I am crucified for my religion,

I am crucified for my skin color,

I am crucified for my economic status,

I am crucified for my beliefs,

My body and soul are condemned,

with atrocious strives

They’re preaching falsehoods, a disguised truth

Words of lies and deceits, for their own indulgence

But I am deaf of hearing, the poisons they spray

So, I am hunted and killed, for not looking their way

I am crucified for my free mind,

I am crucified for my thoughts,

I am forced to exile, to places not home,

A country man, without a country,

I am so terrified, each time the winds roam

I run, far away from the monsters,

but still nowhere to hide,

For my new home is the same,

for humans still live inside

If every where I lived,

my being is not suited, or posed a threat,

I would rather be exiled or crucified,

than being engulfed,

with the fire of bigotry or hate

The ocean of pain begins

with a single action.

The ocean of pain starts

with hate.

I bought myself a boat into

this ocean.

And I pushed it off the shore.

Now I’m lost in the waves,

shore far out of sight.

They say I’ll never get back,

but I might.

I just have to defeat the hate,

I just have to fight.

But when you feel as strongly as I do,

It’s not easy.

So maybe,

I’ll live and die in this ocean.

Or maybe I’ll rise.

Hate.

It’s a bad feeling,

yet it’s so easy to give in

and so hard to dig yourself out.

But if you made the pit,

you can climb out.

You just need someone on the outside

to pull you out.

You can’t fight an army with one person.

You have to raise an army of your own.

So the army of love

fights against hate.

So the army of hate

fights against love.

Both armies are the same size.

In the end, it comes down to

passion.

Hate is a river,

it never stops moving

from cause to cause

planting seeds of deep doubt.

I hate myself.

Myself seems not to care about

what really matters.

Myself never looks the way I want it to.

Myself looks into danger and cowers.

Myself hates me and

I hate myself.

Planting seeds of deep doubt

from cause to cause,

hate is a river.

Live backwards is evil.

Life is an evil force.

I hate living.

I hate living.

I hate.

I hate.

I...

etah.

Live si etah.

That phrase sounds kind of latin.

But it’s not.

It’s backwards.

When you put it forwards,

hate is evil.

Hate is evil.

It’s the most vile of all emotions.

But it’s so much easier

than love.

I hate love.

I hate looking at my

family and friends and lovers

and saying I love you.

Because it’s not easy.

And I had to go through hell

before I realized that.

I hate love.

Because love hurts.

And hate feels good.

I hate writing.

I hate baring my sould for the world to see

everything that’s wrong with me

on a sheet of paper.

But I hate talking

even more than writing.

The words

never form themselves properly

in audio

the way they do

in my head.

on a screen.

on paper.

I hate hate.

I hate the way people hate

because of being different.

I love differences.

I hate haters.

But in a way,

I’m a hater.

So I hate Myself.

Myself feels to strongly,

yet I’m too weak to

rid myself of those feels.

So I cut.

I cut away the hate,

release the hatred bubbling under my skin.

And it comes out and stains my clothes red.

But eventually,

It’ll bleed out completely.

And there will be

one less hater in the world.

Myself.

Such a complex being,

yet my motivations are simple.

Myself is motivated by hate.

It sees the hate of others and twists it like molten metal

into a knife.

Then Myself takes this knife,

this knife of hate,

and points it

at the source.

The hate of others

is turned into my own hate

directed at them.

Live si etah.

Live si etah.

Live si etah.

If hate is evil,

then am I, too?

I hate the way Myself has no strength.

I hate the way Myself doesn’t

see the problems it causes.

I hate the way Myself is confused.

Myself is confused.

While I write this poem, Myself is confused.

Myself is confused about hate.

Is hate evil,

or is evil hate?

Is evil even a thing?

Is hate?

Or is it all just another gallon of gas

on the speedway of life.

Myself’s gas tank has reached it’s capacity.

It’s beginning to overflow.

Time to take a knife,

and bleed out some gas,

that way,

it’s not so overwhelming

anymore.

Myself wonders why I do this.

I’ve tried and tried to explain.

But Myself just won’t leave me alone.

Sometimes I want to kill Myself.

It’s just so annoying.

Myself contradicts me.

Sometimes I contradict Myself.

I don’t agree with Myself,

and Myself doesn’t agree with me.

Myself is merely a voice inside my head.

I don’t have to care about Myself.

But my friends and family care about Myself,

so I’m forced to pretend.

I’ll never be free of Myself,

even when I die,

Myself, the infuriating voice

will always be there.

I hate Myself.

In the gas tank of life,

I’m full.

I can’t carry anymore.

But Myself is making me run

off of electricity,

not blood like I want to.

Always,

I will be stuck with Myself.

Even when

I want Myself to die.

Why do I have to be Myself?

Why do people call me Myself?

I’m not Myself.

I’m me.

Keep me out of my mind.

Take me out of Myself

Live si etah.

flesym etah I

Even if I write this

whole poem backwards,

Myself will always be there.

ereht eb syawla lliw flesym

I can’t escape Myself.

But still,

sometimes,

I want to kill Myself.

and rid me of the hatred

for Myself.

Myself won’t leave me alone.

I hate Myself.

I hate Myself.

I hate Myself.

Myself doesn’t care about my hate.

I wish I could

not care about other’s hate,

but I’m not like Myself.

LIVE SI ETAH

I MA SA

“Repent therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out.” The priest’s eyes met mine, as did the rest of those gathered in the nave. “Repent! Repent!” The chanting filled the room as the priest extended his finger towards my hands which were now covered in blood. Yelling and screaming did nothing but cast a bewildered look on everyone’s face. The priest touched me, asked me to sit and be calm as if nothing was wrong. With a shove and a sprint past gaping jaws, I ran as fast as I could.

The run home was brief, fumbling with my keys, I realized my bloodied hands were clean. My head pounded, my vision darkened.

I regained consciousness to the sound of alarms outside of the decrepit apartment. “What have I done?” My mind wandered, but the alarms brought it back. Louder, louder, then it stopped. Momentarily deaf, I heard nothing and felt as though I were watching over myself, an empty shell. I wasn’t controlling it, and... “I WAS NOT controlling it last night!” Trying to win the battle in my head I stood perplexed. “This isn’t my home,” but I can’t think of home.

I took to the streets cluelessly, unaware of where I was, or where I was going. The streets are all the same, my thoughts all the same and there he is, “on every corner.” The words oozed from my mouth along with the sudden realization of his presence. His head, or the shadow of it, turned to stare as if it just noticed me. “There are no eyes” and yet I felt like it was peering into my soul. “It’s not real, I’ll just keep going,” but it must be, it looks just like him. I’m seeing things, “no, no, because there he is again!” My words and thoughts merged and separated with the streets, faster and faster as my pace increased.

I found myself back at the church, wanting to go in it and wanting to run away from it. I was then looking down from the steeple, it was a long fall, as if plummeting towards Hell itself.

My fat flesh for nothing more than a meal,

These bars are embedding into my skin;

How much longer can I live this ordeal?

Where, when or how I got here I know not,

My life has only been within these bars;

My fat flesh for nothing more than a meal.

The air burns my eyes, and my joints do rot,

The noise pollutes worse, constant agony;

How much longer can I live this ordeal?

I dream of pasture, play and a mud spot,

Then I open my eyes to the life here;

My fat flesh for nothing more than a meal.

Whatever stench is rotting in this lot,

The flesh and shit in my meal smells better;

How much longer can I live this ordeal?

No piglet is meant to be in this hell,

They overrode that, they overrode me;

My fat flesh for nothing more than a meal,

How much longer can I live this ordeal?

The sun sets with my gaze focused intently upon it, eager to see it for the last time. The blue waves, tinted red, crash upon the jagged rocks where the ocean abruptly meets its stony edge. With each impact on the rocks, I feel the throbbing in my chest. My warm red heart is slowly turning blue and the crashes of the ocean begin to outpace the pumps of its chambers. The black of the night fights away the remnants of the sunset. At first the stars wait, their lights obscured by the sun’s dwindling rays. The darkness quickly encompasses the sky as the victor. As quickly as it comes, however, the stars emerge. The darkness repelled with the help of the sun’s reflection on the moon. The darkness cannot prevail and is instead in a perpetually losing battle. The throbbing stops and a feeling of bliss crashes down upon me.

Staring at life through the bottom of the bottle makes for a warped perspective. Watching everything you thought you were, and everything you thought you might have been slowly sputter and drown, and toasting their sudsy deaths with a dulled glee, will do a number on you. When you wake up dimwitted and with headache a year in the making, you set about mourning your eloquence. Putting pen to paper (or keystrikes to a digital imprint) keeps the hands and mind occupied.

@demcmurphy

Born to a schizophrenic mother, once married to an addict, too many failed suicide attempts, I have endured ridicule, fear and overwhelming depression, all while wearing a sweet, sweet smile intended to mask. Looking into the mirror now, past my physical flaws: nose a little too wide, lips entirely too thin, eyes commonly brown, I find the secret of true happiness—after fifty-nine years of searching for just that. I remember I was also loved by a man who wasn’t really my father, bore three remarkable children (whom I raised alone) and was generally well liked, well employed and even loved, by some. But, that’s not my secret. Perhaps it’s not even a secret at all, this truth so elusive to some. Perhaps it just takes some time, some pain, some forgiveness and, always, some well-deserved love. Especially for the one looking back inside the mirror.

Crooked nose, crooked smile, crooked face?

Blonde hair, blue eyes, pale daze.

That girl in the mirror wants to know who she is, but appearances are not the embodiment of identity.

It’s that feeling— like when you repeat a single word over and over until it no longer makes sense, and loses all meaning. Just a grouping of letters that have been rearranged into nonsense. If you look at yourself long enough, the same phenomenon presents itself.

I look like any other person. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. But not everyone uses those features in the same way.

I use my eyes— not only to see, but to find familiarity and recognize emotions that I have experienced, in others. My nose, not only to smell, but to breathe in, and feel crisp air reach down and branch off into the entirety of my lungs. My mouth, not only to taste, but to purse together and form the very words I am using to write now.

I see parts of myself that no one else would ever see. A flipped image, not only metaphorically, but literally.

That’s the beauty of the mirror, but with that, it also has it’s downfalls. The face that I see, is not the face that others see, and it never will be.

Learning to embrace that fact, is the hard part.