when they said the phone was for me i felt the cold hand of dread tickle down my spine no one ever called for me at work and if they did they certainly never asked by real name the last time it happened it was the police they wanted to ask questions about a destroyed […]
oh the constipated horror of it all this half digested mess in my mind these sloppy words that won’t come out and play no matter how i coax them with tales of wine and women and song no these bastards are unwilling to come down from the rafters where they roost upside down like great […]
maybe it’s just me or i’m hallucinating but kentucky smells like eleven herbs and spices i’m trapped at the airport no rental car no hotel information bourbon is sounding really good the girl with blue hair offered me a ride but i declined as i don’t know where i’m going i don’t believe her intentions […]
i hate airports all the scents the lack of sense everyone looks confused unsure as if the straight corridors are misleading always a line to piss short tempers all in a hurry to get to nowhere but a wait happy japanese couple, mid sixties came and tapped my shoulder for a picture i turned and […]
as i walked around saying good bye to my life, meager belongings for a week or two or six packed in front of me drake, my dragon fern is indifferent the ceiling doesn’t care if it gets stared at, it is aloof and believes it is a floor for the apartment above dual natured and […]
the onyx velvet dappled with diamonds above me, the orange of the dashboard lights, the calming sound of hardcore punk followed by japanese synth jazz, cyber punk and serene, methodically mythological missives floating in the air around my head the smell of grease and salt, golden arches a blur as i speed by, the overloud […]
it’s too early to be this damn tired my mind is fixated on the time change i’ll endure soon losing an hour of life i’ll get it back eventually but will i really once gone it seems too fleeting to ever lasso again like the smile and wave at the end of the bar and […]
the silence is palpable, thick and oily and coating everything been throwing plates against the wall, bowls, you name it and they rebound with nary a sound i place my ear to the wall, like tonto would place his to the ground, and feel for vibrations i sense life moving through the wall the lucky […]
cantankerous writhing in impotent rage the footprints of a million dying dreams driven into my broken spine gnashing my teeth swinging my fists like twenty pound sledge hammers at any movement around me chewing broken glass to savor the taste of incidental ulcerous contussions feel as if i’ve been skinned and laid out as the […]
running at full speed in circles getting dizzy from gravitational fluctuations playing havok with my ossicles no sense of direction meandering steady onward though ever forward steadily on to my demise whenever i have a flight coming up i am stricken by the thought this is the time the gremlin on the wing throws a […]
i sat on the concrete it was only nine in the morning but it was already hot enough to fry an egg i’ll never get used to that when it is ninety five degrees at three in the morning or nearly one hundred degress at nine the world hasn’t even started spinning at this hour […]
my tank is empty today unless a screaming banshee if a head ache counts if so i’m full to overloaded stressed and depressed roaming alone everyone i know is either ecstatic or drowning the drowning far outnumber the happy use our hands to dance across the placid surface of the lake we the forgotten doomed […]
happy endings are oxy morons, endings being inherently melancholy things even when a tale ends happily it is sad to let go of the world and characters that illicit those happy feelings bittersweet endings i can see happy not so much and i can’t think of a single ending in my life that was truly […]
he sits silently, blinking spots from staring at her for hours as she climbs across the sky peering up from the horizon he longs to raise his arms and hold her but the scarred flesh on his arms and chest from the last time make him hesitant he loves her fully but she is a […]
i’m the third rail, the voltage that courses through your hand, the static electricity on a cold winter day, the tingle between your ears when troubles coming hello nice to meet you name is mike i’m a scorpio, astrologically, a rabbit, chinese zodiacally, a lion, metaphysically, a lover, tongue gymnastically, a poet, failing miserably, a […]
one time, years ago at this point, i was alone at the bar, a pint of guinness and a shot of whiskey sat in front of me, the dark grain of the bar, combined with the thick lacquer reflecting the neon signs dimly back at me insert generic 70s song in the background, fading into […]
she’s a monet, le jardin de l’artiste á giverny, hanging in a museum she’s behind glass and protected by a series of lasers, temperature and humidity controlled pristine and perfect i can only admire her from afar i’m chalk art on a sidewalk pastels blotches, blowing in the wind, drawn by clumsy hands and walked […]
she was shriveled once so strong and imposing one look and you stood straighter and minded your manners now she was half the size a quarter of the weight all loose skin and wires the room smelled like shit from the bag half hanging off the bed a clear tube with brown piss oozing into […]
i’m an artist and my skin is the canvas upon which i perform menial tasks wielding a razor blade like a paint brush broad strokes subtle definition trace the pulse faster and faster swore off selfies already know what the result will be laser trip wires cover the floor spastic pastiche a ballerina with degenerative […]
it was a dream had to be i walked into the nearly pitch black bar with a terrible thirst smoke filled the air that song i really like by sturgill played on the jukebox “they call me king turd up here on shit mountain, if you want it you can have the crown” i was […]
he hit her this morning not with his hands but with words i heard them squabble outside my bedroom window woke me from a dead sleep it was the furtive whispering that finally mined through the wall of sleep and pulled me to consciousness a low hum increasing in pitch muted yet deafening i threw […]
been bandaged together with twine and pieces of tape like a sculpture of a self portrait of norman rockwell on crank or an escher devolving into the unscrupled madness of a bender on the wrong side of the tracks in hell wearing women’s panties and tap-dancing like a feral cat being tased wearing my neon […]
there is an ever expanding bubble of sorrow in my guts, every second clicks by it grows and consumes me will i ever get back home can i just throw it all away what am i, really just an empty shell of regret plus remorse multiplied by bad decisions and empty gestures, a grand sum […]
awoke on a desert island on a mountain top in a cave at the bottom of the ocean lying in a crater on the moon perched on a branch in the rainforest and in a box six feet deep and steady sinking lower my stomach drops as my head floats in a stupor more aloof […]
woke up into a dream, a seamless transition, running through the park, dark footsteps shadowing my own, heart racing, sat up in bed glad the dream was over, got up to get a glass of water, only my bed was floating over forever clutching my lion blanket, my constant companion since my childhood home burnt […]
there’s a tripwire running from my brain to heart, strung with care down my spinal column and lined with explosives dilligently monitoring for any signs of emotional disruption from daily business all it takes is a flutter do you know how hard it is to operate on yourself to rip yourself open saw through flesh […]
drained and damaged, disemboweled, dismayed and digilently dreading destiny i stood before the gates of hell itself, weeping blood from the empty sockets where eyes once were burning coals in place of lungs, and barbed wire wrapped around my heart, salivating acid and undulating across broken glass i hurt no real words to describe the […]
much to my dismay my eyes opened again this morning it has been weeks of this grainy black and white superlative existence the crackle of film as it rotates through the projector no one here speaks a tongue i can form not that i don’t understand the language per se it is that they speak […]
it’s quiet, the kind of quiet where your heart is the only sound filling the empty room, thwump woosh, thwump woosh birds don’t chirp wind don’t blow sun don’t shine cars don’t drive planes don’t fly water don’t flow she is like light refracted through an icicle, cold and beautiful, but there is a fire […]
i fought the good fight but i’m so very tired now the grains of sand that bastard morpheus tosses in eyes grate and grind with every blink take your sleep and your dreams away those whispered promises of fond hope never acquired my head rests on this pillow my muscles ache and you pile on […]
the moonlight slides into the room i carve your name with it onto my skin on my eyelids so i only see you as with every blink onto my tongue so all of my words are always for you it rained razors, a torrent of rusted blades, he sat in a field, bared to the […]
i’m the evel knievel of emotional stunts looking for my next snake river canyon to leave me broken on the cliff face i’m on a vespa prepared to jump through fountains of adoration only for them to pipe lava at the last second can this illterate fool jump over fourteen buses of childhood fears and […]
anxiety filled this morning feels like angry hornets racing from my right ear to my left stinging across the inside of my skull the air is so still and heavy in here they are welding three feet away and it smells like what space is supposed to smell like burnt steak and ozone sizzling and […]
the sky is bruised as the sun forces itself upon the sleeping world angrily making the air thick with hostility somehow stripping moisture while saturating it with perspiration from all living things just a haze a nimbus around my vision focusing on all the wrong things and in my periphery i see shimmering bodies that […]
i’ve got a case of the electro-shock blues zapping my limbic system controlled voltage i don’t want to forget about you just the way it all went south all my thalamuses need a good shaking up flip the switch baby help me forget my hippocampus could use some current the current state not the mental […]
i was driving home just wiped out done pulled up to home and as i did one of those stupid love songs came on the one you tell yourself to delete but you can’t pull the trigger and with dread the shuffle goes and the first notes hit you like a hammer to the jaw […]
back in the day if you were talented some rich fool would give you housing pay your habits all in the name of art you could have sex with the servants the daughters wine soaked debauchery as long as you put out consistent pieces nowadays we scramble and write and pour our souls out and […]
i wonder if one day i’ll hang up my work boots never to wear them again me and my comfortable vans from then on out or will i be that old angry man barely able to tie my boots or bend over without pain dreaming of retirement that will only come with a box in […]
it rained molten metals a curtain of sparks showering the ground as if struck from hephaestus himself i luxuriated in them this swarm of biting fireflies dancing and bouncing off the hot concrete it amazes me still the lengths man will go to master the earth the metallurgy and near magic of electrical impulses did […]
she stared at my blinking lights in confusion what are these either my phone or my heart is running low you don’t know no do you i’ve never seen those before i thought that all of us had them not me then you’re not defective i feel defective they install then in the ones that […]
heavy eyelids empty words echoing do i sleep or write another pensive ode does it matter in the long run what’s another night of fitful sleep another stop start smattering of words i don’t deserve either but i feel like i need both some days i feel like a pirate displaced from my proper time […]
she gave me most of her but she kept the parts that mattered her mouth explored her teeth bit her hands they had their way but when it came to the part i most desired her heart she never gave that away there was not a piece of her i didn’t taste fondle tease into […]
the welding casts aurora borealis on the warehouse ceiling the men shuffle about like the walking dead it’s never quiet as the host of lights dance across the ceiling and clang of metal and saws and arcs of electricity and they walk with stiff legs and worn out souls worn out soles worn out the […]
yesterday was a special day for the poet illiterate two wonderful poets took my words and made them into something beautiful it’s funny see i post my rampant thoughts in the assumption no one will notice and instead art was made from them i don’t know how to describe the feeling even in floundering verse […]
i only drink salt water the only things i need to replenish are tears and sweat save the desalinated water for those that deserve it only eat food past it’s expiration date no point in fresh i like meal worms nutritional value through the roof i scurry from the light you shine like a cockroach […]
i put myself up for sale on ebay fully functional human replicant some assembly required will to live not included weird motor sensory glitch thinks words sing to him hard factory reboot recommended full system wipe suggested always a surprise when turned on some scarring came that way not self induced *may in fact be […]
i’m in the mood to burn it all down set it on fire and run away a villa in mexico maybe sipping sangria with senoritas farm agave and make my own tequila blanco diablo distillery guarantee dysentery to the first ten thousand customers not feeling the happy side of the street lately someone ground up […]
good night world nestled in my lion blanket head pounding like ryo fukui on the keys here’s to sleeping through the night not waking ten times to the harsh light of emptiness filling the room to not remembering my dreams just floating weightlessly in the aether suspended by gossamer threads leaving this frail form a […]
it’s dead it’s dead they came in screaming tears falling down their cheeks what’s dead i asked sure i didn’t care but feigning interest is polite they slobbered onto one another’s shoulders weeping like howling tempests creativity they shout it’s dead i sat back tapped out a cigarette from the crinkled pack and lit it […]
she bought me a dream catcher to hang over the bed the bed she laid in with me it was her going away present to me i didn’t know she was taking a trip so i hung it over the head board right above where she used to grab and shake it until it seemed […]
phone’s going dead little red lights blinking think it may be connected to my heart the voltage slowly leaking i don’t know what’s left to say so fuck it fade away i don’t know what’s left to write sailing on through the night the little red lights blinking says the dreams are getting weak tossing […]
he’s angry doesn’t want to work with anyone else forced to work with me and i’m suffering from his lack of willingness it’s hot in here the stifling heat and oppressive silence it’s beating me and i don’t like it one bit i’m stressed out it wasn’t what they sold me on but i need […]
every car in the road was red at first i didn’t notice did i wake up this morning or is this a simulation am i in bed curled up next to her sleeping peacefully sated after a night of lovemaking and writing not on site at a job i hate already coated in sweat why […]
i just like to write i don’t think i’m all that good but i still do it sometimes it just takes a muse to make bad poems seem good sometimes restrictions like when you limit yourself with syllable count i prefer tanka for that or haiku if it says fuck strips away the trash no […]
i’m broke like broke broke the last job didn’t pay for the last two weeks of work and expected i would hang around patiently patience is a virgin and i haven’t been one of those in a long time from my first taste of that sweet bud i knew i was hooked before then i […]
she stared deeply into my eyes and whispered i love you i shook my head sadly and turned to walk away why do you think you love me she held my shirt sleeve preventing me from leaving forcing me to stay i fell in love with your words your hurt you are broken but i […]
tightness in my chest my lips feel numb my left arm is tingling dizzy sweating can’t catch my breath am i live writing a poem about having a heart attack or is this stress induced barely slept kept waking acid reflux all night long i just want to lay down and sleep but another nine […]
dreamt a dream where a dream came true and as the dream came true a former flame did her best to burn it down when the alarm went off i fought responsibility to stay and see where it would go but then woke up less than awake with this aching ache now i want to […]
i’ll hate myself later for this wake up in a traffic jam of self denial and despising the reflection staring back with bloodshot vacant scars slivers of mirrors where my eyes vacated the building but that is later for now let me stare at you drink you in like i have the shakes and salt […]
it takes one of two things to be a poet you are either broken or talented it’s rare to see both at the manic word depot it’s about broken but i read others and the beauty it permeates the words i wish with all my soul i could do that but my broken always colors […]
woke up with acid in the back of my throat my uvula dancing in the bubbling liquid stress of bad delusions bad mental health bad options spent so many days looking for silver linings i forgot what it means to be me there are none if things are looking up i’m most likely hanging upside […]
i asked her to undress slowly. she cocked an eyebrow and smiled, i sat back and prepared for the show. she loves how much i love her, the hunger in my eyes as i watch her do even the most mundane things, she feels like the goddess she has always been she smiles and stretches, […]
ladies and gentlemen thanks for stopping by the manic word depot the poet illterate is taking a much needed vacation he won an all expenses paid one way ticket to rock bottom a much needed relaxing trip in the bubbling pits of doubt and sorrow you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay […]
sometimes i look for a camera behind the picture frame this can’t be my life i fell asleep and woke up in the twilight zone as i slept rod serling came out and introduced my episode tonight we take all happiness and joy away from this man when he wakes up everything good will be […]
and she looks at me and the world stops spinning the rain drops float amorphous droplets shimmering like a thousand stars in the air and all that is real is her gaze and that is real is her light and all that is real is her sic luceat lux pouring from her infusing me every […]
it’s been said that anger is a gift then that makes me woefully regifted restricted evicted and tossed out alive if patience is a virtue i must be virtuous but virtue is a saving grace saving face facing the consequences of sequential animosity anonymous the faceless face of infinity floating ever closer yet farther away […]
i need a new wardrobe the rags of shame and regret are ill fitting mementos of another time dress me in your words kiss my scars drink from my bottomless well of devotion i was such a fool then it wasn’t until you i understood the meaning of the words i take it all back […]
he never considered himself a writer or poet or scribe always felt his words to be wasted compared to others especially hers a gifted beauty with a silver tongue but others saw him as a binary bard wandering the ones and zeros that comprised his world he gave his paltry soul to the aether spitting […]
she asked me if i wanted to play a game i smiled she said stick out your tongue and of course i complied she bit down on it and held it between her fangs as she tied my wrists to the bed post with barbed wire easy i mumbled as she bit down harder and […]
can you hear me hello this is me the real me lost in the static of the world no hidden meanings no fanciful imagery just me talking to you you know who you are don’t you i’m not half as clever as either of us would believe i’m yours if you’ll have me scars and […]
she stood in front of me holding the smoking pistol i stared into her eyes as crimson blossomed in the front of my shirt she smiled innocently and raised the gun again a feeling of cold swept through my limbs and my body seemed to refuse the panic my brain was sending in waves she […]
he sat next to the rocky outcropping watching the waves batter the shore this was his happy place one where the world stopped feeling so itchy, where the irritants and constant chatter went silent this was where he came when his wits end were reached, when the thought of letting the azure wash over him […]
my phone buzzed and distractedly i looked down at it it was her that cold ball of lava began to build up inside me whatcha doin ignore it don’t answer it’s okay to ignore it this raid leads only to despair nothing okay it’s fine that was vague so you slipped it happens no worries […]
she eyed me from across the room my first assumption was she was looking at someone else why would she look at me i’ve seen me and now that i’ve seen her she must be looking elsewhere i feel like curling up in a ball armadilloing my way through the building nothing to see here […]
it was weird to hear my thoughts echoed from another’s perspective it’s strange to think the things i think are thought by others at all depression can be like standing in a wonderful wind tunnel you brace yourself from the onslaught and lean forward a bit the rest of the world is like smoke that […]
lately i’ve been having night terrors they always start the same a knock on the door i look through the peephole and see her standing there she looks like she did the day she left i open the door and she smiles that big smile the genuine one she hugs me tightly before i can […]
he stares out over the grass watching the cars on the road so many faces filled with hostility and impatience stuck on the asphalt like an angry caterpillar inching along all fat on leaves and desperate to reach their nest are they aware of what awaits them once they do squeezing themselves tightly into that […]
i roll in the mud left in the wake of your alligator tears sprung forth from that well of incidental falsehoods you mine with intent to debase and damage how many times have i fallen into the traps you so precariously set in my path leading me into a sprint with your subtle teasing and […]
it all crashes down the debris of what was life disillusionment stripped of all facades now bare reality is a dream cushioned in sweet lies draped in another’s wishes lacking all resolve spun into false happiness doomed to live another day subtle injustice coated in honey and smiles hidden knives that slash behind ivory veneers […]
his crypt is fallen into disarray a monument to better times fat maggots litter the ground feasting upon the decay that litters the world around him a tragedy out of sync besmirched by bedlam and bountiful beleaguered breathing he rises with the moon a wheezing shambling creature bereft of sanctity in a land of miscolored […]
when my father died they put him in a box a plain white box and when i got home after two hours in the air they handed me that box his entire being in an unadorned box this man that stood over me towered and all i could ever do was stand in his immense […]
another passively aggressive message searching for fresh water in the brine another plea for me to cage this piece of me to accommodate her feelings no more i apologize for opening up and that not fitting the mold of me you painstakingly made but this vortex of emotion has consumed me the worms in my […]
you’ll never know the esteem i hold you in how badly i want to kiss your sacred heart hold it and feel the gentle glow i’ll eventually bruise it but i swear i will never break it i’m irrevocably broken and that is something i could never do to you your sacred heart il tuo […]
my head is spinning schematics dancing follow the ground overengineered german ingenuity all i want to do is listen to the song in my skull race back to my comfortable cave and spin more words into the immensity that is her but instead it amperages capacitance resistance and the main resistance is my mind screaming […]
music roulette was a harsh mistress this morning in my drive lost out in the darkness came on the sweet hopefulness of it had me happily singing along seeming to sum up my feelings as of late but then chesterfield kings came on and while it is one of the best punk love songs it […]
i’ve been fortunate to have loved and been loved by true works of art, to have had my portrait hung in their hallowed halls even for just a short time, to be painted in minute detail as a renaissance instance of passion writhing between the canvas, bruises and scars and a devilish smile and eyes […]
it started with a broken wine glass snapped at the stem no let me start over it started to end with a broken wine glass snapped at the stem no it was the end of the beginning that started with a broken wine glass snapped at the stem the delicate glass cracked in my calloused […]
she pushed me against the wall i let her she stared daggers directly into the soft gray matter behind my eyes she snarled a lip up put her fingernail against my throat and i felt her draw blood the anger on her face doing things to me i couldn’t put into words do you want […]
is there a way to detect when a spell has been cast upon a soul ensnared it and threatens to consume the last couple times i tried to give my heart away ended in abject failure so i fastened chains around it and tossed it into the freezer to think about what it had tried […]
mark oliver everett told me i was goddamned right it’s a beautiful day and while i didn’t believe him per say i did sing along to the bootleg album from paris as i showered maybe it would come true if i pretended then the misfits threatened to kill me in the bathroom so it’s pretty […]
she sat alone on a bench watching the clouds roll by maybe she was looking for an answer possibly a sign i don’t know all i could see was she caught my eye and seemed like perfection an abstract beauty different from the world she occupied a glitch in the system i don’t know we […]
i dreamt of you again last night when i woke tangled in the sheets and breathless my first instinct was to wake you and whisper it into your ear but that was the dream wasn’t it that you were here this awake life is not for a dreamer like me my sallow skin is see […]
blushed into silence from lines that spray like pixie dust upon the screen i don’t believe in god but god believes in me and from this subtle paradoxical meandering we both cease to exist glancing at one another through window panes and the great heavy sigh of acceptance that we are not on speaking terms […]
i’m my own dopplegänger, an ill fitting, clumsy suit of meat controlled by parasitical aspirations myopic and confused stuttering against the flow of words to define what it means to be drowning in a shallow pool of depression struggling to find the words falling failing flailing hopelessly lost in the surge unable to find the […]
my first instinct is alliteration whenever a new mental hiccup begins to ferment there is always an alliterative gasp like mental gymnastics keeping the tip of the tongue limber most of the time it is erased some days i will write using every letter and forcing five word lines of similar sounds they are meaningless […]
some days are filled with need, others with regret, the peaks and valleys of emotion shift and rage like tectonic adolescence long ago he stopped trying to regulate them, to dam the stream, to damn the chemicals, to wrangle and brand the dissonance now he floats on a paper mache raft through churning rapids and […]
the roses had turned black in the vase, the color drained as if a floral vampire had feasted upon the red in the night, the heavy blooms had hung over the side and shed little black petals upon the table, a string of she loves me, she loves me not to decay in the annals […]
i remember the first time i took her out it was a date in all but name in hindsight it was my first date not the first time i went with a group and it was like a date but was really a herd of giggles and my overly loud voice trying to reach her […]
i suppose not every little thing is a matter of perspective suffocating from lack of oxygen at the top of the world or drowning in a kiddie pool either way it goes you’re still just a rotting corpse i guess the cold air up high would preserve you better and the toddlers and the urine […]
she stood in front of me fully nude my eyes feasted upon her every inch on her skin was written her sensual odes sharp words cut into supple flesh by knife by pen by fingernail etched as if sculpted by the hands of god herself she did not offer herself to me for one cannot […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 