o’er the dreams i dreamt when sleep i slept the tenebrae of loss doth permeate for none call in the night the whooping crane pierced by fangs with venomous drip beseeched by the betterment of mossy regret to perch high upon yon beleaguered soul
the world appeared coated in hoarfrost or so it seemed through tear soaked eyes a glimmering nest of vipers frozen in lapsed adoration
she entered my heart like wind chimes carried on the evening breeze a masterfully subtle coup d’etat that soon my every cell was imprinted with her touch now there is a crater where a pristine chapel with an ornate bell tower once stood the sound of wind chimes still makes my soul ache with loss
calculating the infinity in her gaze using a protractor to measure the acute angle of the angel’s tilted halo as my broken wings sweep through the dust in hopes of finding the missing components to this suicide vest of unsent valentines with cartoon hearts etched in blood
if i was dead before you only springing forth to life when you showered your fleeting affections upon me what type of revenant have i become in our love’s passing i would have a funeral but the urge to crawl into the freshly dug pit would be likely more than this simpleton can take even […]
there is a ball of frustration that keeps growing like a new solar system in my guts as each new piece falls off to rot upon the floor i am left seething with this inability to accomplish the most basic of things correctly work is a dead end the words scream for attention that i […]
the bitter sting of her rejection, her silence, her anger the things she promised she wouldn’t do at the beginning but slipped into like comfortable shoes has gone i wasn’t enough, she made that clear, it was the words i now see as honey flavored falsehoods, the promises that stopped meaning anything when the road […]
i imagine it is difficult to tell an angel from a vulture when you are dying a slow death in the desert alone. it is hard enough to tell the helping hands from the lashing strikes when one has been consistent the other seldom seen.
i sat in the car in a parking garage as they took the bull statue off the flat bed a group of workers in orange safety vests watched as the forklift driver slowly set it on the ground the sky was dark above the wind beginning its howls the air conditioner was blowing higher than […]
i want to feel her draped across my chest her scent strong in my head as we lay just basking in each other instead i will stare at the ceiling see how long i can go without breaking down tomato potato
i find that the swirl cone of anxiety mixed with despondency has me feeling like every single thing i do is pointless or destined to fail you don’t know how important the anchor is until you find yourself floating listlessly on the waves with no land in sight
pale purple flowers growing in a field covered in blown about trash there is a lesson there but i can’t find it through the tears
can you hear me? am i doing this right? be silence once for yes twice for no it’s just that i have been dealing with a ton of shit lately some of it wasn’t even my fault who the fuck am i kidding? it is all my fault the straw broke the camel or choked […]
the rains are salt water and i walk around without skin in the downpour i don’t have enough middle fingers to express the agony of this world of lies that sound like joy
when i was a boy filled with grand plans of great adventures before the understanding of how the lessons taught were tinted by the victors how the conquerors were not heroes i wanted to discover new lands with that childlike misunderstanding that already inhabited lands weren’t new just unknown nations across the serpent infested seas […]
woke up to see the sun glaring down at a world frozen in place the birds hung in the sky in static formation like a swarm of gnats a plastic bag gently hovered my first thought a jellyfish in a tank i didn’t dress just stepped out into the scorching day filled with curiosity this […]
she sat on the edge of the couch with tears and snot streaming, inconsolable in her grief damn it if she didn’t find a way to make sorrow look sexy i told you not to fall in love with a poet she collapsed in a heap on the floor, shapely legs and smooth skin he […]
i saw her reflection in the waves and filled my pockets with stones to find her i heard her voice in my mind and cracked my skull open to set her free i kissed her lips in that moment i chose her as my salvation i gave myself freely to her and she rejected me […]
i let myself be swept along the currents of this invisible sea never afraid of drowning as the coral of loves gone ashen slice the softer pieces into a slurry that calls the sharks to feast. dragged face down through the desert in her eyes parched from lack of reciprocation longing for my lungs to […]
i find myself consumed by her silence those moments between falling into her thoughtfulness before her sultry voice begins spilling her secrets i find myself starving for both in equal measure bewitching is this witchy woman unafraid to open herself not understanding the allure which in itself is alluring curiouser and curiouser as her silence […]
never so beautiful as the eagle that swoops down to consume my liver each dawn never so poignant as the chains that bind me to this stone made from unreturned affection a modern day prometheus, mute fool with too much emotion not enough sense to cease being if only the eagle would feast upon my […]
i get glimpses of poetry little images that flicker across the inside of my eyelids but by the time i stop to write them down her face has replaced every fractal of thought while i know she doesn’t stop to think of me there is a brief moment that stinks of hope reeks of need […]
every trip to midlothian seems the same but degraded slightly the quarries announce your imminent arrival new buildings litter the highway but once you get to the heart of the little city that is when the cardiac disease seems to be slowly eating the town by inches the faces look lined as if the knowledge […]
i thought to stand in the hot water of the shower listening to the song it played off the bathtub in a symphony of disharmonic malaise the smell of the soap reawoke those memories that i have tried to smash deep down into the lockbox at the foot of my brain i was at the […]
we were once two tent stakes driven individually yet united in purpose now the canvas flaps limply in the breeze ensnared in the branches of the old oak and i am alone buried to my neck with a frayed loop of rope to remind me of what was
I. his fingers bleed from clenching the quill tightly in his hamfists; gelatinous eyes peering over the piles of crumpled pages; a cloud of stench hangs over his hungover countenance; a pool of inks catches the reflected candlelight he dies this evening II. the clock on the wall judges all that dare step foot in […]
no matter the length of time i have spent covered in sweat striking hammer to chisel to the undefined block in hopes of the coveted you springing forth fully nude to ease the hunger burning in my belly clumsy hands lead to an avalanche of dust that sticks to my damp skin sparks erupt with […]
it is with a solemn and profound sadness i have to admit i derive no pleasure from this existence not that it matters i will still continue the same rigormorale write the same drivel and press forward
she said my eyes were sad peaking over the mask like two whirlpools that pulled at her heartstrings she asked if i needed a hug i did but my aversion to people to the world to everything feeling like saltwater poured on my naked frame covered by a thousand papercuts of dismissed need i am […]
i feel dehydrated drained emptied of all but the need to frantically spill verse across the opiate colored skies. nothing left but to die ugly and leave a trail of tear soaked odes to promises that were only meant to be broken.
some days the melancholia is rusted iron chains threaded through every corridor of my mind’s cathedral the picturesque glass detailing the arabesque landscape an afterimage of hell overlaid across the idyllic images of smiling faces holding hands a bitter hint at hope in decline as the world crumbles around them i lay on my back […]
at this point short of a time machine or full frontal lobotomy this is the new state of normal i have been soldering components but leaving out resistors because i have given up completely the room smells of disinfectant with an underlying scent of sadness the ice pick sits in isopropyl as i steel my […]
I the moon hangs pregnant like a pause in conversation in which the wrong thing is said at too loud a.volume he was the king of doing that it didn’t help he was usually the loudest any way i watched him the world taking on an eerie slowed down pitch we were outside telling lies […]
i think had she known the task the burden the tireless need that comes with loving one as broken as i she would have been deterred it isn’t as if i didn’t warn her my poetry alone should have been dissuasive enough yet she cracked down on the hollow tooth let the cyanide flood into […]
she moved with sublime grace across the shattered glass that sliced effortlessly through her thin slippers as she spun through the desolation of beauty in decline. i longed to take her under my broken wings to nurse her back into a state of less broken to nurture the sheer magnificence she exudes like beads of […]
he was a loathsome prince of inequity a relic of better times one with sunkissed promises that glimmered like diamonds of dew hanging fat upon the new buds of tomorrow’s strangled misery
can they acupuncture my brain derail this miserable train of thought detail this tale of loss reveil my mind in fog resale my broken heart can they pierce my brain to the core of who i am restructure the list of failings into modern art redraw the blinds to shutter the light that was only […]
i linger in your fiberglass impression ignoring the itch as i nestle in the last bits of you that still stab my ventricles with loss i linger because if i stop dust myself off accept you’re gone i don’t know if i will ever pick the shards of myself back up i linger in the […]
dreams don’t come true after they rot turn to glitterdust nothingness they are gathered by the twitching legs of dirty cockroaches that live in the walls behind the drywall there are millions of eggs waiting to hatch to roll in the remnants of the things you wanted most in all the world dreams are only […]
i long to make love to you to be enveloped in you as we writhe moving as one abstract moment frozen in biochemical frenzy i want to see your soul flash as you explode in orgasmic waves i want to cup your breast nuzzle up and sleep all night long with your smell your taste […]
one of these nights i will go to sleep without whispering my love to you in hopes it finds your deafened ears tonight is not that night
i have found myself at the bottle of rum when i haven’t seen the bottle of anything but olive oil or water in many moons but this is the first day alone without work or the kids to distract me from that you shaped hole that seems the whole of my emptiness and the world […]
the goddamned lump the ball of grief the flood held back by the little boy’s finger stuck in the dike the tulips soon to be submerged all i can do is choke it back down into the pit of waivering need that makes up ninety-nine percent of my mass
the age of beauty in urban decay is failing as we watch the sullen collapse of suburban mimicry the well planned even rows of monopoly houses set in sigils to call forth the elder ones that slumber aeons deep beneath the empty malls tumbleweed laden parking lots of cracked asphalt in front of closed down […]
those bastardly irongripped fingers that grasp my tongue rendering me incapable of speech rise up from the freshly interred soil in the latest in a long line of attempts at what the chemicals decree devoir le plus important chips away the marble edifice where hope once thrived and all i wish to do is scream […]
maybe the key to figuring out the absurdity of existence is not to zig when it zags but to fall into the gradient of madness we are taught to avoid as innocent idiots to revel in the pitfalls like a fork in the cheek of fate as we creep along the spiderweb woven into the […]
etched upon the faceless face of death are the last spit words of every poet doomed in shackles of disparate need left wanting even in their foulest endings
the edge of longing laps the soul, the crane cries out in the dark, eyes like broken pottery beckon alone among the whistling reeds, she exudes panoramic indecency, in shades of emerald malaise reaching up towards the sky, a drip of crimson stains the moon, as viridescent globules blossom she is gone, the wind whispers […]
if beauty were perfectly transcribed from ideal into the soul of one person ms plath was this personification but to balance the wonder she could pull from the aether there must be a profound sadness to keep the scales afloat it is in the heart of this sorrow that ms plath did the unthinkable it […]
the worst part of deep depression is the images it compels every smile every moment every memory is so clear it cuts with razor edges fruitful and futile in the same jagged instant forcing the blood to mix with the ink as the quill carves through the page to slice directly into the fragmentary soul […]
he sits fork scraping pushing his dinner around the plate unable to will the fork to lift unable to taste the meal songs play softly but they are a chorus of discordant buzzing a book lays untouched the words simply swim on the page he tell himself he has to keep moving or he will […]
they comes in swarms with their beady eyes the need palpable dripping off them filling the room with stenchfog i see them for what they are though they wear the right clothes or buy the right perfume or put on make up whatever they read real people do but they are facsimiles cardboard masks that […]
in the darkest night their hieratic spirits envelope me in a cocoon of devilish intent through the halls i scream hunched over a quasimodo for modern times frankenstein’s monster let loose on a global stage a one man pandemic of lucid nightmares bedazzled with stardust fucktassels applied tightly waiting for my fifteen minutes of shameless […]
tu ne trouveras jamais celui qui t’aime moitié moins que moi mais tu es toujours m’a jeté bonne chance en quoi que ce soit tu choisis fuir a l’avenir
turned down two one way streets the wrong way had a moving truck nearly crush me against the wall of the parking garage another almost hit me on the highway the sign on the front desk of my mind says out for terminal dissonance too tired to function unable to sleep the near victim of […]
love is like a penny it costs more to stamp than it ever will be returned on investment or maybe it is just mine that was turned green from disuse tossed aside for a shiny nickel left on the train tracks to be flattened
in a fit of rage and hurt she chopped down every rose bush in the garden then cursed the view that remained instead of replanting she boarded up the home running away to find the next serene spot to begin the cycle anew.
he was a leprechaun who lost it all when the magic died out in the world leaving him with no end of the rainbow to find his lost pot of gold so he peddled snake oil cures claiming miracles were possible knowing damned well there was no easy solution to losing it all they found […]
when i am alone and i am so very alone right now i just let the words spill when i had her i was content to let them slide over her smile like a life preserver when i do not i toss them by the bucketful at the world in attempt to tread water some […]
if i could draw the images i see so clearly i would never write another line i wouldn’t have to open myself to the torrent of words wouldn’t have to be beaten mercilessly one moment gently held the next i would scratch the pencil against the page to convey the infinite sorrow inherent in every […]
he sits astride his roan the desert sands dance in the ever blowing wind metal tipped lance pointed towards the heavens themselves as if to strike the heart of god seated upon her golden throne of judgement. blackened craters dot the land with cracked spirals of glass from the bolts sent from on high as […]
black coffee matches the thoughts swirling within my head the bitter acidity travels down my blood lined esophagus where it sits with all the bile soaked regrets the sun is too goddamned bright the air too thick with lackadaisical memories but even though her name is still branded on my flesh the skin is healing […]
it is beautiful outside and i miss you so fucking much it hurts the you sized hole in my heart is what will finally break me completely.
and Sage Francis sings “i am no destination, i am just a journey, so don’t go settling on me love, no, don’t go settling on me” from a distance the words mislead from the heartbroken fool making him seem like something more than a pit stop on the way to true love upon closer inspection […]
a sparrow standing in the middle of the road plucking at the worms washed out by the rains unnoticing or uncaring of the danger from the vehicles going too fast i see the fat worm it is trying to work into its beak the truck barrelling towards it i press the horn in frantic bursts […]
pt 1 in the before the new normal silence was punctuated by brief moments of adoration the hushed tones were more dramatic in the lack of sound that permeated my globe pt 2 in the after there is a sense of waiting of constant checking of worry that the messages were still coming yet the […]
new blinds in the bedroom after so long with a blacked out room letting in the sunlight across my shadowed den of inexplicable loss. i cleared off the shelves once stacked three deep with hard covered tomes in an effort to divest myself of material possessions in the false hope of home in another land. […]
my passport arrived today just a month after i applied it was a surprise to show my willingness to prove myself to her the surprise was meant for me as she had already given up on me. too little too late for there to be an us just a passport to nowhere population me.
when i was a child that still clung to the notion that life was an adventure filled with excitement fraught with peril and in the end the hero found true love i imagined a great brass diving bell that would take me fathoms below the surface where i would walk along the ocean bottom in […]
it isn’t that i cannot breathe it is that i wish i could just stop. every burning exhalation carries an unheard i love you across the seas.
in my heart there is a hymnal in my mind a stained glass refrain through my fingers arcing poetry across my tongue bitter disdain my bones are calcified regret my eyes blinded by desire my nostrils filled with wildflowers my feet set upon the fire her smile cracked the armor her touch the sweetest pain […]
i follow the eight five three rule of sleep since the end of all i held dear eight hours in bed five staring at the ceiling replaying a greatest hits package that ends in tears three hours of broken sleep punctuated by waking with her name on my lips rinse and repeat every night for […]
i am aware as the record skips the same refrain looped a sharp pop then repeated in the silence in the brutal light of stark honesty there is no gray life is merely rigidly defined sets of absolutes i tell myself to ignore the ancillary soundtrack but it is in that white noise that the […]
i sit skinless as the inimical wind gallops astride the ignoble bared bits clinging like barnacles to this shell i have become i welcome the raucous spiderweb of sublimated torment for in destroying the last lumps of myself lies the hope of hastening an economical return to dust
outside a sudden summer storm comes to life with a fury to match the malevolent hear that has baked the land for days and days i let my own lost mind rage along with the winds my hurt darken the sky my loss fall down my scruffy cheeks like the raindrops does the storm strike […]
this nothing affixed to my chest like an anchor in the presence of this absence i am stricken with an inability to feel anything except for loss it scares me this not caring a part of my mind screams as i drive too fast down the road but the part in control has ceased to […]
she planted a garden filled with bulbs that would never bloom tended tenderly every morning with great care to keep the nurturing soil barren. a salamander with eyes of the bluest flame lay upon a nest of stones thinking them to be eggs never curious as to why they do not hatch. a broken crown […]
through cardiac ablation they burn away clusters of nerves sending improper electrical impulses that cause irregular heart beats through nerve ablation they burn away clusters of nerves sending pain signals throughout a portion of the body usually concentrated around the neck i need cranial ablation to the gray matter to burn away this bone deep […]
trying to thread the needle of explaining to an eleven year old that love is real while barely able to get out of bed because the world is a series of pains inflicted. fake a smile whisper a benediction that he never knows the sting of rejection that he doesn’t plan a future that ends […]
laying in the darkness lying to the darkness that it isn’t all there fucking is listening to the darkness as it softly mockingly laughs back yet again. it is all that there is as emerald forks of ache travel listlessly upon the miasmic totality of what life has become just darkness exhaustion and pain.
i am not convinced the sun will ever rise again that this eclipse that has forced her light from reflecting from mine own eyes isn’t just another end of the world misinterpreted from aztec ruins and i am just so fucking defeated by it all
in a perfect world i would have two sets of eyelids like an alligator that way i would have some protection from the swamp waters of misery that i find myself suspended in for all intent and purposes i could appear very nearly human while maintaining visibility as i drown.
when i close my eyes i see your face for the last year and a half that was pure heaven but the last week has made it a living catastrophic hell.
a violin with frayed bow plays in the distance every third note squeals off key as the sky darkens above the birds fall silent In the trees upon the eaves along the lone gravel road a weathervane squeaks in higher urgency as it begins spinning swirling bits of trash leaves grass whip into a frenzied […]
i wanted a kitty but the long term plans made the idea a poor one then i was let go from my position as loved one left with no plan now a stifling inability to take care of myself means a kitty is a bad idea my world was contingent on a continental shift but […]
the world keeps spinning irregardless of the wobble in my heart. there is a lesson there but i am not nearly smart enough to find it.
from child abuse to self abuse to the fallacy of opening up only so that it can occur again and again. some doors get locked other get boarded up. this one is having molten lead poured over then a controlled explosion to make the barracade stick. the key left rusted discarded unwanted all the way […]
heaving sobs emptiness all that beckons lost in a maze of blank faces predestined to fade away misery, my lover eerily bemoaned i stumble blindly against the knowledge my own failings blossom depression regal and sublime overpowers everything where once there was dream nothing remains inconsolable needles of loss piercing gone, she walked away
if her’s are the last lips i will ever kiss at least i went out with having one dream come true.
some people reach out in their moment of need seek the light from outside to brighten the shadows inside some have been beaten enough to just retreat into those same shadows because they were taught to hide she was the sun burning away the clinging remnants of old pain into nothing but vague recollection at […]
when she first appeared from behind the black curtains my heart lurched into my throat at her beauty in sequined tights she smiled out over the crowd with such a sublime perfection it is a wonder men didn’t begin fighting at once for her attentions i sat numbed to everything but the sadness showing in […]
as the mists coalesced around her bare feet a sudden cold fell over the land the leaves once vibrant verdant foilage now brown piles of detritus left to blow across the barren land she moves like autumn falling into winter just footprints etched into the soil the memory of her kiss burnt into my flesh.
when she whispered i love you the moon flared pink when she snatched it back an entire section of stars simply blinked out. it’s funny how so sudden an absence can shift the universe.
a hollow rancid shell of perverse chocolate nightmare carefully molded into the form of middle aged mania a tarnished cage hangs suspended in the void within where an emaciated sparrow sits bathed in morose languish nothing remains in the circumstantial doubts of poor decisions and abysmally lackluster performance hollow man with a broken heart dancing […]
i rub the needle across the magnet set it on a leaf in a cup of water all in hopes of finding direction in the ever spinning fluctuations of the ever hungry unhinged jaws of desperation. depression is the accumulated baggage of a life half lived anxiety the whip across bare knuckles pushing on with […]
having been abused of the notion of disillusion since the first tentative swings of the wire hanger led to the steady building of walls between myself and emotional constructs on the sandy soil made of crushed dreams a one man jenga using wrecking balls instead of gentle pressure only to stand dumbfounded in the piles […]
when we awake from this dream the sterile light of dawn is nothing but a painful reminder of what was lost. honesty is a terrible sword to wield, cutting both the teller and receiver, leaving jagged wounds time never quite heals. so it is, we are born alone only to die alone. seeking those singular […]
canals run down my weathered cheek to divert the salted essence of dream as it evaporates from unseeing eyes. it would feel less like drowning if the world weren’t murky if my skin weren’t wet if the racking sobs would stop forcing air into deflated lungs. but what else is there hope that one day […]
i kept waking reaching for her not unusual the pain of missing her combined with the pain in my shoulder has me up four to ten times a night but these times were different because somewhere out there she wasn’t reaching for me as well so the pain in my shoulder was joined by a […]
and as the last petal falls free to the ground. it floats gently lands softly in that moment of silent agony. beauty is gone from the world as we know it. it wasn’t as if it hadn’t tried to maintain its luster. gravity has a way of breaking every damned thing. you just feel it […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 