Anxiety

I walk alone at night, with no one near
to calm my ever-rising agony,
to clasp my hand and whisper in my ear,
to softly take my dreams and set them free.
They say they understand, but no one knows
the panic that I feel when each breath comes,
the tightness in my chest that always grows
until I sink to earth, blind, deaf, and dumb.
I cry and cry, but tears remain unleashed.
I scream away the pain within my soul
afraid that it will stay and never cease,
unsatisfied until it takes its toll.
The monster in me scratches at my heart
and threatens, always, to tear me apart.

Grasping at Stars

why today?
why burn away
the dreams that lay as speckled pebbles in the distance of my heart?
a thousand suns are burning
a thousand fires spurning my love for love and life and you.
in the night, i burst forth from my soul,
break free of my whole self
and fly away from the world that drags me down.
take me, break me, forsake me
but you can not reach me where the stars cry tears of dust on my wounded shoulder.
my fingers cling to memories of a life filled with more than death
where youth opened my eyes to magnificence greater than truth.
the stars welcome me with open arms
but will they burn as well?

It’s A Beautiful Day

In the neighborhood, where the sun pounds down like the thunder in my ears
and suffocates the tune to which I dance
away my regrets of the nothings I never did;
I swing on the ropes that I can’t climb
and feel the calluses on my tender hands burn
against the passing of time.
Breathing in the heat is like swallowing a sponge
that soaks up nothing but the air that chokes me
until  I fight to drown,
would rather be drowning
than burrowing my way through consciousness.
If I were a someone other than my own, I might inhale
the song of my sight,
the vision of my hearing,
the smell of my touch
into lungs that contain much more than air,
much more than the will to live.
It’s a beautiful day
where the children play-act
scenarios that pit good against evil-minded
villains whose own childhoods colored grey the questions of their heart.
In a someday that may never come, I will seize the day
with both tender hands, burning
against the stopping of time,
until life slowly begins again
to breathe me in.

A Birthday Poem

(This is what happens when I am given five or six words to incorporate into a poem.)

 

I made her a cake
of fungal avocado
that will forever

asphyxiate cats
as I drink wine in my room
where dreams go to die

and are born again
onto heavenly clouds of
warm fantasticness.

 

Sorrow

the rain in my eyes feels like tears on my face,
dripping into the cracks in the sidewalk.
I follow them to the edge of my tiny universe
and cry to the enclosing horizon.
“Why?” is not what I say
but only what I think
as I fall on my face and smell the damp life of the dirt
for there is only dirt at the end of my universe,
no oceans,
just dirt
filled with the life of a million tiny creatures
whose universes are even smaller then mine,
yet bigger in their innocence.

I ate an apple yesterday
and threw away the core,
knowing that I wasn’t really throwing it away
but giving it back to the land that birthed it.
I wonder if it feels used
or thankful
or fulfilled.

in the midst of my nothingness,
I feel a pang of uncertainty
and it comforts me,
knowing that my soul is not dead.

A Sonnet for All Writers

A girl without a dream, but with a heart
Lives in the midst of sadness far and wide
But lends her soul to giving love a start
And finding purpose as her goals collide.

Her words flow swiftly from her broken pen
Through fondly recollected memories
And thoughts re-thought until they die again
And are reborn into minute stories.

Until the day that darkness dies away,
Until the day that shadows fade from view,
Until the day that light is here to stay,
She wields her pen for all that’s good and true.

In all the words that form her smiling soul
Lies something, somewhere, that makes others whole.

Never Again

You walked through the door
the same way you walked out of my life,
scattering dreams along the sides of the walls you built up against me.
You smiled with the innocence of one who knows everything
and laughed with the sting of a thousand arrows.
Even in death, thorns line your pallid face
with rows of masked cruelty,
reminding me of the rose they once permitted me to smell.
Your folded hands cover the chest that still heaves hatred at me,
even in its frozen state.
I try to imagine your soul watching me from the heavens,
but all I feel is fear.

Depths of Dreams (a sonnet)

the words that spin across the universe

hurl through the dawn that minds alone can see

as worlds of thoughts condemn the lying curse

that aims to break the beauty that can be.

your eyes show depths that oceans cannot reach

behind which lie the dreams that none can find.

your smile shines beyond what suns can touch

and shows the worlds created in your mind.

our dreams push back the boundaries of life

until subconscious overtakes the real.

as we create, we fight away the strife

that sep’rates who we are from what we feel.

In days like these, where springtime never ends,

imagined worlds become our only friends.

Hope

Despite the muddy swamp of doubt
that leaves no pathway clear,
Despite the swirling unvoiced thoughts
that harbor hidden fear,
My soul will stand where I can not
with strength that’s not my own.
Despite this world that drags me down,
I know I’m not alone.

Social Anxiety

I am alone in a sea of humanity
surrounded by the blistering cacophony of laughter
as my friends dance away their insecurities
which flit away to harass me.
i draw into myself as their surface joy pounds against my brain.
laughter. music. chatter.
happiness that only makes me unhappy.
i am drowning in my own bitterness,
screaming for help
crying for rescue
but only the laughter hears me.