Questions

No, I don't understand it any more than you:
why I turn from the things I want the most,
why I always long to find the source of the smoke,
why beauty inevitably makes me think of ugliness,
why the trusting seem like fools to me but liars even more so,
why I refuse to let certain pains fade away,
why my guilt is not an elephant in the room so much as it is a snake coiled in my lungs,
why I avoid thinking about my own happiness as much as possible,
why I hold so many names in my heart like glistening gemstones,
why I was so willing to fall in love until I began to,
why I have an anger that will not be quieted and cannot be stilled,
why I did not think of death when I was dying.

Dream Catcher

The downward spiral is an easy one to march.
Recently I've been plummeting down as though propelled by wings,
darkly feathered ones that span greater than my desire for survival.
I've been lulling myself into this false sense of complacency.
I'll tell myself it doesn't matter how far I go,
as long as I can still function day to day,
still put out an outward appearance of being "there," of being "present."
They say that I'm destroying myself,
like I've just now passed the marker that separates
simple negligence from active obliteration
of self.
I don't want to tell them that I purposefully chose this path.
That the reason the downward spiral is so fast and so easy
is because every step is greased with the fat
of a thousand good, solid arguments.
At least, they sound good for a little while.
I'll admit that I have my days where I look back,
and remember where I've come from.
Days where I want to shed my guilt like a second skin,
and believe in the gift of dream-catchers,
that can pluck the nightmares from your mind.

Faces

It was quiet
until it made a noise
like a gunshot
It tore the air
like it might through
flesh and the
pounding
in so many ears
I watched and said
nothing
I was simply a
bystander
Nothing to say and
no words to add
A typical woman
and a
"stereotypical"
man
I felt the need to speak
but words felt
redundant or
overly simplified
It was your everyday funeral
of the unknown
I shed a tear for her
the woman whose face was
beyond my recollection
Goodbye
I will dream of you
of that I can promise
Hello
Goodbye
I miss you
and
you were loved

Doors

It is in so many ways like a flower that is afraid of the sun. What do the innards look like? Are the colors ugly? The risk is too great! I must hide myself, lest the world see the garish truth and the clashing petals. It is in this way that I become a frigid thing, locked away inside many rooms. I pace the floors and I know these tiles so well that my mind begins to believe that I have imagined the ones before them. I can still recall the scent of her perfume. I close that door.
Running, I find that I am lost among many memories, and that another has been stripped from me; no matter how many frames I beat upon, it is gone, gone, gone.

Burn It Down

The days blend into one another, dissolving like paper on the concrete after so much rain.
The burning echos of your words fade, and the dull bruises in all those dark places barely ache anymore. Who were we back then, that we fought so viciously? We sought purchase on one another's weaknesses like desperate people going to war, trying to gain ground when there was nothing of value to win. Did you see how cramped I felt, inside of my own skin? I was clawing, scratching my way out -- you were only in my way. It wasn't you I wanted to hurt; it was myself and my own foolishness that I was trying to destroy. I wanted to smash the mirror that reflected the sorry soul that avoided my eyes, day after day, but you stood in the way of my fist! You loved the crumpled being that I was, and I perversely, unconsciously, needed to prove to you that I was as despicable and undesirable as I knew myself to be. So I lit a match and I threw it upon us, deliberately destroyed something I knew could save me because I needed to burn a part of myself to the ground before I could begin again.

Solitude

Space. Time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Begin again. Ask questions directed at the silence inside your room and heart and mind. Do you expect answers? Of course you don't. Answers are make-believe here, figments of your imagination created in order to fill an emptiness born of both desire and hopelessness. You know the truth; secretly, we all do. Humans, by nature, are constant seekers of answers, but we are neither sincere enough, nor strong enough, to seek until we find. We settle. Always, we attempt at contentedness when surrounded by lies fabricated inside of ourselves. Such lack of understanding will doom us in the end, don't you think? So just wallow there, in your silence and in your solitude, and forget your questions. Forget God, forget yourself, forget the world, and its people and their problems. Forget time, space, matter, existence -- and simply die. Die, just like the rest of us. You'll soon see how easy it is.