Last Watch

Pacing up and down

Dark and empty halls

There is but one sound

Click click click

The footsteps of the last watch

Overseeing the desolate masses

With darkened and recessed eyes

Click click click

Each step passes another door

And behind each door resides

A new person with new demons

Each protected only by the last watch

Click click click

I pace these empty halls

With darkened eyes

Past darkened doorways

Listening to others darkened hearts

paying no mind to my own, beating with my footsteps, drowned out more each doorway, a heart burning ever dimmer, a beat growing ever softer

drowned out

Click

Closing In

It begins as it always does

The doors are shut

Like a silent gunshot from

A firing line to execute me

Now the walls may do their worst

And so may the voices

Ever present but normally drowned out

In the silence are heard

Their words fill my head like spilled chemicals

And still the walls

Every smallest sound another voice

Taunting

Doubting

Jeering

Sneering

Devaluing

Destroying

Every fear and neurosis screams at the top of its lungs

And still the walls

Breath        is no longer possible

Air flees this        terrible room

My lungs expand        and contract

Moving the        nothing inside        and outside

And still the walls

And still the walls

Closing in

Never to let me free

Crushing me alive

Beneath my own fear and self doubt

They stop and I am left in a small room

To contemplate why I have done this to myself

Again

Breakfast

I love the dining hall in the morning

The quiet
Space to just eat for once
Instead of the clamor at meals
Later in the day

The intermittent
clatter of the kitchen
making
food for a slow stream
of students

The unity in the union
No one is there to talk
No one to judge you
Just to eat a breakfast

The quiet
Without the silence
Without what permeates my nightmares
Without that sharpest psychological chisel tearing at me
Without any space for that nagging voice in my head to tell me "it's time to go"

I love the dining hall in the mourning

Perfect

I finally understand why you hate it

The overzealous discipline

The taking it too seriously

The endless toil

The futile pursuit

All in the name of "perfect"

I loved it for a long time

I sought until I could not see

I ran until I could not stand

I sang until I could not speak

Poured everything I had

Into everything I did

And painted perfect pictures of everything I wanted

Even of you

All the things that worked mattered

All the things that didn't didn't

Beautiful moments engraved

Painful moments erased

And I ran after that perfect image of you endlessly never getting any closer but always believing I could one day lay next to her and watch the clouds

Until I could not

I wish it had been earlier

I had known you earlier

I had believed you earlier

I had tried to fix this earlier

I hate it too now

But it's too late to stop trying

So I am stuck chasing you and chasing this abstract idea

Pouring everything into nothing

Never to be happy

So used to the perfection in my mind that nothing in this imperfect world could ever hope to make staying in it at all worthwhile

So if you find my body

Sleeping below an imperfectly tied knot

Wincing at imperfectly drawn lines

Crying by an imperfectly pulled trigger

Bury me anyway

And write on my gravestone:

I was not perfect

And neither are you

And I guess that

is ok

Psychomelodrama

When your world is in greyscale

You have to paint the colors vibrantly

Even when they are all wrong

The red is blood not love 

The orange is danger not warmth

The yellow is jaundice not the sun 

The green is envy not nature 

The blue is tears not the ocean 

The violet is poison not regal 

You have to break the cycle

Take the hue of all the pain
The blue from your shut eyes
The red from your open veins
The yellow from your skin and rotting liver

And you paint or you dance or you act or you sing or you write
You create art

You create something to remind you that
There is color in the world
There is more than an endless void of grey

And you have to paint the colors vibrantly
Because even the worst rainbow is better than a stormcloud

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

Mouthpiece

When I write
I am my voice
I put emotion to
Words

The emotion is
Mine
The voice is
Mine
But the words are
Yours

My thoughts on
Your wonder in
My eyes on
My page with
My? words

But they have to be yours
They are to you
They are about you
They are made of you
They couldn't exist without
You

I am a voice
Yours

But have no one to be

Mine


My? voice


I cant speak

Salt and Iron

I opened the door.
I should have known you would be there. It was a Monday morning in January. The day after your birthday. I didn't want to bother you but I had to eventually.
I sat down next to you.
I looked at you while you just lay there. But I couldn't see you for long. Your image became blurry. I shut my eyes as drop by drop salt met iron.
I breathed a heavy sigh.
I remembered how you talked almost every day about being there. I only ever half believed you. You scared me sometimes. I didn't think I really had to be afraid.
I brushed your hair out of your eyes.
I used to call you kiddo all the time. It was our cute little term of endearment for each other. You really were just a kid. Of all people a kid belongs there the least.
I bent over and gently kissed your forehead.
I had to convince you of a lot of things. That you were beautiful, that I loved you. You never really believed me. You believed you didn't deserve any of this.
I embrace you for the la-



Wait.



In your hand.
I know immediately what it is. The pen with which you wrote your final message to me. I tear it from your fingers and throw it as far from us as I possibly can. I burn with rage. Rage at you for doing this. Rage at me for letting it happen. Rage at love for not being enough. Rage at the world for hurting you this way. Rage at that pen for making this even a possibility. I rage rage rage rage rage against the dying of the light.

The dying of your light. Your already dead light. Your light that had been dead for so long but I didn't notice until now. Or I did and couldn't admit it. 

I have beaten the room until I am senseless. My fists cannot unclench, iron drips from my knuckles. My eyes cannot open, salt burns down my face. There is no more rage, only your dead light and mine.
I go and pick up your pen from the corner of the room
I want to go with you, to chase after you. I want to lie beside you and draw the same lines on my skin you did. I settle for a little less. Perpendicular lines that last forever, to remind me of what I could never forget anyway. 


My life joins with yours one final time, then I open the drain, and watch the last of you flow away from me.

Way With Words

You always said that words were beautiful that mine were that I had a way with words but you never wanted the meanings I wrote how I feel so I threw it away because you took away my words I have no meaning no more words to speak to you about anything beautiful is wasted on you could not care is wasted on the same old meanings in new ways new words to put away the way I feel about you isn't anything beautiful isn't because there's no way for words to speak words wasted away my way with words has gone away

Drive

Most animals are driven by need
Eat
Fight
Reproduce
Survive

Humans are different
We are driven by want
Taste
Resolve
Love
Live

I don't want to live
But still
I don't want to die

I don't want to love or be loved
But still
I don't want to be alone

I don't want to resolve arguments and solve problems
But still
I don't want to be angry at the world

I don't want to taste or eat or fulfill any of my real needs
But still
I don't want to let myself just fade away

I don't want anything
But still
I don't want there to be nothing

This is not a valley I can climb out of
This is not a mountain I can fall off of
This is not anything
This is an endless abyss with not a single other thing in sight
This is apathy

I am apathy

I am nothing