You Insufferable Bitch

It rises – like bile in the throat
like rage
like the heat from a long-burning fire.

i am tired, i am stretched
i am impatient.

It’s permeating my body the way it’s been filtering down through my brain-folds for months.
My neck is aching so quietly
My back twinges uncomfortably
It rises – the pain (the anxiety!)
And then it falls back down and quietly soaks me
to the bone.
i am losing my hold on me.

i need somewhere to rest –
somewhere away from the
wrestling, pushing, scratching, shoving
the winding ropes,
the single strand of hair caught in the zipper
but still attached to my skin
the car that refuses to start
the key that’s jammed in the lock
the toy stuck in the tree and teetering so suggestively
without ever falling back to earth
the restless fingers
the restless toes
the restless eyes and their sticky, slippery eyelids
the restless mind
the tired mind
the wounded mind
the quiet mind
the screaming
screaming
endlessly screaming mind

i am tired!
let me rest!
i am tired!
let me rest!

i am tired of this aggression
i am not a hard thing
i am not a hard thing!
i am the tenderly unfurling green
i am the first sighs of light rain
i am hushed footsteps
i am small
i am crushed
i am fading under the weight of this ever-so-slight expectation
the one i constantly fail to meet
the one i have  no interest in meeting
i am tired
i am restless
let me rest.

how i long for gentler things.

Gentle Reminder

This is a gentle reminder
To immerse yourself
In every moment.

This is a gentle reminder
That you are a living
And breathing
And changing thing

And that’s okay.

This is a gentle reminder
That you do not owe
Your past self
Anything,
But you do owe
Your present self
Everything.

This is a gentle reminder
That everyone else’s experiences
Are just as real to them
As yours are to you.

This is a gentle reminder
To laugh at yourself
Because life is ridiculous
And difficult
And being too serious
Will begin to weigh heavily on you.

This is a gentle reminder
That life happens quickly
And it is probably ultimately meaningless
But you are still allowed to feel joy.

Please –
While you have this small window of time
On this planet
And in this life –
Allow yourself to feel joy.

Broken People

i’m crying for the broken people
the people with nowhere to go but their bodies
the ones who hurt and sabotage themselves
because it’s how they feel real
or they aren’t sure if they’re real
or there’s too much hurt inside
or because they hope someone,
anyone,
will help them through the darkness
because they’re so unbearably lost
or because there’s nothing right, anywhere, ever
and this primal act at least gives us some control
some grounding in these silly, dying bodies
because we’re too full or empty, too numb or too over stimulated
or, simply put, because we are too gentle
for this cruel and violent world.

we all have our mechanisms –
a blade, a fuck, a hit, a drink –
food, no food,
to die on the surface or to go temporarily insane.

broken people – you know who you are –
i am here
you are here, too.
you are seen
you are loved.

broken people
please, be gentle with yourselves.

Serenade to the Species

We
(the human race)
keep doing the same thing
over and over
over and over.

We are stagnant.

We call it progress
but truly?
We are stagnant.

We’re told we’re going places
but We know
We’re all fucking dying
and depressed
and diseased.

We are stagnant.

We are over-stimulated
but we are so fucking bored
We’re prescribed Xanax and Prozac
but We are sleep(less)-walking and restless.

because We
(the human race)
are stagnant
and We
(the human race)
know
that stagnant is the one thing
We were never made to be.

Love is not enough

i think it’s important to remember that love alone is not enough
a plane may have wings
but it still needs fuel to fly.

or maybe i have it the wrong way around
in that love is the fuel
it’ll take you so many places
you can drive for miles
you can crumple your trail across the landscape
but without wings –
you’ll never take off.

you will never like all of someone
but you can still love all of someone
and honestly
it’s likely that it won’t be enough.

Enjoy The View

A staggering of toothpick trees
A forest threaded up the side of a mountain
Cross-stitched into the fabric hillside
No messy threads or loose ends to see.

The Sun (in time)
Threads her hillside canvas
With grass and scrub
And denser spatterings of trees
She wears winding paths
She bakes the ground hard
She threads us a pool and a waterfall
And a view that’ll stun the breath from your lungs

And
If you die there
She’ll bake your bones white and brittle
While she spins your muscles and fibres
Into more toothpick trees
And smudgy scrubs.

An ending none of us deserve
To be stitches into another,
better,
canvas.

Substance

i get so high on you, drunk on you
drunk on you
hungover on you –

you are fucking everywhere.

tangled in the spaces where my hair curls slightly
slipping across my surface like the blue of a bruise
under my fingers
pushed into my veins

it’s not enough.

i’m not enough-
not whole, not real, not wise, not kind
i’m kind of broken and the spokes keep piercing my lungs
i’m tired
and spoken word has never moved through me
never coloured or cut or chiseled or cultivated via my motley tongue.

i am a wild thing
a frail thing
i’m hurting and i can’t pinpoint the source
the pain isn’t local enough and the fever is eating me

and i know

with such terrifying certainty

that my time is almost

over.

i am going to die soon – i can feel it in my bones
it’s been aching there
in the middle
with the marrow
for days, weeks, months, ever
i know with quiet certainty that in so many ways
so many important ways
i am already
dead.

i’m not sure i’ll ever know where i am with you
and i don’t want to fight
Christ, i don’t want to fight
i’m not a hard, sharp thing
i am the soft moss that faces South.

and you – and you, and you, my dear
the phosphorous igniting
the matchstick shrinks and
the flame drinks and
the neon pain blooms
through nervous fingers
but
the cigarette is
lit.

the cigarette
is
lit.

we lit it – together.

and we’re both jonesing
because
we’re both fiends.

you get me too fucking high
and it’s not enough

it’s not enough

i’m not enough.

light me up.
hit us again.
it’s not enough –

i’m not enough –

is that enough?