Though quiet, this life 
is rich with prose, music, and
the promise of us. 

On the precipice
of endurance I found not
Truth but a Reason.

Ours is a love lined 
with speed limits but they're
a blur in your wake. 

By this point I’ll just assume that:

• My self-image is distorted to troubling degrees, and I’m nowhere near as monstrous as I think/feel I am.
• Or the remaining few are in denial of what’s right before their eyes, even when it’s joked about and masquerades as prose.
• Or they’re just as fucked as I am and are awaiting the inevitable suicide.
• Or they’re saints and believe that I can endure a little more, and then some.

It is a task of the highest order, analyzing the myriad thoughts and emotions to which I’m highly susceptible. They oftentimes flow too deep for true translation, skirting beyond the periphery of my conscious mind, but of this lone fact I’m certain: All the horrors of this world—known and otherwise—would certainly flee were they to encounter them in full; I myself still shudder at the occasional glimpse of their countenances, though I’ve been their captive audience most of my waking years.

This fact isn’t a matter of acclimation, but of evolutionary impossibility.

Who and what am I, then, if not their chronicler and gatekeeper alike? Hypervigilance continues to claim me, every sense I possess heightened to animalistic proportions in response to their rustlings—my physical being paralyzed with the awful understanding that, were I to speak of the darkened locales they roam in detail, I’d be thrown in a madhouse for a second stay.

Perhaps this time in permanence.

wizened in the ways of love and lust,
ours remains a journey into the great unknown,
but I come with a warning label,
breathe fire and smoke with the worst of them
—just ask the ashes in my wake.

and you, the catalyst of every passion embodied,
the indomitable that begs for domination;
I long to oblige you in ways as of yet undiscovered,
to the very limits of human endurance itself.

it's said that yours is a land of perpetual darkness
but I know no fear;
should we ever lose our way
just touch me, lover—say my name,
and I swear we'll set the entire continent aflame.

I’ve now endured five years past my expiration date. Hooray!

Strange, that, how we can 
feel so much and so little 
both at the same time.

A drawn out affair.
I never write about you.
Silence says enough. 

Most can't handle me.
I wonder if you'll stay
when the ink has dried.

Lodged in one's throat, The 
End tastes of gun-oil and smoke.
We're not there yet.

Pen on paper, I
could write endlessly and still
fail to capture you.

Watch them closely, those
lovers with reserves to spare.
They seek what they've lost.

Complacency is never my thing, and it’s on rare occasions when I’m able to write anything of note and feel like, “Yes, THAT is my voice,” but I just did a few moments ago and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

The Devil's playthings,
hands. I hold their wants at bay. 
"Strength" in inaction.