Pressure

The pressure’s unabated
The valves are all closed off
The heart that once kept balance
The mind’s kicked off the job

The tears would flow as needed
The anger would be cool
Now everything converts to heat
And fire has its rule.

Interaction

What makes you most anxious?

It seems so easy when I sit alone
But then the real thing’s there
And I tremble and I worry
No one really cares
About the things that drive me nervous
And if I’m being honest, no one really should
Mischosen words clumsily spoken
First impressions gone way wrong
Every compliment paid me must be token
Every smile must be while wondering, “how long?”
But somewhere, someone feels the same of me
Wondering what I care about
While their “not good enough” is good enough for me
So what am I so scared about?

Reason

When did the change occur?
When did reason travel ’round
To the dark side of a dark future
And there, run aground?

Why did it thus embark?
Why did it head that way?
Why did it not the warnings hark
And turn back towards the day?

I know not the impetus
I know not the time
I only know that it was lost
Somewhere along the line.

Truth

There’s a line I do not cross
It would put me beyond parody
I could not stand the loss
True genius does not fit, you see

I would lose my great facade
Faced with the child that I am
And in trying to be a god
Be only that much less than man

Drown

I want to rage and boil
I want to drag you down
I would rather be an ocean
If it meant you’d feel how much I drown

I want to storm this placid beach
And tear the shifting castles down
I would give up bumbled human speech
If I could show how false your crown

I want to hiss and bubble over
I want to make you see
But if we let our depths bring others lower
We’d all live beneath the sea.

No Reply

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Holy shit, you made it;
Figured you’d die years ago,
A child till the end.
Tell me, how much did you grow?

Did you travel the full circle,
Or did you blaze your own trail?
Did you adapt to all the bullshit,
Painting faces and your nails?

Did you do just what you wanted?
Did you find out what it was?
Did you ever learn to love and trust
Or was it really a lost cause?

Is it worth it to keep going?
Ah, but you can’t answer back.
I can only hope that if you could, you might;
That you have the spine I lack.