Twelve Minutes After Eleven

All Our Broken Shit Still Works

All our broken shit still works
just needs a kick
or a kind touch
or a curse under your breath
when it squeals

The couch has springs that dig
like fingers through the fabric
every time you sit down
it groans a confession
of every nap and fight

The coffee table is a rescue from the curb
carved with initials that aren’t ours
stained with rings
from the beers we drank all night

The lamp leans to one side
like it’s asking for a break
shade held together with tape
and stubbornness
bulb buzzing
but refusing to die

If a magazine crew saw this place
they would call it a disaster
we call it proof
we made it this far
without learning how to lie

The car stalls twice on cold mornings
dashboard lit like a warning sign
held together with zip ties
and a prayer

We talk about trading it in
then remember every late-night drive
with the windows stuck half down
flicking ashes into the air

The phone is cracked across the face
a spiderweb from the time
it hit the wall
when panic made you feel small

Still it holds the photos of us
laughing in parking lots
and the texts saying “made it home”
that mean the most of all

Every ad screams upgrade
replace
toss it out if it squeaks or fails
but all this broken stuff
has seen our worst nights
and lived to tell the tales

I trust a chipped mug that stays
more than a brand-new shine that bails

Your jacket has a zipper
that sticks halfway
so you walk around half armored
half exposed
exactly like your chest

Your boots have soles worn thin
from pacing this city
plotting escape and return
putting the pavement to the test

Our friendship is stitched
from a thousand fights and apologies
from ghosting and calling
and sleeping on the floor

We thought we shattered it
that night we screamed unforgivable things
yet here we are
passing the remote
like we’re ready for more

One day something will finally die
the engine will cough a last time
the table leg will snap
the phone won’t wake up when you plead

We will stand there grieving like idiots
for objects nobody else would keep
eyes wet over plastic and need

But this isn’t about stuff
it’s about history
loyalty
the simple miracle of staying
when you could go

All our broken shit still works
because we did
barely
through the nights
when we couldn’t take another blow

When I look around this wreck of a room
and feel my lungs unclench
after a hard day of work

I know I am home
where all our broken shit
still works

All-You-Can-Bleed

This is all-you-can-bleed
not all-you-can-eat
every mouthful slices deeper
through the seat

Lonely hearts with cracked screens
tired eyes
dead hopes piled on plastic trays
loading up with meat and sugar
till the table looks like a car crash
in the fluorescent haze

I sit in the corner
gulping gravy and shame
waiting for the hunger
that still screams the same

I learned early
that if something felt good
it was supposed to be rationed
sliced thin

Parents counting bites
asking if I really needed more
while their own eyes looked in

Now I sprint down aisles
with a cart like a hearse
grabbing everything my throat demanded
pile cake on top of fried everything
swallow until my belt snaps

You sit across from me
with salad and judgement
pretend your hunger
isn’t screaming in your head
at least my sin shows

Servers keep asking if I am okay
if I really want another round
of grease and sugar
but the register does not complain
it just counts the cost
of this desperate hunger

I lick the plate clean
to shut up the part of me
that whispers about restraint
I did self-denial for decades
now I want the whole buffet
and I do not care
if it ruins the paint

This table is my altar
this fork is my blade
every bite another deal
with the monster I made

I know it is killing me
that is half the thrill
you cannot hurt me
with what I already use
as a pill

When the lights go out
and the chairs flip up
mop swishing through the mess we leave
there is always one smear
on the floor they miss

a little red curve
that spells out
“never relieve”

Alleyway Headcount

Alleyway headcount
one more ghost getting even
in the rain

You wouldn’t hear my voice
now you hear the chain

You walked past me every morning
headphones up
eyes locked on the glass
I held doors
bit my tongue
let the insults pass

You laughed with the strangers
and saved your soft voice
for the ones who wouldn’t stay
I was the face you forgot at parties
the help you used
to get through the day

Tonight the block looks different
under busted lights
and wet black stone
you still walk
like you’re untouchable
staring at your phone

You don’t see the shadow
that learned your route
your lazy arrogant turn
I am the quiet
you trained into a weapon
waiting to burn

You wanted me harmless
you wanted me small
you taught me my worth
now I’m writing it on the wall

No need for speeches
I’m done explaining why I snapped
your eyes widen once
and your mouth stays trapped

You choke on the shock
of seeing the face
that carried your weight
on this cracked concrete
where it’s a little too late

No bullets
no headlines
just fear carved clean
the sound of your pride
hitting the ground
is the whole scene

You walk away shaking
shoes slipping on the stone
that buzzing in your skull
is every second
you left me alone

You will cross that block differently now
looking side to side

I am the silence you created
taking you for a ride

Alone at the Edge

Alone at the edge
reaching out for air
silence screaming loud
stripping the nerves bare

The room went dead quiet
shadows stacking up on the floor
cold air leaking in
from the gap beneath the door

Breath coming shallow
heartbeat skipping
every other beat
fighting to stay warm
in the middle of the sheet

Words left unsaid
throat gone dry
staring at the ceiling
waiting for the sky

Aching for warmth
in a space turned stone
realizing
I am doing this part alone

Clawing through the black
looking for a spark
trying to find a doorway
in the dark

The night opens up
to swallow me whole
losing my grip
losing my control

Animal Confessional

I want to fuck you
like a confession
said through gritted teeth
and bitten lips

Pull every secret out of your throat
with my hands on your hips
drag you down
where halos melt
and good intentions choke
on spit and sweat

You lean against the wall
like a dare in boots
and a crooked grin
eyes locked on my throat
like you are choosing
where to sink in first

The low end crawling up our legs
sweat and cheap lights
making everybody else blur
but you stay sharp as a blade
pressed slow into my chest

You mouth along to some filthy line
in the music
never break eye contact
and I feel my good intentions snap
like rotten teeth
in the back of my head

I had every reason
not to walk toward you
every promise not to start
this kind of fire again
I walk toward you instead

You say my name
like a sin and a solution
drag the syllables down my spine
until my knees forget
what they’re for

You laugh low when I stutter
hook two fingers in my collar
drag me close enough to smell
all the wrong choices
you’ve made before

You tell me you are bad news
say it with a smile
that makes the warning sound
like a sales pitch
for the exact kind of damage I crave

I tell you I am worse
feel every part of me
that ever tried to be decent
bow its head
to the animal I never learned to cage

We are not here for healing
we are here to burn
two fucked-up saints in a blackout chapel
praying to what we never learn

Door slams
room shrinks
air turns thick enough to chew
we circle each other
like addicts trying to pretend
this is about choice
not need

You trace the edge of my shirt
look at me like dinner and absolution
like you already know
exactly what kind of bones
you will feed

Phones buzzing in pockets
partners calling
lives outside this room
beating desperate fists
on a locked door we won’t answer

You push me back onto the mattress
like a verdict
whisper “we are such terrible people”
I say “good”
and fall

This isn’t romance
this is relapse with a grin
two grown disasters lighting candles
for the god of skin

You dig your nails into my back
like you are trying to write apologies
you will never actually give

I bite your shoulder
hard enough to bruise the life
you will lie to in the morning
just so you can keep it
and still live

We move like a crime scene
being drawn in real time
every gasp another piece of evidence
we will both pretend not to see

You choke out “don’t stop”
like a prayer that sounds a lot
like “destroy me”
and I do
because I want you
to destroy me

Say my name
spit it
curse it
choke on it

Tell me you hate this
then drag me back into it

When sunlight slips through blinds
and turns our wreckage
into something cheap and small
and way too real

we will swear this was the last time
we will mean it
till the next night
we need something strong enough
to kill what we feel

Another Key On The Same Ring

Another key upon the ring
another mug in the sink
another coat upon the chair
give me time to think

Rain is hitting hard
on the old row house
hallway smells of coffee
and a secondhand blouse

Three sets of boots
mud drying brown
laces tied in knots
that we threw down

Pictures on the wall
tilting to the side
from bodies walking past
and the heavy stride

Four keys hanging
on the metal hook
teeth lined up
inside the little nook

Bedroom doors open to the hall
light spilling soft against the wall
one room holds the six-string
and the pick
another holds the paint
and everything

The middle is a crash
of books and sound
where all the scattered pieces
can be found

Sometimes we are together
in the space
sometimes apart
but in the same place

No secrets hidden in a motel bed
no double phones
with things we never said
we live a strange gospel in the air
four signatures upon the lease we share

Streetlight stretching out
across the floor
bare feet on the tile
by the door

He comes in laughing
from the outer cold
cheeks pink
a story to be told

She pours the tea
I listen to the tale
glad to see
the wind is in his sail

Later on we talk about the fear
holding it
until it’s not as near

Honesty is looking in the eye
even when the jealousy is high
sitting on the stairs
until it stops
until the heavy pressure
finally drops

This isn’t perfect balance
painted nice
sometimes we pay
the heavy angry price

Logistics crushing down
upon the head
wishing we were lonely
in the bed

But every time we think
to walk away
something in the body
makes us stay

I’d rather wrestle
with the mess we keep
than be alone and empty
in my sleep

Rain begins to slow
above the head
house is settling down
into the bed

Four keys clicking
in the lock tonight
one life shared
and doing it alright

Apathetic as Fuck

You call me apathetic
but I just do not care
I ran out of fucks
three breakdowns ago
there is nothing left in there

Alarm goes off
I swipe it dead
same way I kill every plan
that ever tries to crawl into my day

People talk about grind
hustle
passion
I look at the ceiling thinking
maybe I will just rot here
and let the hours decay

Messages stack like dirty dishes
everyone wanting advice or help
or some kind of spark
I do not even have for myself
I scroll past all of it
thumb numb
motivation shut off
and left on the shelf

They say it is a phase
say I just need a goal
some vision board crap
and a better way to track my time

Like this is a scheduling issue
and not the fact
that my spirit feels like a dead battery
soaking in slime

I used to care
I used to light up
used to bleed effort
for people who barely looked back
when I burned
now I cannot even fake interest
in my own survival
lesson learned

You call it lazy
you call it weak
you say “get up, just move your feet”
like my limbs are not concrete
and my head is not fogged to hell
save your pep talk
I know this too well

Bills pile up
laundry stinks
fridge light hits nothing
but old takeout
and half a soda gone flat

I know I should get up
clean it
fix it
live like a human
not a ghost under a blanket
but fuck it
I am past all that

Every chore looks like a mountain
I have already slid down
in the rain
so I lay here
and let dust write messages on the floor
where I lie

This is not brave
this is not deep
this is me
too tired to keep pretending
every day is a battle
worth suiting up to win

Sometimes the bravest thing I do
is admit
I do not want to begin

If I ever move
it will not be for your speeches
or your charts
or your “you can do it” prayer

It will be because something inside
finally twitches again
not because you care

Applications In The Dark

I’m a laid-off parent
scrolling through a warzone
made of ads and lies
every posting looks the same
every hope gets standardized

Kids finally knocked out
on the pull-out
cartoons still paused on the screen
dishes leaning in the sink
like they’re waiting to join the scene

I slide this old laptop open
on a table scarred with years
job board glow hits my face
while the quiet hums with fears

Filter by “full-time”
“remote”
“entry-level” with ten years thrown in
they want three degrees and miracles
for pay that barely counts as a win

“Dynamic rockstar self-starter”
in a city I can’t afford to reach
I copy-paste my aching life
into one more hollow pitch

Inbox full of “thanks for applying”
that read like “you’re not real”
no one called to say “we’re sorry”
just a mass reject with no deal

Meanwhile the fridge sings empty
only condiments and doubt
I’m doing math on ramen packs
and what bills I can live without

Phone lights up with a number
that used to mean steady pay
now it’s an automated survey
asking how I liked my last day

I hang up before it finishes
look at the cracked linoleum floor
every scuff mark looks like footsteps
heading out the door

I tuck a blanket tighter
round my youngest on the couch
they twitch in their sleep and mumble
kick a shoe off
with a flinch and a crouch

They don’t know
the monsters in this house
speak in interest rates and fees
dressed up as friendly notices
stapled to our needs

Clock hits two
then three
then something past the point of sense
I upload one more version of myself
to the fire of expense

Kids stir in their sleep
and whisper questions to the air
I close the lid
kiss their foreheads
tasting my thin prayer

I slide the chair back slow
so it doesn’t wake the room
stand in the doorway watching them
and push back one more fear

Pocket full of past-due notices
heart full of cheap resolve
hoping one locked line of text
will finally let my life evolve

Ash in the Playground

Ash in the playground
dust on the seat
swings moving
in the heat

Built for laughter
holding signs
warning of the danger lines

Swings hang crooked
over clover beds
chains twisted
over heads

Slides faded
tired pink
plastic warped
before you blink

Paint peeling from the gym
stickers flapping on the rim
stray cats walking in the sand
owners of the broken land

Fence went up
to block the street
trucks rolled in
to beat the heat

Parents murmured at the store
hand on mouth
and looking sore

Playground closed
with rusty locks
tape across the sandbox box
kids watching through the link
puddles turning black as ink

Sirens stopped a month ago
headlines found a different flow
silence heavy like a wool
smothering the push and pull

Flowers pushed into the fence
marking changes
dark and dense

She didn’t know the kids before
just the story
and the score

Teachers talking safety plans
drills that no one understands
truck backfires on the road
class jumps
at the heavy load

Adults signing paper sheets
nods from experts in the seats
kids are counting inhaler puffs
mapping routes
when breathing roughs

Photo shows up on the screen
kids in air
a frozen scene

Comments listing who was there
memories of the open air

Parents scroll and look away
grief for strangers in the day
lives that didn’t have a choice
silenced by the heavy voice

Swings are moving
in the breeze
shadows rocking
in the trees

Ash is drifting
slow and gray
over joy
that went away

Ash in the Porcelain

Ash in the cup
where the brushes belong
cigarette ends telling
where it went wrong

Sitting on the porcelain
shaking with cold
smoke curling round
in the space that you hold

Your toothbrush is leaning
inside of the glass
bristles bent
watching hours pass

Blue fading down
to a tired old pink
standing guard
over the white of the sink

I say I will toss it
and clear out the shelf
but I can’t bring the hand
to do it myself

Towel on the hook
holding the shape
a thin cotton ghost
in a half-folded drape

I stand in the water
on my side alone
leaving your corner
as cold as a stone

The things that you left
are loud in the head
filling the space
where nothing is said

Hair tie waiting
on the faucet steel
a black little circle
that makes it all real

I slip it on the wrist
tight on the skin
wearing the memory
of where we have been

Razor rusting
in the wire rack
blade getting dull
with no way to go back

I run a thumb
along the metal edge
pulling away
from the sharp little ledge

They say to let go
like flipping a light
like I can fix it
in the middle of the night

They don’t stand barefoot
on the tile floor
tasting the ash
and wanting you more

One day the cup
will be empty and clean

Until then
it holds everything
we have been

Ash In Your Lungs

If I turn to ash
you breathe it in
every scar you gave me
settles under your skin

You laughed when I coughed
on your smoke
said “if you can’t breathe, just move”
turned my panic into a joke
rolled your eyes
like you had something to prove

You tossed matches in crowded rooms
pointed at me
when the alarms screamed loud
watched me drag kids through the heat
while you played to the crowd

You called yourself fireproof
strutting through sparks
in stolen boots
used my sweat to dampen the heat
while you severed the roots

Every time I begged you to slow down
you poured gas on the line
said “if we burn, that is on you
you should have warned me in time”

I did
you grinned
you lit it again
now all I have left to give you
is the end

I am standing in your storage unit
with a lighter and a list
every dirty secret boxed up
every victim you kissed
and dismissed

Could walk away
let it rot
pretend I believe you will change
or drop one spark
and watch the whole picture rearrange

This is the moment
where nice people leave
and let the devil walk free
but I am no saint
not after what you did to me

If I scorch my own future
just to burn down the rest
that is the last favor I do
put it to the test

You used to say
I was stuck
that I needed your fire to survive

Look around
when the air turns thick
that taste in your lungs
is me
eating you alive

Ash Teeth

Grind the ash teeth
till the sparks fly high
burn the ceiling black
against the sky

Spit the swallowed words
into the mic
let the feedback hit them
like a strike

Purple light on alleys
slick with rain
dumpsters leaning over
in the pain

Sirens screaming distance
in the pitch
city lungs are scratching
like an itch

Called a problem
ticking like a bomb
shoved in rooms
to keep the spirit calm
tried to clip the tongue
and force the rest
pretending fire
is put to the test

Throat is carrying
the sanding grain
chords are scraped
by every single stain

Dragging jagged cases
through the wet
handle wrapped in tape
and heavy debt

Every riff a finger in the face
every kick a fist
shaking up the place
trained me for the quiet
and the still
I trained in secret
for the heavy kill

Knuckles hold the memory
of the fight
just to make it home
inside the night

Basement smells of sweat
and cheapest beer
bodies pressed together
in the fear

No walls between us
only hands on skin
singing lines
and letting it begin

See the haunted focus
in the eyes
kids who act much older
than their size
meeting in the concrete
in the dark
trading old injuries
for a spark

We aren’t healed
just loud and broken down
ribs rattling
inside the town

One day hands will shake
and knees will crack
hauling cabinets
and never looking back

Better to burn out
in honest heat
than fade away
upon the quiet street

Songs won’t pay the rent
or buy the bread
but they paid for the soul
inside the head

When the note is hanging
in the air
we pack the gear
with a sudden care

Sore and wired
stepping in the chill
knowing that we bent
the world to will

Ashes in My Hands

Ashes in my hands
I hold the blame
fighting fires I never lit
standing in the flame

I carry a debt
that no one gave me
smoke that chokes
the air I breathe

Every step lands
on broken glass
paying for the sins
of a stranger’s past

Waking up sweating
in the dead of night
regrets that steal
the only light

Tied to a promise
I couldn’t see
haunted by who
I used to be

Heavy is the weight
I didn’t seek
breaking my back
but too tired to speak

No one sees the wreck
beneath the skin
guilt is a fight
I can never win

Background Noise

I am not your background noise
humming under every story you tell
when the spotlight hits your face

I am not a silence in the rafters
while you soak in praise

I am the one tuning the strings
behind the curtain
while you crash through chords
like a demolition act up front

You call it our band
our project
our legacy
then spell only your name
on every page

You brag about the nights
you “brought the house down”
while I held the mix together
with tired hands and split tape

You get the roar
the sweat
the lights
I get the feedback ringing in my skull
while I pack up your shape

When the crowd chants
they chant for you
while my own pulse beats time
with the hum in the floor

I could vanish
between soundcheck and sunrise
and you would barely feel
the silence at your door

In practice I write the hooks
that keep their bones remembering us
long after the bar lights dim

But out front you throw your voice
in the air and grin
while they forget I even stand
in the same grim

You change a single word
and call it your vision
while I bury my teeth in my tongue
to keep from screaming out the truth

I gave you that riff
that line
that chorus you sell
as proof of your damaged youth

You talk about your struggles
in every interview
but never mention the shoulder
carrying half that weight

You turned my therapy
into your headline
while I stayed home
holding my own cracks together late

You invite me up front
only when the work gets rough
and your fingers slip
then push me back into the wings
the second the crowd starts to flip

You love my grind
my skill
my late-night mixes
when the label needs something
and the clock runs thin

But when the photos get posted
I am airbrushed out
like a stain on your polished front

You scribble thanks
“to everyone behind the scenes”
in tiny letters no one will ever stop to read
but you never say my name out loud
and that is all I ever actually needed

One day you will stand
under cheap lights
with a borrowed band
trying to recreate the sound
you swear you made alone

You will miss the way I heard the flaws
before they broke the speakers
the way I tuned your tone

You will look around
for the invisible friend you took for granted
and find only an empty coil of cable
on the floor

That low hum in your ears
will not be adoration any longer
just the silence of the ally you ignored

My voice will not vanish
under your control
not this time
not anymore

Backseat Confessional

Backseat confessional
belt digging in the spine
riding out the guilt you have
crossing every line

Speaking secrets to my neck
words you’d never say
underneath the kitchen lights
in the light of day

Parked beneath the broken lamp
the river running black
windows fogging up
before the engine cools the stack

Wrappers on the floorboard
and receipts inside the dash
bad decisions back in session
waiting for the crash

You climb across the console
with a lazy jagged grin
knee into my ribs
pushing hair against the skin

Tasting like the cinnamon
and gasoline and cheap
every time I swear I’m done
I’m digging in too deep

Springs complain beneath the weight
jeans are half undone
hoodie riding up
to bare the bruise from where we won

Street noise fades to nothing
just a hum behind the glass
world shrinking to the skin
the moments passing fast

I grab your hips and pull you down
letting inches land
confession on my lap
falling right into the hand

I know this doesn’t save us
doesn’t fix the broken door
or why we ghost each other
when we can’t take anymore

You call me your mistake
then kiss me like a dare
seeing if the glass will break
with tension in the air

I tell you we are wrong
in all the ways that make it right
both of us too far away
to answer phones tonight

You freeze up in the middle
putting fingers on my jaw
eyes searching frantically
for a sudden flaw

Voice soft
you ask me
if you’re just a gap to fill
it cuts the heat like winter
making everything go still

I push the hair back from your face
I tell you it is real
the only thing this week
that gave me anything to feel

I mean it
with the adrenaline running
in the blood

When it ends
we lie there
listening to the car
talking about leaving
running somewhere far

Changing up the hair
and dropping out of every rule
swimming to the surface
of the miserable pool

I tell you that you could
and say I probably might
knowing that we’re stuck here
in the middle of the night

But with your laughter in my ear
fizzing low and deep
it feels like a promise
that we might actually keep

Straighten up the clothes
and wipe the fog upon the glass
one last kiss of salt
before we let the moment pass

You hop into the front
and start the engine with a shake
driving in the silence
with the ache we can’t unmake

Basement Gods Of Dice And Dust

Basement gods of dice and dust
hear our nervous laughter
and shaky bravery

We build paper corridors
to trap the fear in the margins
every throw tries to beat back the sense
that somewhere nearby
an unseen thing is rolling for us
and none of us asked
to be on that sheet

Down in the concrete belly
of a house that smells
like old cardboard and detergent
four kids seat a scratched table
as their kingdom

Map sheets sprawl under snack crumbs
pencil lines threading through caves
sewers
ruins that never heard of suburbia

Plastic figures stand crooked
in candle stubs
all chipped paint and heroic poses
braver than the hands
that push them

Every roll shakes loose the school day
lockers and grading curves replaced
by traps and treasure
and monsters that wait politely
for their turn

Thunder walks overhead
in the form of parents and plumbing
pipes coughing
TV laugh-tracks stomping
from the living room

Down here
voices sink low and serious
describing corridors slick
with something unnamed
doors nobody sane opens twice

The power flicks once
hard blink
comes back with the bulb buzzing
just a little meaner

No one wants to admit
the room feels smaller
like the basement slid deeper
while the house pretended
to stay still

Character sheets curl
edges lifting
as though the paper wants to get away
from what you’re writing on it

A die skitters off the table
vanishes into a dark space
under a couch
that never hid anything worse
than Lego

One kid reaches down
hand first
wrist deep
fingers sweating
every horror story timed
to this exact move

His palm brushes something
colder than cement
harder than lost plastic

When he yanks back
with the die clutched tight
no one jokes

They just mark the number
and move on
hearts pounding
in their throats

Bat Wrapped In Duct Tape

Bat wrapped in duct tape
nails crooked
heart pounding

Trash-can Excalibur
held together by rage and panic
you don’t want glory
you want everyone you love
eating breakfast tomorrow

If something comes through
that invisible crack in the world
you plan to meet it swinging

In a cluttered garage
full of busted bikes
oil stains
and forgotten science fair projects
a kid builds a weapon
nobody taught in any class

Old bat scavenged from a corner
grip cracked
handle sticky from a decade
of sweaty palms

Nails hammered in along the barrel
crooked teeth waiting
for something more solid
than softballs

Duct tape wound tight
around splinters and metal
ugly silver halo
around splattered wood

This isn’t about being a hero
not really
more about wanting your hands
on something heavier than fear

You swing in the air a few times
feel the weight pull forward
almost yanking you off balance

Imagination paints targets
on everything
monsters that don’t have names
in any field guide
your teachers hand out

Behind every practice swing
is the quiet thought
that this town asks too much
from kids who still get grounded
for late curfews

They hand you textbooks
you reach for tools
nobody writes instructions
for the kind of night
you feel coming

Hands blister
knuckles tear
every practice hit
against a hanging tire
rings through your arms

You picture jaws
tentacles
claws
shapes that don’t belong on earth

In your mind
every swing lands
every strike buys one more day
of bikes and cartoons
and dumb crushes

In reality
you hope you never need
to test the weight of those nails
against anything warm

Binge Until the Blackout

Binge until the blackout
till my sight flickers
and the room goes soft and mean

Stuff my head
gut
heart
with anything that keeps me
from hearing that silent scream

Night starts quiet
just a snack
just one drink
just one hit
just one scroll through clips
that rot my brain into slime

Next thing I know
the room is tilting
wrappers on the floor
the clock stole ten hours
out of time

Stomach twisted
head ringing like a broken bell
hammered by a god
that loves to watch me choke

I tell myself I’ll stop tomorrow
while I suck cheese dust off my fingers
and hit replay on a video I hate

I binge movies
I binge people
I binge arguments I lost
years ago in my head
till I am sweating under the blankets
like a pig

Every craving hits at once
like a gang mugging me in an alley
each one screaming
that I should dig

So I give in
throw my hands up
and let them tear pieces off me
till I feel full and hollow
at the same time

Then stagger to the mirror
see the wreck they left behind
and pretend I do not know the crime

I do not do moderation
never learned that in my skin
it is nothing or everything
starve or drown in it again

You tell me to log off
eat less
breathe
“maybe go for a walk”
like a stroll is going to fix decades
of clawing at an empty plate

Like one salad and a jog
will wipe out the years
my brain spent pacing the cage
waiting for love
that came too late

Fuck that
I am not a self-help poster
I am a dumpster fire with feelings
and a credit card

I know there is better
I know there is healthy
I know I am supposed to want
that calm balanced state

But if I am honest
when the dark hits
and the panic claws
what I want
is something I can chew
swallow
crush
and throw

Something I can shove
into the screaming hole
and hear it go quiet
for a minute or two

Even if it kills me
it was what I could do

When I wake up on the floor
mouth dry
body pissed off
shame buzzing like flies
around my head

I will swear I am done
like I always do
right up until the hunger says
“feed me or be dead”

Bitter Harvest

This bitter harvest
stolen rows
sold-out futures
in silent votes

He wakes before the sky turns gray
boots on mud that never pays
rain or fire
he breaks his back
while suits in cities
count their stack

They talk of trade
of price and scale
but none of them
held a calf gone pale

His hands fed towns
they’ll never know
now banks foreclose
where wheat won’t grow

He’s got two kids
and one last loan
a hundred acres
but none he owns

The check comes late
the costs climb fast
they cheer their yield
while he won’t last

The seeds they sell
don’t sprout the same
each season rigged
a crooked frame

He signs his name
they change the rules
call it progress
then treat him cruel

This bitter harvest
fed by sweat
used him up
then called it debt

They pass him by
like dirt and stone
but he’s the root
they built it on

So drink your fill
from the ones you drain
the hands that bled
through flood and flame

And if they break
don’t ask them why
you turned your back
while they scraped the sky

Bleed On the Contract

Bleed on the contract
I want more than ink
on that dotted line
I want a slice of your future
your spirit
your spine

You come in late
shirt stuck to your spine
eyes ringed in red and coffee
fingers trembling
on the folder you grip

You need this deal like you need air
like the roof is already buckling
like a single “no”
will be too much

I watch you lay out your offer
papers neat
graphs straight
numbers tight
voice trying not to break

Then I pick up my pen
slash the rate in half
and ask how much of your body
you are willing to stake

You start to protest
talk about fairness
talk about cost
talk about the mouths
you are trying to feed

I slide one page
across the table
say “if you want this to live
here is what I need”

You read the clause
where failure means
surrendering assets
hours
rights you did not know
you had left to lose

I lean in
tap the signature line
tell you it is simple
sign or choose

Your pulse is loud in your neck
as you grip the pen like a knife
you know this is a cut
that will follow you
for the rest of your life

Hand shakes
pen slips
a red streak drops
where your signature should sit
clean and black

But I smile wide
slide the paper back
like a trophy
that tiny smear of life
a perfect little seal

Proof you bled
to keep this sinking wreck upright
proof I own
more than the deal

You will tell yourself
you had no choice
that monsters like me write the laws
that the world runs on this kind of cut

Maybe you are right
maybe this system was designed
for my teeth in your gut

Still
when you walk out of here
lighter in the pockets
and heavier in the chest
know I am the one who got fed
and you are the feast

Years from now
when you look back
on the day everything changed
and your veins started buzzing
with debt like white noise in a storm

You will remember that one drop
on the paper
and the shape of my grin
as you signed to conform

Blessed Are The Overthinkers

Blessed are the overthinkers
the ones who text “did that sound weird”
the second they hit send

The ones who stay up late
making sure nobody walks home alone
even when they call themselves
“too much” to be a friend

You worry you are annoying
that your check-ins are noise
that your care is a weight
people quietly resent

I am telling you straight
this broken world survives
on people like you
who notice the crack in the cement

You read that text three times
before you hit send
edited it down
from a full breakdown
to “hey, hope you are okay”

Sat there staring at the bubbles
heart in your throat
rehearsing three different reactions
and six dumb things you might say

You walk into a room
and map every exit
every expression
every shoulder twitch
in case the mood turns gray

You call it paranoia
I call it survival with extra steps
and a brain that can’t look away

You replay conversations from years ago
while you try to fall asleep
wondering if that joke crossed a line

You keep screenshots of compliments
you half believe
and a catalog of every mistake
pinned up like a crime sign

You apologize before you ask for anything
as if needing help is a felony
and your heart is facing a fine

You laugh too loud at your own spirals
call yourself dramatic
and miss the way your kindness
works overtime

You think nobody notices
the way you stay after the party to help clean
because you feel guilty
about taking up space

You think your value lives
in how small you can make your needs
how quietly you can hold everyone else
in place

You fire off a meme at two in the morning
just to say “I am awake too”
in case somebody else feels
like a walking bruise

You catch the tremor in a coworker’s joke
the empty look in a stranger’s eyes
while everyone else hits snooze

You show up with snacks
and chargers
and spare headphones
the oddball friend prepared
for the crisis nobody else knew

Then sit in the corner
convincing yourself you are a burden
while the whole room leans on you

You think your brain is broken
because it never shuts up
never lets you coast through a day
on autopilot and ease

Truth is you live on a frequency
that picks up signals
most people tune out
and yeah
it brings you to your knees

Still you keep listening
keep adjusting
keep catching friends mid-fall
like a reflex you can’t release

One day I hope your mind
gives you the same grace
you hand to strangers in line

That you will look back
on all the nights you saved somebody
with a dumb joke and a ride
and say “that was mine”

Until then
when you spiral about every word you said
hear this on repeat
like a song stuck in time

You are not a glitch
you are the early warning siren
in the climb

Next time you start a sentence
with “sorry I am so much”
take a breath
hold the phone tight

Replace it with
“I care a lot, you are welcome”
and know that freakish radar of yours
is half the world’s light

Blood On Mute

I am done being soft
when you keep drawing blood
on mute

Keep talking like I am furniture
and watch what happens
when I stand

You talk
I vanish
same damn pattern on repeat
like a glitchy loop
you never plan to fix

My words hit your shield
and slide down it
like rain off bulletproof bricks

Your face in lights
my work in drafts
every idea bleeding out in the margins
while you staple my spine
to your laughs

I hold the door
you walk through
and never turn around
then ask why I am so angry
when I finally make a sound

You say I am overreacting
you say I am taking it wrong
you say I should calm down
you never shut up long enough
to hear the goddamn song

I swallowed it
year after year
heart cramps
jaw locked
rage packed tight
behind a half-smile twitch

You hand my work to someone shinier
then praise them for the switch

You clap yourself for empathy
while stepping on my neck
call my pain “dramatic”
call my anger a wreck

I fix your mess
you take the credit
call it fate
you only remember my number
when you need someone else
to carry your weight

This is not a gentle protest
this is glass in the gears
of your act

This is every time you cut me off
coming back
as a sound you cannot control

You built your throne on my silence
now the floorboards crack and groan
every word you buried grows teeth
starts chewing through your phone

Blood-Drunk On Balance Sheets

I am blood-drunk on balance sheets
dizzy on the zeroes
stacking up like skulls

If greed has a face
it is not a cartoon villain in a cape
it is me in a suit
with a calm tone
in a boardroom seat

I watch numbers climb
like mercury in a glass tube
red bars screaming higher
every quarter

Profit margins widening
like a grin full of sharpened teeth
while factories cough out smoke
and human slaughter

You tell me about overtime
about fingers lost in machines
about backs broke under pallets
loaded too heavy to haul

I nod
raise your targets
tell you you are doing great
tell you this is the cost
of standing tall

Workers line up outside in the dark
eyes hollow
throats raw
from the air they breathe
inside my steel walls

They hold cardboard signs
and chant words about justice
punched lungs driving their calls

I watch from a tinted window
with a drink in my hand
amusement curling behind my molars
like a hidden blade

Every shout out there
is just proof I am getting paid

Every cut to safety
every shaved-off cent
feels like another bite of meat
I was sent
I keep chewing
through consent

You bring me reports of injuries
photos blurred
IDs redacted
but the stains come through

Hands caught
lungs scarred
legs crushed under loads
that would not have fallen
if I had funded one more brace
one more guard

I skim the summary
mark it “reviewed”
then flag the cost of fixing it
as “excess spend we can trim”

Go home and sleep on a mattress
paid for by the corners
I refused to cut

I tell myself
I did not swing the hammer
or push the pallet
or design the line

I just wrote the figures
that made it profitable
wrote the script for the grind

But when I read “fatality” in a memo
and feel curiosity before grief
I know greed did not just rent my mind
it stole the fucking switch

One day some jury will hold those reports
in their hands
and ask how I slept
while those figures bled off the page

They will not understand
how money can make you blind
to drink from that gauge

Blueprints for a House That Won’t Keep

I packed my history in a box
with the nails still stuck in the frame
wrote goodbye in the dust on the floor
tried to laugh
but it wasn’t the same

Pulled the dreams down from windows
folded them sharp so they’d fit
heard the floorboards creak slow
through the rooms
never saying a bit

I leave behind blueprints
for a house that won’t keep
broken glass in the sink
faded lines where we’d sleep

I walk away empty
with the ache in my hands
every brick I laid
crumbles into sand

Found a wish in the wall
where the paint never dried
hung my coat on regret
locked the door from outside

Stepped over memories
curled up by the mat
left every light burning
just my failure looking back

There’s no sense in the leaving
no mercy in the sound
just the sound of my footsteps
and the world spinning round

I step out into morning
and try not to look back
the house is still standing
but I know what it lacks

Body Count on My Bed Sheets

There’s a body count on my bed sheets
ghosts in the cotton
stains I can’t bleach out of my head

I don’t remember birthdays
favorite songs
I just remember
who was loud
and how they bled

If lust is a bullet
I am the empty shell
rattling on the floor
after the shot

I stopped learning names
a long time ago
started calling everybody
“babe” or “you”
just to keep the stories straight

They come through the door
in lipstick and liquor
eyes bright
thinking they are something new
some twist of fate

I line them up in my head
like receipts
like trophies I never dust
like blurred snapshots
of thighs and teeth

They leave in yesterday’s makeup
with that hollow sigh
thinking they got close
they never understand the grief

I fucked my way through friend groups
through bands
through offices
through people who swore
they hated folks like me

Give me one night and a locked room
and I will show you how fast
I can turn “I would never”
into “don’t stop”
on your knee

They call it charm
call it confidence
call it some compulsion
that drags bodies into my orbit
every weekend on cue

I call it a hole
I keep trying to fill
with sweat and moans and fingernails
that never fits you

I don’t need love
I need that rush
skin on skin
breath caught
heartbeat crushed
every time the high wears off
I’m already gone
in the hush

I’ve wrecked relationships
I wasn’t even in
turned stable couples
into screaming matches
over texts I sent at two a.m.

Pulled people out of marriages
quiet lives
just to prove I could make them bend

I tell myself I’m doing them a favor
freeing them from boredom
from routine
from whatever they’re too scared to break

Truth is
I want proof I can still make someone
risk everything
for one more shake

Some nights I lie there afterward
staring at the ceiling
while another body curls against me
soft and trying to catch breath

They whisper plans
talk about “next time”
ask what I’m looking for
while I’m mentally planning the text
that will ghost them to death

I’m not proud of this
I’m not some damned hero in my own mind
I know I’m a fucking mess

But the second they walk out
I feel that itch come back
already hunting
the next address

When it finally catches up
and someone snaps
or some disease calls my bluff
in a clinic’s fluorescent glare

They’ll say I did this to myself
they’ll be right
and I’ll still want someone there

Bones Beneath the Linoleum

Bones beneath the linoleum
grief stuck in the grout
a pain they’ll never get
so let them shut me out

I hold your memory
like a leash in my hand
missing you harder
than I ever planned

They say “it’s just a dog”
but the quiet feels heavy as lead
I still step over the empty spot
where you used to rest your head

I hear your tags jingle
in the hallway
when the heat kicks on
and catch myself reaching
to pet a ghost
that is already gone

I find your fur on my black coat
woven into the seams
waking up reaching for you
in the middle of my dreams

They tell me “get a new one”
like you were a broken toy
like I can just swap out the source
of my only real joy

Let them look away
let them judge
how I fall apart

They didn’t see the way
you guarded my heart

They don’t know
that a paw can hold more weight
than a thousand human hands
deciding my fate

Bones beneath the linoleum
you’re part of the floor

I’ll leave the light on
just in case
you scratch at the door

Braver When I Screw It Up

I am braver when I screw it up
when the song falls apart
and my voice goes rough
in the middle of a verse

When I drop the ball
forget the words
spill the drink
miss the bus
watch my plans derail
and call it a blessing
not a curse

Perfection never taught me half as much
as every glorious public crash
when I refused to give up

First time I walked up front
with a six-string I could barely tune
my hands shook so hard
the pick almost flew into the crowd

Voice scraped raw
heart pounding loud enough
to compete with the monitors
brain screaming “abort, abort”
way too loud

I hit a chord
that did not belong anywhere in the key
sang a line out of order
forgot the bridge
cursed under my breath into the mic

Waited for the shame avalanche
for the boos
for the laughter
for that old nightmare
of everyone seeing exactly
what a fraud looks like

Instead one drunk in the front row
whooped like I had just pulled off
some rock star stunt
clapped off beat
yelled “do it again”

Someone in the back raised their beer
and screamed the wrong lyrics
in solidarity
proving that perfection
isn’t the only way to win

I stumbled through the rest
found my footing
left sweating
mortified
wired like I had swallowed
a live wire whole

And in the alley after
shaking in the cold
I realized
I had done the thing I feared the most
and the sky did not crack or roll

Every time I screw it up in public
some secret part of me
grows teeth and spine

learns that humiliation is a shitty god
not worth worship or sacrifice
or all this time

I told someone I loved them too early once
words tumbling out over cheap coffee
on a morning that did not earn
that kind of confession

They froze
blinked
stuttered something about needing time
then ghosted me so hard
my phone felt like it had lost connection

For weeks I replayed it
felt my stomach drop
every time I remembered their face
that silence
the way I wanted to peel my own skin off
and hide

Then one night
a friend sobbed on my floor
about being too scared to speak
and I heard my own voice say
“tell them, at least you’ll know
you didn’t die inside”

This is for the text you wish you had not sent
the joke that bombed
the day you fell up front
and heard that awful sudden hush

For the job interview where you blanked
the date where your stomach growled
louder than your talk
the family dinner where your honesty
made everyone flush

The world keeps selling composure
like it is proof of worth
but I have seen more courage
in the kid who chokes and tries again
than in any smooth-talking ghost

I would rather be the fool
who fucks it up in full surround sound
than the quiet shadow
who never leaves the post

If you see me fall apart
mid-sentence
mid-song
mid-kiss
do not look away like it is a sin

That is just another little piece of fear dying
another scar that proves
I let life in

Break Your Halo With My Hands

I want to break your halo
with my hands
tear every compliment
off your skin

Watch the crowd freeze
as your perfect front caves in

You walk into the room
and the air changes
people straighten
voices lean toward you
like metal to a magnet in the floor

Every eye tracks your swagger
while I hug the wall
fists curling in my sleeves
till the nails leave crescents
in the skin they tore

You flash that easy grin
talk about “luck” and “hard work”
like those words were not carved
out of other folks’ backs

I stand behind you in every photograph
wanting to rip the shine off your face
like peeling letters off plaques

You got the breaks
the calls
the gig
the raise
the girl
the applause
the weight that always falls your way

I got the excuses
the “maybe next time”
the “you were close”
the slammed doors
and the stale taste of decay

You pat my shoulder
say I will get there too
say my time will come
if I keep grinding through the pain

I imagine that same shoulder snapping
under my hands
collarbone cracking
like dry wood in the rain

This is not jealousy
that wants your autograph
and a chance to sit near your throne

This is the urge to drag you
off your pedestal
and leave you in the road
alone

When you brag about your grind
I see the nights I carried your weight
and mine
while you slept through calls
and missed the dirt

You call it sacrifice
I call it theft wearing a suit
pretending it did not leave blood
on my shirt

You think I do not notice
how your stories leave me out
or turn me into a sidekick
in the corner of your rise

I picture grabbing your throat mid-sentence
and squeezing
until the lie dies

I will not do it
I know that
I will keep my fists in my pockets
and my rage in my teeth

But every time you praise your own myth
I count the bruises underneath

Some nights I dream I finally swing
knock you flat
take the mic
while the crowd gasps in fright

Then wake up in the same old room
grinding envy
on the edge of the night

When they write your story
in some glossy book
and leave me in footnotes
cold and bland

They will never know
how many times I pictured
breaking your halo
with my hands

Break

You thought rough meant ignore
you thought kink meant free pass
on harm

Here comes the line
here comes the exit alarm

When I say “get the fuck out”
that is not a lyric
that is the end of the charm

My safe word is “get the fuck out”
engraved on the welcome mat
under all the flirting
and the heat

Hidden in each warning I gave
when you brushed past boundaries
like they were optional
like they made the night complete

You want access to my body
learn the language of my no
my maybe
my yes
my feet

I am not sentimental
about shutting doors
on hands that never learned
how to stop

My safe word is “get the fuck out”
and that line sits ready
every time you forget
who’s on top

Breakable Things

I am done fixing breakable things
for people who drop me on purpose

Done being the spare part under the seat
while you shine up the worthless

You only see me when something breaks
pipe bursts
car dies
plans fall
then my phone lights up
like emergency glass

“Got a minute?”
“You around?”
I show up
patch it
hold it
build it back

You clap yourself for surviving
while I fade
into the noise in the hall

You forget my birthday
forget my name
remember my number
when you need someone to drag your shit
out of the fire

You love my spine
when yours folds like cheap wire

I sit quiet
while you preach about loyalty
to people who would never bleed for you

I watch you pour your love
into everyone else
while mine rusts in the queue

I hear the way you talk
when you think I am not there
disposable
handy
“good to have around”
never the one you bring to praise

I picture it now
your next disaster
without my grip on the frame

Screws loose
cables frayed
no quiet pair of hands
to swallow the blame

You will swear the world turned wicked
the second I walked away

Funny how fragile your life becomes
when the shadow finally leaves

No more last-minute rescues
no more bleeding my back
for your pride

If it shatters this time
let it
let the crash be your guide

Broken But Loud

Broken but we’re screaming loud
duct tape patches on the crowd
off-brand hope and cheap jokes
singing for the regular folks

Coffee cold upon the stand
bills are getting out of hand
phone is buzzing with the alarm
reflection showing all the harm

World throws bricks through window pane
driving me inside insane
speaker crackles
riff crawls out
removing every single doubt

Knees complain inside the joint
but dancing is the only point
socks are sliding on the tile
crumbs are caught inside the pile

Dishes stacking in the sink
judging me before I blink
flip them off with wooden spoon
howling at the afternoon

Cracks in walls and carpet stains
notices on fridge remains
singing backup for the lung
songs that have to get sung

Cat is watching from the sill
judging every single drill
sirens wail outside the glass
watching heavy hours pass

Stir the noodles in the steam
living in the dinner dream
raise the pot and claim the win
let the hunger start again

Nothing fixed and nothing paid
same old mess that we have made
but for a minute we stood tall
heckling the empty hall

One day knees will finally break
rent will take what it can take
but right now we crank the sound
knocking dust all over the ground

Stealing joy between the chores
dancing on the dirty floors
thieves in socks and ankle deep
making promises to keep

Leave the dishes for the morn
let the news look on in scorn
song is finished
you are too
standing up
and making do

Broken Promises From People Who Should’ve Known Better

You said forever
I swallowed the sound
believed your promises
could hold me down

I let your words settle
into my skin
never thought I’d end up
alone again

You made “forever” sound
like something I could use
but every promise you made
was the promise you’d refuse

I watched the warmth fade
from the light in your eyes
still taste every sorry
that covered your lies

If I ever trust again
I’ll keep my guard up high
I’ll measure actions
not the words that you let fly

Love’s not a promise
it’s just what’s behind
you taught me that
with every lie you could find

Don’t talk to me about loyalty
don’t call it fate
I’ll believe in nothing now
except the mess you made

Built from Bruises

We built this out of bruises
from the nights we went home broke
throats raw and raspy
from the screaming and the smoke

Stacked the failures high like speakers
to reach the heavy sky
singing with the stray dogs
while the cars go driving by

No silver spoons for us
just chipped teeth and the chord
ringing over factories
that we can’t afford

They told us keep it down
we made the hallway shake
laughter hitting walls
until the plaster starts to break

They handed out the flyers
the lines all drawn in straight
promising a future
if we just accept the wait

We looked at all the maps
with eyes already red
folded them to airplanes
and aimed at them instead

Security came running
chasing us outside
but those paper wings flew higher
than the places where they hide

Kids in the lot
with the instruments cheap and old
standing in the puddles
and shivering in cold

Sneakers full of mud
the hoodies soaking through
hearts wired together
by the nothing left to do

No money coming in
just plans on napkins drawn
stained with soda circles
and waiting for the dawn

We planted flags in asphalt
cracks upon the ground
swearing that this corner
would remember what we found

Scars upon the knees
from running from the light
jumping over fences
in the middle of the night

Every empty bar
every note that went away
carved out the shape
of who we are today

One friend quit the band
to keep the lights on overhead
another working shifts
that leave him feeling mostly dead

We keep a space in every song
for ghosts who wanted in
but couldn’t push the heavy weight
or take it on the chin

Their names are living
in the feedback and the rhythm there
turning all the grief
into a noise that tears the air

Kids inside the crowd
are mouthing lines like secret code
like every rhyme is carrying
the heavy of the load

When the lights cut out
and the venue clears the floor
when the morning job is waiting
at the grocery door

We carry just the sound
of one kid crying in the back
singing every word along
and keeping on the track

Not money or the fame
just proof we aren’t wrong
that someone heard the message
in the middle of the song

When they ask where it began
tell them of the wet concrete
hands that shook from coffee
and the lack of decent heat

Not from being scared
but from the voltage in the chest
hearts that never fit the mold
or passed the standard test

Bullet In My Pocket

Got a bullet in my pocket
riding next to my last dollar bill
little cold comfort saying
there’s always a way
to kill the chill

Maybe it’s for the monsters
maybe it’s for me
got a bullet in my pocket
I swear I’ll never fire
but I still keep the key

I walk past the liquor store window
catch my own reflection in the glass
trying to outrun the clock
until this day can pass

Keys and loose change rattling time
with the ticking in my head
and that piece of cold metal
resting quiet
where the fears have spread

Picked it up on a bad day
when the walls felt too damn tight
slid it down in my pocket
thinking maybe I’d sleep that night

Never bought the gun to go with it
just kept the spark on hold
like a secret I could bargain with
whenever life got bold

Some nights at the bus stop
when the rain cuts straight through bone
I feel it push that denim
like it’s asking
if I’m done being alone

I roll it with my fingers
feel the weight of choice and chance
like a door half-cracked in the hallway
of every messed-up circumstance

Seen too many headlines
sprawled across the grocery line
faces that look just like mine
staring out from under the sign

They probably had something waiting
in a drawer or on a shelf
one more little metal question
sitting there beside their self

I tell it “you’re my parachute”
it calls me its loaded gun
we argue in the dark
when all the daylight’s done

I say “you’re just a symbol”
it says “I’m more than that”
we both know
if I used it
there’d be no turning back

Morning hits like rent notices
and coffee gone sour and thin
I feel that little weight again
and tuck my shirt further in

Step out into traffic
and the sirens and the noise
thinking how much power hides
inside the quietest toys

One day I’ll throw it in the river
where the shopping carts all sleep
watch it drop without a ripple
into water dark and deep

Till then it rides beside me
one small forbidden prayer
like a promise I keep breaking
just by letting it be there

If I make it to the shoreline
and my hands still shake
I’ll let that tiny exit slip
where the river takes the ache

Walk home with lighter pockets
still bruised
still fucked
still free

No more bullet in my pocket
just a beat left inside of me

Buried In The Feed

I’m buried in the feed
under flashing ads
and polished lies
every chorus I’ve ever written
drowns while sponsored shit survives

I uploaded one more track
to that cold gray site
at three in the morning
watched the little progress bar crawl
like a slow-motion warning

Typed a careful description
tagged every mood and scene I could claim
hit submit
and felt that quiet punch
of knowing it all looks the same

Some label darling hits the front page
with a banner and a pre-roll smile
every playlist slot already rented out
for a long damn while

My song sinks down
like a stone in a well
no one remembers they dug
dressed in all its best heartbreak
for an audience of shoulders and shrugs

“Great news you’ve been added”
says the email
all bright and loud
turns out it’s some dead list
followed by a ghost town crowd

Ten bots on repeat
and a graph line flat as the street
but the platform sends confetti
while my rent drags nails
through concrete

The charts look like a stock exchange
run by kids who never sleep
they sell our souls as data points
then rent them back for cheap

I pour my lungs into a mic
till my ribs feel scraped and sore
then watch an auto-tuned jingle
get a billion plays and more

They say “just build a following”
like it’s bricks you stack with ease
as if time grows on the branches
of exhausted money trees

I’m working days that chew my spine
then nights that burn my throat
so some faceless engine can decide
if my voice gets a vote

There’s a kid with headphones on somewhere
scrolling past my sound
finger flicking through a gallery
where nothing’s ever found

I look at numbers on a dashboard
like they’re judge and jury both
single digits sneering
while the debt begins its growth

Some days I want to pull the plug
and let the silence win
other nights I write a better knife
and throw it back in

One day I might kill the upload
and sing straight into the room
no tracking link
no comment count
no pixelated bloom

Till then I keep feeding this monster
with songs it doesn’t need
hoping one rough truth slips through the teeth
of this impossible feed

Chainlink Uprising

This is a chainlink uprising
boots on backs
coming up from the dirt

Every “shut up and take it”
you ever spat
is carved in my shirt

You pressed my head through the fence
told me breathe it in
rust in my gums
while you cashed my hours
and called it fate

You wrote yourself hero
in every story where I hauled the weight
then laughed in my face
when I finally called your bull

You kicked my ribs with policy
and smiled when I thanked you for the bruise
told me “this is just how it works”
while you tightened every screw you could use

You stacked your ladder out of spines
and told us be grateful for the view
turned our backs into concrete
while you sold us as “family”
in every cheap promo

I watched you tear mouths off anyone
who dared spit the truth in the yard
you trained us to eat our rage
swallow our scars
sit down and call that hard

Now the ground rips open
where your pride once stood
chainlink shaking
steel in the blood
you fed us this

You liked me tired
liked me bent
liked me quiet
with a cracked front tooth

Loved my grind
while you lied about “earning it”
and hid from the proof

I scraped my hands raw
on your engines
beathed your dust
waited for a thank you
that never came

All I got were warnings and jokes
and the same old sneer
when I refused to play your act
or speak your blessed name

Now the payroll logs light up
like burning ledgers in the yard
faces and numbers screaming back “fraud”
while your mask hits tar and shard

We kick the gates
rip badges off
paint every hallway
with your brand of sin

Every camera you thought you owned
now records what you did within

You said we were replaceable parts
in your glorious grind

Look around, boss
your empire just grew a spine

Chains of Solitude

Verse 1
In the quiet fall of evening light
Where shadows mix and cold winds bite
Her pale face shines, a marble sight
Held in silence, locked up tight

[Chorus]
See how the silver fetters bind
Stopping her soul from flight, confined
Inside the corners of the mind
Where hidden truths are left behind

Verse 2
Her hair hangs wild like winter rain
Moving in waves of quiet pain
Her eyes are calm but show the stain
Of deep hurts that inside remain

Bridge
Inside the dark, she marks her space
Upon the skin of her pale face
Bound by the quiet she must chase
Trapped in the cold and empty place

Verse 3
Each breath tells of a story old
Her hands grip tight the iron cold
In chains, her broken life unfolds
Behind the bars that keep their hold

[Chorus]

Outro
She walks along the border line
Where wind and weeping intertwine
Her spirit lost, no stars to shine
Chained in this valley, out of time

Cheap Shoes, Bright Heart

Cheap shoes
bright heart
walking on the street
turning pavement
into something sweet

Bus stop is a chapel
in the rain
low rent living
dealing with the pain

Alarm is dead
the sun is in the eye
like a flashlight
searching for a lie

Phone is buzzing
off the plastic crate
screen is cracked
and sealing up the fate

Rent is waiting
in the metal box
lungs are wheezing
at the city blocks

But the ember in the ribs wakes up
demanding coffee
in the dirty cup

Dishes stacking
in a sculpture pile
sauce is dried
and been there for a while

Fridge light falls
on bread and nothing more
hot sauce standing guard
beside the door

Jeans are ripped
and showing off the knee
band shirt from a group
you’ll never see

Shoes are squeaking
worn down to the skin
laces tied
to let the day begin

Mirror shows a face
that’s getting old
tired stories
that have not been told

but underneath the circles
and the gray
a stubborn light
refuses to go away

Boss is talking buzzwords
on the line
while my brain is working
on a rhyme

Fluorescent light
is wrapping round the head
smell of toner
wishing I was dead

Doodling the chords
inside the note
music rising
in the heavy throat

Neighbor sees it
taps a rhythm back
two kids trapped
inside the office sack

Passing jokes
beneath the cubicle
making moments
that are beautiful

One day the body folds
into the bed
one day the bills are winning
in the head

But for now we splash
the puddle wide
singing badly
on the other side

Happiness might visit
with a slice
wearing ugly socks
and being nice

Night falls
back hurts
tomorrow’s on the way
beat is steady
at the end of day

Shoes beside the door
are ready there
heart is scribbling lyrics
in the air

Christmas Lights on Old Sheetrock

The house is older than anyone in it wants to admit, a sagging box of two-by-fours and regrets, pretending its bones are fine while the corners of the ceiling yellow and hairline cracks spider out from nail heads that never asked to hold up this much memory.

Old sheetrock breathes with every season, swelling in humidity, shrinking in winter, seams tape-lined and paint-smoothed, yet the scars still show through if you catch the walls in the wrong angle of afternoon light, that tired skin marked by furniture scuffs and kids’ handprints and one hole nobody talks about, patched with joint compound that never fully blended back in.

Someone once tried to modernize the living room, cheap paneling ripped away to reveal raw board, then white mud and primer, then one last hopeful coat of off-white that already looks like nicotine even though no one smokes, and over all of it runs that one long string of holiday lights that refuses to die.

Big-bulb cheapies from the hardware aisle, plastic shells scuffed and cloudy, colors a little off, red more like dried ketchup, green more like hospital scrubs, blue sinking toward bruised purple, still taped along the upper wall where the plaster meets the ceiling, drooping between thumbtacks like a tired smile that never quite reaches the corners.

They went up in winter and never fully came down, just got shoved higher, over the family photos and the crooked clock, pushed out of the way whenever the year changed, until they became part of the architecture, another line in the house’s sagging handwriting.

The tape dried and peeled, leaving gray ghosts on the paint, so someone stapled the wire here and there, harmless little metal teeth biting into soft gypsum and paper, and the wire pushed back over time, cutting slender grooves into the wall where it rubbed during storms and slammed doors.

Now the bulbs sit there like small, dull eyes along the perimeter of the room, watching everything, always ready for the ritual plug-in when snow threatens or commercials tell you it is officially festive, even if the calendar disagrees.

On the floor, the outlet plate has a hairline crack, screws rust-stained, and when the plug slides in, something behind the sheetrock hums, not loud enough to notice at first, just a sympathetic vibration in the hidden ribs of the house, as if the electricity has been waiting all year for this excuse to stretch.

At first the lights do what lights are supposed to do, stuttering on in uneven waves as power fills the line, half the string lagging, one bulb dead, another flickering like an anxious eye.

Kids cheer, adults pretend not to sniffle at the goofy charm, music plays from a TV too big for the chipped entertainment center, and for a few hours the cheap plastic jewels glow honest, casting colored halos on chipped picture frames and a couch with springs like bruised kneecaps.

Then the season passes, tree dragged out, ornaments crammed in boxes, cardboard angels smothered under tangles of ribbon and fake snow, and no one remembers to unplug the string every night.

The lights dim but never fully fade, waiting in the dark with that low hum behind the plaster ticking higher, current nibbling away at both wire coating and whatever thin barrier separates this living room from whatever else presses up against it on the other side.

You are the one who notices first that the pattern is wrong, that it is not just a loose connection or cheap overseas wiring, because boredom taught you to track tiny changes long before fear gave you better reasons.

One night the bulbs do not chase in their usual simple loop, red to green to blue to nothing and back again, but jump out of order in a rhythm that feels like a skipped heartbeat, your pulse hitching to match without asking permission.

There is a breath in the room that does not belong to anyone on the couch or the recliner or the floor, a pause between commercial and show where the sound drops out for a fraction of a second, and in that notch of silence the lights blink once, twice, then hold.

You say nothing, because how do you explain to people already drowning in bills and missing persons reports and half-eaten dinners that the decorations stapled to their old sheetrock have started answering questions no one asked out loud.

On the third night, when the sky outside is a lid of dirty cotton and sleet clicks at the window like fingernails that cannot find a way in, the bulbs wake up on their own.

The plug is halfway out of the socket, one prong bare, yet the string pulses soft glow along the wall, breathing in slow waves that move from one end of the living room to the other and back again, a tide of color that somehow never spills past the nail-holes holding the wire.

You stand there in socks and an oversized shirt, midnight snack forgotten in your hand, crumbs scattering to the floor like an offering, and watch as individual bulbs flare brighter in clusters, three red, then two blue, then a long swallow of green, pausing, repeating, never quite the same twice.

Some of them stay dark, not burned out but stubborn, a line of dead eyes in the middle of all that color, and you feel the pull of those gaps more than the glow, your brain filling in the missing pieces with dread, the pattern dragging your thoughts along like hooked barbs.

The old sheetrock behind the lights starts to tell its own story the longer you gaze, stains you never noticed before shaping themselves into continents and coastlines on a filthy map made of coffee spills and roof leaks and greasy child palms.

One water ring drifts under a cluster of flickering bulbs, forming a vague shape your mind insists is a hand, fingers spread, palm pressed outward as if pushing against the wall from inside.

Each time the red bulb above that stain ignites, the outline sharpens for a breath, then blurs when the light moves on, leaving you with the afterimage of someone trapped in primer and nail heads.

You reach out without meaning to, fingertips hovering a fraction from the bumpy paint, heat from the bulb tingling the hairs on your knuckles, the house holding its breath with you as you wait to see if anything pushes back from inside the plaster.

At dinner, conversation staggers under the weight of everything unsaid, empty chairs and shut doors and phone calls that bounce off dead lines.

Nobody wants to mention the basement files, the thick official silence wrapped around what happened under the fields and behind locked fences, so they talk about weather and grocery prices and the way the ball game on television dragged into overtime.

Halfway through an argument about nothing important, the lights on the wall crackle and flare, one long sweep from left to right, red to green to blue, then freeze in a configuration that makes no design sense, clusters of identical color in odd bunches, leaving long patches of dull glass untouched.

All table chatter stops, forks midair, and for the first time the adults look not at each other or their plates but at the old sheetrock border glowing like a tired halo over everything they have tried to protect, every lie they have told themselves about control.

It does not start as language, more as pressure, a sense that each burst of color is pushing on your chest in a different direction, tugging your thoughts through a maze only the house can see.

Yet the longer everyone watches, the more the string seems to respond, brightening in certain spots when certain names hang in the air, dimming at mention of others, bulbs dying for a full five seconds when someone says “never coming back” in a voice that sounded too grown and too tired to belong in this room.

The room gains a pulse, a second heartbeat layered under the human ones, each little glass orb a tiny, clumsy neuron firing along a wire nerve stapled into gypsum.

At one point the whole string flares to painful brightness when hope is spoken aloud, a raw, desperate hope, not the polite kind dressed in platitudes, and then snaps dark for a full breath, plunging the room into a void that smells like dust and old heating vents and a hint of something colder from behind the wall, before guttering back to life with one green bulb stubbornly refusing to relight.

You start testing it when no one else is around, low-voiced questions pitched toward the peeling corner where the wire dips the lowest.

You whisper “Are you there” and watch a single blue bulb twitch twice in the sea of steady color, then steady itself as if embarrassed by the reflex.

You speak into the sheetrock itself, forehead pressed to the cool uneven paint, asking about halls you barely remember, rooms that smelled like antiseptic and metal and fear masked as science, about sleep that had wires in it and doctors who treated your terror like data.

The bulbs answer with uneven bursts, sometimes trailing the edges of your questions, sometimes jumping ahead as if finishing a sentence you did not know you had started, and once, for one terrifying moment, every light in the middle of the string dies, leaving only the far corners glowing, like some invisible shape just took up space in the center of the living room wall.

The house changes around the string as weeks crawl by, as winter deepens and the town tries to ignore the way its own power grid jerks and flinches.

Paint peels in thin curls near each staple, rusty half-moons bleeding out from the metal points as if the wire itself is leeching something from the wall beyond simple charge.

Hairline cracks widen in graceful arcs under certain repeat flash patterns, the plaster bowing minutely, tiny ridges forming where once it was flat, as though the sheetrock is learning to move in response to the signal, flexing just enough to thrill and not enough to break.

On some nights, with every other lamp off and the television silent, the glow paints shadows that do not match any furniture in the room, tall, thin silhouettes bending forward along the ceiling, their heads clustered right where the most active bulbs pulse.

You could blame bad wiring, cheap bulbs, ancient walls, and everyone around you tries, some louder than others.

Yet none of those explanations account for the way the lights go dead every time anyone suggests packing up and leaving this town, only to snap back on in agitated staccato when the conversation drops off in nervous laughter.

No bad extension cord knows to flare red right above the photo of the person who has been missing, no bargain-bin string from the holiday aisle understands the schedule of a secret elevator under the soil outside city limits, syncing its own strange rhythm to engines you can only feel through your soles.

No ordinary circuit should sound like whispering when you press your ear against the wall between the studs, catching fragments of voices that lurch in and out of range like a radio between two conflicting stations.

One night the system blows, or pretends to, a sharp pop at the outlet making everyone flinch, the room dropping into darkness thick as felt.

You smell ozone and old dust, hear the heater cut off, the refrigerator groan, the entire house exhale the last of its stored hum as the neighborhood outside goes dark house by house, a rolling wave of outage visible through the front window.

But along the upper seam of the living room, on that scuffed, stained, patched sheetrock, the lights blossom one by one in the quiet, separate from the dead socket below.

No cords, no visible source, just raw glow, bright as fresh wounds, painting the tired paint and nail heads in violent color, turning the wall into an answer you did not know you had been asking for your entire terrified young life.

The bulbs pulse faster now, trading colors with deliberate intention, not random, not simple blink, shadows around them thickening like something pulled closer by each burst.

You feel the house tilt, not physically but morally, as if the structure has finally picked a side in a fight no one wanted to acknowledge, letting whatever crouches between its studs lean forward into the room under the cover of festive tradition.

In that moment, standing barefoot on wood that creaks in time with your racing pulse, you understand that the old sheetrock has always been more than cheap construction, it is a membrane, and the staples pinning the wire are nothing but crude surgical clamps on a wound that refuses to close.

Every color cycle is a heartbeat, every flicker a syllable from a throat that never evolved to use your language, and yet somehow learned enough of it to press meaning through glass and filament and frayed copper into your waiting, horrified chest.

You could cut the wire, tear down the string, rip out the staples, patch the holes, repaint the wall until no mark remains, and part of you aches to do it, to stuff this whole nightmare into the trash with broken ornaments and burnt-out fuses.

Yet each time your hand reaches toward the plug or the wire, the bulbs nearest your fingers flare just a little warm, not threatening, not exactly kind, but familiar, the way a scar feels when weather changes.

The house knows you, the thing behind the wall knows you, the pattern of your heartbeat woven into its little improvised code after months of back-and-forth.

And you know in your gut that turning it off will not silence whatever has decided this old sheetrock is its mouth, it will simply push it deeper for a while, press it into the foundations and ductwork until the next weak spot opens, maybe in a school hallway or a ditch behind the neighborhood or a lab wire humming in the dark.

So you leave the string up, like everyone does in stories that never quite end, but you stop calling them decorations and stop pretending the house is just a house.

You learn the sequence that means danger, the cluster that means quiet, the long run of steady blue that sits heavy in your stomach like grief and never quite translates.

You whisper to the wall when you cannot sleep, confessing things no diary deserves to hold, and the lights answer in their clumsy little bursts and pauses, a conversation between skin and plaster and something far beyond the snow-laced roof.

And every time the world outside shifts in ways you do not have words for, you feel the house shudder and watch the bulbs flare, a broken halo on old sheetrock telling you the same truth in a hundred messy variations.

Whatever is wrong here is bigger than this room, but it has chosen your walls to speak through, and as long as that wire runs along the cracked paint, you will never again mistake holiday lights for gentle decoration.

—

They never gave you a name that tasted like anything but metal, just two lines of ink on thin skin, the number stamped where a bracelet might go if anyone here cared enough for birthday gifts.

No soft syllables at the end of a hallway, no pet nickname shouted from a porch when the streetlights clicked on, only that pair of symbols recited by tired voices in white coats, clipped and efficient.

The number came first, before memories worth keeping, before friends, before the idea that a person is something more than a file folder and a stack of readings taped to a clipboard.

You learned early that the sound of your own breath inside the holding room was the only proof you existed anywhere outside the charts, that fog on the small windowpane meant you were not just a rumor floating between clipboards and power outlets.

The room was box-small, all angles softened by institutional beige and the padding of caution, floor hard enough to bruise but covered just enough to let reports use phrases like “safe” and “humane.”

Walls hummed with the mechanical heartbeat of distant generators, steady thrum that rocked you to sleep better than lullabies you only remember as a pressure in your chest.

In the corners, cameras blinked red dots, more patient than any guardian, unblinking eyes that saw every twitch, every flinch, every time you pressed your hands to your ears when the vents carried screams you weren’t supposed to hear.

You learned where the hidden speakers were, not through rebellion, but through the simple logic of an animal mapping its cage, tracking the little holes and grilles that always seemed hungrier when you cried.

They told you to sit, so you sat, small body folded into stillness on the cold metal chair, wires glued to your scalp, stickers on your chest, the world reduced to the buzz of fluorescent bars and the smell of disinfectant that never quite scraped away the deeper scent of fear.

They slid photographs across the table, faces you did not know, objects you had never owned, rooms that existed somewhere beyond this concrete belly, and asked what do you see, what comes to you, what moves in your mind when you look.

Sometimes nothing came and the room stayed honest, just four walls and humming lights, the men with pens disappointed but polite.

Other days the air sharpened around you, edges cutting into your focus, and pictures tilted, shadows lengthened, the metal table trembled as a storm gathered behind your eyes, a storm no forecast could brace for.

Things started small, the way earthquakes do down where rock grinds on rock, far beneath anyone’s feet.

A pencil rolling toward the edge of the table stopped just short of the fall when you gazed at it too hard and wished it would listen.

Water in a glass shook tiny rings at the surface when your panic climbed high enough to scrape the ceiling.

The men wrote in their notebooks, hands careful, excitement pressed down under professional caution, while you sat there with your ribs buzzing like a hive, terrified of the glass that now knew your mood.

The first time everything broke, they called it an incident in their paperwork, but the room remembers it as the moment you realized the world could feel your anger.

A door that never gave an inch under the weight of grown men jumped on its hinges under the force of a single thought driven too far.

Metal screamed, glass spidered into a thousand deadly patterns, and the lights overhead popped one by one, showering plastic dust and darkness in equal measure.

You were left blinking through the floating glitter of ruined fixtures, chest heaving, ears ringing with more than alarms, while figures behind the shatter-proof window scrambled, voices sharp against the siren howl.

Pain became the cost of every miracle they demanded.

Head splitting as if the skull wanted to peel back and let the storm escape into the ceiling.

Nose dripping red onto gowns and tile, the smear of it wiped away by gloved hands that treated your blood like spilled reagent instead of a child’s warning sign.

They called your suffering feedback, called it an expected side effect, and every time you screamed through clenched teeth, some part of their faces brightened, their eyes reflecting not your agony but the numbers it promised on their charts.

Some nights, after the last test ended and locks slid into place along the corridor, you curled against the cold wall, hospital blanket bunched around your knees.

On the other side of the concrete, air ducts rattled with sounds that had nothing to do with climate control, whispers ridden on recycled oxygen, half-sobs, half-laughter, the fragile noises of others like you who never learned their own birth names.

You traced your number over and over on your skin, fingertip following the lines until they burned, trying to imagine letters there instead, a soft curve of a nickname, a messy scribble drawn by someone who loved you enough to be clumsy.

No matter how hard you pictured it, the ink stayed a brand, clean and sharp, a reminder that your first language was control and containment.

Then the world above started leaking into the cracks in your schedule, little smuggled glimpses of normal that should have meant nothing and somehow meant everything.

A glimpse of commercials on a forgotten television wheeled past, bright colors and toy jingles bleeding under a news anchor’s mouth silently forming the word “missing.”

A distant memory of a roof that was not reinforced concrete, sky that went on beyond fluorescent rectangles, clouds shaped like animals instead of chemical plumes.

Voices outside the fence, kids’ laughter, bike tires on gravel, so faint through layers of earth and steel that most of the staff never registered them, yet your skull buzzed with each sound like a tuning fork struck by the idea of another life.

The first time you saw real snow through a narrow, unwatched window, the world went quiet inside you.

Flakes drifted down past the security glass, each one a brief, intricate insult to the squared-off geometry of the place that tried to own you.

You pressed your palm to the cold, surface slick with your breath fogging, and a flake landed exactly where your hand rested, melting a shape into the fog that looked nothing like your number.

A guard barked your designation down the hall and the moment snapped, but the echo of it lodged behind your eyes, a memory not of pain or test results but of white falling free for no reason except existing.

They thought they owned every variable inside you, yet the outside kept bleeding through in stolen snatches.

Posters of products you never touched, pictures of families you never met, sitcom laugh tracks muffled behind a staff room door.

You learned the rhythms of all that, soaked it up like water into cracked stone, and one day realized you were no longer just the sum of their experiments.

You were rage and hunger and a collection of ghost-images: kids huddled around a board covered in monsters, a diner sign buzzing late at night, a living room where lights along old sheetrock blinked messages no manual would decode.

The world beyond the fences turned out to be broken too, yet broken in ways that made sense.

People made mistakes, hurt each other, lied, yet they did it with faces mostly uncovered and names sewn onto uniforms.

They argued in supermarket aisles and hugged in parking lots and yelled at televisions.

Nothing like the quiet cruelty of a needle pushed a little too deep or a command repeated until compliance became muscle memory.

You stepped into that mess with shaved scalp, hospital gown, feet raw from concrete, eyes full of things no backyard should have to contain.

Kids on bikes stared at you like a ghost wandered into their campaign, yet still reached out a hand, offered stolen fries and too-big T-shirts.

They spoke to you in words built from pop songs and comic books, none of it in the clinical language you grew up absorbing through the vents.

And for the first time the number on your wrist felt less like a cage and more like a question: who were all the other numbers, and what did the world take from them before anyone bothered to ask if they wanted to be saved.

Power stayed with you, lodged behind your eyes, coiled in your veins, answering whenever the universe twisted wrong around someone you cared about.

Glass still shook when you got cornered, locks still jumped when terror surged hard enough, men with guns still learned too late that a small kid can be the heaviest thing in the room.

Every use had a cost, head pounding, blood falling, body reminding you that nobody gets to move the furniture of reality around without paying rent in flesh.

Yet now the choice came from you, not orders barked through speakers, and the difference sat huge in your chest, a painful, shining weight.

On quiet nights, when sirens slept and the sky above the little town actually showed stars instead of just sodium flare, you listened for the old hum under your skin.

It never left, just shifted from leash to spine, the electricity that once tore rooms apart now shivering in your fingertips as you traced socket plates and doorframes and found none of them interesting enough to bend.

Sometimes you sat in someone’s living room and watched cheap colored lights flicker along cracked walls, wires biting into drywall above couches that smelled like popcorn and sweat.

Every blink reminded you of cables in ceilings and needles in arms and the way fear teaches everything to listen, right down to the studs.

Yet this time the worst thing behind the wall was old insulation and a mouse nest, and the only eyes on you belonged to friends who argued over controllers and laughed when you stole their last slice of pizza without touching the box.

You still wake sometimes with the taste of antiseptic in your throat, ears full of the old alarms, the clipped syllables of your number thrown around like a password.

You still feel the pull when something in this town shifts the wrong way, when a shadow moves against gravity or a power line sings a chord nobody else can hear.

You still know that the thing inside you is not simple, not safe, not domesticated by dinners and bike rides and half-finished homework.

Yet you are more than the label burned into your arm by a place that mistook survival for agreement, more than the readings on their charts and the cracks in their observation glass.

There will always be rooms somewhere with no windows, doors that only open from one side, clipboards poised over fresh pages.

There will always be someone who sees kids and thinks variables, who hears fear and thinks data, who treats numbers as shields big enough to hide behind when bodies fall.

You carry that knowledge the way a scar carries heat in a storm, throbbing when conditions match the old injury.

But you also carry ten fingers that can lace through someone else’s when the dark gets loud, ten knuckles that can mark a face that tries to drag you back to that underground, ten points of contact with a world that isn’t coded in fluorescent flicker.

The number will stay on your skin as long as your skin lasts, a tattoo you never asked for, a record of every room that tried to own your breath.

People in this town might whisper stories about you, put you in their own made-up legends, the quiet kid with impossible eyes, the one who walked out of a place no one could find on a map.

They will never know the full count: how many tests, how many screams in the vents, how many times you held back the storm to keep from turning every wall into shrapnel.

They will only see the slim outline of a kid standing on a porch or at the edge of a culvert, head tilted as if listening to something no one else can hear.

Maybe one day you’ll choose a name that fits in your mouth like warm bread instead of rust, a word nobody assigned, one you stole fair and square from a song or a comic panel or the mouth of someone who looked at you and saw more than a subject line.

Until that day, the number works as a reminder, not of their power but of your endurance, eleven as a tally mark stretched beyond the neat ten everyone expects.

One extra line scratched across the margin of their careful calculations, proof that their math forgot to factor in the part of a child that fights harder in the face of cages than any machine they ever built.

You trace it once more before sleep, fingertip following the ink like a slow promise.

Not theirs this time, not binding you to tests and cuffs and humming walls.

Your own private vow that no more kids get carved down into digits without hearing, at least once, from someone who survived it, that a human being has more syllables than any number they stamp on a wristband.

Christmas Wires Speak In Morse

Verse 1
In a cramped living room that smells like dust and detergent, a plastic tree leans under cheap tinsel and tangled wire
Multi-color bulbs wink on and off in a pattern that doesn’t match the factory box
Someone set them to blink and walk away, yet they keep rearranging their rhythm
The couch sags, the TV mutters low, and that string on the wall starts spelling something no carol ever tried to sing

Verse 2
At first it feels like coincidence, the way certain bulbs flare when certain questions hang in the air
You laugh, tap the wall, tell a joke to nobody, and the green ones answer in sharp staccato flashes
Then names come up in conversation, real worry in the voice, and the red bulbs burn bright, hold, fade with a little afterimage burned into your eyes
Breath fogs slightly in the spot below that line of lights, even though the heater clicks steady and strong

Pre-Chorus
Household junk becomes holy tech when grief and terror lean on it
Cheap copper wire, plastic casings, a wall socket that never asked to be an oracle

[Chorus]
Wires speak in morse on chipped paint and nail holes
Every blink a syllable, every pause a held breath
You ask the dark for answers and the hardware store decorations flicker reply in broken code
Nothing about this is sane, yet walking away would hurt worse

Bridge
Neighbors drive past, see the glow through curtains, call it festive, maybe a little tacky
Only those in the room feel the hook in their chest when a certain bulb refuses to shine for a full minute
Finger traces over every bulb like beads, tapping, counting, begging the pattern to mean hope instead of warning
On the other side of plaster and insulation, something listens through wood studs and wiring, leaning closer every time the cord gets warm

[Chorus]

Coffee Steam and City Light

If love is more than scripts
and telling lies
it lives right here
beneath the city skies

In coffee steam
and streetlamp yellow beams
drooling on the sleeve
inside the dreams

You fell asleep
while the movie played on
city light cutting through the blind
till dawn

Hand open on my leg
fingers slack
chipped nails
from the heavy daily rack

Siren draws a crooked line
on the street
motorcycle coughing
in the summer heat

Kettle rattling soft
upon the burner ring
matching how your breathing
starts to sing

Couch is too small
springs fighting the spine
cat stole the blanket
crossing the line

Socks are mismatched
striping on the black
toes tucked in tight
against the slack

Mugs leaning close
rims touch the side
coffee rings on wood
where we reside

Music humming low
inside the room
chasing out the shadows
and the gloom

Built from leftovers
and missing parts
tempers flaring
when the panic starts

but here the ghosts sit down
upon the rug
bored by how we give
a little shrug

Tomorrow you will curse
the morning bell
trip on boots
and enter into hell

I will sweat the deadline
and the rhyme
chasing melodies
and losing time

Dragging heavy feet
into the door
carrying the noise
and wanting more

but seeing you face down
upon the bed
fixes all the noise
inside the head

One day the couch
will finally break a spring
fabric giving up
on everything

But this will stick
like prints upon the glass
sleeping while the heavy hours pass

You snore a little
soft and stupid sound
I laugh into the hair
that is unbound

Sun will drag us up
and start the day
but for now the weight
is here to stay

Cold Fries, Warm Engine

Cold fries
warm engine
full tank
empty soul
riding for a tip
that barely plugs a hole

App takes the first bite
taxes take what’s left
I’m chasing other people’s dinner
through the edges of their wealth

Phone buzz hits my pocket
another order on the map
spin the keys
start the rattle
chase that tiny little circle

Restaurant line around the corner
staff half-dead on their feet
clock ticking on the pickup
while the ice melts in the seat

The order on the screen
no face
just an address and a gate
special notes in all caps
screaming “Do not be late”

I’m parked in the fire lane
hazards blinking in the rain
breathing in fried air
and secondhand pain

Hand off greasy paper bags
to a doorway with no eyes
“Leave it at the door”
like they’re allergic to goodbyes

Door opens once I’m walking
hand grabs the food and slams
notification dings a tip
I can count on just my thumbs

App pings “Great job, keep going”
like an arcade machine
stars and streaks and badges
while my gas eats through the pain

Tires bald from all this grinding
brakes soft under my shoe
but that weekly statement swears
I made a fortune I never knew

See them in their windows
glowing screens and wine
I’m just a shadow on the sidewalk
running out of time

Map keeps redrawing my night
with arrows and turns
every mile I drive
is one more hour that burns

Bathroom break at a gas station
sink coughs rusty spit
I wash off the fryer smell
and get right back in it

Phone at ten percent
charger cord held together with tape
hope rides with the signal
waiting for an escape

Final order near midnight
long stairs
busted light
climb through stale hallway air
to a door that feels not right

No tip
no thanks
just silence
and a flick of some lock

Walk back down the stairwell
punch-drunk off the clock

Kill the app
kill the engine
sit quiet in the dark
steering wheel under my forehead
keys biting my palm like a mark

Tomorrow I’ll light it back up
for another hungry town
tonight I’m just breathing
trying not to break down

Collateral Shrug

Collateral shrug
whole lives dangling
from my lazy grip

If I let go and they fall
all they get from me
is a lip split with one word
“rip”

Boss sends another message
“need that project or payroll dies
clients walk
lights shut down”
I glance at it
toss the phone on the table
let the fan spin lazily
letting me drown

Whole crew hanging on a file
I could finish in an hour
if I had even half a spark

Stream another video
pick at a scab
let the office flicker
in the dark

Lover stands in the kitchen
plates smashed
saying she cannot keep carrying
this dead weight shell

List of my sins on the counter
all the times I checked out
while she tried to drag us
out of hell

I nod along
say “yeah, you are right”
make no move to step forward
or hold on

Watch her pack
slam doors
spin tires
gone

People keep telling me
“your choices hurt others”
like that is news
I stopped trying to hold the world together
the day I realized
it had nothing left for me to lose

Friends form a band
beg me to turn up
say my riffs could save the set
and their shot

Night comes
I look at the ticket on the counter
roll over
let the chance rot

Later they text a blow-by-blow
of how it tanked
blame themselves
blame fate
blame the rain

I type “damn, that sucks”
while a small dead corner of me
feels no shame
no pain

This started as burnout
nerves fried
brain fried
body running on fumes and regret

Over time that numbness hardened
turned into armor
turned into a bet

Somebody cares about this
more than me
someone will step in

If nobody does
guess it was meant
for the bin

One day the crash will land
on my skull instead of theirs
and snap my spine
like a dried-out twig

Till that day
I move slow
watch the dominos fall
never lift a rig

Come Over, I’m Not Okay And I’m Out Of Clean Spoons

I text you from the couch
with one thumb
screen too bright for my headache
dishes stacked like a wall in the sink
that I pretend I cannot see

Write and erase three versions
of “hey, I am not doing great”
before settling on
“come over, I am not okay
and I am out of clean spoons”

That is it
that is me

The floor is a graveyard of laundry
the trash can is full
my brain has been humming
the same ugly chorus
since three in the morning

I am not dying
I am just stuck in that glue
where brushing my teeth
feels like climbing a wet wall
with no warning

You turn up without asking for details
hoodie thrown on over pajamas
hair a mess
shoes untied
tapping on the door
like it might break

Holding grocery store sushi
cheap cookies
and two bottled drinks
saying “I did not know what you needed
so I brought choices for the ache”

You take one look around
clock the chaos
the smell of takeout
the half-finished tasks
that stare like open mouths

Then you grin and say
“alright, you get the couch
I get the chair
tonight we are doing the bare minimum
and getting out”

You do not tell me to try harder
or go for a walk
or write three things I am grateful for

You just sit down
kick off your shoes
put your feet under my leg
and say “fuck, today hit hard, huh”

You treat my empty tank like weather
not a moral failure
not a reason to pull back

We eat straight from plastic trays
sauce dripping
both of us staring
at the muted movie on the screen
like we care about the plot

You let me rant
about nothing and everything
from the message I did not answer
to the phone call I dodged
to the way my own heartbeat
feels like a shot

You do not jump in with wisdom
you just nod
throw in the occasional
“that is bullshit”
or “yeah, I hate that too”

Every little curse from you
lands like a blanket
on the parts of me
that feel like bad news

At some point you stand up
stretch
wander into the kitchen
and run hot water without asking

Wash exactly four plates
three forks
two cups
humming off-key
not judging

Come back smelling like dish soap
and steam
flop down again

and we both know
that tiny dent in the chaos
is how much it matters
that you did something
instead of just watching

One day I will be the one driving over
mid meltdown on your side
arms full of junk food
and clean mugs
and the patience you taught

I will kick your trash can with my heel
mutter “this place is a disaster”
with a smile
and mean every bit of kindness
in that thought

Until then
when my energy disappears
like loose change in a couch cushion
I never find

thank every tired star
that you read that short dumb text
as the red flare
from my mind

Concrete Halo

I wear a concrete halo
cracked and gray
from hitting on the floor
and looking away

Streetlamps smear a yellow bruise
on concrete
trucks howling
underneath the feet

Smoke mixing with the diesel exhaust
counting up the hours
that I lost

Lighter thumb is scarred
from heat and skin
where the trouble
and the burn begin

They told me to be calm
and treat the rage
like a dog you lock
inside a pen

But my chest is full of nails
and broken parts
heavy beating
of the mechanical hearts

Guidance office smelled of coffee stale
handing me the plan
intended to fail

Bullet points of potential in the lap
while my ears were filling
with the snap

Knuckles aching from the locker door
looking at the patterns
on the floor

Apologies tasting just like chalk
listening to the teachers
talk and talk

Watching the clock
and thinking of the fight
learning how to bite back
in the night

A hum starting deep
behind the teeth
from swallowing the scream
and the grief

Pillars carry paint
like ancient text
names of all the kids
who might be next

Scrubbed away
but shining in the light
ghosts upon the rebar
in the night

Hand upon the grit
and on the stone
feeling all the battles
I have known

Standing in the noise
with the silent crew
the ones the city chewed
and never knew

No angel wings
just leather and the rain
heavy with the smoke
and with the stain

Boots with blown-out seams
and stubborn beat
refusing to keep time
with the street

One day the back will fold
and spine will crack
tired of the weight
upon the rack

But I will hear the bridge
inside the bone
where the late-night plans
were overgrown

I won’t thank the pain
for what it did
or the damage that I kept
and hid

But I know the spine
is straight and tall
because I stood up
after every fall

City keeps on grinding
in the cold
nothing fixed
by stories I have told

Climbing down
with shoulders hanging low
broken halo
is the one I know

Concrete Hunger

Concrete hunger
never full
takes the wild
leaves it dull

They paved the creek
where foxes ran
bulldozed nests
for a parking plan

Stripped the trees
called it “new growth”
drove steel through lungs
that fed us both

Skyscrapers spread
like a rising tide
while deer get crushed
on the county side

The asphalt warms
where roots once cooled
now shadows creep
behind the school

A fox in trash
a hawk in wires
coyote howls
behind barbed tires

We call it blight
we call it “stray”
but they were here
before our way

No treaty signed
no battle won
just lights that burn out
every sun

We didn’t fight
we just erased
now nature rots
in real estate

We choke the green
then wonder why
the forest dies
behind our sky

Just count the cracks
and what they cost
every beam’s a kingdom lost

And when the last wild sound is gone
we built a tomb
to stand upon

Confetti Out Of Fuckups

We make confetti out of fuckups
throw that shit into the sun
let the wind take all our bad calls
all our weird stumbles
every half-finished run

If the neighbors see us dancing
in our ruins
let them shake their heads and stare

I used to keep a secret graveyard
in my head
where every wrong move
every late reply
every drunk text
lived like a ghost that would not quit

All the missed chances
bad haircuts
awkward laughs
the nights I cried in public
and pretended it was allergies
all stacked like shit

Then one day I hit the same old wall
so hard I slid down laughing
thinking if my life
is going to keep exploding
in slow motion like this

I might as well sweep up
all the sharp little pieces
throw them in the air
and call it a goddamn
glitter-bomb kiss

Every breakup that ended
with “you’re too much”
every job I lost
for not smiling
in the right shade of beige

Every project I started
at three in the morning
high on hope and caffeine
then abandoned halfway
through the page

I stitched them into banners
hung them in my mental ceiling
like trophies from a war
I was losing to the floor

If I tripped that many times
and still walked here
maybe falling on my face
is how I learn
what I’m here for

They told me “clean it up
straighten out
make your failures small and neat”

But I was born with marching band heat
in my chest
and a need to drag my mess
out onto the street

There’s the time I quit too soon
the time I stayed too long
the party where I sang off-key heartbreak
into a stranger’s beer

The day I snapped at someone I loved
came back shaking
with apologies and ugly tears

The tattoo that did not age well
the haircut that made me look
like a villain in a low-budget flick

All those moments used to haunt me
now they’re part of the fireworks
when the plot gets thick

If you never screw it up
never take the chance
that leaves you red and raw and wrong
you might stay neat and tidy
but you’ll never know the taste
of a misstep turning into a better song

Bring your “should have known better”
bring your “I can’t believe I said that out loud”
bring your chilly little moments
that still wake you up sweating
too ashamed to tell the crowd

We will tear them into strips
and toss them high
till they’re just bright paper in the sky

Then laugh so hard
the old shame cracks
and falls away
like paint that finally peeled dry

If the story falls apart again
we’ll rip the pages
throw them too

Confetti made from every wrong step
still looks beautiful
on you

Consent To Ruin

This is consent to ruin
you say “do it”
and I hear “burn it down”

I put my hands on you
and feel entire futures drown

You walk up to my door
with your hair still wet
from someone else’s shower
jacket half-zipped
mascara smeared
like you fought your way out
of good intentions
and lost on purpose

You say you “shouldn’t be here”
say it with a smirk
that tells the truth
better than your words ever do
hips already angling
for the worst of us

I step aside
without asking questions
like this is a fire drill
we’ve rehearsed too many nights to count

Everything I swore I’d never do again
is already climbing out of my pulse
in a hungry amount

You throw your phone on the counter
like a bomb you’ve decided to ignore
silence buzzing through the kitchen
like white noise in your veins

Tell me he’s been good lately
tell me that’s the problem
you’re allergic to stable
addicted to wreckage
wired for stains

I laugh because I get it
because I’d rather feel my life crack open
than go another month sleepwalking
in a house that looks fine on paper

We’re the kind of people
you don’t leave alone together
if you want anything near you
to stay safer

We are not confused
we know exactly what this is
two consenting adults
signing a blood contract
with one long kiss

Shirt hits the floor like a verdict
you climb into my lap
and I can taste every broken promise
in your breath

You drag your nails down my throat
like you’re tracing vows
you’re about to lie to
eyes sharp with that
“fuck it, let it be death”

I could stop this
could say “go home”
could pretend I care more
about the people whose lives
we keep setting on fire
than the way your teeth feel
on my skin

Instead I grab your hips
like handlebars on a runaway train
and tell you to sin

We’re not victims
we’re volunteers
trading anniversaries and trust and sleep
for a few goddamn dirty years

You whisper “we’re terrible”
against my neck
laugh when I answer
“yeah, but we do terrible well”

Truth is
I don’t know who I am
when I’m not destroying something with you
I don’t trust myself
in any other spell

We both keep a list
in the back of our heads
of everything we’re losing
each time we reunite

But the second we’re skin to skin
I’d sell that whole list cheap
just to feel you once more

When everything finally breaks
marriages
stories
bodies
all of it
and people ask
what the hell we were thinking
while we tore our worlds in half

We’ll look at each other
in the wreckage
still wanting
still knowing
the answer is simple as shit
we liked the way we kissed

Cornfield Concrete

[Chorus]
Cornfield concrete, buried mouth with metal teeth
Down below, men in clean coats and rubber soles write prayers in numbers and needles
Up above, kids swap rumors and dares, keep throwing rocks toward a patch of earth that sounds hollow
Everyone knows something’s built under the crops, nobody says it out loud in daylight

Verse 1
Trucks roll past endless rows of stalks, tall enough to swallow kids, quiet enough to hide a thousand secrets
Every horror story in town starts or ends out here, dirt roads, moonlight, something moving between the plants
On the surface it’s just farmland and scarecrows and pesticide tanks
Underneath, cables crawl like buried snakes, thin veins feeding a slab of concrete that never shows up on county records

Verse 2
Vent grates hide under weeds, coughing out air with the taste of bleach and burnt electronics
At night, faint glows seep between the stalks in colors no small town should own
Helicopters sometimes drift overhead, lights off, blades clipped close to silence
Animals give the place wide berth, paths curving away long before paws or hooves reach the unseen border

Pre-Chorus
Stories whisper about storm cellars and bomb shelters
No one mentions the low mechanical heartbeat you can feel when you kneel and press your hand to the soil

[Chorus]

Bridge
Lightning strikes farther out, never quite over that one patch, as if clouds understand the contract
Tractor lights dim a little every time they pass close, engines coughing in protest
Once in a long while, a lift door opens under the stars and chews a person down into the dark
They come back changed or not at all, and the wind through the corn sings louder that year

[Chorus]

Couchbound Cadaver

I am a couchbound cadaver
breathing just enough
to keep the rent due

Half-rotten routines
and half-finished flicks
that is my view

Sun burns through the blinds
dust floating like a slow fog
in a room that smells
like old sweat and stale chips

I am fused to this couch
remote welded to my palm
tongue glued to the roof of my mouth
dead words on my lips

Phone buzzes
“you coming?”
“you okay?”
“you alive?”
from people who would not know
what to do with me
if I said yes

I look at the screen
let the notifications fade
into that same gray fog
with all the rest

I used to fight to be seen
now the thought of leaving
this dent in the cushion
feels like a war
I cannot start

Every errand
every shower
every text back
is a boss fight with no loot drop
just another drain
on a cracked heart

I watch my life scroll past
in other people’s photos
while my own reflection looks
like it is pressed against glass
from the wrong side

It would probably take one step
to break that spell
but my legs feel
like they already died

You call it laziness
from your treadmill throne
you have no idea how heavy it is
just to pick up this phone

Dishes crust over in the sink
like fossils
clothes stack up in a corner
like a failed mountain range
of cotton and regret

Every “I will do it later”
stacks into a wall
I cannot see over
but I still keep building it

Because the choice is between
hating myself for not moving
and hating myself while I move
for people who never turn up
when I break

So I pick the silence
that lets my body rest
even if it feels
like a mistake

This is not a cry for help
I would not answer the door
it is a confession
from the floor

That sometimes
the only victory I have left
in this skin
is refusing to run
anymore

If one day the couch is empty
and the imprint fades
from the cushion where I lay

Maybe that means I finally moved
or maybe I just
faded away

Countdown In Red

Countdown in red
on the inside of my skull
numbers dropping
while I look straight through your grin

If I hit zero
I am dragging all your secrets
into floodlights
let the crowd see every stain
on your skin

I am done playing martyr
while you dance on my wreck
if I burn
your history snaps at the neck

You turned my life into a punchline
bragged how I kept forgiving you
no matter how deep you drove the knife

Told everyone I was “ride or die”
confusing endurance
with my life

You never stopped to think
what happens when the quiet one
decides they’ll take their fill

Never stopped to think
what happens when the quiet one
decides to blow up the hill

I started stacking exit plans
with truth baked into every step
saved files
printed screenshots
scraped every smug little boast you kept

You walked right past the warning signs
laughed at the way my eyes
went dry and flat

Called it a phase
called it fatigue
never asked what I was doing
with that

Every little sin you shrugged off
sits ticking behind my eyes
you taught me that you never listen
till something finally dies

I do not need a weapon you can touch
my ammo is all the truth
you begged me not to share
when you sobbed in my lap
at three in the morning

Every confession you poured into my shirt
is a lit match now
each detail in sharp focus
no more gentle softening

You told me I would never have the guts
that I could not live with myself
if I ruined you
that I would fold and cry

Joke is on you
I already died in slow circles
under your heel
what walks around now
is ready to fry

This is not a threat for sympathy
not a plea for you to beg
or change your ways

This is a report of weather
storm already here
sirens wailing through the haze

You loved to boast
that nothing could touch you
that you had dirt on everyone
that you stood above the flood

Check the mirror now
and count the seconds
every drop around your boots
is my rage
turning to mud

Counting Pills, Counting Hours

I’m counting pills
and counting hours
terrified of both
running out

Measuring the day
in aches and limits
in whispers
and in doubt

Alarm goes off before the sunrise
bones already stabbing
like they’re late

Back locked up
like rusted hinges
that never quite cooperate

I roll out of that cheap mattress
in three careful ugly moves
every step a small negotiation
with a body that no longer proves

Orange bottle on the counter
like a tiny plastic god of pain
label all in capital letters
warning me
what’s left of my reign

Two pills for the morning
maybe one at lunch
if I don’t break
doctor says “stretch it if you can”
like I’m not already wide awake

Punch in at the warehouse door
smile stapled on my face
supervisor sees a “good worker”
never sees the brace

I lift what I shouldn’t lift
twist the way my spine hates most
play human forklift all day long
while my nerves turn into wire

Break room talk is weekend plans
and movies they want to see
mine is doing quiet math
on how much pain is left for me

Pharmacy text says “refill ready”
five long days from now
but this bottle’s getting lighter
in my trembling sweating palm
somehow

I could take that extra tablet
and buy one hour where I can breathe
or save it for the shift
when even walking feels like teeth

Every capsule feels like currency
someone slipped into my hand
spend it now for short relief
or save it for when I barely stand

Doctor taps a tablet screen
and says “your scan’s not that extreme”
talks about “lifestyle adjustments”
like this is some shared dream

He’s never held a box at dawn
with lightning running through his hips
never watched his own hand shake
trying not to drop his chips

Insurance clerk on speaker
says “you’ve hit your monthly cap”
like my nerves should check the calendar
before they start to snap

End of the week
I limp back home
with my last two doses left

Hands still buzzing
from a day that felt
like legalized theft

I crack the cap
and tell myself
“tonight you take just one”

Let the other sit
till the next workday
firing line has begun

Swallow down that bitter chalk
stretch out on the couch
and wait
for that slow soft edge to rise
and trim the corners of my state

They say “you’re strong to keep on going”
but strength is not the word
it’s more like frightened stubbornness
that no one’s really heard

One day I want more
than bottles and appointments
on the wall

Want a job that doesn’t harvest
every joint until they fall

Till then it’s me
and these small circles
measured out in doses tight

Counting pills
counting hours
dragging this hurt
through one more night

Cracked Screen, Open Mind

He’s got a broken public school laptop
and a brain that will not quit
hungry for the kind of answers
that don’t fit on a worksheet split

System says “sorry, budget’s gone”
like that explains the burn
but his screen might be dead plastic
and he still wants to learn

Library cart rolls down the hallway
with a rattle like loose teeth in a jar
teacher hands out district laptops
says “this will take you far”

He opens up the secondhand brick
hinge stiff
case scarred and thin
hit the power
watches nothing happen
just his own face staring back at him

Sticker on the lid says
“Property of the board, do not remove”
whole future stamped in borrowed plastic
with a promise to improve

Plug it in at the back of class
cord held together
with tape and a prayer
lights blink once
then go dead
like they don’t even care

Teacher shrugs an apology
eyes tired from a decade of this mess
says “we’ll try a different charger”
with a voice that can’t confess

Half the row’s got cracked-up keyboards
half the chargers spark and stink
Wi-Fi wheezes through the ceiling
like it’s too scared to think

Homework lives on some portal
with a login he can’t reach from here
family phone’s on prepaid data
resets every month with a ping

He stays after class with his notebook
copying problems by hand
old-school in a new-tech war
he never got to plan

At home the kitchen table’s
one shared chair
and a single working light
little sister doing spelling in the corner
while his mother fights the night

Letter from the school about “devices”
printed neat in perfect ink
like access is automatic
if you don’t live on the brink

He props that useless rectangle up
against a stack of cans
imagines what it could have shown him
in some other set of plans

He borrows ten quiet minutes
on a friend’s machine before the bell
types his ID and password slow
so the system won’t repel

Downloads all the reading
to his brain instead of disk
memorizes pages
like he’s betting everything on risk

Teacher catches him in the doorway
sees the way he clings to facts
thinks “if I had one spare laptop
this is where I’d send its tracks”

One day a tech from downtown visits
makes a note
then moves along
says “we’re working on replacements”
with a tone that sounds all wrong

Kid just nods
and flips his notebook
to a fresh clean lined-up page

If the tools won’t come to meet him
he’ll outrun their rusted weight

He writes the formula three times over
till it feels like something real
turns every missing megabyte
into handwritten steel

He’s got a broken public school laptop
and a hunger sharper than the crack
chasing every scrap of meaning
this old system holds back

They can cut the cords and budgets
let the cheap machines all burn
he’s still there in the front row
eyes locked in
ready to learn

Cradle Made of Sky

Little star who never touched the earth
but changed the gravity of our days
you rewrote the map inside our hearts
then drifted home in other ways

Every tear that falls for you
is proof that love can bloom
before hello
and every quiet empty space
still holds the light
you started to grow

If there is a cradle made of sky
I hope it rocks you easy
through the night
know that here below
inside this house
your tiny spark
still softens every fight

We painted such a quiet hope
in colors we had never named before
holding little whispered plans
like petals pressed
between our bedroom doors

There was a chair
that waited patient
in the corner by the window light
tiny clothes that smelled like someday
folded for a golden night

Every breath your mama took
was half a prayer
and half a trembling plea
every heartbeat thin and fragile
like a bird above a restless sea

We spoke your name in secret
like a soft forbidden lullaby
and every syllable was gentle wind
that helped the curtains sigh

Then the fever came like winter
creeping slow through every hallway vein
turning every hopeful word
to fragile glass
we dared not say again

Doctors talked in quiet circles
tracing shadows on an unseen wall
every chart and every number
felt like dice we never meant to call

She would close her eyes
and picture you
a little spark that hummed
beneath her hand
whispering
“stay with me a little longer
be my tiny promise in this sand”

I sat outside that door
and held the wall
like it could somehow hold her too
wishing I could trade my body
for the chance to breathe
for both of you

They placed something
in her shaking hands
not your weight
not what we longed to feel
only silence
where there should have been a cry
to prove that you were real

The hallway clock refused to move
while everything inside her
cracked in two
every second stretched forever
holding all the words
we never gave to you

She asked if she had failed you
if her body was a house
that lost its frame
I told her every broken piece of this
was cruel
and none of it was hers to claim

Love is not a promise of arrival
love is simply showing up each day
and she showed up for you
with every breath
until they took your chance away

Now there’s a bedroom
with the light turned low
where dust floats
like a little ghost parade

and a lullaby hangs half-finished
in the air
where your first smile
was supposed to be made

We keep your blanket folded
on a shelf
like a soft unfinished line in ink
and every time we brush against it
grief pulls us to the edge
where we can’t think

Yet somewhere in this hollow ache
a quiet truth begins
to gently rise

if a soul can touch us without birth
then you are here
each time she cries

If time were kind
we’d hear your footsteps
down this hallway
made of worrying and paint

we’d be tripping over toys
and little socks
instead of standing
in this faint

Yet here we stand
with empty arms
and hearts that carry
every unspent kiss

and in the middle of the ache
she whispers that she felt you
and she holds to this

For a moment there was flutter
there was warmth
that rose and brushed her spine
and in that breath
the universe bent inward
just to say
that you were mine

We never got to count your fingers
never traced your sleepy little brow
still the echo of your maybe
wraps around us
in this trembling now

Rest in arms we cannot see
where pain can never touch
your gentle skin

When she closes tired eyes
and lets her sorrow drift
across the darkened floor
maybe you will meet her in a dream
and lean your forehead to her door

We will talk about you softly
never treating you as less than real
you were here in every heartbeat
you are part of everything we feel

Little flicker
you are not a story cut in half
you are a quiet thread of light
that runs through every tear
and every laugh

Crawl For Your Cut

Crawl for your cut
that is the price I like to pay
you get to live another month
I get to shave another piece
off what you thought you were worth
today

I sit at the top of a long glass table
watch you shift in your cheap suit
sweat through your lie

You need this contract
to feed your kids
keep your house
keep your head above
that rising cost

I read your desperation
in the shake of your hand
and the way your eyes dodge
the zeroes on the page

Smile slow
lean back
let the silence stretch
till it turns to cold

You try to talk value
try to talk fairness
try to sell yourself
as more than a line

I tap my pen
cut your rate in half
ask if you really think
you have time to decline

You look at the number
like a bullet
that missed your heart
but shredded your lungs

Know you should say no
say yes
with a bitten tongue

I am not just watching you sign
I am watching your spine fold
that is the part I hold

Later in the bar
you laugh too loud
say you made a good deal
say it is a foot in the door

I nod
buy a round
with the cash I skimmed
watch you salute the pen
I nailed to your core

You will work double
triple
chase deadlines
that drag your health
into the mud

while I roll over in silk sheets
barely hear the sound

One day you will snap
and spit my name
through clenched teeth
like a curse

Call me parasite
thief
devil
worst

Tell everyone
I squeezed you dry
till there was nothing left to give

They will nod
then sign my deals
to live

Cries from the Lonely Spire

[Chorus]
Hear the calls from the lonely height, sound of wars long done
Inside his chest, the past is tight, the lines of doom are spun
As the sun drops from the edge, his spirit sings the pain
In the empty sounds of time, where memories remain

Verse 1
In the shade of the dark stone spire, where quiet takes the ground
An elfin knight marks the hours, as evening fire burns down
With eyes like storms upon the moor, he looks through heavy haze
Keeping truths from older times, throughout his weary days

[Chorus]

Verse 2
With armor cut in ancient signs, shining in the white
His life a web of many lines, in the wind of night
Every mark tells a tale, of hurt and battles won
Standing guard, strong and cold, until the day is done

Bridge
Over walls where ivy crawls, and rock falls slow and sure
His promise stays within these halls, a motive sharp and pure
Through darker years and stories old, he watches like a star
Among the wreck of iron cold, he sees the end from afar

Verse 3
Sing loud of the elfin knight, who holds the heavy tears
His story full of lasting might, planted in the years
Let his name stay alive, for those who seek the light
The lonely calls from the tower, in the middle of the night

[Chorus]

Outro
There stands the keeper of the old, in the place where quiet stays
His history in the rocks is told, across the windy ways
Bound forever to his post, until the end of land
His mark is cut in the coast, a soldier’s final stand

Crimson Heat

Crimson desire
burning through
nothing left right now
but you

Red like evening light
your mouth is tasting sweet
the want is written on the skin
a heavy steady beat

Inside the fading grey
the shapes begin to merge
lost inside the red
I feel the hunger surge

Every touch
lights up the wire
inside the heat
of red desire

Crosswalk Chalk

You cut in line
every time I tried to speak
steamrolled over my voice
like gum under your heel
on the street

You talked about loyalty
while pocketing my work
like unpaid stock

Waved from the window
while I stood stuck
on the corner
at the crosswalk

Crowd That Should Be Mine

This is the crowd
that should be mine
every roar
every chant
every out-of-tune line

I play dirty basements
for drink tickets and spite
sweat peeling wallpaper off brick
while twelve bored faces
check the light

You headline festivals
screens towering over the zones
whole fields moving
like they are wired to your bones

Same town
same start
same bills on the ground
back when nobody cared
who had the skill or the will

Now your logo sells out shirts
while my best hooks die
free downloads scattered
where nobody walks by

Every chorus you belt
feels like a warped version of mine
hummed into a cheap mic
when we shared that van
and the wine

You pitch your story as “self-made”
while I chew my cheek
watching another chance pass
feeling heavy and weak

You nod at me from up front
like I should feel pride
that we came from the same street
and survived the ride

I nod back
clap on beat
hide the sting
climbing my throat
every time the crowd starts to sing

Those hands in the air
look like a jury calling me a fraud
you get their sweat
their lungs
I get ignored by god

You say “come up for a song”
throw me one verse like a bone
to an old stray dog
standing at the edge of your throne

Spotlight hits for thirty seconds
and I taste the heat
concentrated
sharp
sweeping me off my feet

For one breath
the crowd locks onto me
then your voice cuts back in
and I’m back in the debris

If I slashed your strings mid-set
and took the front
would they shift with me
or would I bear the brunt

I run that scene in my head
when the insomnia bites
eyes open
heart pounding
through the nights

Jealousy wraps both hands
around my throat
whispering the one thing
I can’t un-quote

“You had the same years
the same chance
you just missed the note”

When your bus rolls out
and the field goes still
trash glittering in the dirt
giving me a chill

I stand in the wreckage
pick up a wristband from the ground
and hear phantom voices
singing my sound

Dead Air Riot

This dead air turns riot
in my chest
I am done playing quiet
while you pound your pain
against my rest

I speak
you scroll
that is the whole damn story
in four short words

I throw you my core
you throw me bored

You call when you need a therapist
hang up when I need a hand
every call that starts with
“you will not believe what they did”
ends with you
and you
and you again

I look at the ceiling
phone hot
ear red
heartbeat pounding
through this dead air beat

Try to say “I am not okay”
you cut across with “anyway”
you love the sound
of your own defeat
you just want me there
to nod and say okay

The next time you talk right through me
like I am dead air
don’t flinch when something snaps
I don’t care

I used to whisper
used to try soft words
now every syllable walks in
with knives and birds

I’ve got teeth in my throat
talons itching to tear
you turned kind talk to a choke chain
I am ripping it out right here

You will tell them I snapped
for no reason
that I went cold over night
you will never mention
the years of talking at brick walls
the way you kept my side
of the story
out of sight

Dead Battery Soul

Dead battery soul
lights dim
nothing turns over
when I twist the key

Used to wake up wired
ideas sprinting out of me
faster than my hands could write
now I wake up feeling
like a dead car in a frozen lot
every thought heavy as night

People say
“just start, the energy comes
once you move”
like I haven’t tried
hitting that ignition
till my wrist went raw

Engine coughs once
twice
goes silent
just that familiar
sinking lead

I watch them plug themselves
into caffeine
self-help
whatever keeps their motors hot
running from meeting to meeting
building fortunes out of thin air
while I sit in the same spot

They call me a drag
dead weight
say I should just push through
as if this flatline in my spirit
is some small problem
I can choose to undo

If drive was a switch
you think I wouldn’t kick it
you cannot “just do it”
when the circuit
can’t even flick it

I remember wanting things once
big stupid shining things
that felt worth bleeding for
and building from scratch

Then life hit
like a steel boot to the chest
and every failure tore a wire
every loss cut another latch

Now wanting hurts worse than apathy
because wanting shows me
how far gone I am
from being that kid

So I smother the want
and let the numbness sit
where the light expired

Don’t preach miracles
unless you are willing
to stay through the rot

Everyone loves the win
nobody sticks around
for the parts where you can’t get off the cot

If someday a spark drops back
into this husk
and the engine grinds itself
awake again

I will move
I will run
maybe even fight
but until then
I am not pretending
for your gain

Deep Water

Deep water
pulling strong
dragging me
where I belong

Your love hits
like the rising tide
with nowhere left
for me to hide

With every heavy
rolling swell
you catch me
where I fell

Down below
the surface blue
I am lost
inside of you

Every wave
a heavy motion
lost inside
this open ocean

Deepest Hour

Midnight calling
dark and deep
in your arms
the calm I keep

The dark has settled
on the floor
we lock the world
outside the door

Your hand is light
beneath the sky
as heavy hours
go passing by

The room is still
the pulses jump
we find the place
where we belong

Every minute
a stolen sign
in the midnight
you are mine

Die On This Hill

I will die on this hill
even if it’s made of trash
and bad calls
and ego
and spite

If you try to pull me off it
I’ll bite

You show me a path
around the problem
clear as day
gentle
no shame in your eyes

I feel my chest tighten
feel that old reflex kick in
say “no, fuck that
this is the way
you’re wrong
I don’t compromise”

You tell me we’re losing money
losing friends
losing health
by clinging to this one bad call

I stomp my boots
plant my flag in bullshit
dare the whole world to fall

Boss says “change the plan or we fold”
friends say “back down or we’re done”
partner says “let this go or you lose us”
I hear one thing
“if you bend, you’re no one”

So I double down
triple down
quadruple down
watch everything peel off
like paint in a storm

Hold the line
for a choice I barely even believe in anymore
just to keep myself warm

If I give an inch
I feel like I disappear
so I’ll take us all
the way over the edge
long as I’m still here

You come back one last time
eyes red
voice gone
say “we can still fix some of it
if you just admit you fucked up”

I see the open door
feel the weight in my hands
and still I spit
“no, you’re the one who gave up”

You walk away empty
but lighter
done playing medic
for my self-inflicted wounds

I stand on my little mound of ruin
screaming at the sky

Years from now
when the fallout finally settles
and there’s no one left
who even remembers
what I was fighting for

I’ll still be telling the story in my head
like I was some martyr
who held pure ground in a war

Ignoring the fact
that I could have had peace
love
maybe even joy
if I’d dropped my fucking shield

But I chose to be right
instead of alive
chose the hill
over the field

When they find my bones up here
clutching a flag
nobody else even recognizes anymore

They’ll say “he was stubborn as hell”
never knowing
what I really died for

Dirty Halo On A Tuesday

Dirty halo on a weekday
twisted
bent
still hanging on your head

You swear you are nothing much
just tired
just grumpy
just trying not to lose the thread

But you keep showing up
for other broken creatures
when you can barely stand yourself
in bed

You drag yourself home
with takeout in one hand
and a bag of regret in the other
same crooked weekday
same worn shoes kicked across the floor

You talked too sharp at work again
snapped at someone
who did not earn that edge
then replayed it all the way to your door
like you were standing on a ledge

The sink is full
the bin is full
your chest is full of that low throb
that whispers you are a mess
and always will be

Then your phone buzzes
with a “made it home?”
from someone who never asks for polish
just wants to know
you can still see

You have not meditated
hydrated
stretched
or “worked on yourself”
the way every smug article says
you should by now

You ate fries for dinner
forgot your meds twice this week
lied to your boss
and blamed the traffic somehow

Yet when your neighbor’s kid
lost their keys
and sat crying in the hall
with a busted backpack and scraped knee

You sat on the floor
shared your fries
wrapped a cartoon bandage
around their arm
and turned that hallway
into a safe place to be

Nobody saw that
but the peeling paint
and the cheap light
no choir
no gold
no big reveal

Just one tired person on a weekday
doing something quiet
that made the air feel real

You answer late-night messages
from friends who only text
when they are hanging
by a fingernail in the dark

Sit with them on call
while the silence stretches
toss dumb jokes in like flares
wait for that first small spark

No training
no secret script
just your own worst nights
as reference
for what helped you stay

You tell them
“drink water, breathe
block that bastard
I’m not going anywhere
not today”

You keep a running list
of every time you failed
every chore undone
every habit you did not nail

You never count the hospital visits
the rides
the coffees
the times you refused to bail

If there is something keeping score
it is not the dishes
or the inbox or the gym
or all the ways you fall behind

It is the hand on a shaking shoulder
the spare blanket
the stupid meme
that pulls someone back
from the edge of their mind

You are not a lost cause
stumbling through another week
of almosts and a losing grade

You are proof
that even flickering light still counts
when the rest of the street fades

Next time you call yourself useless
while you pace that late-night room
picture that dirty halo
lighting up the gloom

Dirty Little Apocalypse

You’re my dirty little apocalypse
one more night with you
and cities fall in my head

Every touch a warning
every gasp a tremor
every bruise another piece of life
I should have led

You hit my phone like a fire alarm
two-word text
that might as well be a red button
“come over”

You know damn well
what that does to my spine
how it makes me leave drinks
lies half-said
excuses I barely bother to cover

I turn up at your place
like an incoming wreck
hands already shaking
heart beating too fast
to be anything close to sane

You open the door in that look
that says you’re done pretending
this is about anything other
than setting fire to everything again

We don’t talk at first
just slam into each other
like the world really is ending
and we want to burn through
the last of our skin

Some part of me is counting
all the things this will cost
trust
sleep
self-respect
maybe more
but the rest is focused
on your body
my sin

You kiss me
like you’re trying to erase
every other mouth
I’ve ever let near me
like you want to tattoo your need
into my bones

I drag you closer
like I’m drowning
and your body is the only shore left
on this fucking beach

We call this “bad timing” in public
in private we call it what it is
the end of everything good
with one more kiss

We take each other apart
piece by piece
like we’re searching for proof
we’re still human
under all this habit and harm

Use teeth where tenderness should go
use grip where comfort should be
use each other’s bodies
as both weapon and charm

When it’s over
the room looks like a war happened
sheets twisted
pillows on the floor
lipstick on my chest
like a confession

You laugh out of breath
say “we’re terrible”
I say “yeah, but look how good
we are at this mess”

We should be talking about changing
we’re talking about
when we can do this again
scheduling the next disaster
like a shift at ten

There’s a choice
where I walk away
block your number
tell the truth
start over somewhere quiet
where the nights don’t taste like sin

We kill those versions every time
we hit “come over”
every time we lock the door
behind us
and leave the world outside to rot

We know exactly what we’re doing
we do it a lot

When everything finally breaks
and people ask
what the hell we were thinking
while we tore our worlds in half

We’ll look at each other
in the wreckage
still wanting
still knowing
the answer is simple as shit
we liked the way we kissed

Dog With All The Bones

I am a dog with all the bones
snarling over shit
I cannot even chew

You beg at the gate
with hollow eyes
thinking I will find a heart
under all this rust

Greed welded my jaw shut long ago
every kindness rotted out of my throat
I would rather choke on this hoard
than throw you one spare note

I sit in a yard
full of shit I do not need
while you stand at the fence
with empty hands
and a tired stare

I dug up the whole neighborhood
for anything that looked like value
even if I had to rip it
out of your share

Now I have bones stacked in piles
so high I cannot even walk
without tripping on my own stash

You have a stomach
gnawing on itself
and a spine that feels ready
to crack in half

You ask for one
just one
something I will not miss
some small thing
to get you through the night

I bare my teeth
growl “mine”
like you dared to step
into my god-given right

I do not even remember
where half these bones came from
or why I wanted them so bad

Only remember the rush of taking
not the people
I made go mad

I would rather sleep
on a pile of loot
that breaks my back
and crushes my chest
than share a single scrap
and fail this test

You finally turn away
mutter my name like a curse
shoulders slumped
walking toward a darker street

I watch you go
with a flicker of something
almost like regret
then bury it
in another heap at my feet

Tell myself
you will bounce back somewhere
that I owe you nothing
but the memory of when we ran side by side

Forget that I once vowed
I’d never leave you
on the wrong side of the divide

Nights get colder
bones get heavier
yard feels smaller
with each breath I steal

No laughter
no footsteps
no one left to impress with my haul
no one left to kneel

I stand in the middle
of everything I ever took
and hear my own chest beg
for some kind of trade

But there is nothing left to barter with
just this heap I made

When the yard floods
and the bones float off
into gutters and drains
washed clean of my claw marks and stains

I will die in the mud I guarded
begging the rain
for chains

Don’t Turn Me Into Your Recovery Arc

You walk up to my door
with a suitcase of bad nights
and a highlight reel of people
who walked away
when you were too much

Eyes already wet
voice already shaking
saying you do not know
why everyone leaves
once they get close enough to touch

You say you need someone patient
someone strong
someone who can handle your triggers
then you look at me
like I am a rehab center
with a heartbeat

You talk about your exes
like villains and lifeguards
who quit halfway through the rescue
when the waves got rough

Skip over the part
where you held their heads under too sometimes
where you called at three in the morning
and hung up
when the care felt tough

I am not saying you are the problem
I know your past is vicious
and your scars did not appear by choice

I am saying I will not be the saint
in your story who saves you
with hugs and perfect tone
and never once loses their voice

I will listen when your ghosts get loud
hold you when your hands shake
cook soup on the nights
you cannot leave bed

But I will not audition
for the role of miracle cure
I will not let you write my value
as what I pull from your head

If your love only works
when I am pouring into you
that isn’t love
that is hunger
dressed as a bed

Do not turn me
into your recovery arc
the shining partner
who walks in halfway through your season
and cleans the mess

I am not your therapist
not your saint
not your final proof
that love can survive every test

I am wrecked too
held together with coffee
meds
and tape
trying not to sink
under my own chest

You say no one ever stayed long enough
to see the soft parts
under your meltdown claws
and your late reply

Then get mad when I do not answer
every text within seconds
when I admit I am tired
and my own brain is running dry

You want someone
who will sacrifice sleep
money
sanity
to prove they will not leave
like the rest

But if my love is measured
in how fast I abandon myself for you
that is not devotion
that is you
failing the test

I’d rather be the one who says
“I love you too much
to let you treat me
like a fire extinguisher behind glass”

We can go to therapy
separately
together
or not at all
that choice has more doors than one

We can stand in the same storm
share umbrellas
share flasks
share jokes about how neither of us
is getting this shit done

But if you expect my love
to heal every old wound
while you sit back and watch
calling it fate

Then I am out
not because you are broken
but because you are making my heart
your only tool
and calling that fun

Do not turn me
into your recovery arc
love me as a human
not a cure
or this whole thing
breaks like smoke

Drag You Down Screaming

If I sink
I drag you down screaming
through the black water
and the bones

Every lie you told
rides shotgun
chewing holes
through your paper thrones

I spent years in your shadow
picking up shards
from the bottles you threw
in your storms
while you blamed any nearby soul
for the mess

You staggered through lives
like a cheap gas fire
set roofs alight then walked away whistling
while I stayed behind
to mop up the stress

You called me dramatic
when I said I could not breathe
told me everyone had it rough
and I should just toughen up
and take the hit

I did
until the bruises joined hands
turned into armor
and now all they want
is to see you get split

You loved to say
I would never leave
that I needed you more
than you needed anybody
on this cold blue wreck of a rock

You treated my patience like a leash
jerked it hard
whenever I dared to talk

Now that cord
is around both our throats
and it tightens
every time you try to run

You taught me
how to go down quietly
now watch the reckoning rise
with a loaded tongue

You thought I would fall alone
sink without a sound
you forgot who held the secrets
buried under this ground

I have recordings
messages
photos
every dirty whisper you thought
would stay in my chest
like a vault built out of fear

I have faces
dates
amounts
all the little crimes you shrugged off
when the victims cried in my ear

You said “no one would believe you”
with that smug half-grin
like you held the world in your hand
and I was just junk on the floor

Now that same sentence cracks
when you realize
I am willing to blow up my own life
to kick down your door

This is scorched earth
no survivors
no safe little corner
where your legend sits untouched
by what you did

I light the fuse on my own future
while I kick dirt
off the coffin lid

You should have given me
something worth saving
some reason to keep your sins
tucked away

Instead you left me empty and armed
and now the whole town hears
what you had me hide
every day

You gambled on my silence
laid your future on that bet

House just burned down
debt collector
has you by the neck

Dragon in the Belfry

[Chorus]
Dragon in the belfry, claws in the beam
Waking up the town from the quiet dream
Breath is shaking frames in the window glass
Watching all the people as they try to pass
Ring the bell and wake the heat
Hunger rising from the seat
Leave a candle by the door
Don’t go asking anymore

Verse 1
The moon hangs low on the crooked roof
Light catches rust as a little proof
The tower leans like a tired man
Built without a steady plan
Wind threads through the empty arch
Stopping the pigeons in their march
Tail scrapes wood with a heavy sound
Sending terror to the ground

Verse 2
Inside the pews are overturned
Pages scattered, edges burned
Candles sit in clumps of wax
Filling in the floorboard cracks
Dust motes spin in the center black
Where the stained glass shows a crack
Twin red fires in the nest
Putting ancient fears to test

Pre-Chorus
Kids are talking of the night
When the steeple lost the fight
Not a hero from a book
Just a storm the city took

[Chorus]

Verse 3
Smoke is curling from the vent
Not a fire, just a scent
Snow is melting in a line
Tracing out the monster’s spine
Drifters sleep beneath the sheet
Muttering about the heat
Dreaming of the scales and stone
Chilling in the deepest bone

Pre-Chorus
Priest has locked the upper gate
Key is heavy, like a weight
Hears the scratching over head
Wishing he was in his bed

[Chorus]

Bridge
Lightning cracked the open sky
Blue fire flashing in the eye
Witness saw the wings unfold
Catching water, brave and bold
Street turned red and then went black
Lightning striking on the track
Morning showed the ring of soot
Bell is warped beneath the foot

Outro
Walk on past when wind is thin
Feel the rattle in the skin
Nod your head up to the stone
Leave the sleeping thing alone

Dragon on the Iron Rail

[Chorus]
Dragon on the fire escape, watching from the grate
Blowing sparks whenever I begin to hesitate
Every time the screen begins to pull me down
He puffs a cloud of gray and makes a little sound
Get up, he seems to say, the time is turning tight
You have songs to burn before the fading of the light

Verse 1
Third-floor walkup, paint is peeling back
Radiator banging like a heart attack
Head is full of buzzing, emails left unread
Cable wire landmines right beside the bed
I slide the window up to get a little air
Smell of gasoline and pizza on the stair
Right there on the railing, breathing smoke and gray
A tiny lizard watching in a weary way

Verse 2
Scales the color of a rusted soda tin
Wings are dirty from the city and the sin
Eyes like traffic lights just stuck upon the green
Blowing rings of vapor, the strangest thing I’ve seen
I drop the coffee cup, he catches with a claw
Sets it on the ledge, defies the gravity law
Tilts his head and looks at all the mess inside
Deciding if I’m worth the time or just a slide

Pre-Chorus
No ancient story, no message from the sky
Just a scaly creature with a cynical eye
But something in the chest begins to wake and beat
A part of me that wanted fire and the heat

[Chorus]

Verse 3
I feed him bits of bagel and the noodle scraps
He sleeps upon the speaker while taking little naps
Vibrating the chest whenever chords ring true
Hissing when the notes are turning sad and blue
When I start to spiral, worrying on rent
He nudges at the hand until the time is spent
Drawing little pictures in the margin lines
A monster on the roof to read the city signs

Pre-Chorus
Problems don’t just vanish, the landlord calls again
Anxiety is dripping from the ceiling like the rain
But the dragon on the metal keeps appearing there
Setting fire to the pity hanging in the air

[Chorus]

Bridge
Maybe he gets big enough to fly away
Carrying the heavy weight of every day
Or maybe he stays small and keeps the watch right here
A witness to the struggle and the constant fear
When the morning hits and I just want to fold
I think about the dragon in the bitter cold
Waiting on the iron, tapping on the bar
Reminding me exactly who and what we are

Outro
No one sees the magic clinging to the brick
But I can feel the heat, the air is getting thick
Dragon on the escape, settles for the tune
My room is feeling closer to the rising moon

Dragon Tattoo Heat

Dragon tattoo heat
burning through the thread
messing with the heart
and with the head

Tail coiling high
hand sliding low
warning and a sign
for where to go

Leaning on the box
the light is low
denim slipping down
ready to go

Sleeve rolled up high
the ink is black
dragon wrapping round
the muscle track

Fire on the wrist
you reach the glass
water leaving trails
where fingers pass

Bar humming loud
the glasses clink
I only see the dragon
and the drink

Smoke curling
from the candle wick
air is heavy
and the sound is thick

You catch me looking
lift the eyebrow high
mouth twisting
waiting for the lie

Stepping closer
ink begins to slide
moving with the pulse
from deep inside

Finger in the loop
and pulling near
ribs feeling hot
the path is clear

Table chipped
and beer is getting stale
line of sweat is shining
beyond pale

Lungs skipping beats
when eyes align
reading every note
and every sign

Leaning close
to speak into the ear
lost beneath the noise
but sounding clear

Moving to the back
and through the door
bodies parting
on the dirty floor

Alleyway is cold
but you are hot
writing threats
on every breath I got

Dragon pressing close
against the neck
hand upon the jaw
a total wreck

No promises to keep
no future plan
just the touching
of the woman and the man

Crossing wires
in the brick and steam
waking up the body
from the dream

Later on
the music fades away
chairs are stacked
against the light of day

Collar holds the red
the shoulder bite
memory of the teeth
inside the night

Dragon goes with you
to sleep it off
while the city gives
a little cough

Lying in the dark
and grinning wide
feeling fire
on the inner side

Next time that I hear
the opening chord
looking for the ink
that I adored

Dragon left a map
upon the skin
showing me exactly
where I’ve been

Eat My Reflection

I eat my reflection
to keep the image clean
swallow every doubt
every flaw
every scream

Pride turned cannibal
chewing on the parts of me
that might be real

Every mirror is a battlefield
where I have to come out on top
or smash the glass

I lean in
tilt my head
flex
pose
smooth the edges
till I give myself a pass

If anyone suggests
I might not be as perfect as I sell
I laugh in their face
then go home
and pick myself apart in private
like a corpse in a locked case

I pretend I don’t care what you think
act like I’m above your view
but I scroll through every comment at 3 a.m.
terrified it might be true

If one asshole says I slipped
that I aged
that I lost a step
I build a whole new costume of arrogance
just to protect the rep

I’m starving for worship
and choking on it
needing more
just to feel baseline fit

When someone else walks in the room
with more charm
more skill
more presence in the air

I either tear them down with a smile
or wrap them in fake praise
till they vanish in the glare

If I can’t be the best
I’ll be the one who decides
what “best” means
change the rules mid-fight
rewrite the scenes

The sickest part
is knowing I’m rotting
under this gold-painted shell

I can feel the hollow echo
when I laugh too loud
when I sell
this plastic version of myself
I polished for strangers
who wouldn’t visit my grave

But dropping it feels like death
to the kid inside
I never saved

When the glass finally cracks
and the mask slides off
in some future fall
I can’t quite see

Maybe I’ll meet the ugly bastard
under all this pride
or maybe
there’s nothing left
of me

Eat The World And Die Hungry

I eat the world
and die hungry
teeth red
belly screaming for more

Shove love
meat
cash
pills inside
till it all leaks back
onto the floor

I started chewing on the small things
late-night bites of comfort
just to keep my hands from shaking
in the dark

Chips
pills
cheap praise
any scrap that hit the floor
I swept it all into my mouth
until my tongue turned numb

Friends said “slow down”
while they licked the same sugar
from their fingers
and pretended it was different
when they swallowed theirs

Meanwhile I kept loading both arms
with whatever I could grab
stuffing guilt and grease
and strangers’ skin
down the chute

Tables broke under the weight
of what I “needed”
heap on heap
till the plates looked like mass graves
under sauce and shine

Did not matter if it tasted
like bliss or poison
if it filled me for a moment
I called it mine

I ate sleep
I ate time
I ate years off my own spine
chasing that one full breath
I never got to keep

Bit into every easy answer
every cheap affection
every body that curved close enough
to make the voice go quiet
in my sleep

You told me “enough”
while your hands were in the bowl
we all gorge on something
to patch the hole

They tried an intervention
standing in a circle
with their own addictions
sweating through their shirts

Telling me I should find balance
while their eyes dragged
over every platter in the room
like a pack of cursed birds

I heard “stop”
from people who never stopped taking
saw plates cleared
with the same hands
that pointed at my mess

Realized this wasn’t about saving me
they just didn’t want to see
their own hunger
in my excess

This table is my altar
this fork is my blade
every bite another deal
with the monster I made

I know it is killing me
that is half the thrill
you cannot hurt me
with what I already use
as a pill

When they scrape what’s left of me
off the table
and whisper
“he went too far, too fast”

They will walk home
gnawing on their secrets
I just got caught
eating mine
at last

Electric Lines

Electric light on collarbone
lines I want to trace
long before my hand is brave enough
to touch the place

Every breath you pull
moves the shadow on the chest
painted heartbeat
put to the restless test

Leaning on the railing
with the city hum below
electric signs climbing up your throat
nice and slow

Streetlight marks the collarbone
in heavy yellow bars
shadows filling in the dips
brighter than the stars

Breeze sneaking up the shirt
raising up the skin
glancing back across the shoulder
letting trouble in

Eyes reflecting billboards
mouth is crooked sweet
looking for the trouble
standing on the street

Inside the room
the party drones
the playlist on a loop
drinks sweating rings upon the wood

Voices fold into a blur
laughter hitting high
plastic cups crushed
beneath the feet passing by

Out here the noise
is just a hum inside the pipes
distant and forgotten
like the other stripes

Light a cigarette
you know you’ll never smoke
ash trembling on the wind
a quiet little joke

Stepping on the balcony
boards begin to creak
hand brushing near the rail
warm against the cheek

Perfume mixing
with the rain and the city air
patience tested in the dark
standing over there

Laughing low
vibration underneath the palm
sound landing heavy
like a sudden calm

Hand finds the wrist
and settles on the spot
circling the pulse
and the heat that you got

Taxi honking down below
shouting for the keys
subway grinding underground
shaking up the knees

Trading heat in doses
incremental slow
sipping on the heavy thing
letting feeling grow

No promises upon the lip
no plan inside the stone
just two bodies in the night
standing way too near
letting chemistry decide
exactly why we’re here

Later walking back inside
the crowded room
hair mussed and cheeks flushed
within the gloom

Friends raising eyebrows
pretending not to see
how long we stood outside
in the privacy

But skin is humming
where the shoulder brushed the line
where the electric stripe
made you look like mine

Every train that passes by
will bring the memory back
of the current running
on the hidden track

Last guest leaves
the room is sinking dim
you step back to the balcony
on a whim

I follow
drawn by the light upon the skin
knowing that the collarbone
is where I fall in

Empty Calories Of Fame

I’m chasing clout
on an empty stomach
living for likes
while my self stays thin

Every ping
another sugar rush
that leaves me weak again

Ring light burning my retinas
in a room that never sees the sun
rehearse the same fake laugh again
till it sounds like everyone

I crop the mess out of the background
smooth the lines out of my face
sell a polished little moment
while I’m rotting in this place

Refresh that number at the bottom
like it’s hooked into my veins
little hearts float up the screen
while something colder still remains

I tell them “living my best life”
with a grin that isn’t real
then eat instant noodles standing up
too wired to even feel

Brand deal in my inbox
asking me to fake a better home
hold this product
sell this smile
make their numbers foam

They pay me in discount codes
and promises of “future reach”
while my rent climbs higher
than the slogans
they want me to preach

Friends become statistics
in the backend of my mind
if your page goes quiet too long
the algorithm leaves you behind

So I post another reel of nothing
put a filter on my dread
watch the comments say they love me
none of them know
where I rest my head

I used to write in notebooks
just to hear my own thoughts ring
now I trim every truth
to fit a screen-friendly thing

They say “just be authentic”
with a script behind their eyes
while they test which angle
of my pain gets more replies

Mama calls asking
how I’m getting by
I tell her “things are going great”
and change the subject with a lie

She doesn’t see the drafts folder
full of posts I never share
where I almost tell the truth
and then remember
they don’t care

One night I kill the ring light
and sit quiet in the dark
no front camera
no rehearsed pose
just my heartbeat
and its mark

I wonder if I disappeared
from every feed and every page
would anyone feel that silence
or just scroll on past my pen

Empty Chairs, Closed Doors

Empty chairs
closed doors again
running a race
I can never win

Waiting room smells
like bleach and cheap pine
clock on the wall
dragging out the time

Faces down
staring at the floor
just another number
waiting for a score

Questions designed
to make me trip
she taps her pen
with a tightening grip

I nod my head
pretend I’m fine
while I’m dying here
inside the line

Knocking till the wood
begins to crack
knowing there is
no turning back

I’m just noise
they try to ignore
left standing here
outside the door

Every Villain Has an Origin Story

Every villain has an origin story
mine’s written in sweat
on motel walls
that never asked for my sins

Every time I gasped “never again”
my hands were reaching
for the next wrong door
the next skin

Saints don’t come here
not to these sheets
not to this couch
where the ghosts pile cheap

I keep saying I’m better now
then some devil in boots walks in
and drags me in deep

I was just a kid under blankets
screen glow burning a hole
through the dark in my head

Found out early
if I hit the right nerve
I could drown out the kitchen fights
play dead

By the time they were trading
awkward kisses and drawing hearts
in notebooks at school
I was already chasing blackout switches
burning through strangers
like fuel

Fast-forward
that bar
ring on my finger
your perfume cutting through
my “better man” lies

You laughed once
and every promise I made to myself
curled up and died

Heat like a car crash
in a bathroom stall
phone lighting up my leg
like a flare I wouldn’t read

Turned the sound off
bit your shoulder hard
thought
if this totals my life
let it bleed

They sell lust like soft lights
and slow hands
a tidy moral
when the credits roll
they don’t show shaking in a shower at noon
trying to scrub the guilt
off your soul

There was a stretch
I stopped learning names
called everybody “babe”
just to keep the story straight

Body count on the sheets
ghosts in the cotton
stains in my head
I couldn’t erase or abate

I slept my way through friend groups
and bands
turned birthdays into breakups
with a text at two

Said I was freeing them from boredom
truth is I wanted proof
they’d risk it all too

Then there was you
the matching fault line
the relapse in eyeliner
“you up?” burning my screen

You walked past in a crowded room
and every sane thought died
stripped down to the obscene

You liked me ugly
liked me selfish
pinned to my worst
hands against the wall

Scheduling disasters like shifts
hotel keys
“just one more time”
you
me
and the fall

We could’ve walked away
blocked each other
grown up
let this fire finally go

Instead we kept hitting
that same red button
just to watch it glow

There’s a cleaner version of me
that writes
runs
breathes
sits with the ache
instead of knocking on your door

A version of you
that deletes my name
and lets the guilt hit the floor

But every time I try
to be that person
reach for something
to change this story

you hit my phone like a fire alarm
and the villain in me
takes the glory

Every villain has an origin story
mine’s a highlight reel
of bad decisions
low light
sound too high

Every “I love you” I meant
got buried under
“don’t tell anyone”
and “we can’t let this die”

Saints don’t come here
not to these rooms
not to this car
where we cut one more piece
off our lives

One more time
you say
and I swallow
the lies

Fangs

I am broke
I am broken
I am tired
I am worn thin
the bills have fangs
they dig in

I wake to the heater
chewing pennies from the grate
overdue notices slide under the door
like spiders that can’t wait

I count quarters in the dark
like beads for my sins
hands black with coffee grounds
waiting for the panic to begin

The fridge hums louder
than my pulse in the den
carpet remembers every fight
we promised never to have again

You text “are you good”
and I type “sure”
with a smile I don’t own
watching the shadow of a man
in the window
who won’t leave me alone

Payday drifts past
like a ghost with butterfinger hands
dropping nickels through the floorboards
wrecking all my plans

The boss smiles a wolf smile
measuring my spine for the break
I nod like a dashboard bobblehead
just another plastic fake

Wishing the stoplights would bleed green
wishing the mail held no threats
wishing sleep was more
than a curtain nailed over my regrets

In the aisle doing math
with bruised fruit
and a cracked screen
whispering “not me, not tonight”
to the humming machine

I talk to the sink
it coughs rust
like a smoker’s lung
tapping out “spend what you don’t have”
with a metal tongue

I laugh the kind of laugh
that puts the soft hearts down
smelling like burnt sugar
and bad brakes in this town

The numbers climb the walls
like bugs in banker ties
I make promises to the ceiling
the ceiling answers with lies

In my head a switch flips
every shadow grows a knife
whispering
“cut the cord, cut the cost, cut the life”

Friends say “breathe”
and send emojis like bandages
that won’t stick
I nod through the ache
while the radiator gives a judge’s click

Neighbors laugh through the wall
about trips I can’t spell
I wonder what a dream is worth
if I decide to sell

The bed feels like a courtroom
the sheets call me a liar
I tell the dark I’ll fix the math
before the whole place catches fire

But the night just smiles
sharpens nails on the frame
ready to play the same old
hungry trick

Maybe tomorrow is a trapdoor
with a welcome mat
falling through thirty floors
of ringing phones and idle chat

Maybe I learn to scream quiet
like a kettle run dry
in the stairwell I hear a voice
that sounds like a lie

I answer with exact change
the silence counts it twice
leaving me with a busted cart
and a heart made of ice

When the lights go out
I can still see the teeth
I can still feel the bite
on the skin underneath

I keep breathing anyway
let the night file me down
to a smaller key
that fits every locked door
in this town

Feed Me or Fuck Off

Feed me or fuck off
that is the deal from here on out
if you are not bringing something to chew on
keep my fucking name
out of your mouth

I am done starving
while I clap for people
who never miss a feast
I am the sin at the table now
and I am done with remorse

I want everything
they said was “too much”
in one filthy screaming plate

Pile sex
sugar
sleep
power
praise
let it slip off the edge of the table
shove it in my face
and call it fate

Spent years being the good one
saying “no thanks, I am fine”
while my veins howled
like a broken siren in a pen

Now I am done pretending
I do not want this shit
I am done swallowing guilt
I am done playing saint

I want the last slice
the last sip
the last word
the last body crawling into my bed
at 3 a.m.
just to see if I am still awake

I want all of it
every goddamn thing
that makes my pulse shake

You can call me selfish
while you hoard your own quiet stash
of vices you just happen to hide
better than me

At least when I say
I am a greedy bastard
I mean it
I am not dressing it up
as “living clean” on TV

I know it is ugly
I know it is loud
but this beast never learned polite
it just learned how to bow
now it stands up

I will take your compliments
your orgasms
your spare change
your spotlight
your fries
your side of the bed

I will chew through every
“you should be grateful”
you ever spat into my head

You want to call me a black hole
fine
I will be the black hole
swallowing your judgment
and your god complex whole

You only hate me
because I am honest
about the hunger
chewing through my soul

You preached about balance
while you binged on control
you fasted from pleasure
while you gorged on being the victim

I stopped buying your holy diet
and started eating what I need
your problem is not my appetite
it is that I do not bleed
when you call me greed

I will burn out
sure
but between now and the crash
I will empty every plate
that ever passed me by

And I will not share
my stash

Final Hook (2)

I’m chasing clout on an empty stomach
living for likes
while my self stays thin
serving pieces of myself
till there’s nothing left within

If attention is a currency
I’m still broke
at the end of the day
all these empty calories of fame
never take the ache away

One day I might log out for good
and let the silence lose my voice
trade the numbers for a quiet room
where nothing needs acclaim

Till then I keep on posting
while my better parts protest
a hungry heart on camera
dressed up as its own guest

Final Hook (3)

We’re stuck in this bad connection
that keeps cutting out the heart
lag between our sentences
like it wants to pull us apart

Every “I love you” hits a buffer
every hope hits delay
we’re hanging by a glitchy thread
that might snap any day

One day my door might open
and it won’t be a screen that shines
you’ll step through the dust and distance
and kill these crooked lines

Till then it’s you in tiny windows
and me in this empty room
two hands pressed to cold glass
trying not to assume
we’re doomed

Final Hook (4)

They say suicide is always an option
waiting at the end of pain
but I’m not marching there in silence
like a slave in the rain

If that’s the last door standing
I will pass a thousand first
choosing sleep
choosing help
choosing rage
choosing thirst

And if dawn feels like a sentence
and not a brand new start
I’ll still drag this battered body
still drag this stubborn heart

Whisper “you’re not trapped, you’re choosing”
into my own shaking chest
leave that final option locked away
walk one more mile instead

Final Hook (5)

They say suicide is always an option
parked out past the last stop sign
a hard-line kind of freedom
at the edge of the structure

But every time I hit that thought
I walk it backwards
step by step
till the choice I make is smaller
and I’m still here
bruised
but kept

So if you hear me say it softly
late at night when sleep won’t land
“it’s an option” doesn’t mean
I’m ready to follow that command

It just means I’m not a prisoner
I’ve still got moves left on this square
and tonight I’m choosing
the ugly miracle of staying
one more chord

Final Hook (6)

I’ve seen more body bags
than pay raises in this line of work
more zipped-up endings
than mercy from the network

They call it “public service”
like faith alone can feed
but my bank account
and my conscience
bleed the same shade
when they bleed

One day I might hang this badge
on a nail and not look back
drive past the crisis center
and let someone else track the cracks

Till then I keep walking these hallways
with my teeth set tight
trying to keep one soul breathing
in a system that kills by slight

Final Hook (7)

Three a.m. glow
burning holes through my skull
scroll till it hurts
just to feel half numb

Notifications silent
but my brain won’t quit
living in a blue-white coffin
built of clicks and counterfeit

Drop the phone on the nightstand
swear I’m done for good this round
but I know that little buzz
will drag my dead ass back
from the ground

Till I break that glass addiction
and let the night be night
three a.m. glow keeps calling
like a cheap low dirty burn

Final Hook

Thank you for holding
thank you for waiting
while my life unthreads

You want your system perfect
I’m trying not to lose my head

I’m just an ID on a schedule
in a chair that won’t sit right
patchworking other people’s chaos
while mine rots out of sight

End of shift
I hang the headset on its hook
like hanging dead

Walk past rows of tired faces
lit by cheap blue din
on the bus home I stay quiet
throat too raw to even speak

Having spent another eight hours
fixing worlds
I don’t get to keep

Fine, Let It Burn

Fine
let it burn
let the sky turn black
and the streets crack under heat

I ran around with buckets
long enough
let someone else blister their feet

Fire alarm chirps once
then twice
then screams like a demon
in a cheap apartment hall

Smoke rolls under the door
in lazy ribbons
paint blistering
shadows tall

I could grab the extinguisher
I could hit the stairs
and pound on every neighbor’s door

I stretch
yawn
sit on the edge of the bed
light a cigarette
watch the ash hit the floor

News blares from the screen
about the world going sideways
headlines stacked like corpses in a feed

War here
flood there
kids in cages
rich men fattening on every bleeding need

I scroll with one thumb
heart rate flat
no spike
no prayer
no righteous rage in my veins

Just a vague “figures” in my skull
and the slow twitch of a leg
while the planet strains

You scream “how can you not care”
like that fixes a single flame
I retired from panic
when nobody listened
to my aim

Mother calls
voice thin
says she needs help
with the meds and the bills

I stare at the phone
till it stops ringing
pop another movie on
chase a couple cheap thrills

Guilt crawls up my spine
like roaches
then settles in
and falls asleep

I mute the memories
turn the volume up
let the worry sink deep

I used to sprint into every blaze
till my hair smelled like smoke for weeks
nobody handed me water
just more fires
more demands
more shrieks

Something in me snapped
one midnight
on the third unpaid rescue run

Ever since
my first thought watching any flame
is “good, let it be done”

When they call me heartless
on the newsflash
and dig through my history
for proof I never earned

Tell them I once ran
till my lungs bled
then I stopped
said “fuck this”
let it burn

Fire Escape Hymn

Fourth floor walkup
hallway smells like grease
fried onions
and the lease that will not cease

Fire escape outside the bedroom glass
where the building watches seasons pass

Teenagers sneak a smoke
and share the bud
exhaling futures thick as river mud

Old man in 3B tends the leafy row
talking to the plants
and making sure they grow

Tonight we drag the busted speaker out
taping down the wire
removing doubt

Neighbors lean on windows
mugs in hand
letting go of TV
looking at the land

Skyline shines just like a silent god
air tastes less like judgement
more like sod

Strum the chord with knee against the rail
burned out souls prevailing in the gale

We aren’t headlining
just climbing high
between the red brick
and the open sky

But when the chorus hits the heavy line
ten windows join the song
and make it shine

This is our fire escape hymn
sung off key
between the laundry lines
and satellites we see

We don’t ask for a deal
just a break in the fear
a moment where the wishes
ring out clear

If the city down below
wants the money and the back
it can wait
while we are singing on the rack

Mom from 2D leans upon the frame
baby on the hip
without a name

Teen from 5A adds a verse on math
voice shaking on the narrow path

Someone bangs a pot to keep the time
someone clapping rhythm to the rhyme
building vibrates with a sudden heat
courage rising from the concrete street

Landlord cannot charge for what we make
police can’t file a form for what we take
twenty strangers sharing one rough hook
living in the pages of the book

One day voices move and drift away
chased by rent and finding better pay
landing in a building new and strange
staring at the ladder and the range

But when they see the iron on the wall
they’ll hear the chorus
and the heavy call

Knowing they aren’t foolish for the song
singing is exactly
where they belong

Kill the speaker when the morning comes
wires coiled and quiet in the skins
back inside
the silence feels alright
carrying the music
of the night

Floor Made Of Bodies

Floor made of bodies
hear the cracking
under your stride

If I sink through the boards
I am pulling you down
from the other side

You trampled through friends
like pavement
walked on their ribs
to get one inch higher

Called it hustle
called it hunger
dressed your rot in a lie
and sold it as a noble thought

By the time you were “somebody”
the hall was full of debt
that once fed you
housed you
kept you dry

You listened to their bones crack
called it background noise
never once asked why

I watched you drown folks in rumors
point at me
when the smoke rolled in

You burned every bridge behind you
then charged a toll
for anyone else to get in

You sneered when I talked about damage
said the weak deserve to fall
now the weak you stepped on
are knocking on your front wall

You built your throne
on a floor made of bodies
pressed their faces into stone
every step you take now
shakes their bones

I used to defend you
when they said you were poison
said you were broken
needed time to figure it out

You thanked me by cutting my throat
in the back room
and writing a hit
from the sound of my shout

Now I see you plain
a scavenger in leather
chewing on the last scrap
of whatever loyalty still lives near

And I am done playing preacher
for a lost cause
that only whispers cash and fear

This is not revenge
this is equal weight
you dragged us under
this is your rate

Every corpse in your history
pulls the same rope
round your chest
when I drop
we all tug
no one rests

You bragged you were self-made
said no one ever gave you a thing

Listen closer now
that is not applause under your feet
that is bone
and string

Flowers From The Fuckup Section

Grocery store at midnight
only the lonely wandering aisles
that smell like bleach and old bread

You head for the back
where the dented cans live
the markdown meat
the fruit nobody picked
when the sun was overhead

Right next to them
a rack of flowers
with wilted edges
and stickers that won’t stick

Roses leaning to one side
daisies missing petals
looking a little desperate
and sick

You stand there in your hoodie
cart loaded with instant noodles
and frozen crap

Looking at those plants
like you see a family member
caught in the same trap

You pick up a drooping bouquet
check the tag
laugh at the markdown slash
mutter “we’re all one bad week
away from the bin”
and toss them in the stash

These are flowers
from the fuckup section
half-dead but hanging on
marked down by people
who stop caring
once the bloom is gone

You take them home
cut the ends
put them in water by the door

Flowers from the fuckup section
blooming like a second chance
you never got before

Back home
you shove cans aside for a vase
that came with the place
cloudy and chipped

Fill it from the tap
drop aspirin in
fingers steady
even though your day was ripped

Bosses
bills
bodies that ache where nobody sees
still you stand here
begging a plant to just live
please

You say out loud
“nobody wants the busted ones”
not the flowers
not the stress

Then catch your reflection in the window
shrug
and fix the mess

“I want them” you tell the room
“I want the ones who made it this far”
in a world that only claps
for the shiny new car

Friends come over
see the leaning bouquet
ask why you didn’t buy the good

You say “these were cheap”
leave it at that
misunderstood

But the truth sits there
humming along with the fridge
you know what it feels like
to sit at the edge of a shelf
waiting for a hand that never came
having to save your self

Next time you feel like shelf space
marked down to nothing
in the back of the aisle

Look at those petals on your table
still throwing color
and give yourself
a crooked smile

Fluorescent Saints
Verse 1Hallway tiles glow a sickly off-white under lights that buzz like tired insects, sanctifying lockers, water fountains, dated motivational posters,Teenage bodies drift from class to class in denim and boredom, carrying notebooks, bruises, crushes, and that low background dread they call growing up,The sound system coughs out announcements, lost items, practice times, substitute teachers who will never matter,Between words, the speakers breathe, exhale a sound that doesn’t belong to any human throat in the building.
Verse 2Bathroom mirrors stretch the world a little wider, corners smeared, your face thinning out toward the edges,For a heartbeat your reflection pulls a different expression, one half-second out of sync,You blink hard, splash water, blame sleep, sugar, hormones, anything that doesn’t point to reality slipping,Stalls rattle with unseen drafts, doors tapping in patterns that could be morse or simple hunger.
Pre-ChorusNo one writes this into the handbook or the pledge you mumble under your breath,Still, everyone feels the shift when the bell rings just a beat too slow.
ChorusFluorescent saints hang overhead, buzzing gospel over cheap linoleum,They flicker twice every time the world outside these walls twitches,No rosary, no incense, just gum under desks and graffiti carved honest into paint,Prayers get said without words here, in glances that say stay close when the clock hands stutter.
BridgeA science lab sink coughs up sludge in the shape of fingers before the drain swallows the trick,The library lights dim no matter how many new bulbs maintenance screws in,A guidance counselor’s office plant leans away from one specific corner of the room and never grows that side back,Everyone senses something wrong in the wiring, but textbooks keep handing out the same old diagrams of sane circuitry.
ChorusFluorescent saints hang overhead, buzzing gospel over cheap linoleum,They flicker twice every time the world outside these walls twitches,No rosary, no incense, just gum under desks and graffiti carved honest into paint,Prayers get said without words here, in glances that say stay close when the clock hands stutter.

Folded Like A Prayer

I keep an eviction notice
folded like a prayer
against my chest
words sharp as broken glass
saying “you failed the test”

Every time I pull my wallet out
it’s there like a threat
holding all my little failures
in a thin black silhouette

Woke up to a paper in my wallet
I don’t show to anyone
folded into quarters
like a secret loaded gun

Ink bled through the thin gray lines
the day I pulled it from the door
“Vacate by the first”
in letters heavy as a score

I pressed it flat beside a picture
from a better quieter year
now both of them are creased
and the edges aren’t clear

Every time I buy a coffee
I can’t really afford
thumb brushes that old warning
like a cut from a cord

Standing in the checkout line
while fluorescent lights hum low
thinking how fast a life
can pack its shit and go

I smile at the cashier
who thinks I’m just another face
while a deadline in my pocket
sets the rhythm of my pace

Rain on the windshield
rent in the clouds
noise on the radio
lost in the crowds

I keep walking under skies
that feel one bad month from done
with a piece of paper in my pocket
weighing a ton

They slid it through the metal slot
like they were handing out a bill
no knock
no quiet warning
just a bitter pill

Kitchen table
yellow light
I read it twice again
did the math on every paycheck
trying to outrun the pen

Called the number at the bottom
stayed on hold an hour straight
listening to soft fake music
while someone else decided fate

Now I count days on my fingers
when I’m riding in the train
watching rows of empty windows
shining cold through mist and rain

Every station looks like places
where someone packed and failed
boxes stacked like proof
of how their plans all derailed

I wonder how many strangers
carry what I do
silent little notices
folded out of view

I pick up every extra hour
that this body can endure
clean the floors and stack the boxes
like sweat might make this sure

Driving rides on Sundays
when I ought to rest my spine
anything to keep four walls
and stay behind the line

Still the mail slot coughs up notices
dressed up in softer tone
“past due” wrapped in friendly phrasing
from an office full of stone

Friends invite me out for drinks
I check my wallet
feel that edge
think about the trade I’m making
on this uneasy ledge

One round at the corner bar
or one more ounce of breathing room
one night loud and laughing
or one less night of ruin

I tell them “maybe next time”
blame the shift or blame the rain
never mention how one cheap night
could swing this whole thing toward pain

One day I’ll take that notice out
and feed it to a kitchen flame
watch the words turn into smoke
and forget the shame

Find a place
that isn’t balanced
on somebody else’s whim
where the roof above my heartbeat
doesn’t answer just to him

Till then I walk through weather
with this warning tucked in there
folded like a lottery ticket
half a curse
and half a prayer

Forks And Fault Lines

We got headlines cutting through the family
like a dull rusted knife
turning one long kitchen table
into a front line for life

Mom sets out the chipped plates
same roast
same mashed
saying grace under her breath
TV humming in the background
crawling with the latest count of death

Dad walks in with his phone
already shouting headlines in his hand
says “can you believe this shit”
before he even finds a place to stand

Brother taps the table with his finger
says “that’s not even close to true”
waves his own bright screen like scripture
with a different colored view

Each feed fed by its own preacher
algorithm pouring fuel
now two men who share a bloodline
are playing someone else’s fool

Used to argue over chores and curfews
stupid fights we’d mend
now it’s “where the hell did you get that”
and “you’re brainwashed”
without end

Aunt forwards some wild story
in the group chat right before we eat
something about secret plots
and the neighbors down the street

Uncle mutters “they’re all lying”
but he means a different “they”
everyone trusts a stranger more
than what their own kin say

We pass the peas and mashed potatoes
like a ceasefire in disguise
then someone drops a trigger word
and the hate fills up their eyes

Grandma stares down at her plate
like she can’t hear the words at all
but her hand shakes just a little
every time the voices fall

She remembers when the paper came
once a day and that was it
now ten thousand shouting channels
fight to own each little bit

She doesn’t know which clip is doctored
which quote got chopped in half
just knows the kids stopped visiting
after one too many gaffes

Nobody at this table
wrote a single headline on their phone
but they’ll go to bed convinced
their kin are threats to what they own

Whole companies get rich
off making sure we never agree
selling outrage by the portion
while we choke on what’s not free

There’s a profit in each fracture
in each slammed door and cut-off call
and we pay it every holiday
in silence down the hall

Little sister asks a question
that hangs heavy in the smoke
“do you still love each other
if you think each other’s woke?”

Half the room laughs bitter
half the room just looks away
nobody answers straight
they just reload what their screens say

Someone reaches for the clicker
like they’re grabbing for a gun
switches to a rerun
just to keep this house as one

One day maybe we’ll talk again
about how the garden’s doing out back
about the song stuck in our heads
instead of who’s on the attack

Till then I pass the salt
and swallow all the words I won’t say
trying to see the people I grew up with
through the noise in the way

Friction Halo

Wearing a friction halo light
bending round the neck tonight
pulse is tripping
shoes are loud
logic lost inside the cloud

Sliding sideways through the frame
shoulder first to stake the claim
low end melting through the wall
timing to the heavy stall

Streetlight cuts the broken blind
tracing gold I have to find
leather skirt and fishnet line
boots are planted
doing fine

Back against the counter edge
fingers tapping on the ledge
closing distance
step by step
perfume mixed with smoke and pep

Finger underneath the chin
staring where the eyes begin
smile is trouble
that is true
checking what I need from you

No slow records on the spin
just the loop of where we’ve been
shadow on the kitchen tile
hunger staying for a while

Press me to the fridge and steel
magnets rattling
making real
hands are mapping out the rib
nothing here is looking glib

Tracing spine through cotton shirt
knowing exactly where it hurt
sirens yelling in the street
inside here we feel the heat

Not a romance
not a play
wires crossing in the gray
gravity is pulling in
let the heavy part begin

Trading heat and insults low
clothes are going
nice and slow
if bad habits had a look
you’re the picture in the book

Later on the sweat is cold
stealing shirts and acting bold
water from the chipped glass
watching all the minutes pass

Tug the hair and walk away
nothing left for us to say
storm fronts hitting
then apart
secret kept inside the heart

Door clicks shut
the night exhales
kitchen hums and never fails
leaning back and breathing slow
tasting cherry
and the flow

Fuck Yeah, Tiny Victories

Fuck yeah
tiny victories
like taking out the trash
before it turns into a separate ecosystem
in the hall

Like texting back that one friend
you have been low-key ghosting
because your brain turned simple replies
into a wall

Like getting dressed in real pants
and walking to the corner store
instead of scrolling till you crawl

You text me a picture of your sink
not exactly sexy
just a couple plates washed
a fork
a glass
a sponge sitting proud on the side

Caption says
“I know it’s dumb
but I got out of bed
cleaned these
took a shower
and did not cry in the water this time”

I grin at my screen
bigger than any graduation announcement
ever managed to pull from my face

Because I know what it cost
to lift that plate
to twist that faucet
to stand up
without slipping back
into that bed’s embrace

You send me a screenshot
of an email you finally answered
after weeks of letting it sit there
like a ghost in your inbox

Write “I did the scary adult thing
hit send
did not die
my heart is still beating
even though my brain yelled this sucks”

Later you tell me
you went outside
just long enough to feel the wind on your face
no big outing
no productivity award
just three minutes on the stoop
counting breaths
while your inner critic droned bored

The world throws confetti
for promotions and weddings
and new cars and shiny finished goals

Nobody throws a party for
“took my meds three days in a row
ate breakfast
did not collapse in old holes”

But I see those quiet wins
stacking up like tiny stones
on the side of the road
for tired souls

We keep a shared list in our chat
of dumb things we are proud of

You wrote
“today I washed my sheets, no lie”

I wrote
“I called the doctor
I have been avoiding for six months
and did not hang up when they picked up
even though I wanted to fly”

We react to each other’s updates
with fireworks emojis
and screaming faces
like we just won gold

Because in our house
staying alive
and handling basic self care
counts as giant courage
not some background thing

People can keep their inspirational posters
about climbing mountains
and hustling hard and never quit

Our gospel is
“you got out of bed
when your brain told you not to bother
and you told it to eat shit”

One day all these little wins
will blur into a bigger picture
where you look back and think
“damn, I climbed a whole hill”

Not with one giant leap
but with a thousand small stubborn steps
taken when your energy
was near nil

Till then I will keep cheering
every dish
every shower
every email
every pill

Because celebrating survival
in all its basic boring glory
is my favorite kind of thrill

Fuck You, I’m Proud Of You

Fuck you
I am proud of you
and I will say it
till it sticks in your thick skull

Every tiny choice you make
to stay
to stand
to text
to eat
adds up against the pull

You climbed out of bed
on a day that wanted you buried
under blankets and dreams
that smell like stale sheets and fear

Pulled on yesterday’s jeans
found one clean-ish shirt
and walked into a world
that never made it easy
to be here

You answered three emails
you had dodged for weeks
made that appointment
picked up your meds at the store

Nothing glamorous
nothing shareable
just boring hard things
that used to keep you glued
to the floor

You did not drink last night
even though the bottle looked loud
on the counter
telling its smooth lies

You texted a friend instead
said “I am not alright”
and lived through the part
where your throat tried to close
on your cries

You blocked that number
that always dragged you back
into a loop of apologies
that ended with you feeling small

Tossed your phone on the bed
and shook like hell
yet you did not cave
when it started to call

You act like none of this counts
because the sky didn’t crack
and no one handed you a medal
at the end of the street

You only see the days you crashed
the jobs you lost
the bills in a pile at your feet

You miss the way
you keep getting back up
even when your own brain says
stay down
admit defeat

You went to work
on the day your chest felt like a fist
told your boss you needed a quiet minute
instead of quitting by noon

You answered your sister’s call
instead of ghosting the family
until holiday guilt
came back too soon

You said no to a favor
that would have emptied your tank
then sat with the feeling
that you were selfish as hell

You made dinner from cheap groceries
ate at a table instead of the sink
and that simple act
broke the dizzy spell

You love to list the things
you didn’t do
every unchecked box
like a case against your own heart

I am keeping a separate list
every hard truth you faced
every morning you showed up
and pushed the day to start

That list is longer than your failures
and it’s growing off the chart

You do not owe anyone
a big movie ending
with fireworks and perfect teeth

You owe yourself
quiet mornings
where you breathe
without grinding your jaw
underneath

If all you manage today
is not hurting yourself
answering one message
and changing clothes before sleep

I am still going to look you dead in the eye
and say I am proud of you
no punchline
just playing for keeps

When that voice in your head
starts listing every way you fall short
and calls it truth

Hear mine cut through
with a rough little grin
and a middle finger raised

Proud of you, kid
there’s your proof

Ghost Seat

I am tired of being the ghost seat
at this table
the warm body
no one quite includes in the room

I sit at the same kitchen table
every holiday
same chipped chair
with the paint rubbed thin
from years of lean

You pass plates over my hands
like I am a shadow
in the corner of an old home movie
barely seen

Everyone laughs at stories I told first
only now they are retold
with my credit carefully edited out

I watch my childhood walk around
in someone else’s mouth
while I drink my water
and swallow the shout

They ask me how work is going
then check their phones
before I even finish
the first half of a line

I could stand up
and set myself on fire
and they would just complain
about the smell of the pine

I learned early
how to fold myself
into father’s moods
and mother’s quick storms
without taking up space

Smile when spoken to
vanish when the volume rose
never challenge the pecking order
in this place

My dreams hung in the hallway
in crayon frames
that quietly fell
when new portraits took their hold

Now my victories live in closed notebooks
while you brag about a cousin
who once did half of what I already told

You never remembered my birthday
without a reminder three days late
from some glitchy site

But you never miss a chance
to praise a stranger
for doing the same thing
but louder and bright

You only call
when someone else cancels
when you need another set of hands
to lift or drive or pay

Suddenly I am precious
irreplaceable
until the job wraps
and I go back to storage
for another day

You speak over my advice
till it blows up in your face
and you come crawling back
with the same request

Then skip my number
when you share the success
writing your initials
on the front of the vest

I used to think
if I just kept turning up
they would see the lines I carved
in the ground just to stay

Now I understand
that some people only see furniture and favor
never the soul
they drain away

I am sliding this chair back
letting the wood scrape loud enough
to leave a mark in your ears

I am walking out
with my quiet rage
warmed just enough
to burn through all these years

If you want to miss me
you can miss me for real
while you stare at the space
where my plate once sat

No more half-hearted questions
tossed down the table
like breadcrumbs to a stray cat

I built that future
without this room
without this table
and I did it on my own

Glitter In The Wreckage

We’re glitter in the wreckage
bright in the crack of night
the “fuck it, sing it anyway” misfires
that somehow land just right

I woke up on the wrong damn side
of a life I never really signed for
half dressed
half stressed
coffee burned
rent late
bills piling on the floor

Every channel on the screen
is screaming that I’m nothing
if I’m not sleek and rich and pure

But my mirror’s cracked and laughing
whispering
“you gorgeous broken idiot
you’re still the cure”

I’ve got shoes with their soles half torn
and a heart that overdrafts on hope
each week

But the way the sun hits
my chipped-tooth grin
turns the whole cheap day
into something unique

And I’m humming off pitch
in the shower
like a drunk church choir
that forgot how to speak

Every flaw
every scar
every wrong note ringing through my chest
looks like trash on the surface
but inside that junk
there’s a heart that beats the best

I was told to hide the mess
but the mess
might be what I do best

I’ve been told that my joy is “too loud”
that my laugh sounds like a bar fight
in full swing

That my dreams look like graffiti
on a wall where the rich kids
never dare to sing

But my cheap six-string’s got three good strings left
and that’s enough
to make the rafters ring

Every ex
every boss
every petty little voice
that said “calm down, you’re too damn much”

Never understood
that some of us were born to blow the fuse
instead of using a crutch

I’m the saint of wrong directions
still stumbling
into the right kind of touch

They said grow up
shut up
smooth your edges
till you fit their script and suit

But I’d rather die with my hair on fire
than live forever standing on mute

If loving who I am
means saying “no” and “fuck that”
in the same warm breath

Then I’ll toast my flaws
with a chipped glass grin
and dance off-beat with death

Call all the burnouts
call all the freaks
call all the saints who swear

Call all the kids
who were told they’re trash
for daring to breathe loud air

Stack your middle fingers in the sky
like a strange stained-glass prayer
turn that broken window into a mural
let the neighbors stare

Yeah we’re glitter in the wreckage
shining like the world’s miswired art

If love feels strange and loud and cursed
that’s our kind
that’s our part

Glutton For The Hole

It is not about taste, never was
it is about the hole that opened in my gut when I was too young to call what was missing from the air
I started filling it with everything I could grab before I understood it would never care
Food, bodies, work, screens, sound
anything that kept me from hearing the empty hum in my chest
I became a walking landfill with a heartbeat
calling this hungry pit “doing my best.”

You tell me to stop while you shovel your own flavor of poison down your willing throat
Your addiction just happens to photograph better
fits in a cleaner quote, I take mine messy, loud
obvious
a heap of wrappers and broken morals on the floor by my bed
You hide yours in quiet little habits that gnaw your brain and hollow your dread.

We all feed a hole
I just stopped pretending mine is small
You hide yours in silence, I display mine in the fall.
I am a glutton for the hole, not the treat, not the hit
All I want is to drown that void till it spits
If I die under a mountain of everything I grabbed to feel whole for ten minutes straight
At least I did not leave this world politely starving at the gate.

I have tried fasting, tried clean living
tried cutting out every sugar
every hit of false light till my hands shook and my brain screamed
All it did was make the hole louder, teeth bigger
dreams more mean and unclean
It is not that I do not see the cliff I am sprinting toward with arms full of junk I refuse to drop
It is that the thought of going back to emptiness is worse than the fall on rock.

Call it sin, call it weakness
call it self-slaughter wrapped in candy and sweat
You are right, every label fits
every warning you ever set
But when your judgment day comes and they ask what you did with the time you had to feel
You will say you stayed neat
I will say I devoured everything real.

I am a glutton for the hole, not the treat, not the hit
All I want is to drown that void till it spits
If I die under a mountain of everything I grabbed to feel whole for ten minutes straight
At least I did not leave this world politely starving at the gate.
If there is a tally kept somewhere of every bite
every body, every thrill I shoved into that endless pit
It will be long, It will be ugly

And I will still sign it.

Gold Bands in the Morgue Light

Gold bands on our fingers, cold against the skin
We go through the motions, shrinking from with-in
You twist the ring while you pour your tea
I fake a smile, and you look right through me.
Gold bands in the morgue light
No heat left in the shine, Trapped in the ritual
tracing the design, Just metal and memory

drawing the line.
Photographs dusted, strangers in the glass
We shared the vows, but let the feeling pass
Beds divided, patience wearing thin
Wearing a promise that can’t get back in.

Gold bands in the morgue light
No heat left in the shine, Trapped in the ritual
tracing the design, Just metal and memory
drawing the line.
I could take it off, let it hit the floor
But silence is safer than walking out the door.

Gold bands in the morgue light
No heat left in the shine, Trapped in the ritual
tracing the design, Just metal and memory
drawing the line.

Gold on Skin

Verse 1 Your hands are heavy, warm and bright
A sudden flash inside the night. With every pass
the value’s found, In this space, I am bound.
Chorus Golden touch, like breaking light, In your arms
we hold on tight. Every kiss, a running fire
In this heat, we rise up higher.

Good Luck Hugging A Porcupine

You warn everyone up front that you are a bad idea with legs
a walking no-contact advisory wrapped in leather and secondhand denim
You make jokes about abandonment before anyone else can
toss out lines like “I bite, I bolt
I fuck things up for sport” just to see if they can stem ‘em
Your texts come in bursts of hysteria and silence
three days of memes and over-sharing

then you vanish without a word like a magic trick nobody requested
People call you intense, too much, moody
trouble; you shrug and say “yeah
good luck hugging a porcupine” like the verdict’s already been tested.
Under all that spiny sarcasm sits a kid who learned way too early that warmth carried a price tag
hugs had fine print, comfort could flip on a dime
Every arm around your shoulders felt like a countdown

every “always” sounded like a lie waiting for the worst possible time
You started growing jokes like quills
grew barbed humor along your spine till anyone who got too close learned to laugh or bleed
Now you call it personality, punk charm, personal brand
while your chest still aches every time someone leaves at normal speed.

You say “I am not romantic lead material
I am comic relief with knives
” Yet some nights when you forget to act
your guard drops and you talk about wanting to come home to the same set of lives
That slip of honesty hits like a startled heartbeat under all the jives.

Good luck hugging a porcupine
that is the warning label stamped across your grin
Sharp jokes pointed outward
sharper doubts digging deep under your skin
Still I see the soft belly you keep hidden when the room gets too bright
Good luck hugging a porcupine
challenge accepted every night.

You test people with little stings
cancel plans last minute
pick fights over nothing just to see who bolts and who stays
You drop “fuck off
I do not need anyone” in the same breath you ask if they got home safe
built for push and pull in twisted ways, Most back off
call you toxic, dramatic, exhausting

take their gentle hearts and pack them in bubble wrap for safer friends
The ones who hang around learn to read past the spikes
to hear the shaking in your voice when you say you “do not care how this ends.”
You are not easy, not low maintenance
not the person who glides through parties leaving a trail of calm in their wake
You are the storm in the kitchen, the spilled drink
the too loud laugh

the sharp remark that cuts through the fake
Under all of that
there is a soft creature that never got taught how to take.
Good luck hugging a porcupine
that is the warning label stamped across your grin
Sharp jokes pointed outward
sharper doubts digging deep under your skin

Still I see the soft belly you keep hidden when the room gets too bright
Good luck hugging a porcupine
challenge accepted every night.
If I pull you in and you flinch, swear
call yourself names that hurt you worse than any ex ever tried
I will step back only long enough to let you breathe
then come in sideways, no halo, no pride

I am not here to declaw you, not here to tame your wild
not here to sand down every spike till you fit on a postcard shelf
I just want to be the idiot who learns how to hold you without bleeding too much
and teach you how to hold yourself.
Good luck hugging a porcupine
that is what they say when they walk away from your strange light
I am still here with band-aids and bad jokes and a stubborn will to ride out every fight

If you ever feel too sharp to live
too dangerous to keep around
Good luck hugging a porcupine
I call that phrase a dare and I’m standing my ground.
One day you will look down
notice the quills bending toward trust instead of war
Porcupine heart, I am still here, arms open

bleeding a little, coming back for more.

Good Morning You Chaotic Miracle

Your alarm goes off six times before you actually move
phone buzzing across the nightstand like it’s trying to escape the day
You swat at it, curse the sun
knock over a half empty glass of water and that book you swore you would finish in May
Blanket tangled around your legs like a heavy weight
hair sticking up in directions that defy all logic
You finally stagger upright

stare at yourself in the mirror
mutter something unprintable
then manage a crooked hello.
The sink is full, the laundry hamper is overflowing
your plant looks one bad week away from tapping out for good
You microwave coffee you forgot you poured an hour ago
sniff it, shrug, decide it is fine

stand in the same spot longer than you should
Your brain starts its usual list of accusations
every mistake you’ve ever made
every message unanswered, every dream on pause
Then your cat headbutts your shin
your playlist hits an old favorite
and for one tiny second you forget to keep score.

You think you have to earn your existence with productivity and grace
with a spotless kitchen and a perfect grin
You forget that just dragging your tired self into another sunrise counts as winning before the day even begins
You wake up looking like a cautionary meme and still manage to be the best part of someone’s incoming spin.
Good morning, you chaotic miracle, hair wild
shirt inside out, heartbeat still refusing to quit
You survived another night in this mess of a world

and that alone is enough, you stubborn misfit
We can worry about emails and dishes and destiny after coffee and a small laugh at this whole bit
Good morning, you chaotic miracle, you woke up again
and I am stupidly glad you did.
You trip over your own boots on the way to the door
spill crumbs down your front
send a text that reads “I am on my way

” You forget your keys, go back, forget your wallet
go back, forget why you walked into the kitchen
nearly stall
Then you notice the light through the window hitting the chipped mug just right
making the dust in the air look like some cheap magic trick
And for half a breath, you just stand there, existing
not fixing, not rushing, letting the morning run slow.

You beat yourself up for not being organized
for needing lists, alarms, reminders
for losing the thread
Meanwhile the people who love you are out here thrilled you still pick up when they call
still send dumb memes
still turn up in your own crooked rhyme
They do not see a failure

they see a person who keeps going even when every step feels like climbing wet stairs covered in slime.
Good morning, you chaotic miracle, hair wild
shirt inside out, heartbeat still refusing to quit
You survived another night in this mess of a world
and that alone is enough, you stubborn misfit
We can worry about emails and dishes and destiny after coffee and a small laugh at this whole bit
Good morning, you chaotic miracle, you woke up again

and I am stupidly glad you did.
One day maybe your room will be cleaner
your inbox smaller
your schedule less like a joke with no punchline
Or maybe not
maybe you will always be this whirl of half finished art and overcooked pasta and texts that arrive at nine
Either way

your value is not tied to how polished your morning looks or how well your life matches some imaginary design
You are here, breathing, trying
caring in ways you never give yourself credit for
and that is more than fine.
Good morning, you chaotic miracle
dragging yesterday’s worries into a new sunrise and still finding ways to laugh and care
You check on friends, you feed pets

you turn up to work or school or whatever fresh nonsense waits there
Even when your own heart feels heavy as a cement block
you still find room in your pockets for other people’s despair
Good morning, you chaotic miracle, you woke up again
and the world is better off with you in the chair.

Next time you look in the mirror and see nothing but flaws and fatigue staring back through the glass
Hear my voice in the background saying “good morning
you chaotic miracle
one more day with you is worth this whole wild mess.”

Good Vibes Bad Mouth

I hold the door for strangers
tip too much when I’m broke as hell and living on noodles and loose change
I text my people when I feel them fading
drag them out for walks
remind them their specific brand of weird doesn’t need to change
I rescue spiders in the bathtub like a soft-hearted idiot who thinks every tiny life deserves a ride to the open air
Then I stub my toe on the way back to bed and scream the kind of words that would make a preacher stare.

They say “such language from a sweetheart
you should really watch that mouth
” But sugar never saved a single engine from stalling out and heading south
Kindness in my chest and thunder on my tongue
that’s how I’m built, I don’t do guilt.

Good vibes, bad mouth
I’ll love you hard and swear out loud
Hug you tight then curse the storm that tried to knock you to the ground
If you need a gentle shoulder and a darker sense of humor too
Good vibes, bad mouth, that’s me
all messed up and true.

I send voice notes saying “proud of you” then ruin the Hallmark moment with a joke about how we’re all just damaged freaks
I’ll talk you down from panic at three in the morning
then roast your ex for sport and call him names for weeks
I will show up with soup when you’re sick and sit on your floor doing dishes while you rant about your job and cry
And every time you say “sorry for the mess
” I’ll say “shut the fuck up, you look human
you’re allowed to be alive.”

They want us soft voiced, measured
always shaking hands and whispering praise
But love from me comes in power chords and F-bombs thrown like bouquets
If I’m wrong for mixing tenderness with trash talk
I’m not changing my ways.

Good vibes, bad mouth
I’ll love you hard and swear out loud
Hug you tight then curse the storm that tried to knock you to the ground
If you need a gentle shoulder and a darker sense of humor too
Good vibes, bad mouth, that’s me
all messed up and true.

I won’t police my tongue while the world spins lies with a frozen grin
Labeling cruelty as “professional” while they tear the spirit from the skin
Give me rough-edged honesty
give me laughs that shake the frame
Give me “I fucking love you” over “kind regards” signed with a name.

Gothic Whispers in the Moonlit Vale
Verse 1 In shadows deep where voices call, Beneath the moon’s cold, heavy pall, A lady walks, held in thrall, Through vales where dark of evening falls.
Chorus Hear the murmur, soft and low, Under the moon’s pale, silver glow, Where the night’s dark secrets flow, Truths that only wind can know.
Verse 2 Her gown drifts like a river wide, With stars embroidered on her side, Each step a dance, a flowing glide, Inside the vale where shadows hide.
Verse 3 The statues watch with marble eyes, As daylight fades and sun-warmth dies, Her peace within the silence lies, Beneath the empty, blackest skies.
Bridge Past the arch of olden stone, Where ivy covers buried bone, Her heart beats a heavy tone, In places where the dark is sown.
Chorus Hear the murmur, soft and low, Under the moon’s pale, silver glow, Where the night’s dark secrets flow, Truths that only wind can know.
Outro Walk without a fear or dread, Through iron gates where she has led, For in the vale, her voice has spread, Echoes of the words unsaid.

Gravel

Intro Are we all gonna make it? We’re not gonna make it
are we? Are we all gonna make it? When the lights go out I can still see the teeth. I can still feel the bite. And I keep breathing anyway while the night files me down.
Night sits on my chest like a wet coat hung wrong
A weight that stinks of missed calls and nerves strung long
I pace the kitchen tile, mapping cracks in the floor
While the clock drills holes in the drywall some more. Streetlights blink outside like eyelids that won’t close
Dust on the fan blades learns the name of my woes

I hold my breath long enough to see stars
the sharp kind
My hands shaking like receipts for a life I didn’t find.
I talk to the drain, it gurgles back slow applause
Raid the fridge for courage, staring into empty jaws
My phone face down is a small coffin for plans I couldn’t keep
When it buzzes I flinch like I’m waking from a bad sleep. Outside a siren pulls a wire through my ribs

While I audit the damage of all my little fibs
I picture the hallway in my head, the exit painted red
A door that never opens, just a wall inside my head.
I am not cured of the night, not tamed, not fixed
Not healed by a slogan or a drink that I mixed
But I’m learning where the floor holds
where the breath fits

Where the bleeding stops and the panic quits.
I will wake with the sun I will stand when it hurts I will shoulder the day I will push
I will work Not a happy ending, not a clean slate won
Just a step, just a breath, just a start with the sun.
I lay my clothes out like armor: threadbare hood
stubborn boots, Shirt with the bleach scar
digging up the roots

I write a list that doesn’t lie: pay what I can
Move my bones till the brain stops chewing on the man. There’s a whisper in the vent that tells me to quit
I look it in the eye and tell the bastard to sit
I kill two alarms before they’re born
leave the third as a flint
Floor creaks like an old friend giving me a hint.

I will wake with the sun I will stand when it hurts I will shoulder the day I will push
I will work Not a happy ending, not a clean slate won
Just a step, just a breath, just a start with the sun.
Window latch fights me, then finally gives
Night breathes out the secret of how it lives
In that thin seam of morning the walls stop their grin
The mirror shows a face

not the rumor of a sin. Mouth tastes like burnt plans
coffee fixes half
Walking through the rest with a bitter little laugh
Tie a knot in my resolve, tell the dark “no key
” I mean it like a locksmith, and the locksmith is me.

Maybe the street spits rain and pocket lint at my shoes
Maybe the numbers snarl like they’ve got nothing to lose
But I know the trick of a bill shaved down
A sandwich that fills the hollow in this town. I know the way a body forgives in installments
Ten minutes of heat, ignoring the involvements
The door opens if you lean, even if the hinge is rough
Like an old judge who knows that you’ve had enough.

I will wake with the sun I will stand when it hurts I will shoulder the day I will push
I will work Not a happy ending, not a clean slate won
Just a step, just a breath, just a start with the sun.
When the first line of light writes my name on the floor
I read it aloud, walking out the door, No miracle
no choir, just the click of the lock
The shoes remembering weight

beating round the block. Past where the night kept its knives and its trial
Into a morning that spans for a mile, Promising nothing
but showing up still, Enough to be moving
enough to climb the hill.
And that’s enough to be moving. Enough to begin. Enough to grind that gravel down to a path I can stand on. While the day starts grinding back.

Graveyard Carousel Part 1

Verse 1 Moonlight leaks on angels
wings are stained with moss
Cigarette burns on the stone
counting up the cost. Shadows stretch between the names sinking in the dirt
Iron fence is grinning like it knows about the hurt. I walk the path with heavy boots that remember rain
Listening for a footstep to answer back again.

Verse 2 Horses lean behind the church
peeled to wooden bone, Eyes are glass and staring out
standing all alone. Chains are hanging from the pole
swaying in the breeze
Marking time for secrets hidden in the trees. Spin it once to hear the talk
spin it twice for dread
Spin it three times round and you are riding with the dead.

Pre-Chorus Candles gutter in the damp
dying in the night, Wax is melting down to bone
fading from the sight. Names are carved in secret spots
hidden on the stone, Breathing in the heavy air
feeling all alone.

Chorus Round and round the graveyard ride
music gone and quit, But the rhythm carries on
refusing to submit. Every turn a memory
a mirror cracked and split
Showing faces in the glass that never really fit. Hold the brass ring cold as ice
closing on the hand
Smile for the darkness covering the land.