there that one time
watching my collarbones twist up into my skin
as i shrugged and said "alright—
do what you like";
spent another one
wondering if youve been there since

TUESDAY
look,
i remember it all just fine
dont tell me a single thing
about how much i did
or didnt eat, and dont you dare try to tell me
how you were always a little drunker
than you let on
ive decided i dont give a ****

WEDNESDAY
i saw your latest ex
just last week—thought you should know
they walked fast like someone with nowhere to be
who does not want anyone to see the aimlessness
of their travels
it reminded me of a bird, i think
or a desperate little moth
or a locust
lost in lieu of an swarm
either way: something with wings
and i wondered for a moment
if in the end theyd believed me after all
and then i went back off on my way
just a bit faster than before

THURSDAY
sometimes i think it wouldve been easier
had you just really made me **** myself
i think you couldve come up with
something really beautiful
if you tried
so at least there is that

FRIDAY
theres a bloodstain on the tracks tonight
a little faded, a little old, not quite enough
im waiting for the last train home
turning myself inside-out
with thoughts of you
and suddenly i am hoping
that wherever you are
you are okay
(i lean my head in against the window
and sleep, all the way
and i dream of you)

SATURDAY [1AM]
i wake up shaking
and i miss my stop
and some other things
and i realise on the long walk home
that you liked my writing before you liked me
and i wonder if youd like this
i wonder if youre winning

SATURDAY [1PM]
you wouldnt touch me like this; sickly
and sweaty and small
paying respects to a watery grave
youd love me but you wouldnt touch me
i left you a message in-between waves
just to ask if you meant what you said the last time
i couldnt even quite remember what it was
something slurred that hit me running
like being passed over by a storm
and then i heaved a dozen flecks
of language up into my hands
watching some illusion of coherency
a quiet, collected existence
drip out through my fingers
and didnt care one bit
yes, im quite sure now
youre winning—no
youve won

SUNDAY**
i thought about it and decided
im starting fresh; it is 10am
and i am trying earnestly
to hate you

In youth
It came as a flood
Almost senseless with
the rush of expression
Pouring from my hand;
It could not keep pace with
the ceaseless deluge from my mind
Half-formed coherency
No thought paid to the rules of
Grammar, Spelling, Paragraphs
Just a wrenching of the soul
that demanded ink.

Years later, studies of
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson
A mind full of words that
are not my own, I am
Senseless with the inability
to break this learned dam. Now
nothing comes out right.
My mind, it burns
and burns and burns
But nothing ever takes aflame.

the depths beyond light 
 of dark primordial fears
ensnared in a trap of
  winding dangerous paths
    'tween passion and fire,
horizons like ink clouded seas
  of menacing madness and
    drunkenness' sanity midst
    psychobabble's inquisitions
rushing rampant to devour
  an overgrown hypothesis
    of imagination's luxuriance
   and anesthetics' coherency,
taming perpetual motion
   of  windswept emotions
lingering in shadows of
  moonbows after resolute
  mind bending storms of
   teeming reigns &
     elusive transcendence
  amid skillfully evasive grapples
       beyond liberated rationality

Meaningless
pushed and pulled
through arbitrary dimensions
Emulating differences in the same,
the Fatal Contradiction
Redefining the sane!

Recombined
fused with idle spinning.
Forging the distorted lie,
these lines in between
with apparent coherency
and ingenious discrepancies
blurring the boundaries
of this new systematic hell!

Put in perspective
these inconsequential banalities
and childish banter
all but shape the future
reiterating the errors of yesterday

Skewed

Conceptualized
Vizualized
Realized
Quantized
.­.. Denied!
how long was it before i fell?

does it even matter?
when even these parallel thoughts repel...

No matter what I do
       it happens again.
I start to think of a starfish,
       and his eyes come to mind.
Who is he?
        I don't really know,
         most of the time he has
                brown eyes.
           But it seems to be whoever
             I happen to fancy at that time.
And its not as if that is seldom,
      because I seem to find beauty in almost everyone I am around.

But with this, how am I supposed to let him come to me,
                when even though I am not looking
                                     I see potential.
They are all so beautiful.

his hair
                       his writing
     his literacy
                                               his coherency
his incarnation into his body

And the thing that makes me pause?
         makes me wonder?

space
              distance
                                understanding
                                                             intent
                                                                           origin
All things that must be considered...

Are you up for the task?
      Up for the unbending intent
              and the unwavering eyes.

Most of us know what love feels like,
               at least the physical/emotional level,
but can you tell me what it looks like,
               and what it does?

Can you tell me something I don't already know.
         Not a fact but a truth?

Can you show me that you're Him,
     without even trying,
         without it being the goal?

This is what I want.
       I want the world,
I want Him,
       to be with Her,
            and for us to be the vessels of that love.

Can you give me eternity,
        without thinking it impossible?

Can you look into my eyes,
     and I into yours,
          and both see the trauma and the lies,
                    but to also see the truth that lies behind?
And can we battle the demons inside,
      to find that truth,
           to know that truth.
Will you destroy hordes of demons with me,
           and stand victorious by my side?
Will you push off from shore towards battle,
           and fight the very gods
             to find me once more?
Will you travel to the beginning
               of Thyme
   to find each and every form
      that love had ever taken?
Will you love me,
        in every form that I take
                  that is Her?
Will you embrace every form
         that He has taken,
             and see yourself
                  for the portal of divinity that you are?
Will you travel to the end of the Earth,
          just to find a letter that says:
                *Keep Looking

I told Halie she was beautiful today
And she smiled and said “You’re handsome.”.
I could tell immediately that there had been miscommunication.
I returned that smile as if I could ever hope to mirror the beauty of hers’ and changed the subject
but honestly, she was missing the point.
‘Handsome’ refers to features that are aesthetically pleasing whereas ‘beautiful’…
‘Beautiful’.
It’s a word I try to avoid defining because I don’t think I know enough
but just talking to her…
Putting our foreheads together instead of our lips,
I feel like I could write a bible about what that words means.
I see more than anyone has seen of her yet.
Sadly, herself included.
I love you like a blind man, Hail
Where it isn’t your body that keeps you in my mind,
It is everything you are to me.
You are the symbol of innocence, even after all this time
I still find myself searching for words to say
that could do you justice.
Now I wrote a poem for Amy because of her looks.
I wrote a poem for Megan because of the pain she caused me.
I never wrote you a poem, Hail.
Maybe I was afraid my words would fail
To describe in detail the way your fingertips strike my nerves
as flint strikes steel and throws sparks
into my heart.
I want to let words fall out of the front of my face
and land at your feet
as if they would have any semblance of coherency.
When we’re touching, I can’t make words.
I can’t rush to my first line of defense against the outside world
because I don’t want to be defended from you.
People hear my brazen declarations of love and I know
They’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking.
‘In the grand scheme of my life, our relationship is the blink of an eye’.
But if I can make you one promise
and if I could only make you one, this would be it.
I’m going to remember you, girl.
Life is the tide that washes over the sand castles we've built together
in this sandbox we call an adolescence,
but I promise you that I will always remember
the times I laid my heart bare
for you to see how much I care.
I promise upon this fluttering pulse
I’ll always be
Your something else.

I have scratched out my journey across a mountain of pages and each and every time I’ve filed away a book, I’ve mourned the trees, compassion is not something I lack.

I have been thankful that they took each and every step with me and as each notebook closes I retreat to my back yard to plant another seed.
I’m happy to give back.

The million litres of ink that have been bleed beneath my fingers and have spread to stain my hands as my life raced across the pages has not been spilled in vain if one day the moldy old box is opened and the dust is blown from the covers and a futuristic version of me delights in the find, and hears beyond the echo of the scratching of tortuous proportions to see a life that was fun filled pain.

So much chatter, most of it doesn’t matter, little tidbits float along on a swollen creek that has never actually seen much rain.

Tiny little letters run across a barren land and accidentally collide into one another because they have no coherency while all the Big words sit in their gilded towers and watch, and wait, drinking the finest Port they can find while mocking the chaos below with ridicule and disdain.

Little bits and pieces have been scattered to the wind...
Thrown into the air, as an offering of peace, to the ancient scourge that is the birds.

I guess this would probably make much more sense if I could only just find the right words….

Jan 9 (two thousand and something)

To the crushing of bones
when you implode;
my stubborn skull
was no match for the concrete.

I flew face first-
now I am ground into dirt,
or the dirt is ground into me
wherever I’m bleeding.


I can’t clean these wounds sober.
this girl?
you won't know her.

my jaw is popping-
is there any chance of that stopping soon?
The moon is closing in on the sun,
threatening to collide
and I've grown wearing of hiding in the night.
I'd just like some
medical attention.

My knees,
my knees...
I forgot to mention they're all ******;
I don't have the money to call off
for a few days.

can I sleep on my face?
my pain is evidence of my shame-
these wounds just my physical disgrace.

I'll regain coherency
at a quarter till three
with a swollen, puffy face
and vinegar in my veins.

just add it to the list
of blundering strains
maybe some time in the future
I’ll be able to worry about it again.

it never ends.

my new lamp, shattered
my clean sheets
dirtied and tattered.

my left ear is buzzing-
everything has gone fuzzy
and my head is numb and
throbbing.

maybe I’ll sleep well tonight,
and my nightmares will find me
without any fight left
in my dried out bones
and pseudo studio home.

c.m.
draft/original: 8.5.14
posted: 1.7.15
revision/edit: 1.8.15

A day off from school, and nothing to do.
So here goes nothing, another letter to you.

words uttered and regretted
but silent still-
just ghosting by,
leaving no kind of trail.

a series of letters,
you somehow bother to read.
a lack of responses,
to which I have "no need".

A dull sort of pattern:
lines and spaces-
ink and not-
yet with so much meaning,
that the world has forgot.

still, they drift off
some grow heavy, and sink straight in.
reluctantly fleeting,
cover blown.
Whispers heard.
All senses now, on full alert.
Wanting a reply, but not at such a cost.
Knowing I am undeserving,
yet deserving of all the loss.

A dull sort of kindness.
an unsugarcoated truth.
I can't help but wish,
I wasn't a disappointment to you.

I can't help but bother,
wishing you wouldn't even dare.
giving words such meaning-
even words such as "care".

I am a sad kind of poet-
yet most never know it.

Just that kid in the corner.
dark room,
never known her.

Others, how they claim to know me-
But my sculpted facade,
hand designed-
by the clear streak of tragedy.
that is all they see.

Center of attention.
laughed at, and never with.
Respect my form of hiding.
It is all I have left.

Shape me, & mold me.
ground me down-
stand me up-
Dusted remnants standing still.
Blinks and stares,
tear through the silent air.

A shake of annoyance.
A twist of my neck.
"can't you see this isn't you?"-
"how dare you think like that."-

You're right.
It's not me.-
As cliché, as that may be.

A puppet at your service-
Fix the outside.
Top performance so they say.
But just one look inside,
and not a single light of day
rusted metal, grit, & oil.  

Fix the strings,
of most importance.
Once broken, soon brand new.
Nice firm tug.
just to Test Performance-
Aesthetics
Appeasing Quality
Of course, Don't you see?

Why of course not,
I would never hurt you.

Tug 'n tighten. Pull the cord.
until the collar stills no more.
Too numb to feel it, Tired & Tried.
Drug back against my will-
Fighting just to close my eyes.

One door closes, another one opens.
keep them both closed.-
Can't you listen?
Too much noise.
I can't stand it.
The door stills. Oh, for a moment-
but is yanked free.
The laws of nature,
so kindly ignoring my only plea.

Reality's firm grip on that cold handle.
Never giving.
Never quelling.

The only note of my existence,
forcing me to note such memories.

They flood back in,
through hidden doors.
Seeking refuge,
from places once stored.
The door always locked-
.. oh so long before.
Now open, mocking.
Here to settle the only score.-
The only thing bothered to be accounted for.

Revamp this puppet,
play my strings.
Gears groan from overuse.
Oil thinning, straight to thin.
Disappearing from existence,-
getting lost too deep within.
Gears grind in dissatisfaction.
Angrily forced to play along-
with such a sad,
unheard,
unforgiving song.

Giving in. Giving up.
Finally, to the abuse.
Just my luck, so lost and alone.
Doing this all, on my very own.

Don't touch me.
I can't take it.
Dizzied from the noxious fumes-
the memories spit back,
toxic to my wounds.

Never resting
always scared
of what lurks "right over there".
Childish fears never quite disappeared.
Gruesome company.
to one already so lonely.

So she slips down the hallway,
hair covering her eyes.
Nervous & skittish,-
Her hearing on overdrive.
One last glance over her shoulder
before slipping just inside
Sliding down,
echoes resound.
Cold tile, sniffling nose.
Vaguely aware of the chill spreading in her toes.

Arms crossed tight, protecting what's left of within-
Reminiscent, barely so
of just one missing, true friend.

Finally safe, my breathing escapes.
paper full,
pen in hand,
smears of ink-
just some peculiar squiggles.
Lines stilled, spaces dots
Dashed & Dotted.
Ink & Not.

My mark on this world,
One that can't be forgot.
Time frozen in place-
A gift for me, that you can't seem to see.

You walk right on past.
Reluctantly so,
sneaking glances through the glass.
Everknowing of my presence,
& that I hide myself away.
To you it is a dark corner.
Not a haven, a place to gather my thoughts.
Sorth them out & string them along-
until I reach the coherency of a single thought.

Peace at last,
my mind can rest.
Demons at bay,
no silent regrets.

Oh me?
I'm just that kid in the corner.
Dark room,
you've never known her.

A sad poet I may be-
But sad to you, isn't sad to me.
A mere relief.
My saving grace.
Just one of the pieces, I choose to embrace.

But that is that.
And I am me.

not quite as wrong, as the world fathoms me to be.

Speed on the
Mirror highway
Lanes and lines
One after no where
On and off-ramp
Stuck in traffic
Lucid acid
Flaccid masses
Classes filled
With stupid *****
Crooked cops
And ******* crashes
Head-on collision
Illusive vision
Elusive division
Intrusive mission
Through a tube
And up your nose
****, who knows
Where nowhere goes
How to get there,
Why I'm going,
What I'm doing,
Who'll be there.
I have no plan,
Nothing is written
In stone.
I'll
Figure something out.
Of sight and in
My mind.  I'm coming
Short of coherency.  Free
Writing poetry never works
In my favor.  I'm just drifting
Away into the
End of the dark sideline.
Through a tube, spiraling,
Stumbling mumbling,
Blundering blindly and
Mindfully striding
Across infinite tiles
Endless, black and white,
Checkerboards.  I am the
Grey area.

He brought her along,
only wanting to get laid.

She introduced herself
as awkward, 'though
first impressions rarely
amount to truth.

I watched him flirt with her;
and watched her try to pull away.
But, it's Friday. Gotta get ****** up.
What else is there to do in life?

She drank more,
he drank more:

"Nah, guys, I'm totally cool to drive."
He slurred as he spun donuts
to impress the tipsy woman.
His hands inched to her thighs.
His eyes seized her *******;
who needs to see the road?

We made it to the birthday,
a standard college party.

She and I sat across one another
at the table. She smiled and started
small talk:
"Oh, I love Vonnegut,
have you read Sirens of Titan?"

We kept drinking as he went out
to pick up more *****.

"Of course I play video games,
they got me through high school."

He took longer than he intended
but neither of us complained.

"Isn't chemistry only
the language of biology?"

Time passed quickly, or slowly,
either way it's dead and buried.
She started to stumble,
huddled closer to me,
tried to move from him
when he returned.
She lost coherency,
she looked at me, muddied;
did she have something to say?

Had she asked,
she would have received,
but silence heralds silence
and unvoiced wants
remain unfulfilled.

He knew she was loosing interest,
that, of course, I'd gotten in the way.
He pulled me aside:
"It's time for you to leave.
I just want to get laid
and you're ******* it all up."

He drove us both home,
hand grasping her thigh,
but she didn't notice;
she was barely alive.

I suppose this is how it goes:
some nights you make friends
that you never see again.

She hasn’t left her room for three days. She hasn’t left her house in two weeks. She hasn’t gone into town in a month before that. She hadn’t been rationing her food supply on purpose but it’s what ended up happening anyway.

She’s laying on the floor, now. She’s been laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling for hours. She knows that the ceiling is a muted, toneless, comforting beige but all she can focus on is the creeping gray shadows that feel like a physical barrier between herself and the rest of the world. She knows that these shadows are only really in her head, but four nights ago the angle of the sun coming through her curtains had been just right and all she could focus on was an oppressive mass of shadow that froze her in her tracks and locked her inside her own mind as it crawled nearer and nearer.

That horrifying moment had only been that, a moment, but now that she’s locked away she doesn’t even have the energy to start looking for the key.

She’s been lying on the floor staring at her not-gray ceiling for hours. She has no idea what day it is because every time her mind starts to right itself into something resembling coherency there is another shudder of uncertainty and the physical shadows in her mind slither over her more tightly and she is left again a shell of herself, dead, glassy eyes staring, seeing nothing and the ceiling, both at once.

However, if there is one thing she can focus on longer than anything else, it is the shadows. The ones that wriggle in the corners of her periphery and make up her cage. Even if her mind can’t pull itself together enough to name the days, she can at least count how many times the shadows were at their weakest and instead of reaching towards the silhouette of her body, she can at least count the three times where she felt the light pressure of warmth on her skin. It lasted a little while, she remembers, vaguely, but it was never long before the briefest change in the shadows illuminated their own movement again. Again, if coherency was anywhere near possible she might question how her strict one-way mind can connect that this means that days have passed, but for now she just waits in numb agony for nothing and everything in her mind to make sense.

She has no idea if she is awake or asleep and really, doesn’t care.