Powerless

I don't know what is with me,
Doting on your everything
And I can't stop myself.
I'm just your puppet
And you taunt me by placing
A pair of scissors in front of me.

And you stuff my mouth with
A wad of your words
Silencing my objections,
I've never felt this kind of powerlessness
It makes me want to die
And I might as well be.

Does it make you happy
To see me struggle thus?
What have I ever done
To deserve this?
What is wrong with me?
Who am I supposed to be?

I don't even feel the pain anymore
Just breathlessness,
A suppression, a numbness,
And if I cried any more
There would be grooves on my cheeks
And it would be flooding over.

It's like screaming and no one can hear you
And I am so alone, so alone
I am going insane, with these two sides of me,
Schizophrenic, paranoid, bipolar,
And I'm so scared the dark side will win
I'm so scared of you, of losing you, of losing myself.

How do you do it? Such masterful skills,
Convincing me, overpowering all of me...
And I nod silently, with tears brimming my eyes,
"Yes, I'm only as good as you say I am."
"I'll do anything," I whispered pathetically,
"If you will just let me stay..."

So if you love me, please
Save me or let me go.

The Arsonists

Men with twisted minds
Haunt me in my dreams
They are strangers 
With familiar faces
Setting fire to my feet.
The glowing in their eyes 
Reveals a delight
At my inability to leave.
The smoke clouds my eyes,
As I whispered, "Why?"
Forgetting who I'm supposed to be.
They watch as I burn,
A proud accomplishment,
And whisper back,
"Stay here, and be like me."

The Thin Line

My heart is a book with a worn bind
Each crease and line signify
Every time you open it roughly and wide.
So careless and cruel,
Claiming you have better understanding
Than you actually do,
Of the words not written by you.
I am on the page you've bookmarked,
The page, tattered and waterstained,
When confronted, you apologize
With a smile, for knocking over the glass
But what else can I say except "It's okay"?
The words bleed and melt, the ink seeps,
Pages and pages of darkness
A mark I cannot unfeel, cannot forget.
So I'm sitting here, running my finger
Over the wrinkled lines and blurred words,
I close my eyes and feel the tears well
My grip on the page tightens
The rage in my blood urges me on
The paper, in my hand, conforms,
But I don't know if I have the heart
To rip it out.

Gratitude

The memories and feelings I had of you
Are now like pressed leaves
Dried and easily crumbled,
Tucked away in the pages of a heavy book,
Made to remember, but soon forgotten.

What we had was a strudel of time,
Made with layers and layers of words,
Filled with a bittersweet reality,
Baked in an oven of emotions,
And you ate it all up, 'till we were gone.

Like any person in my life,
You were a drop of dye
In my cup of water,
Changing the person I am,
But you stained my glass.

I had such a childlike faith
Believing that I could make a difference,
That I could better things
And just when I thought I was,
I failed.

In times of disaster
One could only hope
To have something
To hold onto, to keep afloat
But you were nowhere to be seen.

Only to appear and chastise me for wanting
That childlike faith back,
And I quivered like the candlelight,
Afraid of that one breath...
My light, was extinguished.

I was kept alive for torture
Because once you've decided
That I was unworthy of leaving
You refused to see anything else,
You chose to forget the good.

These fueled my want of death's comfort
As I can no longer battle in the dark.
And I hurt myself, stepping over
My broken spirit, my broken mind,
My broken heart.

You made me understand
What kind of a person you were,
Just how broken you were,
But you can't keep me here
By making me the same as you.

You can't hurt me
And expect me to stay.

I don't know how I survived
And perhaps life was kinder to me
Than it was to you.
Surely none of us deserve this pain,
But who gave you the right to impose it on me?

I could be angry,
I could be sad,
I could be holding a grudge,
Still.
But I am not.

Because you made me realize things
That I would not have discovered by myself,
So I want to thank you,
For helping me write this fable.
You were a lesson I needed to learn.

Thank you for making me realize
That my tears are my passion overflowing
From a bubbling and boiling concoction
Within, heated by things I saw and witnessed.
And though those hot tears sear my skin

The pain I feel, makes me more human
Than I can be without them.
The clarity I can see with after the storm
Is worth the pain,
Is worth all of this that transpired.

And though the lessons were long and tough
Your repeated assaults have taught me
That if I stopped caring, it doesn't make me less of a person,
That I should not have to suffer and agonize
Over your unhappiness, or over anyone else's.

So, thank you, in the end.

This Was What You Wanted

You wanted to make me, a person as broken as you are
And I've become a person that I hate
You brought out in me, a side that I don't like,
A hatred and frustration served with cold words
And I didn't know I had the capacity to be this way
Day in and day out I question this split, this divide
Between who I thought I was and want to be,
And who you think I am and what your words made me out to be,
And your words carried more weight than my thoughts
So I am dragged down by their heaviness
Finally, I removed them from my chest and I can breathe again,
Clear headed, but still weary and worn, 
I hope what I write here will absorb all this that I feel
So I will not be burdened with them anymore.

Trapped

You bow to me, hiding your smirk,
Asking me for a dance,
So we twirl and twirl 'till I'm dizzy,
Too lost in the moment to care,
But you kept winding up the music box,
Your arms refusing to let go,
Whispering honey-laced words
So I'd be stuck on you,
But I grow more weary each beat
I politely ask to be excused,
You spit out more reasons why I should stay,
Imposing and guilt-inducing,
It's hard to breathe, 
So I'm trying to push you away,
But your ego is bigger than your heart
As you clinch on tighter 'till it hurts me,
Grab me roughly and shake me out
With your accusations and injury,
And I no longer know how to escape,
I can't get away.

Residue

I cannot deny that I loved you once
You thought me the worst person and I believed it, still,
Because they were your words

I cannot deny that I love you still
But I am constantly reminded of those days
And I am overwhelmed by questions and regret

I cannot deny that some things remain always
The darker days gone, but these are the same tears,
My heart still spinning in the same spot

I cannot deny that I want to forget
But I still remember nonetheless
So you are a shadow I have to live with

You are a feeling that I live with.

Cold

You poured my tears
Into the ice cube tray
And jovially placed it
In the freezer

You froze my fears
So you can betray
Me with your cruel wit,
The greatest crowd pleaser

The truth, my dear
Those cubes on me you'll lay
One cold sear after another hit
And I live the ending of Caesar.

What You Say

Your words are low in nutritional value
Though they sound good
They do not nourish me as a person
And any satisfaction they offer are temporary
Now I'm wasting away, waiting to rot,
Simply because I ate up what you said.

War of Words

Where did your words
Gain the power that they did
To hurt me, inside out,
Striking me down,
Bowling pins,
Perhaps you have been
Saving all your dark memories
And used it all in one attack on me,
Because I am the only one
To have gotten this close
That you mistook for some other enemy
Trying to invade your soil,
But I wasn't, I was simply there
Trying to understand you.
And thus I tried shooting back,
But I can't seem to hit the mark,
My words can't end the war,
And you kept going
With your artillery,
Never ceasing fire,
Bombing my heart,
Because all your care about
Is winning,
And as the smoke gather
Up around you
You lose sight of the purpose
But perhaps it's your 'foresight'
Because you never wanted
Anything more than someone
To put down, to kill
Inside and out
With your words.

Anchor

It's blame because you withhold it
From me for so long, then throw it in my face,
It's blame because I feel the need to defend myself.
You make me out to be a colder person than I really am,
Out of your love, I can only find negativity in myself
And that's not the way it's supposed to be.
Nothing you say makes any sense, except for your silence
Which tells greater truths than you ever will.
If you ever had the notion for salvaging,
You would not let your silence push me away,
And all the things you've ever read that I've written,
You only gleam its surface,
Just like the way you act and behave,
And I lost all my trust in trusting you.
All the sacrifices you made, I pitied,
But they are hard to swallow
Because if you had held me in such high-esteem,
You would not have treated me in those unkind ways;
They were just excuses to make me shed tears for you,
Tears I no longer know if you deserve.
You threw an anchor in my heart
And I once wished you'd stay,
But all I feel now is its weight
Sinking my spirit and my love,
And I can't remain this way
So I've got to sail away,
But I'll never forget the mark your anchor made.

In Your Hands

You push me and push me
And now I'm finally on the edge,
Is this where you want me to be?
As rocks crumble from the ledge
Down down into the dark fall,
You start your ridiculous accusations
When I've done no wrong, so still I stand tall.
And so I've come to a resigned realization
As I take a defeated step back,
You continue on with your empty words
And with the understanding that you lack,
You push me off, yet cry afterwards,
And as I'm falling, my heart bleeds out
And you stare down seemingly horrified,
I thought, "Is this all you want us to be about?"
This is your work glorified.

Sandcastle

Our love is a sandcastle
The waves which you set in motion
Wash over and take away
What we had, what I cherished
And I walk the wet sand
In the break of day,
Walking towards the wreck
That was left, that was us
And I stand over the deformation
And I laugh and weep
At my attempt at rebuilding it again
I call your name, I call for help
Over and over again,
But you did not come
And the waves came again
And carried me away,
Far away from our broken love.

Too Close to the Heart

You took a knife that you sharpened
And stabbed me in the back,
You did this repeatedly
Until I stopped moving,
You licked the blood off
Of the cold blade warmed
By the passion that made me alive.
You dragged my corpse
On the ground carelessly,
An old rag doll that you stole,
And threw me into
The cold, dark freezer
So you can thaw me
Whenever you need
Something to hurt.

Graveyard

You got me tied to a chair
In a dark cold room
And you shine in my beaten-up face
A bright light that swallows up
All the truth that I hold,
My hands are clenched
Trying to grasp onto
Whatever conviction
That is left within me
As you try to strike fear into me,
Trying to rattle my soul,
But you can only get to my body.

My heart is a graveyard,
Where you bury your sadness,
Disappointments and victims
That you murdered
With your unforgiving hands,
And they haunt me like
The shadows that grow long
In daylight,
And amongst them,
There is one I am most afraid of,
My own dead spirit
Walking across the dead landscape.

Published Oct. 31, 2011.

Unsaid

10.06.2012
You don't deserve my words.
The person I wrote this for,
Was someone I thought was different,
Than this monster that finally removed his mask,
Who is incapable of looking in the mirror
And looking into himself
To realize, that it never had to end this way.
You are trying to dig a way out
By digging out the past,
But you're just digging yourself a hole
In hopes of resurrecting what died.
But it's dead. And you're killing yourself with it.
You want to drag me down with you,
But it's not something I consented,
So please, just stop,
Just watch your actions and your words,
Because what you called me out to be,
Is exactly who you are.

Nothing I said
Or written in any way
Can penetrate
Your heavily-fortified gate.

My every approach meant
Acts of encroachment
And I'm afraid to get near
For fear of losing something dear.

So I tied my message to a dove
Set flight over the wall and above
But your defense was on high thereof,
And shot down my love.

I don't know what else I can do
My tears are morning dew
The sun shines, but the world is dark
Because I share it with the whole of you, so hark --

There's nothing I can say
Or write in any way
That can penetrate
Your refusal to open the gate,
But know I'll be sitting here
Now and for passing of years,
Should you ever need me to catch your tears,
Listen to your fears,
Because our bond will never disappear.

The False Friend

All those maddening and rabid cells
Are rapidly multiplying, as it spreads
From the site of infection,
The chunk of my life you bit off.
When I looked back on the times
All those seemingly sunny rainy days
I was deceived by my own happiness
Which was not a difficult trick.
As a transparent red screen
Descends before my eyes,
I see with fitful passion
The lifeless you before me, so clearly.
I was blinded by my naivety
To have placed trust in you,
You, a parasite, the most lowly kind,
Feeding on the host until it dies.
And despite my transformation,
Caused by your dirty hands
I will not lose my humanity
Which is permanently absent in you,
I don't want to waste more of my life on you
As I turn my back and walk away,
Letting distance dissociate our link.

Your Cruelty

Dear, dear, pass the salt
I want to watch each crystal melt
Into the wounds you've torn open
Me, to the edge you've driven
Should I jump or am I to fall,
It's completely your Highness's call
I have no where to run
For in your hands lies a gun
Loaded with bullets that will not miss
Will death be a bliss?
I'll tell you when the ground and my blood kiss.

Bad Influence

I fell to the ground
Trampled on by your feet
I lay in the muddled water
I am muddled water
I reached up to the dark gray sky
Grabbing for the imaginary support.

A fat raindrop breaks upon my face
Even nature is pitying me.

So cleanse me,
Renew my soul,
Save me from you.