Memories

I remember
Late night talks
I remember
Out-of-the-way walks
With you

I remember
Venomous words and fights
I remember
Apologies and dying light
With you

Everything
With you
Against you
About you
I remember everything that's you

I wish I didn't

Sometimes I will be in an anonymous crowd
Someone will wear the same perfume as you
Somehow I will remember so much more

You said I was listening to your favorite song
So we loved music together
And you laughed at my lame music
And I leaned against you and laughed too

You sat beside me with a long way home ahead of us
So we kept warm together
And you slept on my shoulder
And I kept watch over the open road

You wanted to hang out for once
So we watched a dumb movie
And you gained a new favorite
And I laid my head in your lap

Somehow I remember
When we were close enough
That you flooded all my senses
And know it can never be that way again

I remember
What you said
I remember
How I bled
I remember
Cut red thread

I wish I didn't
But I remember everything that's you
And how it really is everything
And how there will be no more you in my life

And how memories are but jagged shrapnel of better times rending me anew each time I try to return and repair whatever it was that broke

So I wait for the day when
I don't remember
Anymore

Lies and Realities

I loved you from the moment I met you
That's a lie. I hated you when I met you. I hated talking to you, I hated listening to you complain, I hated how you'd always be upset about the same damn thing. I thought you were this obnoxious little annoyance. Hell, I thought you were just pretending to be hurting for the attention. But I stuck around because I felt like I had to.

I have all the confidence in the world in you.
That's a lie too. I'm scared near constantly that you're right about yourself. That one day you'll end up dead in a gutter having overdosed on some drug or another. I'm scared that you won't make it. Hell, sometimes I'm scared that I won't make it without you if you don't. But I stick around because I feel like you need that confidence.

We fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
That's another lie. Yeah we have a lot in common but we don't "fit together" in some special way beyond the fact that we usually enjoy each other's company. Hell we don't even tolerate each other half the time. We argue and fight damn near constantly. But I'm sticking around because I feel like the good times are worth it.

You're the most beautiful person I've ever laid eyes on.

That's just one more lie.



...I think
See that's the problem with making up my own version of the truth. With writing a revisionist history. With putting up a facade to hide what I really believe. With pretending the arguments and hateful words don't matter in the end.
Truth and lies blend together into a false reality I no longer understand, but I need to survive. A reality I need so I can survive, but one that is coming apart at the seams as I'm caught in the web of lies I wove.
But that wasn't one more lie. You are the most beautiful person. So I stuck around. So I stick around. So I'm sticking around.
Because the most beautiful piece of my false reality is true.

You.

The Same Sky

I fall to my knees
Take cover
From the bombs falling over my head and heart

I roll onto my back
Look up
Wondering if you feel the same fear

Am I a good person?
Does anyone really care?
Is anyone truly my friend?
Am I worth anything?
Does anything really last?
Is anything truly important ?

I stare up at the sky
As these bombs keep falling and these questions keep asking themselves
And wonder if you do the same

After all we live under the same sky
And the same planes dropping the same bombs
And these same dark clouds

Shakes

I don't know if this is you
Or if that is him
Or if that is anyone 
Because if this is not you then both might as well not exist to me

He and you flash in my mind
all the time
every night
every word you say he is wonderful and he loves you just maybe like I do
Every time he and you and I am still unfazed

but one mirage and i shake

it's only maybe-he and maybe-you but it burns out of the light
it burns at me while I sit completely vulnerable in the flesh
raw beauty exposed as maybe-you radiates from the light

my head races ahead and cuts itself off at the pass sending everything into a tailspin careening over the edge of a cliff I fear I could never climb again
could it be really-you? with really-him? and really-together? and did i go wrong somewhere? or was it just always meant to be this way? could there never have been us?
my stomach turns and I shake and I shake and I shake

pleased and turned-on by my lust
jealous and turned on by my love
my stomach turns as my feelings turn over and over and over and over and over and over and over
and i shake

my head spins as i make assumptions my breathing is laborious as i am crushed to death my stomach turns as i want to vomit this venomous envy out but cannot and i shake and i shake and i shake

i lie here cold
cut open by my own sharp tonuge
chemically burned by my own vitriol
my jealousy turns me against me 
the pain is BURNing but it just leaves me COLD
and i SHAKE

My Love for Music as an Art

        So this is the first piece of something very different in focus from the rest of my writing and more conversational rather than expressive or presentational. Late at night toward the end of June I was lying awake and just aimlessly browsing genre tags on a music website called Bandcamp when an idea struck me. Just as an aspiring novelist strives to read the work of numerous great writers before him or her, I as an aspiring poet and songwriter should take in as much new and different music as possible. So I set a goal for myself for the month of July to listen to a new album every single day, and now I've decided to share bits and pieces of that experience here.
        For the first week I decided to do something very similar to what lead me to this idea, and listen to albums from a fairly wide variety of genres, often genres I'd never heard of or ones previously dismissed. I expected to enjoy a large majority of the music I found and indeed I did but there was something that surprised me. I loved and appreciated all of it as art even if I didn't enjoy it, and I experienced so much more of the intense and complex emotions music can evoke as an art form.
        I found songs that made me want to be in a crowd at a concert (Art School Wannabe), songs that made me want to just let go and dance (Always Leaving). I found songs that reminded me both of my own personal highs (let (1)) and my own personal lows (You Are My Sunshine). I found songs that made me feel subtly uncomfortable (a line falls on two lines), songs that made me feel not-so-subtly uncomfortable (all of Angel-like Contraction Reverse).
        Feelings like that are what make music so important to me, it has an ability to rip the mundane and the monotony out of life and make it a truly varied experience. Whether you share my deep love for music or it's just background noise for your life I'd strongly recommend that you take time at some point to look for something new, you might be surprised at the interesting things you can find.
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Albums of this week: 

Joy, Departed by Sorority Noise
Oblivion Songs by Divine Circles 
I Love You, This Is A Robbery by Spoonboy
Angel-like Contraction Reverse by Nac/Hut Report
Let by Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack 
Somewhere in the Sierra by alone.
Run the Jewels by Run the Jewels 

Prometheus or "My Inner Light"

        My old friend, I thank you for your letter, but  I write speeches for many to hear and take my views from, not correspondence for but one person to view me as they wish to. So I respond to you with this one and hope you will listen to what I say rather than proselytize at me about what I willfully abandoned.
        You are right about me, I do believe that words are for expressing something older than themselves, something dark and primal. My use of words to express these ancient things called emotions is art, not an expression of any personal struggle and certainly not a god damn "cry for help." And this art is not a voice "for the dark," it is my voice representing the dark. Helping others understand and deal with the darkness that is part of life now and helping them more than any prophet of things to come ever could.
        And I do believe in a "let there be light," but not the one of your precious YHWH. Those words were spoken in myth by the poster child of human ingenuity, Prometheus of Greek myth. Light was not a gift from a benevolent creator, it was stolen from a harsh and uncaring universe. We created our own light long ago when we first became bright enough to rub two sticks together. We let there be light and saw that it was good, and more importantly that it was ours.
        And so I won't join your crusade for a light I no longer believe in. I respect your beliefs, as everyone needs something to lean on, but I do not want or need your particular crutch. I did at one point but now I have a new and better thing to believe in but that is myself and my own inner light. I, like everyone else on this planet, am my own god and the master of my own fate. So I have to believe that I have the forethought and ingenuity of Prometheus to carry me through, and refuse to rely on a cosmic safety net.
        Frankly, I am angry that you act as if you know me better than I know myself, that you view my life as unsatisfactory because I am not the same as you, and that you presume I need help because my art does not reflect your ideals. Yes, life is a pile of shit. It's painful, it's dark, and it's uncaring about you or me or anyone else. But god damn it I love it anyway, and I ain't quite done with it yet.
Soli Ego Gloria,
-VNV

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I suppose Jesus is a Fuckboy by my friend Will could be considered related reading to this. I'm not in the habit of promoting others but check him out, his writing's way better than mine.

A Light in the Darkness

There is a reason we call the addictions and neuroses and insecurities that constantly haunt us our "demons." Though more a concept than a being, the Devil is very real. He even has a name: Lucifer, Bringer of Light. When you look the Devil in the face, as we are often forced to, he casts light into the darkness around you. And make no mistake, a light in the darkness is only a blessing when its director has your best interest in mind.

1. Nobody is afraid of the dark, they are afraid of the uncertainties which it conceals. Carefully selected lights illuminate those parts of that amalgam which we truly fear. Every worst case scenario that flashes through our minds to prevent action has been carefully staged to appear in full light.
2. The light at the end of the tunnel is the universal euphemism for hope in times of despair. Hope, however, is not always a good thing. Sometimes that light of how is an oncoming train ready to run us down. And so false hope is the lights left on just too long at the tragic end of the first act. 
3. Walking in the dead of night with only a flashlight to guide us, our vision is severely constricted. Every snap of a twig or rustle of bramble outside that small circle of clarity inspires worry and apprehension. And so the anxiety that keeps us ever on our toes is the lone spotlight focused center stage, making the surroundings seem so much darker

Knowing the uselessness of darkness, the Devil uses light to bring humanity to its knees. And while we lay there wretched and broken, one last spotlight shines onto the scene. In full light the stage is set for the final blaze of glory  

a knife

a gun

a rope

a balcony

a lake

a bottle

a syringe

And amidst this whole charade we never realized who was holding the flashlight, standing in the background, pushing us ever closer to the precipice, and chuckling as we stumbled over the edge. 

The Devil is not real 

But we are