Verbatim

There is something so romantic about cigarettes The way they hang from an artists lips As they’re leaned up against bricks One leg up they inhale and exhale toxins The fashion of quietly killing themselves But I don’t see it All I see is The rise and fall of breaths The unexpected beauty of a slow death

At what point did this pursuit of love become addiction Itching for a scratch of that pen against parchment Parched for a diction to define the idolatry of such idle demise Slow-churned thoughts surmise fantastical connections Washing away any glimpse of self preservation Self respect Self love Every time I think I’ve risen in the throes of blissful romance I find myself falling prey to foolery even Tom would not condone

My heart aches like a splinter buried deeply in the soil of my flesh Dirty from your touch Still lush from your kiss Now parched from the drought you left 

Familiar sensations stem from familiar temptations Love making disguised as meaningless relations My biggest secret is I don’t know how to touch without touching souls  Transferring so much more than saliva Spiritual entwined with cerebral Tongues talking like old friends from past lives through cups on cosmic strings whispering silent I love yous between the lines of your lips

You can’t contain a flame without causing wildfire Or snuffing out her wild  Suffocating the oxygen from her dance of airs Flowing through red orange auras of the untamed Her mane aglow  Spires spreading outstretched Searching for something she could touch without destroying

In some ways My stubbornness has kept me alive Helped me survive with Foggy sighs subtly dimming a daft shine of blinding light  Positivity playing as my most favored shield My heart, a sword Cutting into this world relentlessly Irreverently seeking healing through the wounds of others My sadness, a sheath to such self-inflicted cuts For people like me, it’s easy to love To see so much in others I cannot easily see in myself  Depression digs deeply at my roots Reminding me to be unapologetically selfish Withdraw my sword and remind myself that it’s okay to rest This spirit needs nourishment This mind needs respite  This heart needs comfort  This body needs 8 hours of sleep tonight

I’m not crazy, weathered at worst Like early days of earth Rubble rock birthing life from  violent destruction Fires burning molten in the underbelly of my origins Bubbling beneath cracked surfaces Where I oftentimes appear stable My heart is a volcano Bursting at the seams where new ground must form Former foundations crumbling, splitting like Pangaea  Where connections we once had feel like nothing more than distant history Evolution of man How he crawled out of water to feel sun upon his face How I would wait hundreds of thousands of years  In hopes he’d emerge from darkness to find me Staring out into space The nostalgia of quiet combustion Peering into past lives in the distance Knowing most of what I know to be beautiful is dead I am a supernova  Bursting at the seams where new life may form  Gathering masses from stray debris Gasses and gravity Nebulous love Pulling together new solar systems  in ancient designs and unwritten formulas Life is messy S...