Oh, look at the little one.
Catching bits of dust
dancing in his window’s beams of light
swinging his door open
to catch his toys alive.
Writing his first book,
inspired by a lego movie.

The plots used to be so simple.
A hero and a villain made of brick,
But now you write like a dog eats,
Gorging on my soul.

Our mother still loves him.
Sometimes she calls for you,
And cries at my disfigurement,
As if I’m not still the same.

Ghosts of potential stare down upon him,

Boxers. 
Musicians. 
Doctors. 
Arsonists. 
Accountants. 
Criminals. 
Janitors.

But I am a ghost of the future, little one.
And I am a madman.

I hope there’s a ghost above me too, little one.
But I look up and see a cracked mirror—

Blood weeping from its fractures,

Bending the light of my face to be more monstrous,

more vile—
More me.

4 AM (Written October 13th, 2023)
This, is how I am starting my day.

There is something in me that constantly desires terrible things. At least an eighth of my heart seems to be dedicated to depravity. It takes all the rest of my heart to suppress it.

Awful things, to be sure, but also self destruction. Perhaps, it acts as a demolition button. Maybe I’ll find it useful one day.

For, if some soul shattering event happens, there may be nothing left but that button. Does my body wish to start anew? No, these are all coping mechanisms. It is bad. It is unromantical sin. God does not forgive unromantic sins, you know.

6 PM (Written today.)

Karen Byrne reclined in a soft blue doctor’s chair—never just herself again.

After the surgery, her left arm moved on its own. Throwing items. Unclothing herself. Slapping her. Stabbing her. Even attempting to suffocate her.

She had to use her whole body to stop her left hand.

It’s called Alien Hand Syndrome.

My hand stirs. I don’t kill people because of you.

AHS raised questions of the soul, of consciousness.
If Karen didn’t control her hand—who did?

I know your love once controlled my left hand.
With your love severed, my soul shattered.
Brain split.
My left hand will sever me further. So much further.

It’s said that deep in Karen’s brain lived another consciousness—
a dangerous one,
with no mouth,
screaming to die.

My left hand twitches toward the button.

Maybe if I’d told you before it was too late, you would’ve maintained the facade.

Maybe you would’ve tied me down past your death.

But I see now—your strings, retractable as tape measurers.

Just as flexible.

My left hand is now the voice of that screaming, dangerous consciousness.

And this time, I can’t use the rest of my body to stop it.

God forgives this sin.
It is one of romance.

From the red tear-stains on my thighs,
From the flowerpots of needles lying on my wrists,
From a child crying for god,
From the footsteps of satan,

Silk cocooned, hid my scars.
I asked the gleam of light for wings,
and He took my crawling feet,
cast me from my nest.

As a weeping willow’s seed, I fell,
Staring at a rapid current through blurry eyes,

Like butter,
I spread!
I fly!

My radio messed up today.
And I listened to the ocean’s color,
Until I was sitting in my driveway,
Listening,
As small waves of music peeked between
The crackling sea.

I drained the ocean,
Stepped out,
And stared at some trees.

They’re always more beautiful at night.
Sharing the sky’s cadence of black and grey.
I heard the wind’s seduction of the branches.
Tangling, teasing. 
Whispering.
Until the ocean returned.

Seasick, I waltzed through my side door,
Fear and nausea rising like bile,
When I heard the waves had followed me, 
Only to see it spilling from my mother’s CPAP machine,
Dazing me into deluded tears.
Ocean receded again,

I stumbled my way through the kitchen,
Into my bedroom,
Lit a candle to calm my unease.

But the flames flicked and crashed,
Waved and ebbed,
Drowning me in its crackles.

It’s still light now as I write.
And I just can’t seem to bring myself to put it out.

I started writing poetry because I felt alone.

Very, very, alone.

It’s funny how many people have reached out to me, telling me they feel as though I may be the only person to understand them.

I’m sorry, reader. I don’t sympathize with you. I believe you sympathize with the scraps of describability I leave in my wake. You munch on the kernels of my absurd.

But I am not your friend. I am much, much, more than these poems may ever reveal. I have 0 attachment to my life. Truly, zero. How do you think I value yours?

You feel “understood”?
You feel “normal”, because of me?
Let’s get intimate.

I am a drunkard.
I am an addict.
I am a murderer.
I am regicide.
I am genocide.
I am the ant Buddha didn’t step on.
I am Buddha.
I am the stars.
I am dark matter.
I am Mao.
I am the man who 3 years ago had a psychotic break in a gym bathroom at 4 AM.
I am the man who closes his eyes while driving, hoping it’ll look like an accident.
I am the man who tried to overdose at 14.
I am all.
I am really, fucking crazy.

I don’t write poems. I bleed my fucking wounds.

But I’m glad some find meaning in the residue of my madness.

I’ve lamented myself to sleep.

I’ve hunched over and written about pain ad nauseam. My back hurts.
My elbows have stripped wood off this table.
Even my chair is depressed.

I’ve painted picassos of pain.
Created the grandest architectures with my tears.
I’ve written bibles of my struggles.

My pen’s out of ink now.
And I have nothing left to express.

I sit here, holding whats left.
Lamenting again.
Knowing only one way to deposit it.

Suicide is a dream.

An aspiration, a goal I’ll never truly reach.

A dream, a desire, one too big to ever be achieved.

…

Heaven is described as infinite endless oneness with God.

…

Seems a bit boring. An infinity of joy? It’s incongruent with my soul. I wish it was different. To be simpler. But it’s not. And I’m unwell.

I belong in Hell. Jesus may have the nails back. I never deserved them anyways. Hell, an endless darkness, is more fitting for my soul.

THERAPY

I’ve been deeply opposed to therapy forever.

Life imitates art. The inclusion of a therapist would only serve to encourage form, diminish creativity, limit a canvas.

I don’t even have anything poetic to say. Sometimes my poems are fueled by anger. Thats what this would be, but I am too unskilled to describe such an indescribable feeling of anger.

I don’t wish to ever be normal. This life I live now, I deeply hope it all crashes and dies. Free me.

FREE ME

Oh carcosa,

How I wish to waltz your streets,

Cracked streets of carcosa,
Beautiful and freeing,
Fentanyl tucked in its crevices,
Potholes full of blood,

Your vulgarly curved streetlights,
Whom reflections dance on broken glass,
Stared down upon by brain matter skies,
A horizon broken by distorted architectures.

Architectures that twist and stretch their hands to heaven,
Metallic absurdities match glowing golden clouds in the pink sky,
Both groaning and falling, slow as feathers,
Glancing out of Carcosa.

Oh Carcosa,

With the ambience of children singing ring around the rosie,

Where cthulu’s tentacles watch close in every corner,

Where the eldritch is the only constant.

Let me live in your heart,

Rip me from this world of peace,

For when the moon shines brighter than the sun,
I fall in love with the dark.

This is noise I’ve arranged with rhythm and fancy words. Not, a poem.

I thrust myself deep into sin. Deep into violence.

There is no formal word for edgy. Avant-garde, being just shy of fitting. The word itself, is edgy.

I roll my windows down in nice neighborhoods and blast Freddie Gibbs, Conway, Glokk40Spaz. I match a stranger’s smile with a scowl. I wear braided hair. I am a great evil.

I invite judgment in, impiety towards a judgmental world.

I quietly listen to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, David Bryne’s rendition of Au Fond Du Temple Saint, виртуальная любовь by Tanin Jazz. The earbuds that border my scowl, read Ocean Vuong, Oscar Wilde, Dostoevsky. I volunteer at homeless shelters, and tell as little people as possible.

Mona Lisa lives in me, covered with graffiti. Like a child, cursing their parents into a pillow, I achieve my own little triumph by weaponizing perception. One only I know.

My soul, caught by a doctor’s latex gloves.

Gloves as white and colorless as the soul it has captured.

You paint your portrait with tears of love, and let it splash onto the glove-white canvas of my soul. The first blot, one of love that surpasses the word itself. Over the years, your tongue painted brushstrokes around that focal point. But before any new stroke, using your canvas for reference, observing all the slips and errors, careful to use the right paint, careful to not paint too soft or too hard. Lest a stroke be a mark.

Strokes of age, paint of lessons, and blots of trauma. They all cover that focal point now. Only you, can still see and remember when this canvas was but a splash of love.

Our two works, a collaboration tied to each other. The hard truth, is one of us must enter the gallery first.

I know, the more experienced artist enters first. And thats how it should be.

But I find a selfish beauty in entering before you. An odd, inane desire to show you a completed work. To say, “Look! It is done! And it is beautiful! Do you remember how blank it once was?” To say,

“My portrait is done, mother.”

I’ve seldom shown my mother my poetry.

Last night, I shared some with her. As well as my “VJ” skills. Thats stands for “visual jockey”.

She told me that on two occasions, she’d witnessed harbingers of greatness in me. The first, when I was thirteen and showed her my favorite film, “It’s Such A Beautiful Day”, by Don Hertzfeldt. She had never told me she watched it multiple times after, on her own accord. The second instance, when I was about ten and told her “The person who invented the white crayon lacked creativity”. I do not see these as bellwethers myself, necessarily.

Always a realist, she never supported my desire to quit my current, well paying, job. Upon my poem, “DEAD FLOWERS”, she sobbed. I thought it to be a weaker poem. She told me to move to new york, to pursue this.

Maybe, I will.

In the throes of my erstwhile mind, I became familiar with solitude.

So close, it came with comfort. Non compos mentis, self-persona non grata, to Hoi Pollio.

So silence was a friend.

A disposition so intense, I could only process alone.

So when I talked to God, I talked in automobile.

Driving down a winding road, I took a turn and talked a prayer.

I asked God, “If Deleuze was right, send me a sign.”

Though God can speak in ways only realized years later. So I drove faster, and said another.

“If I am to follow my mind, send a rabbit, flying across the street.”

Almost a joke, God is not a man of blunt.

And yet, I slammed on my brakes to save roadkill.

If God validates soridium, is it right to follow it?

I kept driving, praying for just one more.

I’m not addicted to nicotine.

I smoke cigarillos daily. I’ve smoked perhaps five, eight, maybe ten in a day at times. And if you offered me a cigarette, I’d say… sure. They burn too fast, for me. I enjoy the smoothness of a cigarillo.

But. I’m not addicted.

I smoke as a testament to absurdity. Camus drank a coffee, I smoke. It stinks. Its nasty.

I wrote an essay for myself that I lost. I’d share it here, but it was probably on the notes app of my last phone. I wrote it in the gym bathroom, walked out to my car, and smoked my first ever cigarette.

It was nasty. I wanted to throw up.

At this point I’ve written about my feelings regarding the human experience and life so often it’s a pretense of my work. But, I’ll tell a bit again.

I hold absolutely no value to my life. None. I promise. I deeply believe in pantheism and samsara, and so, I believe I’ve been in samsara for millennia. What’s this life? Psh. It’s nothing. I’ll be trapped here forever, the God who casted himself into all. I drag lifetimes.

Cigarillos are my memento to my soul and beliefs. Like a depressed man who self harms to prove to others he means it. I, really, really, mean it.

CAMUS DRANK COFFEE

My soul is the most removed from its body.

It may have started in the gymnasium.

My eyes bounce off itself, and stare at a foreign man.

Not an unrecognizable man, no. I know it to be myself.

However, over the years I’ve inserted philosophical shims to that gap.

Our cells replace fully every couple years.

And our minds can change in a minute.

I rarely take pictures.

I’ve come to love how fleeting the self is.

I hope my children frame me elderly.

As a tapestry of who I’ve been, not who I am.

I’m sorry that I’ve always been so weird, mother.

I’m sorry that I didn’t cry at your funeral, grandpa.

Nor grandma.

I’m sorry your wet eyes meet cold ones.

I’m sorry I refuse therapy.

I’m sorry I flick sensitivities off a sharp tongue.

I’m sorry I don’t feel attached.

I’m sorry I can’t relate.

I’m sorry you can’t have a normal son.

When my figure feeds flowers, I hope the sunset sustains your soul as it does this soil.

I hope the crescent comes with a crisp cold, the cold which passes through goosebumps like a calm stream through rock.

I hope stars still shine and wink on a moonlight’s brook.

When my lungs are air, I hope the wind whispers through your hair, and you appreciate what it has to say.

When my blood is washed with rain, I hope you enjoy the musty smell of blossoms blooming.

When my eyes are bone white, I hope the world keeps turning for you, and you only.

Please, appreciate all that I cannot. Please, love all the sunsets I never will.

Independent from time.
Independent from space.
Independent from matter.

In that purple couloir between eternal dispositions, between entire universes, between everlasting bloodlines-

I sat. I sat for eternity. I remembered all my memories, all my sins, and all my dreams.

My last personage, was a great one. I don’t want to start again.

My soul shakes in self-solicitude. will I be? Will it truly be me? May she taint my soul? In this turnpike of quintessence, time had no reason to exist. But, I’d like to say I waited 2000 years. That’s not true, of course.

During my 2001st year, I saw for the first time ever. Inscribed in the void in an ethereal purple, “TABULA RASA” appeared. I was sucked up, instantly.

I dreamt of light obstructed by a layman’s latex.
I dreamt of warmth in a woman’s womb.
I dreamt of familiarity in the freezing furnace.

I remember it all still. But these memories, all this wisdom, all the intellectual experience my soul has earned over millions of years… infinite knowledge, was fleeing out my mind like roaches from a spotlight.

After a minute, I could only recall the last 10,000 years.

After two minutes, only the last 2,001.

All I could remember was that dark void. That wet nothingness.

I weeped. I stared at God herself, and wept tears of joy. She held me so close, with infinite love. And I returned it with infinite gratitude, materializing through my salty tears upon her chest.

After ten minutes, all I knew is I loved her.

But, that’s all I needed to know.

With every change of the crescent, I saw the apparition.

My earliest memories were shared with her. I came to her a cherub, and left with no wings.

I’ll never recall the evanescent holy innocence of youth. She left me with no wings.

In my accommodations, my bed was directly on the left. On the back wall, beams of sun oozed through the window; illuminating the bone white walls that enveloped the cell. Dust particles danced in the photon sea. They slipped in between my fingers as I tried to catch them.

Underneath the daylight’s ballroom was a plastic, red toybox with a grainy texture.

To the right of this toybox, was a door. In this realm, it led to an attic. Odd construction for a childs room.

In another, it must have led to Gehenna. I came to learn, the creaking of the door was the specters knock. With the same reaction ones neurons may have touching a hot stove; The pure terror that leaked from that room and into my heart, filled my paralyzed muscles and shocked them into a carnal rage. I had to escape.

The spirit and I repeated this dance every night. I always slipped her grasp.

I told Mama. I was relinquished to aesculapian asses, and given back to that cold Woodbury moon within a week.

The diagnosis: Night Terrors. My parents could sleep at night. But I still could not. I weeped, begging to not be led to Sheol. I was dismissed.

As I reentered my trepidation, I noticed something.

Why was the door still open?

Why?

We returned to our dance.