I Couldn’t be shaken before

I don’t deserve this collar

From under the ceiling to atop the roof

I don’t deserve this collar

I Can’t find the way any more

I don’t deserve this collar

Another face, another place gone

I don’t deserve this collar

I find myself adrift wading through these aisles

I’m getting too much fresh air

All my friends tell me what’s wrong

But of course, it always amounts to nothing

No brass tacks at the bottom of my cup

Dreams of buttons and papers plague me

My rest plays in shallow snow

A perfectly frostbitten and restless slumber

White fields and white walls

My resignation is my prison

A torment only stoked by my thoughts

I don’t deserve the ones who love me

I don’t deserve this collar

Once I could find solace on my knees

Where I thought I belonged

The pleasures of service were mine

And I held them dearly

My hands found their rightful purchase

My tongue found its faithful use

Panting and subdued I found my purpose

But my stability was founded on a dishonest loyalty

Our little house, whose walls were built with holes

Crumbling at a glance

Yet still I maintained to my obedience

“Look out for number one” they told me

And I remembered

I did

I don’t deserve this collar

My fingers gray perpetually

Wasting away from the life I live at my own expense

I am an empty vessel

Awake on the floor

Full only by my own doing

And only temporarily

And only detrimentally

It isn’t much of a hole

Or much of a slope

But rather a low place

A place whose gravity only pulls me deeper with the years

I wrap my hands around my own ankles

And I pull myself to new depths

I don’t deserve this collar

When life gives you lemons, squeeze them over your wounds

Take solace in the fact that the pain is yours to bear and others would fail

Don't wince, let the pain wash over you like a sickening wave

And know that the sting grants you life beyond others

Find tranquility in the agony

Turn the hierarchy of needs on its head because you can

Because you wanting to hurt overrides your body's desire for safety

And know there is value in your tears

Know there is value in reckless power

Know you won't buckle when your ideals are open sores in the eyes of the weak

It’s kinda like rain

The sounds your mother makes

When she pleads for you never to leave her

When she softly screams in your ear

About why you should love her for what she did for you

About why it’s your responsibility to be with her

About how you matter to her more than anything

About how you deserve a mother in your life

About how she’s sorry, despite her not knowing for what

About how I shouldn’t let others make my decisions for me

At first it makes you shiver

The first time you hear your mother beg you for your love

But after awhile, it becomes white noise

You become indifferent

It’s hard to believe at first

The way the woman who gave birth to you’s tears fall

And maybe you notice a foggy window

Or how your hair’s a little frizzy

But it means nothing to you

You take no joy in it

But it doesn’t hurt you like it’s supposed to

It’s just there

Trickling into your ears

Watery and insubstantial

Making no claim on your conscience

Guilt is her weapon

So is fear

And rage

And kindness

And mercy

And ignorance

And trust

And deceit

And curiosity

And faith

She breaks you down with every tool she gave you

Once you realized it, your veins coursed with fury

An indignance too mature for your age

You realize how she kept you and your brothers and sisters in the dark

And she manipulated your father

The more you think about it, the more it seems like she tricked him

The hours he worked, his exhaustion every day

While she “taught” you like she was supposed to

She did whatever she wanted

While you fought and never learned

This was all I could think before I spoke to her that night

My parents never taught my brother to read

They never taught me to tie my shoes

They never cared what I did

I used to torture my siblings for fun

Because I didn’t know what else to do

There was nothing else to do

Alone with them all day

Every single day

Not a single wavering aspect

Never having contact with someone outside of your family

Never even going outside

Not a single one of us having friends

So we tortured each other

We did it out of necessity

It was fun to hurt them

And it was fun to be hurt by them

And it wasn’t playing, either

It was torture

It really was

And my parents didn’t care

My father too tired or too busy

My mother content with the chaos

I did things to my brother I’ll never repeat

And I saw him do things to my sisters that would bring most to tears

Each day was an eternity of suffering born of neglect

And they were all too young to remember

But not me

I remember every single day

What really strikes me looking back is how little my parents cared

I lost my virginity at 9 years old

A fact that haunts me every day

And they couldn’t have cared less

Because she was just fine with her easy little life

Once my father finally caught on, that’s when the pain really set in

When I really realized what was going on

My parents got a divorce

And my siblings and I were finally put back in school

My brother unable to read

My sisters having never interacted with another human being their age

Me having to grow up that instant

I went from not going to school from 1st through 6th grade

Being completely left behind in my education

To having 7th be my first experience in school

And when I went to talk to her

When I finally confronted her

She brushed every last word of my pain off

When my father finally moved out

And we were split finally

I was forced to do everything my mother wouldn’t

I realized what I’d done wrong

I realized what had been wrong

My malice reared its head

I knew she was wrong

Wrong for forcing me to take care of my siblings when she refused

Wrong for never giving me the chance to be normal

Wrong for never giving me the chance to be a kid

Wrong for never teaching me

Wrong for never taking the time to be my mother

And I still loved her

She was my mother after all

So I kept hearing in my head after she picked up the phone

I told about how I didn’t want to any more

And the lines in my forehead deepened

Lines too deep for a twelve year old kid

Her forced sobbing cut me deeper than I’d imagined

Emotions were just tools to her

Means to an end

Just like my father was

Her pride wouldn’t let me go

So she tried all she could

I can barely believe I didn’t surrender to her

It was only recently that I realized how much I hate her

I hate her for what she let me do

I hate her for never changing after these years since that night

I hate my mother

But I also know that she isn’t some villain

Some master manipulator like I thought before

She’s just pathetic and selfish and unaware

Which only makes me hate her even more

Because I see that same stupid face in the mirror every day

And when people ask I always tell them I don’t think about it

But I’m lying

It still dries my eyes out in the middle of the night

Her repulsive little voice still lives in my mind every day

Because I’m just as selfish and pathetic

And rambling about it just shows it:

I just want the attention, don’t I?

I’m just as bad as her

I’m sure that I’ll torture my children just as much

I’m just another batch of spoiled milk

Wasted potential

Just like her

Everything I said is just more white noise

Just more rain trickling in the background

I stand atop the hill

Born open to the wind and rain

The stinging cold feels good to me tonight

I had always heard the phrase growing up

"what you take from the land, the land takes from you"

I never knew what it meant until now

Now that I pay the toll of flesh to the world

The tears of the world assault me

And I am forced to reconcile their bitterness

The flaying power of the earth will scorch me

Until either my purity or my weakness are made plain

"It's just pain", I tell myself

Winter's shadow seeks to test that statement

All the seams that surround me are ripped away

Sucked apart by the storm

But I am not made of cloth

So I remain standing

My power is tied to the thunder

And the clouds

And the moon they obscure

I am of the world

And so I will be taken in by it

I will decay like the trees

And my blood will spill and feed it

And my strength will be shared

I was born from the sun

So I will die eaten by things beneath the moon

You fill your cup with dust

And toast to a faceless deity

An insubstantial deity with no motives

So go ahead, make me a believer

Your threaded tentacles grasp at muddy blades of grass

Like the fingers of a drowning child submerged in fate's indifference

A death compounded in fractaline fragments

Cracked and scattered through a hundred piece network

A maze of tunnels stretching from here to my golden patience

So go ahead and give me your forgiveness

Grant me a way out

A path to the light, as it were

Show me the way like I know the core of me wants you to

But you can't really show me anything, can you?

Because it isn't really knowledge you are the master of

Feeling

Flight and intangibility

Fear and fancy

Hot coins meant to make us jump when you throw them

Treats meant to make us dance when you beckon

You pry open our jaws and drop syrup flavored spit into our mouths

And we thank you and beg for more because we don't know any better

So go ahead

Show me the path

It's almost clerical

The way we're all listed by our desires

Exploited in a hormonal mass farm

Harvested, then left to search for a quiet cavity of the world to fade away in

A billion molten heads washed down the drain

Full of emptiness, we are echoes in the expanse of time

Simply recalling the beguiling influence of those who learned to speak

Like you, and the metallic taste on your lips

And so our pitiful, penniless lives waddle on

With a false comfort in conformity to an artificial spirit

It's almost comical

The way we all flow in a stream of mangled identities

Our arms snapped and wrapped around one another

A twisted embrace meant to symbolize the usurped peace of man

Crushed fingers intertwined in a bruised, involuntary kinship

The needle pierces us, sowing us into a tapestry of pain

A brutal flag that stands blowing on a barren plain

So go ahead and sell me the vaccine to your own disease

The anesthetic to be taken straight from the hands of the torturer

The pressure builds in your head

You try to make sure, but you're already dead

Stop breathing, for you have no choice

Strangled by fate, life ripped from your voice

Reservations left to melt in the shade

Empty eyes, a hollow look on your face

Your feet fail you

There's no way away

Your heart starts to wane

You feel your soul fade

I've done that. I've Been there. I've Seen that. I know. I get it. I've had that. That reminds me of a . I did it better. I did it first. Did it faster. Did it for longer. Did it harder. Did it first. I understand.

Yes. Sure. Sounds good. That's true. I got you. I know you are. I know you do. Me too. You, too. I'm there. I'll try. Of course. I would never.

That's a good idea. You should. Leave them. Trust me. It matters to you. It matters to me.

Living in the shade of a hundred fears

Those indefinite trembles that shatter our tendons

That drop us in the ninth place we deserve to be

We leave the worms behind as we scavenge

We sift through the remnants of us

Hoping to find the origin of our headlessness

The grooves in our flesh have been smoothed over

Mended by rotted sweetness and its fifth parallel

We lose track of our infernal complex

We take the arduous way down

The slowest path through moisture's decay

It will be a long time going

Oscillation fills the cavity

Where they sing concrete songs

And honey drips from the branches

Drifting through yesterday

Like the fog that ate me alive

White lights whirl around my head

Alone, life has new meaning

Contorting to new forms

Thorns rain from above me

The world bleeds out molten light

Comprehension acts as the tourniquet’s embrace

A thousand promises to reap the living

When all that’s wanted is to rape the dead

The beating heart seeping through their fingers

The disruption of the method is complete

A flood of stolen eternities

The intangible universe shudders

Warped shreds of its essence drifting down

Gracious in the milky void

Preying upon connection failure

With severed truth leaking from wounds of the mind

Tortured into new shapes

Writhing like the pit of snakes and vermin

The mysteries of evil sink to the soil

Lost by time in liquid memory

The tastes lashed from their tongues

Every book burned, every head turned away

White walls scorch unholy sky

Tears of hatred drip from red eyes

Limbless forms howling  out in the dark

Crying like beaten strays in the cold