His words were smoke

Grey consonant vapor

And blurry black vowels

With slurring recollection

And passive delivery

Unfounded and defused

Madness in third person

An inarticulate crumbling

With a deflated disposition

His resigning spirit folded

On breath exhaled like dust

His pupils emptied dilating

And his dimming eyes fogged

With translucent ghost skin

His rotten roots mulched

Ungrounded by his reality

All vague reasoning faded

My muse is dead

He expired prematurely

A metamorphosis of undoing

His soul dissolved into nothing

Faux literary canonization

Unmemorialized in words

And erased.

I don't see the point

In living anymore

I'm not contributing

I'm just here

Miserable

Broken

Lonely

Sad

It just seems so easy

To pull the rope tighter

To swallow the pills

To make the jump

To pull the trigger

But I can't. 

What of my mother?

My father?

My sister?

My brothers?

It would make them cry

The dogs won't understand

Why I'm not there anymore

So I'll keep on living

My useless

Sad

Broken 

Miserable life

Because I can't find it in me

To end it all.

G A S P I N G 

G A S P I N G

I can't breathe. 

G A S P I N G

There is no air. 

G A S P I N G

This is how I die. 

Not with a scream, 

But a shutter. 

Drowning in hurt.

The silent malice

Of others. 

G A S P I N G

I am pulled under. 

S I L E N T

S U F F O C A T I O N. 

Your hands

Trace the veins

Of fire

Beneath my skin.

You say I'm cold,

I'm hot,

I'm never just

Anything.

I guess you see

The things

I've been saying

All along.

I see you suffering.

I see you crying.

Let me be the one who saves you.

Please.

I don't want to lose you because of them.

They hurt you, and you let them in.

So why not me? 

Please.

I know you hate yourselves.

I see you struggling with the little things.

Your weight.

Your height.

Your hair.

Your make-up.

Let me show you none of those things matter.

Please.

Because maybe by teaching you that these things don't matter,

I will also learn.

Let me help you understand,

So that maybe,

One day,

I can understand myself.

Please.

All you have to do,

All you have to see,

Is that it will be okay,

To just let me in.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

can I delude myself to fall

in love with the wretch that I see,

who's sickened gaze stares back at me?

Scale, scale, on the floor,

can I avoid you one day more?

I'm still afraid that you'll display

the truth I hide from every day.

Can I just twist my mind around

until I feel safe and sound?

Adjusting beauty to fit me

by ignoring reality?

Or do I take a chance and try

to change myself in my own eye

until I'm who I want to be?

Can it be done? I guess we'll see.

Iron, iron, in my hand,

will pumping you make my arms grand?

Treadmill, treadmill, in the gym,

will running on you make me slim?

Diet, diet, no more shit,

will eating healthy make me fit?

Scale, scale, on the floor,

Show me what my work's been for.

Mirror, mirror, on the shelf,

Are you for real? Is that myself?

I don't look perfect, that's ok;

I like the way I look today.

She is Blasphemy 

And I loved her, once

The daughter of a whore of a whore

And a seedy cocktail 

Of use and abuse, betrayal and religion 

As Silvia said

"The bastard's a girl"

A term that always seemed 

so masculine 

But she was a woman by 15

She shaved her head 

And poisoned her arms

I watched her take shots in the hands 

After dark

Because she traumatized 

Everything she came across 

She couldn't help it

She lived by an inherent sequence code 

So she could claim no fault of her own

She was rude reckless and crass

And the greatest lover I've ever had 

Who became a stranger just as fast

When she didn't need you

She said she'd be buried in a golden tomb

With each little mistake

She had plucked from her womb 

And they would line her box

"Irony"

She'd say 

Or a homecoming 

Where angels with shredded wings refuse to pray

 By 39 she was an old maid

Living and dying in half the time

She paid interest on the future 

For the sins of her past 

Someone said flatly 

"She lived too fast"

I remember, one night

She said to me

"These memories we're erasing, they aren't free"

She had this wisdom at 18

A wonderful, beautifully broken wisdom 

That she could spout like free poetry

But she never really believed

In consequence or karma

Or each one of us getting our just dues

Good or bad, right or wrong 

Yet she spoke of these things, incessantly  

Never though, could she deny

The irony 

More than anyone I've ever met

She knew who she was

From follicle to bone

She couldn't shake the code 

Embedded in both

Indebted unto herself

"This is why"

she claimed

"There's no god, free will is a lie"

"Proof that we can never step outside

 of ourselves, or reach further than the length of our arms, or live larger than the size of our hearts" 

"Progress is a burden because each story's been told, and the comedy is the tragedy left to unfold 

The darkness is eternal when each curtain closes 

We'll never progress past death

Even though

It is our ultimate goal"

"And that is why, born from trauma, I traumatize"

We were just naked kids that night 

Waiting impatiently for the sun to catch fire 

Unaware that before us was a fork in the road 

We would never see each other again, alive

She went left as I went right

She went as bold as a muscle-car rolls

While I began this timid stroll 

And what became my lifetime search for characters, along the way

And hers, a relentless pursuit of the grave

Because maybe

Just maybe

More than anything else she just wanted to be wrong

And maybe she knew she had been, all along

And maybe her fear wasn't the final chapter of death, but when every addict realizes

"It's all I have left"

A free-for-all

A free fall 

A glitch in the code

Where you can be anything you wanted 

When, after all

One truth, she did hold

Irony

That irony, I can taste

Like getting punched in the teeth, while having a mouthful of pennies

That irony haunts

I feel it, today 

Standing at her grave because she was wrong

There's no golden tomb

And she's buried alone

Or is the irony that the whore of a whore really did know

Because what I always thought was a joke 

Chiseled on stone 

        "Blasphemy" 

I loved her, once