The alarm sounds and he is off

The bed springs grumble as he tumbles out

The faint patter from the shower starts and ends

Closet doors open and shut, clothes are donned

For hours, no noise; he is away again

Perhaps at that job he always complains about

Yes; in the evening he returns, tired

Ready to repeat today's events tomorrow

Years this goes on, painful monotony

Never any others in this house; no friends, no family

But one visit from an angry and disappointed mother

Who ingrains in his head that he is a failed man

The cycle goes on, always the same

Day to day, he goes away

And comes back the same man

Broken, moaning to himself about his misery

And one morning the shower is not turned on

The closet doors open but do not shut

There is the sound of rope tied up and around itself

And the cycle, finally, is broken

Dude,

I fucked your mother and learned so much about you. We pretended the Pooh Bear nightlight in your bedroom-shrine didn’t remind of us a zygote. She hid the refrigerator polaroids of you and me kicking soccer balls together on a prepubescent travel team. We fucked, but it wasn’t just hollow fornication, not mechanical insert-withdraw repeat, not accessorized masturbation, not without need or intimacy. She and I leaned way way in.

In the hours before we met by the dairy aisle, I tripped over caveman thought-shadows: there must be a soul because I can feel mine pissing on my liver, swelling secondary bladder eroding a hollow in my gut, pressing the abdominal wall, stunting my appetite. I decomposed, was wasting away at photon speeds, reduced to spinal column, dermal shroud and a soul-pissy balloon near my navel, staggering around the streets like a stem with a single clinging grape. The soul piss sac wanted parasitic ground beef, tobacco and a set of bell curved hips –the kind that toll when in motion and make my soul snap its jaw so all my emaciated ears hear is ringing female anatomy and clicking incisors. Which is when I saw your mother holding a gallon of skim, looking soulful.

Lust faded like an anti-polaroid once she squished her wounds against mine. Skin cells and capillaries knitted together, binding us in knotted scar tissue. The whole situation only became uncomfortable when your mother referred to my penis as a “little exclamation point.” She punctuated her moans with tantric ooohhhhmmms and probiotic brand names. After our exclamations wilted we laid in ageless eggshell sheets, sweat damp bed covers, my panting dome on her left areola, listening to the hump and pump of her chest cavity.

Your mother made me brush my teeth and change into flannel pjs before she recited a bedtime story (one she told you, once upon a time) about the man who floated above sticky linoleum floors on a cushion of cig and bud smoke. A methed out Jesus. No name, no clean socks or place to sleep at night, but the man made every party hop by whipping his waxy mane and whiskers in precise orbits until anonymous pills flew from his roots like the devil’s own dandruff. He killed a man in California – “Frisco,” he called it – pushing this Other into oncoming traffic with one worn boot heel to the ass. Blood and pedestrian vomit flowed downhill in iconic cable car tracks. The end.

Then we slept. For 100 hours, waking unshaven and ravenous at the heart of a bio-siege. Through the bedroom window: a legion of cornstalks crept towards us with sun-touched hand grenades rather than ears. Erect ranks of plants smothered the Kentucky Blue lawn and overran your childhood’s patio furniture –dingy white plastic fractured to splinters. I hope the corn lets your mother and me go before winter embraces us all for months, trapped in the farmhouse where your memory still pitter-patters down the halls. Bare little footsies.

Her fucking face...

I can see it in my dreams

The highways separate us,

And this shit hurts more than ever

I can feel you wanting me

Fuck driving, I'll walk for hours

I'll end up with the sunset sitting next to me

I'll speak the truth and you'll make an ass of me

I can't rewind the clock but fuck, why would I want to

My life wasn't shit before you

So I'll bleed these words until you'll listen

And you can tear me to pieces before you put me back together

As long as I end up next to you

Everything is you.

Every scent. Every sight. Every sound. It all reminds me of you.

The ticks and tocks of the clock reminds me of your laugh and it makes me feel like the bird in the center, cuckoo. It makes me crazy.

Every window that I pass I swear on the stars that your smile is reflected back at me. It makes me dizzy.

I smell your cologne on every stranger and when I gaze into their face I see you again. You are they. They are you. It makes me feel so damn ill.

At night when I try to rest, visions of you swim on the insides of my eyelids.

When I finally get to sleep you are the star in all of my dreams. You are the focus in all my nightmares too. They is no limelight to share. It's all you.

When I wake, the first thing I see is you painted on my ceiling. I turn over and catch a glimpse in the mirror. Instead of my reflection it's you.

Everything I write is about you. You are the exposition. You are the climax. You are the resolution.

All the characters meld into you. You are the hero. The foil. My antagonist.

I want to be free. I want to be wild. I want to be carless.

But I can't move on when all I feel is you watching me.

When I turn around to catch you there is nothing behind me. Not you. Not anyone.

I want apathy.

If only one thing all I have to say to you is fuck you.

Fuck you for keeping me alive when I wanted to be six feet under.

Fuck you for leaving me.

Fuck your disinterest in me.

Fuck my interest in you. 

Fucking help me. I am fucking drowning. I feel the fucking water fill my lungs. My arms are fucking tired and I never could fucking swim well.

Please tell your ghost to stop fucking with my brain.

You never cared much for my mental health anyways.

I'm fucked.

Just fuck you.

I'm quite biased, but Prose is also my favorite app for a reason. 

It's not the beauty, despite how beautiful a work of art Prose is. It's the soul. 

The soul of the design, the functionality, the content, and the people. Prose is a safe environment in which I can express my soul completely, and in which I can listen to other soul express themselves completely. 

The soul of Prose, and its constituents, emanates aliveness, passion, wonder, elegance, depth. It embraces the full spectrum of light and dark and rejuvenates me like a literary fountain of youth.

Love you, Prose.

So you're a Republican. Or a Democrat? Or a Blood or Crip? No, wait, you're a 33rd degree Mason? That had better to be on your resume.

So you're a jock, right? Not a nerd or prep or freak, to be exact? If not then what the fuck are you. Emphasis on the period in place of question mark.

Enough subtle sarcasm.

If you feel the need to identify with a political party instead of simply explaining your beliefs, principles, and reasoning plainly, then you're a slave to the modern political game.

And the only way to win it is to break its rules.

...break them for good...

recovery,

to me,

is shouting into the void

and expecting an echo

to return.

i think

i am scared

of getting better.

i think

i have lost

my voice.