Everyone tells you how things won’t be like this forever. That even when they were at their lowest, things eventually turned around.

Everyone tells you that you are better than what you are feeling right now. That somehow, all this emptiness that plows through you will be pushed aside to usher in your feelings.

Everyone tells you about happy things. Flowers, and dog kisses, your power, and hot mistresses. Things to build you up. Compliments and sunny days to dampen the sonic waves that say that you should hang your limbs from limbs of trees, that’ll snap your neck so you sway in the breeze.

Everyone tells you about the breaking point they hit, where everything came flooding out all at once, and they were able to feel. Able to feel what was real, what’s the deal with this illness that always catches us when we’re at our best.

No one tells you about the nights you lay awake in bed, hoping to sleep, because nightmares feel better than the black hole you feel in your chest.

No one tells you about the times you are able to look everyone you love in their faces, and put on the biggest shit-eating grin, all the while telling them that things are going great knowing DAMN well that you just thought about your body hanging from the trees three paragraphs ago to release these feelings of loathing and hatred you feel towards your self.

No one bothers to mention that everything you say right now even you don’t believe.

Nobody gives a fuck to tell you that while you’re seething in your bed, wishing you were dead, everyone else has in their head that you’re not seeing red or feeling dread, no no no. They decide it’s not important enough to put in their spark notes studied presentation about your brain wanting to literally fuck itself into oblivion.

No one ever said that pain would feel so divine, because at least then you wouldn’t be lying.

You never mentioned that deciding to have sex with anyone who was willing to glance at me was better than not, because though I’d be seen as a fuckboy, or a fuck toy, that only has 7 and a half inches of use in him, and that he would hate himself for giving something he could never take back, at least he felt something more than that dark, dark blackness that would envelop his mind everytime he couldn’t rhyme his feelings away.

No, no one ever told me I would be this way.

Butchu ain’t about to see me give up so easy.

She was a traveler and so was he

He loved adventure, and she, the sea

He crossed the countries to their shores

She crossed the oceans to many more.

He found his heart in the earth, with the roots

She found hers deep in the ocean flumes

He, with the earth worms, and she with the fish

Soon, he became the bait for all her heart’s whims.

He gave up his life on solid ground, to follow her with endless bounds

Soaring far from the place he called home, he found his love outside the zones

of his comfortable dirt and comfortable trees away from twittering birds and flitting bees.

He fell further in love than ever before

Unfortunately she couldn’t love anymore

She became obsessed with ebbs and with flows

Came closer to the edge as they came in droves.

He noticed her love drain from him into the sea foam

Still, he refused to let her be home

He was alone, and she was not

He then came to one final thought

He’d become one with the ocean’s waves

Hoping she’d notice, and their love would be saved.

He was right, she did, and fell in love again.

They sunk to the bottom. Now that’s where they live.

The sun

The rain

The blue sky above.

The flowers you pick

The things you love

I want to be them

For they are they are things that see you

They want to be you

I want to believe

That I can see

You again.

 

I see it all but can’t touch

For it isn’t me that you want

I see it all, clearer than day

But you’d never give the time to say

To say

Hey.

Hey.

Hey.

Hey.

 

This jealousy is beating

And eating away at me

Until

There’s

Nothing

 

Left

I’m afraid… Of clowns. I mean look at those weird lookin’ fuckers. Why are you crying? Why are you smiling? Why the fuck are you angry? I’m afraid of a lot of things actually. Spiders, ants, snakes, rejection, being in a relationship, being single, my dad, my dad is a pretty scary person, sometimes when he got drunk he beat me. But don’t worry! Because he apologized in the morning! And I was always told apologies are only valuable if felt and I mean I could feel it deep down. Maybe it was just the aches my body cried out to me from the night before.

 

When I was younger, I wasn’t afraid. Because I mean if I was afraid that would somehow in my father’s eyes make me look weak and he would beat me and I remember overhearing several conversations he had with his hick motherfuckin sorry excuse of friends about how they only beat up faggots. I didn’t want to be a faggot and disappoint my dad because damn man, he is who I’m supposed to aspire to be when I’m older and I dealt with this from the time I was able to utter my first word and it’ll continue to haunt me until I speak. My. Last.

 

I wish someone had seen the signs and said “I’m here for you” but no one ever did so when I was seven I decided that I finally had had enough, I told my dad that he wasn’t a man. I don’t think I even finished the sentence before a beer bottle swung to connect with my pale, young face. That beer bottle broke and left a scar right here. He then stood over me and continued to beat me until I was sure I was going to die. But I said NO. Why?

 

It’s true, he broke me down but that didn’t mean I was broken. I couldn’t let him win this time. I picked my shattered teeth and broken bones off the ground though he continued his assault across my back and said YOU DONT CONTROL ME ANYMORE. I spent three days in intensive care. I can’t remember much. Only two things.

1. Playing Donkey Kong on an old Nintendo 64 that a doctor brought in

and

     2. My mom saying she would never let this happen again.

 

I haven’t seen my father in six years but he’s always going to be behind me. But that’s where he belongs. Behind me, in my past. He made me one thing I’m proud of today. A survivor. He showed me just how strong I can be.

 

I wish I had more to say but really these same four words flash in my mind. I’m here for you. Every single one of you.

Hey… you are… loved

It might be from the person that you kiss over and over again and call yours.. and that would be pretty great. Sometimes things don’t work out like that though, and that’s okay. I mean, who knows? You’re best friend could love you too. Maybe not in the way that the person who kisses you does, but they love you in their own unique way, that you can’t get from anybody else, and that’s good too.

Too many times we fall into “O, Woe is me” and get trapped in a pit of self despair lit with candles screaming “I don’t care” paired with a healthy side of scared, to die alone. But that’s just so ridiculous. From parents, to friends, to ride or dies to the ends, they love you, it’s true. The only people who do convince yourself otherwise don’t really give a shit about you, but THEY do. You fool. The sad part is sometimes you’re the one that doesn’t give a shit about yourself, so get down from that shelf, and get some help, before that self begins to melt, do you remember when you felt?… it was beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking. Like a cosmos filled with purples and greens filling the skies, please all of you close your eyes and imagine it with me.

I’m serious. Close your eyes, please for me. Now just imagine. Imagine your soul floating off in these deep colors, with the hands of those that love you keeping you afloat. This is what life is. You’ll float as long as you drown out the sounds of the people saying you’ll never make it, don’t let their weight get the better of you, cast it down like an anchor to root you in the present, but it’ll never pull you under, because the voices of love are thunderous to help pull you from under, thus floating you to the top of your wondrous soul, making you feel whole, lighting up that fire like coals, oh trust me there are people that love you. How do I know?

Because I do… I love you. And you. And you. And you, and everyone who has ever believed they are not good enough because of the stuff other people have bluffed, trust… me. You will always be enough. You will always be loved.

 

(sung)

I’m so sorry mama, you did so much to be so kind. I’m so sorry papa, you did so much to make me mind. I’m so sorry mama, I know that you’re really trying. I’m so sorry papa, you warned me always see the signs.

(spoken)

And as I look through these mirrors that are convex, I see the complex problems that seem to vex this nation blowin’ checks on the newest Jordan’s. I don’t care how fly you look or how high, you’re shook

 by the ability

 to never learn humility. You can sit in your room day after day playing’ 2K but never goin’ to your mom just to say,

“Hey. I love you moms, more than my pay-day”

Ya know. All this shit about mass shootings got me feelin’ asinine about how a dude can be “a family man” or a “loner, with a history of mental illness” just because he has the same sex and skin color of mine? I’m hesitant to throw race into it because it’ll grow like cancer, because it’s maligNANT but heh, I never seen a white man be called a terrorist by the media. Now maybe that’s because I’m looking in all the wrong places, or, rounding all the wrong bases, or throwing stuff into shadowed vases because I just want to shatter all expectations and prove I am not a product of my generational hatred that sprays like mace of the soul, and makes the heart irate. But lately, if I try to integrate these, portions of a different culture into mine I get told I’m destroying it. Now that’s rich, shit. We go through periods of oppression in this great country that we all “happily” reside in, confide in, but should never die in, especially at the hands of the people that should be protecting us

(sung)

 I’m so sorry mama, you did so much to be so kind. I’m so sorry papa, you did so much to make me mind. I’m so sorry mama, I know that you’re really trying. I’m so sorry papa, you warned me always see the signs.

(spoken)

Now I know a white boy comin’ up here playing with words like a toy might be kind a coy way to get across a message but oy vey, if I can’t, then who? You? I’m putting my beliefs onto a platter for vultures to silently judge and if I happen to say one politically incorrect thing my throat will get slit and any type of ego, hit, by you birds of prey not giving’ two shits that I am a human too. We have no empathy. What ever happened to pathos, you say you have it but where’s it at though? Maybe if we ALL focused on livin’ and givin’ just a little bit more we wouldn’t see so many youth dead at our door, so fuck off.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton