so this a moment outside of the poetry. just the poet illiterate communing with his readers. a moment of frank and brutal honesty.

the she and her don’t really exist. the pain and depression are real.

when i’m hopeful, i’m not really. like blowing on an eyelash and wanting the wish to come true.

i overuse the ocean and stormy seas as metaphors. because sometimes i feel like i’m drowning. the surface feels farther and farther away everyday.

you’re following my descent into madness. a hundred souls that must understand a spark of this irrational sorrow somewhere in your perfect beating hearts.

i’m sorry. truly i am. you deserve better.

or at least a lantern to carry into the darkness.

i took along a black light. it casts spooky violet violent shadows onto the hanging tree branches.

my skin glows and i may be a ghost. rattling chains and slamming the cupboard doors.

leaving ectoplasm on the couch as i slip through it to hit the floor.

i’m less casper, more autopsy of jane doe. like jessica rabbit. i’m not bad, i’m just drawn this way.

you’ll know i was there if you find a large hook jammed through a door. or a trail of seawater across your rug.

but thanks for letting me in.

i can’t enter without an invitation.

and you’re just my (blood) type.

i’m like santa.

leave out a glass of whiskey and sleeve of tagalongs. or i’ll leave a surprise in your left shoe.

i’m just a pirate, bird perched, swashbuckling my way from port to port.

looking for love in all the strange places. hoisting the jolly roger and covered in crumbs. spouting off fumbling lines of unintentional intellectual fallicies on the seven seas.

and goddess forbid i try and sleep before the words have had their way with me. i spent the day wrangling them like attention deficit cattle and they demand recompense.

i close my eyes and they taunt me with visions of sugar plum fairies. of armageddon. of fires and blood and silly little geese all lined in a row.

i don’t know what any of it means.

none of it.

the secret is that they are just words i string together to go with the melody in my head.

sometimes it beautiful. haunting. sad and melancholy. sometimes it is straight off the streets. or the linear notes of a hardcore album that never got recorded.

a sea shanty. a power ballad. robert johnson strumming his guitar fresh off selling his soul at the crossroads.

sometimes it is silence. and as they pour out they pick up a life if their own.

i’m lucky that way.

or unlucky that way.

i can open a blank page and spew an opening line that means nothing nine hundred words later.

i need an editor.

i need someone to push me.

i’d like it if someone would share my ramblings. expose them to the world beyond my feeble grasp.

i’d love to put out a book. three in fact. one of prose. one of short stories. and a novel.

i probably will never do any of it.

just continue on writing for the sake of shutting the words up so i can sleep.

today alone i have written nearly ten thousand of the bastardly little things.

what was supposed to be a short story has become a novella. i had to look it up to see the criteria. between ten and fifty thousand words is a novella. i’m at eighteen thousand and finally nearing the finish line.

this is my life. the poet illterate. composing while decomposing. just for you.

you you, not figurative you. although i don’t know the difference that well.

i don’t know where this was going. hell, i barely know where it began. but thank you for reading this little page.

i love you. some more than others. sorry. just how it is.

if you want to communicate, shoot me some prompts or just spill your guts to a stranger. feel free.

i’m always here. and if i’m not. neither of us will know.