Vanity

Pluck your eyebrows
Pick your teeth
Skin unblemished
Obsolete
Must be perfect
Must be right
Oh you will be quite the sight
When your hair falls out
From too much product
Face in lesions
Tweezers bloody
Skin and bones
And thoughts a'plenty
A worn out shell
Still chasing beauty
Perfect torture
Tortured perfection.

Summertime Blues

Flip-flops
Lemon drops
Taste the summer air.

Face your fears
Retort your jeers
Live life if you dare.

Mostly water
Cannon fodder
Flesh with bits of hair.

Filled with smoke
Until you choke
Pain that you can bear.

Sleep til noon
Talk with the moon
Stars the show they care.

Storytime

Before the humid night turns grey
And the crickets chirp grows mute
Tell me all your favorite tales
Of fancies, follies and pursuit.

Tell me of the massive book
That is your darling life
I'll listen on this sweat soaked bed
With the sun and moon at strife.

Impress me with a fine adventure
Or sadden me with sorrow
The night ends soon and after all
Who know what comes tomorrow?

And with your final graceful lines
The sun's rays break the pane
A final query about my role
Secondary character, or main?

Temptation

Arsenic and Roses
It's such a pretty sight
When you're staring down a barrel
On a long and lonely night

An itchy trigger finger
With an empty fifth of rum
A combination made for kings
A song the beggars hum

This empty night is getting hot
My body growing cold
Its such a shame to walk this path
Escape meant for the old.

Isolation

Isolation is to be stuck in a cage. A cage made of bars. The bars are spaced perfectly apart, so that from any given angle, the opposite side of the cage looks just large enough to squeeze out of. Freedom is just a tight squeeze away, all you need to do is step over to the other side and work your way out. But you can't. It's a petty illusion meant to give you a false hope, so whoever is looking onto your cage can be amused by you chasing the exit. And suddenly, as you cut off circulation to your lower half trying to squeeze through an impossibly small opening, you realize that where you were originally is just slightly wider than your current escape. But it's a lie, the illusion is all around, teasing the condemned.

The cage is the worst form of isolation. It's not because of the limitation of movement, it's because your senses tell you what it's like to be free. You can hear others chatting, your can see friendships forming out of raw air, sometimes, albeit rarely, you can even stretch your hand out and scrape your fingers on the sandpaper of others. The eyes play tricks on you. You see other people crawling from their cages, but you remain faithfully stuck inside yours. This gives you hope. Hope keeps you looking for your escape, but then you see that the others cages were just a single wall, or perhaps a few, and all they had to do was step around them. But your cage is made of six walls - Four on either side of you, a roof, and a floor. You're trapped, but can taste the freedom on your lips.

Hell they say, is what you make it. My hell, it seems, is to be trapped in this cage and watch life around me, while I can only grasp the bars and reach for hands that don't want me.

Morning Dew

Cold air intermingles with a trail of smoke,
Breathing in the morning air with carcinogens.
Bright light teasing behind the dewy trees,
With fog coating the roadways to confuse the morning commute.

Constant shade surrounds me before the sun rises,
Shivering briefly before ignoring the chill.
The chirp of birds is the only music heard,
Interrupted by the crash of a dump-truck feasting on refuse.

The wolves and foxes go into hiding,
Another night of food and frolic past.
Business-suit wearing apes emerge from glass caves,
A firm noose tied around their necks as an invitation to predators.

Paper burns and ash falls to stone,
A leathered foot and morning dew extinguishing it's flame.
And I myself crawl back into my den,
With the wolves and the foxes hiding from the morning light.

December

December has never been a very good month for me. Ever since I can remember, it's always been the month that has the most effect on my emotional state. This is followed closely by January. As such, people who know me are sometimes curious as to why I change so drastically in December - Long story short? I'm not sure. But I can tell you about how I feel.

December is the start of a period of the year where I am highly depressed. I'm not talking sad, or melancholy, or any simply stated emotion, I mean severely and completely depressed. This usually lasts til around mid January, though sometimes crosses into February. I'm not sure of any given cause, it could be the weather change, it could be the drastic reduction of stress from school ending, it may be the simple fact that everyone I'm close to is traveling away until January.

Depression doesn't effect me like most people think. I don't cry, I don't contemplate suicide, I don't do stupid things for no apparent reason. I just lose all motivation. For anything. Going up the stairs to go to bed seems like too much work. Food is in the kitchen, and that's often too much for me to consider eating. Showering? Not likely. And the chances of me making plans to hang out with someone are slim to none. I just cease to care about doing anything, even things I'm highly passionate about. I also become easily agitated. Small things annoy me quickly, and people judging me or not listening to something I have to say quickly get on all my nerves. Similarly, people trying to get me to talk about how I feel annoys me to no end.

Are there reasons I'm depressed? Aside from a chemical imbalance in my brain, yes. I'm consistently low on money, to a point where buying enough food to sustain myself can be difficult (I could ask my parents for money, but I avoid this because I already borrow so much from them, to the point where I feel like a terrible son and person in general.) I'm constantly single, and while it's not hard for me to find someone to share a bed with, I have an extraordinarily difficult time finding someone I connect with on an intellectual and emotional level (I can think of a very small number of people who I think of romantically, and naturally none of these women have the same feelings for me.) My grades are mediocre at best, and I'm always always going to be worried I won't be able to make a sustainable living in theatre, especially considering I can't even get my education in what I hope to do in the future. I don't have many friends, and I know I'm replaceable to all of those that I do have. That is to say, I'm hardly close with even my closest friends, and none of them will be sad when I'm no longer around them. To summarize, I'm poor and lonely and not terribly hopeful for the future.

There's nothing that can change how I feel. I've been on medication, and it does nothing for me (well, it does, I don't feel bad, but my motivations are still entirely lacking.) Similarly, people "showing that they care" has no effect on me, as there's a long history of people who "just want to show they care" and who "will always be my friend" who end up abandoning me entirely by March. It's best to just wait it out. I'll be myself soon enough.