Tag Archives: mental health

You Will Always Lose

It rummages about,

rampaging in the dark clarity of slumber,

rifling through shelved ideas.

Cluttered it comes to be

half-past acceptance of being awake,

half-before the sun’s encroaching glare.

In perfect lighting,

Shadows thrive in ignorance,

undiscovered by the myth of lucidity.

Catharsis denied in dampened returns to the bed,

unclean by the shocked, sweat-stained rhythm

of a figure rising to prepare a fall

into the corridors of the lurking expectations,

rummaging about in imperfect theater;

the impetus of inevitable disappointment.

( ❤ Mitch)

Count the Errors

On a daily

sliding scale,

where are you found?

Which statistic is speaking

at the direction of a finger’s assertion?

Now as it wavers in air,

dwindling to the side

of a sliding scale,

where are you?

On a daily

mounting dosage,

what sector of mind talks?

In reoccurring conversation flow,

a distance transforms the self and its killer,

placing the latter at center focus

as the former is escorted off,

restrained for examination,

picked apart.

On a daily

slipping grasp,

how do you balance?

When the edge is excavated,

scraped off by a scalpel’s ill intent,

do you collapse for more?

Perhaps seek another

ready ledge to cling

and breathe.

On a daily

concluding scene,

have the credits rolled?

Scrolling through insomnia’s throes

in the decaying glow of an opened window,

has an escape route been uncovered?

Does it flash in memory?

Still it drags on,

repeating.

On a daily

sinking story,

what will bail you out?

The buckets have holes drilled in.

The savior’s been tossed off to drift,

and his gift was only a sour taste

that lingers on the tongue

and deeply drops

a sliding scale.

( ❤ Mitch)

Ebb and Decay

Static in motion

                yet kept so still

                                in illusion of

                                                a form of progress

                                illustrated thusly in

                scattered carpet lines

wherein a kitchen blade

                was poking holes

                                playing pretend skin

                                                with a hunger for flesh

                                that plays its hand

                                                at a game of resistance

                                                                ebbing further cliffside

                                                                                until a precipice glistens

                                                                and a prey’s eye

                                                turned hesitant killer

                                catches a stray glimpse

                and a dormant compulsion

discovers a rebirth

                with maroon dreams

                                and dances with razors

                                                plotted delicately in fantasy

                                                                as spun by desperation

                                                and concluded as solution

                                                                by migration from the floor

                                                                                and jagged worry marks

                                                                towards definite indefinite

                                                                                outside of conscious bounds

                                                                                                where motion is irrelevant.

( ❤ Mitch

Dissected Attention Span

Hers was a fatal nothing.

Stretched across to negate awareness,

a back is pressed to the wall,

scratched delicately with fingernail signals.

Savored sensation

absent of substance;

inundation through imagination,

searching for more in laughter than reaction.

Caressing impressions ethereal,

mere mites on a mind

lacking conscious form to compose itself,

registering desire in tandem with attention,

in purgatory perpetual,

undermined in persistence.

The foe is an unspoken encirclement,

existent in the air between bodies

so meticulously intertwined

without ever been close from the start.

A Boy, in Parts

Truth comes foul

when the comfort of falsehood

loses footing in reflection,

geometry proven irregular in critique

with wanting eyes plowing for faults.

Unsustainable, the boy mutters,

tripping over cigar ash smiles

and knife hugs.

Dead-end motives

seek the next trial

to fall first, headlong,

losing by default in absent glances

where lust swings wild,

its direction uncaring for appearances

like cigar ash smiles

and knife hugs.

Unsustainable, the boy mutters,

enraptured by the rupture

cleaving through action and reason.

Desire comes aimed for the aimless;

quick fix dilemmas.

Lipstick scars

bandaging the whispers of displeasure

until withered

as plastic roots undo,

support decayed in reflection

when wanting eyes see only “no” as an answer.

( ❤ Mitch)

Lean Into It

Painted into the darkened clouds,

past the rim of eyesight locked on looming waves,

have you come to pull me out?

Shades are drawn over the cot.

I’ve been induced to statis again

under a marching fog’s watchful guard,

wrapped around my knees to bear down my feet.

A runaway set of tracks runs straight onto my head,

leading flying train carts to the top of the bed,

the force of a million hammers dropped carelessly onto,

and the aching never departs,

nor the thought that births its strength.

On a better day in a mirror’s rays,

it’s said I’m a carcass in a dancer’s gown,

confident in clothing that hides my darker colors

and the cracks I’ve inflicted.

Stuck out as a limb on a precipice,

jutting from the face of a pitfall,

you’ve got a shoulder I’m dropping my heavy weight on.

I don’t deserve this cushion or this ladder up.

I want to shout a question out to you,

but you’ve put forth an answer with a smile and a shrug,

lifting jetsam up the cliff as if it was air,

and on the trip to the surface I feel a rush.

A moment to spend beside your warmth

has me barreling towards a future,

holding in my heart the confidence to stand up straight.

Any slip towards the drop no longer has me panicking

knowing I’ve always you to know as my friend.

( ❤ Mitch)

Run the Table

Cast out the blind’s reel

and the night peeks in.

Setting’s all the same as it was before:

No shaved hair,

no wardrobe change;

all is as it were,

with a pajama presentation show,

trying to force a deal with the lights

to give a strength that’s never internal.

Waiting at a window for a wandering word

to plummet down through the shingles of my armor,

the comet to pierce through glacial aftermath

where any sense of self has been ashes or frost.

There’s no new sign in the lasting stars,

too distant to know other than an ephemeral name,

too far to call to in confidence,

but I’ve more faith in removed particles than flesh and bone.

I push forth a wilted rose as a bargaining chip;

a promise of quiet in the darkness

or wherever the endless question guides,

and an assurance of peace in a blank garden,

never trampled by visitor or friend.

In the stillness of the sky’s overarching eye,

there’s only a silent nod to perceive,

impassive to the passing observer.

I find in it truth in dried scars on the thigh

while testing the veracity of an edge

or the secret behind a tall window’s ledge.

But there’s no waving embrace.

No trampoline to cushion.

Only a comet’s crater,

scorched and seething with heat.

Panicking in a pajama show I stand above,

all as it were:

Same fear.

Same doubts.

Same insecurities along my legs.

Waiting on a hope to abandon,

or a hidden fire to draw down the blinds

and block off the gaze of the emptiness.

( ❤ Mitch)

In Viewing What You Could Be

You swore you would not pass the decade line.

You swore you would be enough to stop.

You swore and you swore until words were gasping breaths.

Leave the past behind as has been written all this time

in every trail of prose stemming from a sweeping pen stroke,

claiming this is the last note to be given on the plunge.

When the final page of the ascending moon is locked into a screen

with the key tossed aside to keep a faded identity inside,

is it a desire fulfilled or does it reappear against will?

Is it the only complaint you’ll commit to paper

or will a medicated thought break the ranks

and push down a wandering heart’s hand,

bleeding colors of a promise to be forgotten

but a promise that puts up fists against passing age?

You swore you would cancel the light.

You swore you would ease the aching.

All was said while all along you were swearing a song,

committing trauma to a confined space of brief beauty

kept close to chest, off the cartographer’s eye,

remained as an uncharted second life to hide from the first:

A crumbling stone statue static in storming weather.

Would anything ever move you from that perch

when stubbornness commanded none should dare approach?

You were saying you were lifting a burden

when you drifted off a balcony’s pedestal.

But all that could do was a fleeting flash of a gravitation change

and an enduring mark of the pain that stays the chase.

You swore you would pass away

and you’re fading every day.

( ❤ Mitch)

Graves Line the Bedroom

Spiraling along the edge;

the B-side of a friend.

Isaac Brock confesses in parting

that which is close is fake.

Plucked off the rim by the retreating needle,

thoughts are tossed into the air,

intermingling with the particles,

obscured by dust, dead skin and doomed intuition.

Naked now with words disrobed,

a scratched silence is begged to cease,

tugging versus the departing soundscape

where nocturnal dwellings greet familiar forms,

shaking hands with make-believe

to shift out the cardboard cast.

Any face in the row was a liar.

Any face in the row spoke two ways.

Two throats uttering two sentences,

two meanings in one sequence

with one truth and one unkind truth

never said correctly.

I deem it fate:

A miniature Icarus is snagged in a butterfly net

away from waves of notes

where songs carry a sense of ease.

Tousled in a snare,

put before the crowd bare,

declared empty at auction,

gaveled out to under known geography

but off mental grids,

detached from cardboard wiring.

And it never comes about

and it never comes out

until shoulders begin to sway

where once sat a mountain,

foliage now drawn asunder

and an emptiness says nothing.

It never comes clear.

It never comes out

until no call is ever met

and no names are left to check.

Spin as you were

and spin as you will

In a hollow grip that stings true

yet without a force behind;

only an actor’s grin

as they shuffle to memory

with the pain of their stay never hanging on their day

though forever imprinted on bumps and scrapes

when trying to claw the sight of them out.

Ringing voices

whispering that these choices

are vested to self-destruct,

manifested into bumps and scrapes

when trying to claw the presence out;

to forget the friend you weren’t;

to blame a perceived weakness in myself;

to die in a cocoon in vaguest desires

I never am haunted by this repeating loss.

( ❤ Mitch)

Unfortunate, to be the Fault

To fail forwards on a single message,

I am wed to be at beck of your convenience,

my expectations consequential to your command.

And in tracing steps in rubble,

no footprints match your own in dust and discard,

as if I were but a passenger to this obedience.

Outlined in rags is where my reflection lies

when understood in the veins of your demand,

crawling to craft snow angles out of fragments.

Failing ever far forward for futile fables,

I am awed by the absence of convenience

when my own messages are unheard.