As blood pours through my veins, confusion reigns and forgets its name. I am stuck in day to day but the rush of pain keeps life away. You redraw lines enough and they begin to blur. Fall behind, repeat - a cycle to which I adjure. Not afraid to crack the space between breathe and death. I am the enemy of myself and no one else sees what is left. Time only tells a singular story. Comic and tragic continually bore me. Winter ruptures my eyes with ways to end the lies. Cultivate emotion to a working erosion. I've been told eagles turn to vultures in the end, but I can't help but believe that we don't stop where we begin. Construe life to a far-fetched goal. Fracture into an empty, yet robust soul. The mouth eats all that has been sown, but never formulates into something that can be grown.

Pray for peace, cursed with bitter eyes. Body has lost any will to try. Hatred is the beat of my heart; a demon that has torn me apart. This pain has a name - it is my own. Trudged too many days through a broken home. This apathy has fed on me - continuing endlessly. Lost, alone, left all friends. Easy to say I am dead again.

I find solace in the leaches in my mind. Congruent parts never seem to realign. My feet are tied while you pour daggers down my throat. Spill these words in song through a blue note. Can’t help but hate all the friends I throw away because I believe that nothing good can stay. Take a picture with misery on your wall. Oh, how the greatest Rome falls. I refuse to eat a flower that hasn’t bloomed. I refuse to spit my bile in open wounds.

Broken – these attempts at breath are forsaken. I lie for repetition. I am a slave to this depression. These cycles consume my mind - they engulf, I fall behind. Too late to create another version of self-hate. These tendencies get the best of me but I can’t see another way to be. Oh, I lean on this crutch that I’ll never be good enough. My good friend history, I am satisfied that you’ll destroy me, but the worst is that I still exist even though these thoughts are hard to resist.

Lay down in the gurney and just sleep. I’ll try to remember but I’m unsure how much to keep. There’s a glaze on your eyes that faded too soon. There’s only so much a body can take. Who am I to pretend that I know the limit of love and care for anyone or anything? The knot in your stomach got too much to bear and now mine just sits in my throat. Can’t find the words to speak through my swollen gums. There’s only so much I can do like cut my hair and watch the past wash away. You knew of nothing more perfect than to have death take you by the hand with the one you love. And now we just huddle around and try to make sense of this cold that sinks in so slow. I can’t be angry because I know that this is how you wanted to go, but it doesn’t make it any easier to just float on in an empty hole. There’s a cold side to a bed and a towel on the floor that I can’t muster the strength to move. There’s a picture in a frame that will lie by your grave. There’s a part of us all that left just to join you somewhere. And if there’s a god, I hope he treats you well because you deserved more than that living hell, that physical imprisonment. If there’s one thing to learn, it’s that there is some peace in this world; you just have to leave it to truly know. In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia --as always , then known by another name illegal unlatching teeth, locked glottal stop man, ungassed, sings in fields, in cabarets, in your kitchen while preparing din- ner. As always, you are found out the canary, the catch of a too used tongue, the granule of human flesh. And, as always, you are peeled down to onion core goose pimpled and bleeding. Placed out- side, and have you ever watched trees boil out, then freeze over, glaciating your emaciated body? Catching in our throats as rings unlatch one by one to congeal the skin with sap?