i wrote this the bus was on fire, the occupants were not children, they were demons with the faces of children, the driver just laughed as everything went up in flames sometime today i don’t know what i was thinking this wasn’t an ode to you if it was i sure can’t find the connection […]
today i looked in my wallet and saw my driver’s license saw the same goofy looking face staring back at me on an official piece of identification irregardless of public opinion i exist
i wrote a new poem earlier it was garbage except it was about me loving you and this one is just about me writing about writing about loving you like the earlier one i trashed was a premonition it isn’t as if i stopped loving you i just stopped enjoying it being the only thing […]
the skin suit is weak failing every second he hopes maybe the words will live on all the greats died at least they will have that in common
sometimes when the loneliness is too strong i text myself just something simple wondering where i am how things are going i never text back i am too busy being miserable
there are rules to the game but no one ever wrote them down so instead we fumble about hoping we are playing it right keeping scores that are arbitrary at best i think i am losing but you seem to be doing great
feeling haunted by the ghosts of first kisses they hover at the edge of my lips whispering of times long dead shh can you hear them no they are mine alone my personal unrequited lullabye
the river bed never sleeps yet settles for eroding the banks. that feels deeper than the shallows of my mind allows. as i sit and ponder the broken promises resting in the inky black.
i saw the cover for my collection today it made it all real notches by m ennenbach my melancholy whimsies
i am so alone it could be worse at least that is what they say. fuck them though they aren’t sitting here crying with me i don’t think it could be worse. but who am i just a lonely fool with words for company
the music plays as i stand to the side and watch as the couples smile and twirl to the beat one day i shall hold you close stare into your beautiful eyes and the room will stare at us though i won’t know it blissfully unaware i only have eyes for you
i found myself fascinated with her clavicle with the gentle raised bumps of her spine in their graceful arc there is not an inch of her not a blemish nor scar that isn’t as if painted by matisse sculpted by michelangelo written by neruda composed by tchaikovsky my fingers dance upon her like baryshnikov my […]
she asked what made me so broken makes me feel as if i could have it all and i held up my hands coated with decades of dried glue and shards of glass i can’t seem to put it back together again no matter how i try so now i just watch the light refract […]
are you real really real or did i dream you up am i real really real or an illusion in a funhouse mirror if i hold my breath and squeeze my eyes shut tightly i can hear the ocean thwump tiss thwump tiss if i hold my breath and think really hard really really hard […]
i wish i knew your favorite animal the one you love the most the one you would keep as a pet if i knew which animal that was i would study in tibet behind enemy lines go against the chinese government learn the secrets of reincarnation of karmic return then i would commit crimes just […]
the blank page stares at me on it all i can see is you another ode to this woman that haunts my mind and soul if i close my eyes you are in my arms i gently kiss the top of your head murmur my love when i open them again the page is filled […]
wrote this for black friday last year and a friend reminded me about it today so we can consider it a cyber monday deal at the manic word depot the walls are closing in on me this morning made the sacred pilgrimage to the Mart of Wal, the quest to find bread and milk a […]
i sat on the shore of the lake tossing pellets to the passing fowl an older gentleman sat near watching you look sad. he said i nodded need to chat. i asked if he ever wished he could do it all over again make better choices that would just make two more of them. i […]
at some point in the middle of the night i woke up and wrote the word longing on a piece of paper by the bed and drew a series of hearts at least i think they are hearts without the aorta in place it is hard to tell maybe the pen was running low on […]
woke up after a long night of dreaming the sunlight through the blinds combined with the empty bed told me it was also another lonely night but the dreams were nice you were there again you looked as beautiful as i always imagine so it wasn’t a complete waste
her lips across my throat like a razor her teeth come away crimson this is love by means of suicide
she glides across the room like a raven in flight my eyes are drawn to her every move she is beauty she is death i dream she is mine
early this morning i woke from a dream of pomegranate stained kisses last night before bed i spoke with my publisher about possibly using a pomegranate as the cover art for my collection when i woke from the dream i read a poem from one of my favorites she mentioned a pomegranate i fell back […]
i know three things next to you the stars are the most beautiful thing i have ever seen and counting is not my strong suit but my appreciation for beauty is unmatched
i need to fall in love with my own voice because i feel like a broken record. all the things i want would be better sought from within but i’m broken. so i listen to myself on repeat thinking the skip and the hiss have meaning they don’t.
if it wasn’t behind me long gone if i were to ever have more children i would name a daughter dolphin star call her my phinny star if he were a boy i would go with kraken cthulhu after cuddles i would scream release the kraken probably for the best for all parties that time […]
the neighbor’s dog barks and scratches at the door from when they leave until they return i feel the same wishing you would come knocking and relieve me of this hell i just need a collar with a bell
one day i hope to see myself as you see me on that day the lower case i will become nothing more than stylistic conceit one day perhaps
i shed my skin like a snake, leaving man sized balloons in my wake, faces left in mid scream from the pain of forced molting my muscles contort as bones shatter and joints pop from sockets, my mouth cracks wide as the muzzle if the beast comes forth i am no longer the man you […]
it’s on the tip of my tongue i am fairly sure it is important but i’ll be damned if i know what it is feels like this isn’t the first time i have forgotten it so i am going to say it is it’s own damn fault for being so forgettable
some days i lay out in the sun to warm up my robot parts sometimes it rains then i just rust out on the lawn i don’t do it on purpose it is just hard to remember to care some days when all i want is to sit and stare into your eyes and remember […]
i sometimes wonder if this is all an elaborate ruse a mirage then i wonder why anyone would go through the effort to build such a vacant world just for me to suffer alone in
i know a secret i fear i have said too much now you know a secret as well i won’t tell if you promise not to
she wears an arboreal cloak leaving bits of red and yellow in her wake littering the ground with memories of laughter in the sun she turns the lights off early maybe to hide the fact she will soon be nude awaiting her fresh white blanket under fluffy gray remorse
today shall be a day of writing he whispered to himself and he awoke to an abstract h so he lay in bed writhing as three bombs explode inside his head this is not the start he sought he thought as the abstract h held sway if it is truly mind over matter what matter […]
it’s funny a lack of beauty can inspire poetry a surplus of beauty can quench the words as if surrounding yourself with beauty kills the desire for it luckily for me i am usually all alone
she painted across my skin with a myriad of styles lashing autumnal anger whithering winter sullen spring and seductive summers i was her canvas her flurry of emotional instabilites her brushes deep purple bruising ragged bite marks clawing her way through the fleshy bits until not an inch was left unsoiled she left me a […]
this application incarceration tinder setting myself on fire lime wire downloading viruses directly into my mania frame can’t explain can’t contain won’t refrain woeful disdain ones and zeros fluctuate punctuate deteriorate commiserate inundate antiviral mediation feel the bass roll across your skin goosebumps flicking tongues probing fingers phantom limbs growing numb kingdom come banish the […]
kurt sings softly he swears he don’t have a gun another lie woven into the air how many softly sung falsehoods have worked their way into my ear of love of life of hopeless hope only to die unfulfilled
your love is a drug my veins are collapsing i knew this would happen the endorphin overdose has me shaking transferring manic neurosis for sexual subservience in an effort to sate this addiction one look a shot along my ocular nerve humming straight to my brain leaves me stumbling punch drunk searching for more one […]
if you had told him when he was fifteen that one day it would be like this he would have shaken his head and walked away if you told him tomorrow it would get better he’d just look away in sorrow
have you ever seen the edge of the void and wondered what it would feel like to fall for eternity he asked he could tell by her vacant expression and body language everything her lips didn’t say he quickly changed the subject
i would give you something beautiful something that reflects the you i see but all i have is words emotions thoughts they seem to not amount to much hardly worthy of you
i have whispered your name so many times my tongue has formed a callus my heart has quickened at the simple thought of you it is as if my brain torments it callously one grows numb the other goes insane as if i have a choice
i called back home today just to hear the sounds of being innocent again got a busy signal and the unending pain of longing illinois feels like a daydream fleeting memories and forgotten roads that used to be as ingrained as the scars upon my hands now faint white lines crisscrossing my brain and heart
i wonder if when i reach chapter twenty and the epilogue if i will title my poetry more often than i have lately it began as a way to write about her without expressly saying they were about her her then it snowballed into everything was another (un)titled thought i would send out to the […]
sometimes i wonder what would happen if i stopped thinking i love you and just said it then that little voice screams in the back of my head that i would lose the small piece of you i have so i stay quiet but know i think it or we can both pretend i do […]
she waved smiled and said hello clearly the look on my face spoke volumes it was half an hour later i realized who she was i felt like an asshole i am nearly positive i wasn’t alone in that assessment as bad as i am with names i am just as bad with faces
all he saw was a crooked smile and it was all he needed to see
there is a sniper on the ridge taking pot shots as i do my evening stroll plumes of earth rise from a few feet to my side one of these days she’ll get off that lucky shot depending on the day i cannot tell which of us will be luckiest when she finally does until […]
the highway is filled with the fumes of dinosaur corpses and saturated fats every mile haunted by the ghosts of every molten memory misery is the co-pilot windshield wipers smear the entrails of the past hammer down the accelerator as the present blurs into fleeting gasps the future is a burning orb on the horizon […]
he makes all sorts of secret promises to himself in the dark he will be better he will be stronger he will not be broken not again in the light though cracks begin to appear in those softly whispered promises his resolve cracks as well he falls into the same routine the same cycle the […]
telling myself to not love her is like eating soup with a fork it is fucking stupid pointless a waste of time and energy so instead you tip the bowl to your mouth and hope to drown
hope is a trapeze but someone sawed through the bar love is a tightrope that has been electrified neither come with instructions and the audience wants you to fail because they know a secret the net is made from razor wire suspended over a tank of piranhas
she smelled of wildflowers and hellfire her head adorned with a briar crown her every word scarred upon her lips branded upon her skin it was impossible to not fall madly in love with her untamed spirit he was just the latest fool to try
i am an organ donor but i am having second thoughts they say the ones who receive the organs sometimes have flashes of the donor’s feelings and thoughts can i risk that does saving a life and inflicting pain still equal a gift take my eyes and see the image of her burnt into the […]
this isn’t where he thought he’d end up, this isn’t where he hoped to be, the fortune teller said she saw him free like the breeze but he never expected to be a macabre law ornament she read his palm, his life line lost at sea, his love line a hyphenated long since erased, he’d […]
he writes more about writing than he writes about life because he can lose himself in the words when he writes about life he just realizes all that he lost
there are times the very last place i want to be is trapped in my own skin like a character in my own shitty novel i will give the author credit he really doubles down on the sadness
there is a streak of bird shit on my windshield it looks like modern art two thoughts occur to me one the bird has talent two it may be sick either way i feel like my art is lacking
sometimes i will write poems for first thing in the morning as you read them i have already forgotten them you start your day with my final thoughts of the night before i feel like a time traveler sending missives to future you sorry for the confusion i was a different person then or now […]
my sanity left this afternoon it scribbled a note said it needed a break i have spent the rest of the day talking to the toaster but he only speaks latin
he spent so long drained the emotions he ignored crystalized inside of him and inside this cave filled with dazzling jewels a light shines only for her
writing of love and need in poetry facilitates the desperation emptiness pit within from so long without writing of love and need in fiction reminds me of why so many of these pathetic odes return to it i may sit on the outside and watch in wonder as it flits past my open chest cavity […]
there was a loud knocking on my door it woke me from a sound sleep i angrily answered a man stood there he was dressed nicely and asked if i was mike i nodded he said i have a delivery for you please sign i scrawled my signature asked who it was from he nodded […]
i imagine my soul is an after image of a murder of crows perhaps a cauldron of bats i would prefer it be a maelstrom of salamanders or pandemonium or parrots but frankly an unkindness of ravens seems more apropos instead of a tattered flag waving surrender in the morning breeze
today starting now in my time zone at least it is the day to celebrate the birth of a muse she doesn’t celebrate it herself but i do see ever since i blindly stumbled upon her tapping my cane in front of me peddling pedantic odes her words opened my eyes made me want to […]
my apologies you seem to need to have a shoulder to cry on don’t let my sobbing disturb you we can mourn this tragedy called life together
i am nearly sure i didn’t do anything wrong but my anxiety tells a different tale so i will just gnaw on the edges of my brain and fret that is normal right?
it is a brazen disregard of common sense fortunately i excel at those
his chest is an ice cave each icicle an offering to her crystalline reflections of her beauty her wit etched into the deep blue vascular longing
when i picture her lips on another man i have an overwhelming urge to scream maybe because i cannot imagine my lips on anyone but her
her smile reminds me of freshly fallen snow full of promise and unsullied as yet by the world my smile feels like a freshly dug grave full of regrets a final resting place for love now dead
when i was a kid i imagined the stars were cigarette holes in the construction paper sky i imagined once you became an adult and could do what you wanted it was always a party that love was forever whiskey tasted like apple juice and happiness was a given i got it all wrong dreams […]
no one cares this is what the voice keeps whispering deep in the bowels of my mind the acid a lurching sea of agony in my guts you deserve this i want to fight back scream tell it to shut it’s inane fucking chanting pummel it into submission just as it has done to me […]
life is a cycle not always a good one seems finding something equates to losing something else sometimes what we find is much better than what we lose sometimes the inverse is true when i stood at the cusp of losing everything i found you this is a case of it all being worth it […]
she asked me where does the sun go at night i could have said nowhere it stays in place it is us that moves this chunk of coal spins in place while spinning around her she only seems to travel across the sky when it is the sky that is moving but there is no […]
EC got nominated for the Sunny something or other award which is fitting. She asked a few of us to answer the questions and I am incapable of saying no to not only one of the greatest poets I have had the honor of reading but best people I have ever had the pleasure to […]
my soul is a graveyard of all the hopes dreams and loves i have had to bury regrets like wilted bouquets dot the landscape watered by the freshly fallen tears that bring no vibrancy just muddy the unfertile soil
chills race down his spine someone stepped on his grave his long dead grandmother would have said am i dead he wonders and if so why does it still feel so fucking painful she doesn’t answer of course she doesn’t she’s dead maybe they both are he really can’t tell he wonders as the chills […]
it is a fine line we tread between triumph and failure or so i keep hearing them say as the corks pop on the other side of the fence i just cover myself in leaves hope it doesn’t rain
he dreams in those dreams he flies soars he is free it isn’t until he wakes reality crushes him to the earth but he dreams still
i don’t remember the second i fell in love but i remember the moment it fell apart wish that was reversed trapa llef ti tnemom eht rebmemer i tub evol ni llef i dnoces eht rebmemer t’nod i still hurts
if you look up right now and look at the moon know somewhere i am looking at it and thinking of you
they call it the jesus nut it is the one retaining pin that holds the main rotor to the mast of a helicopter it is a source of possible catastrophic failure without it everything goes down in a fiery wreck you don’t know this but you have been that to me it’s funny because jesus […]
i’m missing in action a casualty of causality lost in this crowded empty room just me myself hatred and i alone i am an erroneously anxiety overridden apostle of apocalyptical insignificance and i am so tired so very tired
spinning a tale makes me appreciate the work spiders put into a web i wonder if they ever finish and look back in surprise at the beauty they weave or is that type of conceited reserved for humans normally once something is written i leave it as is move to the next new idea but […]
he is her’s completely in every way, beholden besotted, bewildered by her every thought and word docile yet ferocious, capable of equal amounts immense love and loyalty or savage rage and fury he is
do you ever think you shall love me i asked she smiled and said i shan’t so i moved on eventually found someone new that was when she decided she shall she asked me to give her the chance i’d offered before i didn’t smile i couldn’t i just softly whispered i can’t
i can pull a rabbit from a hat a dove from my pocket make three rings into one interlocked chain i can pull the table cloth off of the table and not disturb a dish saw a woman in half guess your card any card squeeze blood from a stone turn water into wine escape […]
the days are quiet the nights are loud afternoons are made for napping if given the choice i would gladly trade the quiet and the loud for an afternoon with you
pins and needles race down my deadened limbs anxiety acupuncture for the shattered soul massage my temples this temple unholy hell fire rains from the tolling brass bell brain stem haunted by demons named longing desire and remorse work the gordian knot out of past tense muscular dystopia hollow brittle bones echo broken hearted odes […]
thirty degrees in texas wind chill in the teens coffee and depression under a blanket steel gray soft and comfortable looking for a reason not to curl up and cry need an electoral college for will to go on because the popular vote says quit trying the electoral college was a way to balance out […]
curse you silence you contemptible harlot curse you longing you damnedable fool curses on curses on curses on and on the fool cries in silence
soon it will be morning another fitful time for dreaming to end every ending means a new beginning but i’m not ready for this time to end quite yet perhaps i fear a new beginning more than the pain of clinging to this ending the melancholy minstrel and his faintly forgotten fallacies
she crashed through my life like a lightning bolt as quickly as she came she was gone i could no more capture her essence as catch the wind in my feeble grasp then she was gone all that remained lichtenberg figures etched into my heart her signature clawed into my brain her scent burnt into […]
feeling like a tortoise curled up in my shell but surrounded by water confused with a turtle misunderstood and lost not where i belong at all
your words and creations helped shape a better world left an indelible imprint you guided the hearts and minds you touched made us see nothing was impossible now you rest and the world itself is less colorful less dynamic with your passing so many iconic characters storylines tinged with hope so much joy thank you […]
he is tangibly intangible in contrast to viable constructs in an illusionary world radiantly irradiated by the solar rays that refract through ozone and bounce off of satellite hearts he is
i like fairy tales because against all facts to the contrary in the real world they have happy endings evil is vanquished true love prevails everyone lives happily ever after life is nothing like that though evil tends to triumph the valiant knight gets cancer the princess tends to run away with the bad guy […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 