Chewing Scenery

I'm still a good person; aren't I?

Despite the moments where 

I vex those who love me,

They know that I am always 

On their side; don't they?

My job provides for me

As I struggle with sunlight.

A thousand hobbies

That I don't always have time

But can always find my way to guilt.

Lava lashes out from my speech

Eyes view the devastating diatribe,

Destruction delivered in Dolby

Breath grows ever shorter

As my body sizzles silently.

My mind racing, it is hard to see

The tiny sliver of sense

Piled atop the corpse considerations.

If only I could sacrifice my want

In favor of my deepest need,

Without fracturing my self

And leaving me despaired.

Happily Ever After

How hard is happy?

Meeting multiple matches

Left longing for love.

Seeking simple sentences,

Illustrating inquisitive invites.

Which wisdom will worry:

The opaque outcome ongoing

Or desire to determine desire?

Taming the torrential tides

Regulating response to rumination

Allowing aspirations all arenas.

Puzzling potential partners,

Considering commitments and care,

Fear of forgotten foils finality.

Breathe beside your beau

Everyone experiences emptiness

Never for nothing; new names.

Qualities quietly qualified

Working within walls of want

Gathering gifts of generosity

Ultimately uniting universally

Knowing the kamikaze kiss

Attained after admitting to always.

Burning Hammer

      Sometimes, all you can do is push through and hope that life's forces reward you for persevering. There isn't always a way for you to overcome. Laying down to die isn't always an alternative at your disposal. More often than not in life, I have learned you just have to stand as strong as you can while life pummels you with a plethora of little abuses or one big hammer. There isn't always a better way. "You live and you learn"; a philosophical way of saying you get out of the situation any way you can with your self intact and hope that next time there will be the slightest window for you to escape from. Justice is not promised; very often in the modern day it is not even clearly decipherable.

      There are times you just have to shut up; stand down and take what's coming.

       In the end, isn't that what faith is all about? 

Will I always be a slave?

Look down

From your place on

High

Down at the things

I try to give

Down on the things

I have held as 

Accomplishments

Look down on all I 

Have given you

All the dreams

I have placed

In front of you

Look down on 

My place in this

World

A downcast eye

For the emotions 

I have expressed

As well as those

I have sought to receive

Look down on all

That I am

But by looking down 

On what I express

As love

I rise up

A sudden upward glance

At my nemesis

My eyes blazing

Come to rest on my tormentor

In the mirror

The reflection speaks

A thousand words....

The Darkness is Less Hectic.... When you are alone

     So, here I sit - alone, afraid, hurting - with no desire to reach out or share with anyone. I'm tired of letting my pains seep out and engulf those around me... I've done this so long that i am used to it and forget how hard it is for those around me to see and hear and feel all the things I experience as a daily event. I'm no martyr - I have no cause. I'm just a man with a mental condition that eats me up bit by bit and wears on all those who dare get close to me. With all my talk of equalities and you have to know Hell to understand Heaven - I wouldn't mind a lot more understanding of just plain old Earth. A flow of ease...... I wish my problems would just lead to having a drink - not a drinking binge. I wish I could be upset because I got a flat..... or my teams playoff chances.... or because my job was in jeopardy. No, I get upset about things that are undefinable - and thus eternally tormenting. I feel pains in my chest because everything seems so bleak and dark - and at the center of the destruction stands me and this bipolar mess I create. I have found the love of my life. I have found a job I greatly enjoy. I have a life many would envy. Yet all these things have suffered in some way due to me and this tempest of emotions I continue to embody. It's hard enough to forget a traumatic past - but when you have a tendency to fixate and dissect - these lessons become lifelong study guides. Not of a positive nature.

     All I want is to appreciate the life I have worked so long to attain. I have made my mistakes; paid my dues; lived my reality and somehow - despite it all - I find myself finally at 38 and with the life I have wanted all along. But some of the lessons BURN. They are tied to shadows - I can't always make out the threat - but I know its there and I jump at the mere sight of something moving. My girlfriend has had to answer SO many questions..... things I don't need to know - truly; things I probably didn't WANT to know..... but she does it because she loves me and wants me to have the whole truth. I then take that truth - in these dark moments - and reinforce the shadowed areas - creating shrines to my fallibility and lack of desirability. All I want is to love her and make her happy..... I think I have made that abundantly clear. But with these moments - can I ever just make her fully happy? She says I am worth it..... God, what an Angel. I believe her when she says it - I'm sure I'm worth it - but I get so ANGRY because I don't want it to be a trade off for her - I don't want her to wade through the quicksand to reach the Oasis. I just want to give her Oasis. I wish there were a way to break this bucking bronco of emotion - to bring it all under control and use the forces for GOOD only. 

     Primarily for my love - but not only her. How nice would it be for my friends to get a text from me and not have to ask - "Are you okay?" I'm the best friend you can have when I am on my game - but in these moments I become that friend that everyone has to carry home every Friday from the bar because he's drunk and pissed himself again (at least in an emotional sense!). Countless hours spent telling me what anyone would love to hear - you're good enough; you're smart enough and - doggone it - people like you! Just to have me run down my every weakness and hand them back their kind words covered in soot and ash. Who DOES that? Yet, my friends, ever vigilant - stand at the ready any time I call - ready to do battle with the enemies in my head. God bless them all.

     Not just for everyone else - but what about for me? I sit here; enveloped in a dark shroud that burns my skin and eliminates my vision. Every move I try to make to escape only brings more misery - as I cannot walk through this quagmire. At the end; all I have really learned is another thing I don't like about me. Then I feel the guilt of my actions - with my darling it seems lately I've been doing the - "It's you, it's you, it's you...... it's me". I don't mean to. In the moments we are talking I just want answers. Those answers are from her and about her but what I am searching for within her is about me. At the end of the day; I just need validation that I am doing well by people because I know I am so unpredictable and taxing. Even then, I continue to tax people by asking them to verify what they feel I should already know. By taxing them thus; I garner further guilt and a vicious cycle is born. Especially with my darling - where it becomes I am you and you are me - I owe it to her to stop this. I need to find a way to close up these gaps in my personality..... a way to stop using pasts and futures to negatively affect my present. I hope love can show me the way.....