I'll Come Running

Alone I am harshly introspective

and afraid. 

I can't do this loneliness

for too long.

The tide is coming in.

Let's talk about

everything

we will never be able to do.

Let's declare we are not alright,

and that's ok.

Let's stick it to the man,

because it all seems to be 

fruitless anyway.

Let's make up

stories 

for improvised constellations.

We can name them 

beautiful floral things

and lay in the cold grass

and listen to the

immensely silent winter

as it begins to bear down.

Landlocked Blues

"I've been sleeping so strange at night

with a head full of pesticides"

My Dream Girl Don't Exist

That song is really 

upsetting actually.

I mean, it's all about

the girl he is convinced his

only real love killing herself.

She's apparently five when she 

simply cuts herself open and dies.

I'm sorry Jeff Mangum,

I'm sure you have another 

dream girl out there someone.

But he gets so into the song

emotionally. His voice is really raw.

It makes me want to cry sometimes.

And his voice will even crack,

it's so strangely perfect.

I am glad Jeff Mangum exists.

It's snowing.

I feel cold and

very weird.

Like cocooning.

I feel like cocooning.

Stephanie Says

It also doesn't help
this fate of mine 
when you, lovely
wonderful boy
recount your explorations and
your interests and you
laugh so and grin.


It is not ok for you
to love the Velvet Underground
(and Nico),
for you to have wonderful
small quirks in your language,
to have traveled and
spent time in places
and decided in some sort
of soul-searching wisdom
I know you possess in great quantities
that everything
is the same everywhere.


You went and you came back.
You are such a curiosity to me.
I want to break you
open sometimes, and ponder you from
another angle. 
To glean something else from you
other than this affection
I harbor so far deep in my limbs and
my strange-shifting soul for you.


I do not know
what to do about you.
When so often
you confound me.


It is a wretched truth
when I say that
 I love you.


There is no other way to
accurately describe this.
You.
Your soul and heart and
hands and fingers
and lovely blue eyes.
Your brain and your ribcage
and your quick fleeting pulse.


Something within you
is much too wonderful 
for me.

We Are Nowhere and It's Now

"I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
-Ernest Hemingway

You know.

The more I think of taking a 

gap year, the more appealing the

entire idea becomes? 

The idea of being a little free

for a little while.

Of having the independence

to go.

And do.

Things.

And meet people.

And have a little fun

and see some new sights.

Before I go off to learn more

bookish things.

To be able to travel

while I am young and 

very much alive.

Before I am crushed up

and swooshed around

this country full of mess

in the workforce

and taxpaying majority.

A chance to see

Italy.

And Turkey.

And India.

And South America.

A chance to travel America.

And to write.

And to see.

With my own eyes,

what there is to be seen.

To acquire new perspectives

and gather new ideas.

Not to slack off.

Not to sit at home.

Not to get a job.

I want to get out of this godforsaken place.

I want to be somewhere new.

There is not enough money.

There is not enough time.

And I know I am heading towards an

imminent and terrifying doom.

I have to stop this before it

goes too far.

But I see a lot of

nothing in my future.

I see a lack of fulfillment.

I'm scared the world will not live up

to its expectations, nor will I.

I am deathly afraid of 

personal failure.

What happens when I get stuck 

here?

What happens when I am poor?

What to do 

when I can see my life 

bottoming out before me?

I want to crawl into bed 

and sleep until I can retire.

Oh wait.

That's never going to happen.

These Days

There are times when I am painfully aware

of life.

As in,

what I am doing with it now,

where it is going,

where I want it to go,

and how I will push to get my life

there.

How will I 

judge my

living 

versus my existing.

Am I currently existing

or living?

Will I be who I want to be someday?

Can I get it together enough

to be happy with my life?

How much debt will I accrue

in college and how will I deal with it?

Where am I going to travel to,

how will I get there?

Who will matter the most

and what will I do to 

show them their importance?

I refuse to settle.

"Lack of passion is fatal".

There will be failures.

Mistakes.

But there will be triumphs.

And victories.

Someday I want to wake up

and be exactly where I want to be.

To have no regrets, no second thoughts,

no desires- if only for a moment,

is my single greatest desire in life.

To be contented fully for any amount of time.

We are all striving toward something.

There are fears and aspirations nesting

in each soul, they are trying to bloom and

become realized. 

If we could only go out,

all of us,

and grab at our goals

and make them real,

hold them above our heads

in sheer, magnificent wonder,

and triumph.

If our goals were all accomplished,

if we could all work towards something

with such fervor and passion as to make

it a reality.

I cannot imagine what would come of the world.

We could stand in awe of the wonders of human nature.

The content would be palpable in the air.

If nobody had to settle

and we could all accomplish our

dreams. 

There are small longings 

sleeping in the foxholes of

our hearts, which strain to pump

the blood of being, of living

into our limbs.

To stir an exuberance 

into our spirited souls,

stoking the fires of our passions

to push our sails to straining,

so we may cross our seas.

So we may all live.

We are all striving for validation.

For lives we dream of.

I will not settle.

We should not have to settle.

The Fairest of the Seasons

I had a horrible dream
where you cut open
your wrist and bled onto 
the floor and all across the
linoleum and fell unconscious
and bled and bled.


You needed 37 stitches 
to fix your arm,
which would have a big long
scar on it now. 


I had been the one to find you,
and I screamed and screamed
and had to hope you wouldn't die.
I rode with you in an ambulance
and held your other hand the 
entire way to the hospital
and cried.


You were going to be ok
physically. They put you on 
drugs and you were not yourself
you were a silent small thing
I had never known. The most depressed
I had ever seen.I stayed the whole
time you were in the hospital,
I held your hand
and sometimes you would wake from
the drug-induced sleep and you would
talk so quietly. And cry.
You cried. And my heart broke to pieces.


It was the worst sort of nightmarish dream.
The clearest and most terrifying ones.
It was horrible.