Burden

(Heavily inspired by the Baxter Anthology. Go listen to that.)

Troy thinks if he puts all his problems inside the same bucket he’ll be fine as long as he never knocks it over. But he’s going to learn that all the bad things in the world cannot be contained like that forever. Troy’s not going to notice them spilling over the buckets lip, one by one, as they slink back to the corners of the room. Troy’s not going to notice them taking over. He’s just going to keep trying to put them back inside.

Try to make sense of how I feel

Try to make sense of everything real

Try to make sense of how I feel

Can't believe in anything real

-Baxter

This One’s on R Kelly

Cylindrical lifestyle choices have left me hoping that repeating the same questions are going to get me different answers. My Dad did the same thing, and now here I am.

Best I can do is try out different vocal inflections, put my emphasis on different syllables, but I guess I already know how it’s going to end. These exercises are entirely for me, internally. The saddest circle jerk is the one with yourself.

That's a nasty cut that you've got from me

I think I'll do it again

Save my friends

These are my friends

That you can't have

You'll never touch me

-Baxter

Attempt

I’m the king of self sustain, and self defense. What I do to stay alive is desperation, cling to your anchors so you’ll at least reach the bottom safely. I am Icarus, and I melted my wings on purpose, before I ever left the ground.

I can’t decide if I’m watching the people still flying with more envy or malice. Am I jealous of their heights or excited to watch them fall? Or maybe it’s just awe: appreciation of the attempt.

I wish I had a reason to hate your guts

because then I would be right and you'd be wrong.

I can't remember a time when I was free

of these thoughts that entangle me.

-Baxter

I’ve Watched You

Watching and waiting are my acting and doing. The best way to I’ve found to do anything is vicariously through you.

Wish I had a way to control you, though, because you’re doing it all wrong. I want to do all the things you don’t, but then you always seem to pick the right path after all. It’s infuriating.

Back in high school I was so sure that I had it figured out. And here we are. So you’re right after all, and I am what happens to excess friends who lose their way. Well, fuck you. I am friendship left to fester, and the rapid expansion of my disdain has me turning tumorous, and malignant. I’m attached to you and taking you down with me.

But you’ve always been so goddamn nice that I’m left feeling bad about it.

Well up until right now I've been ok.

Sky fell, then came the pain.

If only this weren't true.

If only this would change.

-Baxter

Hope in Time

Bide my time, because there’s an end to everything. I know that I’ve been negative lately, this awful kind of angry, and I’m sorry, because it’s unwarranted and you bear the brunt of it. So, I’m going to wait it out. Can you stay as long as it’ll take?

I am good company when I am anyone other then the person I am currently, and I think you know that there’s still hope for me.

can you recall,

sweet scents that brings you back to a life,

a life worth living... today?

-Baxter

Second Degree Burn

I’m in it for the slow build.

Because I like to watch the water begin to bubble, just before it boils.

I like waiting for the pay off of all the dark clouds; I’m in it for the rain. I mentioned a cylinder before, and I believe that the dark side of it is worth pushing through, to get back to the better half. I may not mention that while I’m trudging through it, but it’s always there in the back of my mind.

I know that all we’re gonna remember is the bad times when it’s all said and done, because of how the human mind works. How it’s going to dwell on all the shitty things. But I’m writing this down, and saying it to myself, because I want you and me to know that there’s all the good things under there, that we never really focused on.

I want to remember the 4 am take out during exam week favourably; I want to remember the tv shows we watched; not for all the time we wasted, but all the times we spent together. I want to remember rock bottom as the spot where I decided to finally get back up, instead of the spot where I had fallen to.

I want to remember you agreeing to come with me, and not the part where you decided to leave.

Untitled, June 14th, 2016

I’m going to try to bleed grey:

Because if I’m bleeding out I want

To be rescued impartially.

No red no teal no

Rainbows in

Me. I’m just keeping shut,

And that’ll work just fine.

You’ll see.

Cynicism is an oven that I've had

my thoughts stuck in.

They've been sizzling like

Cinnamon buns,

Left too long on bake.

Now they're burnt to black;

Broken, because

Their was nothing to them

After I committed to the wait.

Held in too long to the point where it's all

spoiled.

Turns out my grey blends into the background,

Here I am bleeding and no one can see me.

In Worship

Thrash Inward,

Thrash Outward,

It’s a choice with no options to choose,

Either way, 
Everyone involved leaves feeling abused.

Battered to the point of exhaustion

The breath between bouts reserved for licking our wounds.

But still,

I know I’ll end up thrashing again.

No one gets the intensity of that interior burn,

The soul has adopted a scorched earth policy;

It craves the flames of the thickest rage,

Using fire to cut through the mire that self loathing leaves behind.

Relationships and Loved Ones strewn upon the funeral pyre.

As Sacrifices to the Gods of Self Destruction.

Metaphors and Misery

I started drinking with the people I work with because I decided I’d rather hate myself than have to spend my 9 to 5 hating all of them. If I could do it all over again, I would stand by that decision. It wasn’t that they were awful people -- it’s just that they were pretty close to it, and it took at least a 5th of vodka until I could stoop to their level. And honestly, as soul crushing as option 1 was, option 2 would have inevitably led to me drinking alone again, which I had promised my shrink I would stop doing. It was less of a choice and more of a necessity.

What I do regret, however, was telling the previously mentioned co-workers all of the above during Friday night’s usual karaoke get together, in a drunken lapse of judgment.  

So now it was Monday, and even with the help of an Ipod cranked to an eardrum splitting volume, their stares of disdain as I walked in were still deafening.

---

“Would you believe me if I said I was kidding?”, I finally asked someone after the first hour or so of my shift had passed, breaking a silence that was so awkward it could demolished the spirit of even the most exuberant public speaker. Unfortunately, the reply I got didn’t do much to alleviate the tension.

“No.”

Where I had been hoping to crack through their newly erected walls of sheer hatred, they all seemed to spend the whole morning really becoming acquainted with the bricks and mortar, constantly striving to make it taller and wider with each dreadful second.

Oh, the inevitability of it all.

The Captain Has Drowned

Idols are made in dingy bedrooms,

As kids scour youtube for things to believe in

They find prophets preaching through audio files,

Telling them to scream.

This Saviour's poetry is inter-cut with kick drums,

And it’s beat makes those dirty walls resound,

Making the listener pause,

Causing something to stir.

It worms its way into their bloodstream,

Hitting them like a drug;

A proposed purpose,

An anthem to sing back with a previously unknown fervor.

And in it they found their Captain.

But their Captain has Drowned.

He choked on their admiration,

He was smothered in their praise,

Their hands had unknowingly pried the wheel away from him,

And veered his ship off course.

They all watched his every step through LCD screens,

Caught and coddled his cast-off words as scripture,

Made a mythos out of meager moments,

And propped a man up as a Messiah.

The Captain has Drowned,

And the crew held his head down as he struggled to breathe,

Converted lyrics to church hymns,

Doing it all with a masturbatory zest.

The Captain has Drowned,   

His last words unheard through all the praise.

Wave Watching

There they are with their fucking books and pens.

Writing shaky sentences with words that don’t have weight,

Things that lack any punch or Taste

Can’t even muster up any hint of HATE

It’s all pale and colorless.

… Right?

That’s what I’ll tell myself, anyway.

.......

See I used to be pretty good myself.

Words would just flow like like the tides rolling in,

Cold and merciless and unasked for,

Splashing against the poor unprepared me who was just digging his toes into the cold sand,

Knocking me over.

And what else could I do but taste the failure sewn in the water’s salt and let myself be carried out to sea,

Kicking out as I mastered a doggy paddle.

I was lucky.

Most feel the lapping of the water at their ankles and run back to the dry sand,

Or Immediately start to sink,

But after being carried out,

I knew I could do it,

Buoyed by the weightlessness of how hollow I was in my youth,

The purity of an empty plastic bag--

...not a pretty image...

--Detritus like all the rest,

But at least unaware of that fact

And dimly yearning to be something more.

Words Written over Coffee inspired by the Siren Songs of the Deeper Waters,

Emulating the greats whose influence was felt like massive ripples trying to drown me,

But I endured.

And they made me better in the end,

...

Acknowledging that em-betterment is scary,

Accepting that I'm ready to try a backstroke,

Ready to abandon the Shallows…

But damn,

Is it satisfying to make the switch.

Yet here I am.

Bitching about the form of everyone else who’s attempting to write.

Reading the forums and blogs instead of writing,

Reacting to honesty with snide and spite,

And why?

Because it’s easier to strike out then try,

Too scared of people like myself to make an attempt at anything extraordinary.

Too worried about sinking to Swim Down any more.

Happy to head back to shore with the rest of the world,

Home to Harbours where there isn’t the Love of the open water,

But the Hate and resentment of those who tasted the Salt and were too scared to keep going.

Lifeless because I am,

Pale and Colorless because that’s what is left of my complexion,

My own stench steals the taste,

And all the Hate is held tightly by me;

There is none left to share.

July 18th, 2015

Do you have it in you?

Can you live with the consequences of doing it?

Can you live with the consequences of not doing it?

So yeah, those thoughts all run through my mind in the span of time it takes me to inhale one deep breath.

---Feel the sticky air of this smoked out apartment hug the walls of my lungs. Feels like a slow death, wrapping me up, nice and neat, starting on the inside.---

And I want question 2 to leave the biggest crater in my mind, for it to be something that dwarfs the other 3, making them seem so small in comparison. But it’s just not the way things are. I’m too wigged out by the others, too caught up in the hollow stares of my friends.

Make the plunge, baby,  

And so I just do. Just like that. Be who I shouldn’t want to be.