Fever from exhaustion and aches from reluctance
Stress responses to unbearable situations
Call me broken
Of the mind perhaps, the body certainly
But not the heart
And ain’t that some weird shit
To have things flipped table like that
But still that familiar song of close but not close enough plays on the radio
Turning that dial, looking for a stronger frequency
Rolling those dice hoping for a triple hard eight
To run the board and let it ride
Until dreams become reality
But reality is wicked
It does care what you want, only what bargain will you make
Because that’s how it is here
We sell our time, physical or mental
And what’s the price tag on a new life
Hard to buy when you are still making installments on the one you have
Just broke enough to know that you aren’t broke
Alive, paying bills, told to cut back on that overpriced coffee that tastes like freedom and for a few sips you get to forget that the rent is due and food is running low.
Buying everything cheap
Instead of well, because saving costs to much, can’t go to work if you aren’t wearing shoes
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps
That’s some non-newtonian physics
Smiling faces like they’ve done you a favor
Tired of this broken wheel
This simulation
Fucking programmers
Always introducing new bugs with each new sketch update
Fuck it
I gotta live here
What happens when it goes away
Futures uncertain but still
I can always depend on being wide awake when it’s time to sleep
stress
Brief contemplation on the confluence of art and life
It’s hard to keep writing when the song in your heart is silent. When its constant mutters and chatter bleed off into silence so quietly that you jerk awake, lulled by the absence for those brief moments indulging in that quiet that never seems to stay. Until you see that the chatter has gone. And you are left with the quiet.
It’s no secret that I use my pain and bouts of depression to fuel my art. And there is no doubt that it has led to a well fed blood forest.
It’s weird. The quiet was the moments when I would create in. Maybe I need to reassess. And know that this is not quiet. Instead it’s the steady white noise, too busy to stop and think. Too busy to experience and grow. Far too busy. But what must that mean?
And can I get back to that without sacrificing what I’ve gained. I don’t know. I have this need to now commit to trying but that feels like the first step to failure. So instead I’ll commit to a small change. And perhaps that change will lead to another.
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Fog descends when pressure fades
Can it be called writers block if the words flow easily but tepid and sluggish. Feeling like syllables instead of the flutter of butterfly wings against lips. No pouring of life onto pensive page, instead just the slow chime of waiting. Of being dragged down into sleep, again and again
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Drowning drip by drip
Dreams bring no rest
Only mysteries
Dystopian
Running in place
Lost a still yearning
Broken piece jigsaw
Death and lies until all jumbled
Breakdown
Lasts words turn to wet sand
Dribble out of mouth
Painful lost hope living
Rejected solutions
Yes’s and no’s
Plans for the future
Waiting for that rejection
That always comes
Faith broken
Steel plate fallen away
What’s a real relationship anyway
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Feigning normal while drinking seawater
Give me a minute to think
Just a minute to breathe
To plan
This thought that a minute to think will sort things
While my mind stays empty
Except for the algorithmic upward trend of my heartbeat
Feeling the fight or flight response filling my limbs
Washing in like a tide of seaweed
Choking off access
The walls falling into place
Locked behind the steel
While outside adrenaline rages and barely held in check
I wait out the anxiety
This rising blood tide instead settles to this new normal
Fighting to tread water
Glimpsing the seabed
And the shore
And knowing how to reach neither
Only the sure knowledge of of how to drown
And the sure knowledge
… It’s coming
And then, all hopes die
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Breathing too heavy air scraping shallow scars
Twisted fingers entwined through time
Dancing dreams scream the bereft
Last chance echoes slip behind curtain
Called by your voice
Accent makes me climb the walls
Prisoner of our times
Deliberate voice raised in song
Unheard in distance
Wistful by the wishful
Care for the casket
Drum beats exhorting abandon
Too still to be seen
Control gives in to silence
Weeping hearts begging to be loosed
Never was a simple thing
Love which beats wings against cages
Saline trails through grimes soaked skin
Wishing tears were bullets
Watching the disintegration
Loosed arrow
No missive massive enough to wake the lobotimized
Asleep by choice
Stress flakes away hard won demilitarized zone
Refuge in your arms
Head on my shoulder
Old habits waking
Muscle memory creeks hoping its recall is sound
Torn
And base truth
That all I want is you in my arms
Your voice speaking truths in my ear
Our hearts beating faster
Safe
And loved.
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Stress fractures break the mask
Heart full of blood and shadows
Cupful of salt
Distilled from bones left in the sun
Mind races on a track
Round and round
Stopping only to kiss you
Waking with the midnight sun
In the quiet
Fur and chocolate
Late nights become early days
Hourglass sand
Spills
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Forced backwards
uncertain fuels the breakdown
butchered goals at the whims of others
chances risked pay out gold
that fades with the dawn
pulled back
skin no longer inured
heart no longer fatalistic
no longer adapted to the caustic environment
Instead
burn
as if the time never was
lost in the false storms
at the mercy
of the merciless
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Silence…. Draws out
An unhealed wound bleeding slow pulse
Thick with the poison
Alkaline tears burning as they roll
resisting the pull of gravity to cling to skin
one more bare second of together
wetness drying on a face
wracked by silent screams
voice made quiet by the nightjar
and a horrible sense of ichorous urgency
nobility snuffed out
so much simpler to bleed than to break
under the weight of hoping
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Set back after setback
There is a point where I can feel you letting me go and I scrabble for purchase but I can’t quite hold on to you. And I say you like you are the only one to do this but I have become so familiar with this that I can feel it happening. I feel you slipping away from me and I don’t know how to hold on to you and I don’t know if there is something I’m not saying that keeps you walking away. This isn’t a novel. I don’t know the words to say that tells you to stay. I don’t know the action to take that convinces you. If I did, I would have said it, done it. But you, you, you. It’s each person who has drifted away from me. What am I doing or not doing that causes or contributes to this? Maybe I seem fun and simple but then you get to know me and I’m complex, maybe you are good with that too, then I hit a day of too little sleep and too much stress and all my emotions start racing around and I bottle it up, trying to hold it together and you ask what’s wrong, not taking my honesty pledge seriously enough, and I say everything that is eating at me and it’s like standing in front of a sandblaster. And I’m immediately regretful and I try to put us back together but now I don’t have anything to stand on but this quicksand because I know I fucked up but feel like I didn’t. That this maelstrom is a part of me, and I have to work with yours, why don’t you have to work with mine. I’m not uncomplicated, not simple, not easy. I don’t know how to get you from the slow crawl of beginning to nestled close to my heart. I don’t know how we can get there. And I am so tired of trying and failing. The people that love me but not romantically say that a person is out there, but that’s not what I feel. I feel like my person is gone, she’s not coming back. I feel like I acted with care and love and it wasn’t enough. Each time it’s not enough. I keep trying, because that’s what I am built for but, each time, it’s like a new stab wound. My heart reels back trying to heal and my mind tries to figure out what the misstep was. It never ends.
Pelgris 