Break me open and find poisoned flowers

That line my blood vessels. 

Comets and moon showers

Will not save a sunburned soul.

  
Watch me scribble a warning sentence

In front of your teary eyes.

Are you confused and cemented

In an ideal that nothing is a lie?


You may not be able to write a response,

But I feel your signature on my hands

Like an artistic renaissance,

That overtakes the English lands.



I will eat myself alive before I see you gone,

You monster under my bed.

Every part of you like a ringing gong,

I want to be alone instead.

  
My mind wants separation,

But my heart wants connection.

But my heart and my mind aren’t connected at all.

My heart rhymes whilst my mind writes. 

My mind may tear up a stanza,

And ruin the meter.



How could I need something and not want that thing?

Or would you rather me want you and convince myself

I spent good money on a fake gold ring,

When I could’ve put real gold on a shelf?

  
My mind fantasizes.

I’m not even writing to anyone.

I’m not even writing at all.

I am venting about a problem I made up.



If I can invent the problem,

I can invent the solution.

Today’s solution;

Stop writing about a problem that doesn’t exist.

It wasn’t anything evil.

Just a beautiful rose.

Everyone mistook its leaves as thorns,

And thought the color of its petals was from spilled blood.


I panicked every night,

Hoping it wouldn’t come out of its hiding place.

It never did, but not from strategy,

It was scared.


It hated what the people said,

And thought I would hate it because of what others told me,

And what they said it was.

But I didn’t hate it.


In fact, I embraced it.

It was difficult, and it wasn’t overnight,

But it happened.

And I got it out from under the bed.


I was hesitant at first.

But now, it is hanging back on my wall.

Its glass is still intact,

And it still does what it was built to do.


Once I chose to accept it,

I was no longer afraid of how it looked,

And I almost felt guilty for its collection of dust.

But I got so afraid of it that I had no choice.


And I threw it under the bed.


But now, even though the cracks are still there,

I am able to accept what I see.

Now, it helps me every day,

As if I never hated it at all.

I will miss the windy gossip,

That was carried through the breaking summit,

Telling me secrets of nature,

Making me feel like I was apart of natural order.


Unlike the chaotic disposition of the everyday,

That barely holds the truth together.

But the mountains confided in me, 

By sending their winds.


And the hills lent me their ears,

So I could hear things,

No man ever was meant to hear.

It was as if the hills saw me as a friend.


So now I greet the grass,

As I walk through a polluted land,

Knowing pure nature will never be achieved again,

Unlike that garden I was once in.

Personify an object, they said,

But how can I personify something with a personality?

It is a redundancy. 


I thought of my guitar first,

And struck a string to hear the sentence it wanted to share,

But was surprised when it whispered something higher,

On the fretboard.

No chords could replicate its tone.

No theory could decipher its metaphors.


The string whispers a silent symphony.

But a symphony requires a chorus,

And a chorus requires many.
  
And so the guitar befriends the six strings,

And each one whispers sweet proverbs.


Every note is invisible to the careless,

And on paper they sporadically dance,

Like a dancer with no rhythm,

Even though her steps are choreographed.

And they all come together to form a song,

That silently plants peace into my soul.


When a string is out of tune,

The foundation of the symphony crumbles.

Like a trumpet breaking in half,

Or the absence of a conductor.

My finger is the baton.

I control the noise of the guitar,

And determine the tone of the musings,

That my guitar cries out.


What does it want to say?

Why can an object speak more than a human can?

Why can’t I whisper sweet musings into your ear,

Comforting you?

I must be out of tune.

Or perhaps,

I auditioned for the wrong choir.

Singing a part that I thought fit my voice,

But my guitar is in a different key.


Every single string beckons for my original voice,

And I promised it I would stay,

To help it sing out its desperate,

Dying breaths.

Say hello to the whispering night lights for me,

Because I cannot speak to yours.



My bedroom is like a city,

The citizens are my dreams.

The night lights are the beacons,

That help all my visions see things.


A lamppost that colors the sidewalks yellow,

And gold until the way forward is a reality.

The mangled darkness of my thoughts,

Is defeated by the night lights.


I cannot help but say goodnight,

To the light that ignites my room,

My inner child will always see,

That light in the corner of my eyes.


The monsters in my closet,

Are locked away by this templar.

All the lights gathered by the round table,

Swear to protect my childhood self.

  
They renew their vows with every waking moon.

I hear their whispers amongst the cracks in the floor.

The sound of a buzzing, as faint as a firefly,

But with enough light to ignite the entire sky.


And they don’t judge what they hear,

Like my imperfect rhymes.

They instead gather near,

And whisper goodnight.

Every poem begins with a purpose,

Whilst it is formless and void.

It is devoid of character,

Until you scrape up the dust shaken,

And stirring as it collapses on the ground,

From a rattled situation.


Most poems I have written,

Personified the dust that I saw,

But for a short time I want a shift,

And to focus on the now dust-free furniture.


I want to focus on the tissues,

Instead of my sneezes.

I want to focus on the food,

Instead of the dirty dishes.


I welcome a new season,

And I am prepared to enter the wardrobe,

Of change.

I cover my ears to avoid the buzzing,

And turn a blind eye to the spreadsheet of my life.

A pie chart with the worst taste,

Formed by the doctor that I created in my head.


At first, he nurtured me.

He spread his wings around me when I couldn’t fly,

And coughed up sweet lies when I wanted to eat.

I cut into each one and savored the juices,

That permanently stained my mouth.


And now people stare at me,

And judge the lies they see on the surface.

But there are so many more they don’t know about.


I don’t even schedule my appointments anymore,

They are just there.

Lined up orderly amidst my messy head,

The only clean bookshelf in a library of cobwebs.


Into his office I go.

And into me the needles go.

Each one said to boost me from something,

But then he prescribes me with self-dependence.

And he quarantines me for something I do not have,

But I can’t prove it.


And his white coat never changed color,

From the blood he spilled.
  
But I wouldn’t know anyway.

I never know blood when It’s mine.


The surgeries are the worst part.

Mandatory moments when something needs to ‘change’.

But there is never anything to make me go to sleep.

In fact, what he gives me keeps me awake.

They are called ‘thoughts’.

And they dance circles around me,

As if they know I can never catch them.


All his painkillers do,

Is kill me with pain.

But why do I keep coming back?

Because he has proof I can’t last without him.

I just can’t figure out what the proof is.

But he convinced me he has it.

So who am I to avoid his appointments?


I cover my ears to avoid the buzzing,

And turn a blind eye to the exit door.
  
If I pretend this is my only option,

Then maybe I can trick myself,

Into having a good result.

I built sandcastles with the sands of time,

Expecting them to stay up forever.

And to my dismay, when the castle fell,

I had no knights or horses to protect me. 


Just a desperate child shoveling dirt into a pail,

With a body turning pale,

Paralyzed by the fear of the ocean,

That is clearly so destructive.

  
I was afraid of the sand bars.

What drinks could they be offering?

Who was the bartender,

And why does he know my name?


Why did the sea take my time?

It destroyed my drawbridge,

It overflowed my mote,

It decimated my turrets,

And no one saw it coming.


I was enraged at something I couldn’t control.

I yelled and kicked the ocean,

Only focusing on what it took away,

And forgetting that the ocean,

 Was why I was at the beach in the first place.

There are many moments where my eyelids open,

But my eyes remained closed.

I wake up from a deep dream,

But I continue to fantasize.


And I continue to remember;

“I must die at some point.”

Inevitably, inarguably, indisputably. 

In a burning light, in a gloomy silence,

In a way I may or may not like.


I do not fear death, however.

For If I live in fear of death,

I am not living at all;

You could say I am already dead.

So I choose to breathe in the emerald meadows,

And tend to the flowers that watch me pass.


And I speak to them,

Knowing they will never speak back.

But the flowers are good at keeping secrets.

Better than almost anything else. 

And they won’t tell anyone about my screaming,

Or my tears that watered them.


But now they are fed with real water,

Because my tears wells have dried up.

I understand I can’t stop time,

No matter how much I cry.


And accepting that life isn’t permanent,

Is what made me feel free.

The storm found me.

The fog rolled over my senses,

Clouded my defenses,

and deafened my morals,

Like a bolt of unforgiving lightning.


Regret is like a tropical storm,

In the moment, it feels like a tropical paradise,

Like climbing to the top of a coconut tree.

Until the storm knocks it down,

breaking open all the coconuts,

and revealing that there was never water in them,

Only poison.


And when the rain comes,

It drowns you, and runs down your throat,

As you scream at the sky,

Begging for forgiveness.

Hoping that as you choke on this water,

The eye of the storm will give you a moment,

to breathe.


But in the eye of the storm,

There is constant worry,

About the storm picking up again.

And creating waves so vile,

So great in size,

You are swept away,

and restart the cycle,

Of drowning,

While begging for a savior.

Dearest soul,

When will you return to me?

Desolate ghoul,

How much longer will you be?


Wonderful spirit,

I took you for granted.

Never did I know,

I ran up a hill that was slanted.


So when I failed to step,

I yelled at your lack of action.

I exchanged my breath,

For fake satisfaction.


But the screams dissipated into the grass,

As I tumbled down the hill.

I scraped my knee but alas,

My heart was the only thing that bled still.


I watched as you walked away.

It was like staring at a mirror,

That didn’t want to stay.

And I lost myself forever.


So I’m hoping this will pass.

I hope as I write this, it changes you whole,

And my half-empty self will get back its glass,
  
And I will learn to see I was half-full.

I want to give you my everything,

But it’s hard when I don’t know all I am.

I want you to lack nothing of me,

But if I give you all I am,

You won’t long for me anymore.


I am like a wardrobe with cycling outfits,

I will always open up to you,

But it will never look the same each time.

I did not choose this,

As the seasons dictate my clothing;

I wander around dressed in autumn leaves.


These leaves burn when I try to get by,

And sneak undetected through your eyes. 

You light them aflame,

Hoping I will start to wear snow.


But snow melts away with rage,

And my anger begins a new season.

I start to walk wearing the summer sun,

Lighting up the moon that refuses to speak to me.


Eventually, the wardrobe is slammed shut.

Yet, I wait inside.

Banging on the door,

Promising I won’t change anymore.

I am not overwhelmed,
  
I am merely exhausted, and I forgot how to use a pillow.

I am sleepy,

But I forgot how to dream.


I cry and beg for a blank spot in my calendar,

And then sit in the void degrading myself,

For ‘wasting precious time’.


I stare at my bed,

I even try to lay in it.

I’m tired,

And I forgot how to rest.


But I hear the dreamscape version of me.
  
He is calling from my sleeping world,

Begging for me to return,

So he can live again,

And experience the closest thing he can,

To life.


But part of that frightens me,

Like a child afraid of the dark,
  
I am afraid of the start,

And the process,

Of sleeping.


Because when I sleep,

I have no control.

Scientists scratch their heads so greatly,

At the sight of a broken heart,

That their scalp bleeds and drips,

Until a question mark is formed on their documents.


And they ask themselves:

“Why do humans rely on someone else to keep their hearts intact?”


When really, the moment you find love,

Your heart is already broken.

The person you found is just holding it together.


Like a stubborn piece of tape that sticks to your fingers,

And refuses to leave,

Taking your fingerprint with them once they're ripped away.

Showing they will always have a part of you.

But if someone leaves another,

The reaction can change.


One person may lose their entire heart with a fleeting love,

The other will only lose part,

And recover that part within somebody else.


For another, it may crumble into a million reasons,
  
Each reason is an excuse to never love again.

And those shards get caught in the bloodstream.

After some time, those reasons start to become the person.
  
And their blood is contaminated,

And they don’t have a heart to clean it.


Because the remedy for a broken heart,

May lie in a cure you haven’t met yet.

Nobody warned me that life scaled in difficulty.

Nobody warned me that my path would suddenly divot,

And I would be forced to choose a path with a sign,

Giving me two options, 

But one of them led to death and destruction,

So I basically only had one.


This is how life felt when childhood ‘ended’.


But childhood can end, but a childlike spirit can’t.
  
I slowly grow older,

But I do not lose the part of me that laughs,

Or misspells a word, 

When my heart is pouring itself into even glasses, 

So everyone can get a share.

  
Nobody warned me that life requires learning,

But when I figured that out,

I welcomed it.

I can do things I couldn’t do three years ago.

And I wish I could hug my younger self,

And tell him I eventually figured things out.

Darkness was everywhere.

But not the color black,

Like when your eyes are closed,

But only dark because of an absence of light,

And an abundance of nothing,


But no typical darkness.


An awkward gap between light and shadow,

A bridge that broke just short of freedom,

Leaving it’s walker stuck between headache,

And flowing, everlasting happiness.

And the debris that came from destruction,

Created a special darkness,

That only comes with the absence of vision,

And an abundance of dust.


One side shows solutions,

The other side shows outcomes,

And yet here we are in the center platform,

Where neither have happened yet.


And we can’t see anything.

But still, we run towards false hope.

Our hands entwined,

Like a stubborn puzzle,

That we could never quite solve.

And my brain tells my heart there is light,

But my eyes know nothing is there,

Yet I keep running anyway.

I am made of entwined strings,
I am a tool to scale the greatest mount,
Pull me on down, I can lift anything.
So many threads, I have lost count.
  
What am I?

I am a rope.
Attached to a wheel,
To even out the slope,
So that you may not squeal.

I will carry your burdens,
Because you thread me through a ring,
Attached to a thousand bargains,
“This for that” and other things.

Yet you pull me,
And I lower the effort required for you,
But my nylon grip can see,  
my advantage was never true.

I am ripping at the seams,
Like a curtain stretching too wide,
To cover up the seas,
Filled with water that’s poisoned inside.

Slowly, I am tearing.
One day, the weights will drop,
And fall through the room that your staging,
And the hole will reveal the things I tried to stop.

This one is from the heart.
  
My heart is overflowing and I must speak,

And see to it’s needs,

Like a parent nurturing a child,

Watering a seed. 

I am throwing that seed into the soil,

Of an uncultivated earth,

Hoping maybe it sprouts into a large plant,

That grows words for you to take off a branch,

And digest those words to strengthen your mind,

Not because my words are a ‘remedy’,

But because what joy it is to hear someone speak their heart.

Be warned, the plant may cry when it’s words are taken,

For it is frightening when someone indulges,

In a fruit that bleeds its juices,

And perfectly resembles a person’s heart.