what you make of it.

the pavement is awake. the rain hit the ground running. there's an idiot  screaming that it's sunny while the world around is flooding . I've come to grips that i can't hold on, but my redemption is a song of freedom and the beat goes on. There's a war within a war. Bones crack like fire that whips through the desolate shore, extracting the poor in the culture of more.
We're all a little displaced. I just wish the sun would shine for those with a different shade on their face. I wish the grace of humanity would touch all the inhabitants of the lost marble in space. I wish sometimes that i could be a monster with demonstrative rage, so the rain wouldn't feel so alone on this plague.
I couldn't feel more alone if i were the dried grass beneath an unwritten tombstone. If our lives are a flicker, my heart is the ash. The dismal and omnipotent stench of our past is wafting toward our future, seeping through foundation cracks. I am now awake with the pavement, and there's a peace inside of me that accepts uncertainty. With peace I'll always be.

Solitary Confinement.

society is solitary confinement.  I was born of the human assignment, and i am happy to be on my land with just my thoughts and 3 plants.  It's not that i'm reclusive. I'm just tired of a humanity that casts a pall over the inclusive. Where hope gets reduced by the intolerant and stupid. Please only paint me as a shadow though. I will disappoint you otherwise. I have an unconditional love for the world , but no legs to stand on against the stars in her eyes.
Your wisdom is a clouded pearl and there's death in the skies. My solitude an umbrella against the the down pour of hate and lies. It's not born of fear, it's just that I'm tired. My patience has withered, my pain has expired. I only know absence. A stone wall that wants to be a field. I wish i could be more. I wish i could feel. I wish i had control of the fire within. But it rages on without script, i am the peril of its whim. I am the shadow if its eclipse. I am the light when it is dim, as I document the journey with the maps on my skin. I want to be more. I wish that i could. But i'm alone in this world, as any sane mine should.

Auto Pilot Episode.

There's been no chaos. All is still. No movement on the pane. Just dust on the sill.
Too quiet for the liking. Too safe to live. He died by suicide while having 50 more years to kill.
Walking the earth behind walls, feeling nothing. Plexiglass soul stops the heart from erupting.
Denial. Excuses. Disrupting the muses. There's no light coming in, means there's no light going out.
More denial, as fading beacons flicker about.
The pilot's off. The window's sealed. The routine is laden throughout barren fields.
No episodes, so close to a sigh. Safe guarded emotions, just rerunning through blank eyes.
No need for disguise when you're living inside.
The bullets all missed. but so were the memories. everything going by as the clock moves steadily.
Hands heavily passing the face. Is there anybody home? is it worth it to be safe?
Time is still ticking, there's no bomb in the chest. Just a treasure neglected with plenty of beats left.
Flip the switch.

The Horse's Dream.

Miller the Horse had a long day in the fields. Grazing and fucking. Non-stop. A retired racehorse, he was sold to stud. Helping to pump out million dollar race horses for the feather capped freaks in Kentucky. He liked his new life, but was definitely tired. He had an amazing stall. Equipped with mosquito nets, organic hay grown by farmers who didn't eat gluten, and the audio version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull narrated by Jeremy Irons to help him sleep steadily throughout the night.
As dusk settled so did Miller. Atop the softest bale of hay he rested his eyes and muscles, and let out a content snort before drifting away to the gentle annunciations of Jeremy Irons. At peace with his conscious state Miller was now free like the night. To wander the landscapes of the imagination through dimensions of suspended gravity and reality.
Miller found himself in a maze of caterpillars. At the exit was a 73 pound carrot in a wading pool filled with sugar cubes. Miller had to navigate the maze successfully before the caterpillars morphed into butterflies with giant nail guns. These blood thirsty Lepidoptera will make a soup with a horse's kidneys and serve it to him before he dies. They bore no soul and Miller knew it. He had to reach the end of the maze before it was too late. He trotted lightly, but the sound of snapping twigs under his hooves stirred the beasts in their cocoons. His strides were careful as to not further disturb their slumber. For once awakened they would turn Miller to glue and send just his eyes back to his family, stuck to a piece of brown construction paper.
Miller was nearing the half way point through the maze. An octopus on a stem stopped him and asked if he could open his lollipop. The wrapper was way too goddamn tight, but Miller's teeth could pierce through rhino flesh if you let em'. Miller obliged because he is a Christian horse and that is what they do. The loud tearing and rustling of the lollipop wrapper awoke and enraged the butterflies. Fluttering around Miller with nail guns cocked, the butterflies salivated and began to dive bomb Miller. He swatted them away as quickly as he could. Trying to be a barricade to protect his new octopus flower friend. Miller grew into a giant. Muscles protruding from muscles. Each nail from the guns inciting more rage in Miller. He wasn't going to fall victim. He wasn't going to bear the thought of his family opening up a parcel with his eyes glued to a piece of brown construction paper. He grew even more massive and began slaughtering the butterflies by the thousands. Winged corpses strewn across the last stretch of  maze when the universe shook. Trees and brush were uprooted as the grounds opened up to a 7000 foot butterfly with gold medallions dripping from his wings, and spears for eyes as he gazed at Miller. It seemed to be over as the winged deity took flight and aimed his eyes towards the defenseless horse. The gold medallions were tokens from hell used to send unruly horses to the ashes of the earth's core. Burning for eternity.
Miller heard a familiar voice and felt soft tentacles shift his petrified body out of the first strikes way.  It was the octopus on the stem. It could move. The octopus on the stem was Jeremy Irons and his tentacles were the 8 points of the universe. Closing in around the Butterfly god and squeezing it so tightly with the suffocating grip of our polluted atmosphere, that the Winged Deity exploded like a piñata. Blood and intestines pranced throughout the maze as if they were excited to be free from captivity. They donned hula skirts and did a celebratory dance for Miller and Jeremy Irons before escorting them to the wading pool filled with sugar cubes and a 73lb carrot. There was a moment of silence for all the horses who fell victim to the butterfly maze's curse in dreams prior. The curse was broken, and so was day. Miller awoke and headed to the meadow to pee.

The end.

junk

Their god is the junk, and they take the lord's name in vain.
Their god, their god, your god. Not my anything. Not my refrain.
Numb your senses. Yes the violence is senseless, we all feel defenseless, but to feel is strength, to live should be relentless.
Your eyes frozen sand dollars, your bones protrude. Your soul lives in squalor and you're stuck in a mood. Between a rock and a quiet afternoon.
Silence is deadly, but it can also be friendly, when staring at your reflection through the back of a spoon, your blood dancing a medley. You can close your eyes in a hurricane, but you'll still get knocked down. Out of sight, but in mind, you can't mask the world spinning round.
Your god is just junk. Your holy temple's rotted. A fix will not fix what was never meant to be solid.

I'm An Avoider: The Anti-Stalker.

I never understood stalkers. All that effort. All that time. I just can't. That's too much. I am tired just thinking about the energy a stalker expends in pursuit of a restraining order. Why go through all that? In the history of stalking has there ever been a case where the person falls in love with the masturbating guy in the bushes below her bedroom window? I am not cold hearted. I know what it's like to love, be in love and yearn. But the effort these stalkers go through is like a bottle of Xanax to me. A fucking hammock full of Ambien. With the internet stalking has been made that much easier too. But even doing all that research on someone is way too daunting. I would prefer to the internet for what it was meant to be used for: Wrestling websites, and buying things that don't involve me having to leave my apartment. I am not a recluse though. I'm just writing this so that every one knows that i am not a stalker. I am an AVOIDER.
If I'm in love with you, you will never hear from me, or see me. I am so lacking in effort that you may not even exist. I don't like heights so there's no goddamn way I am climbing a ladder to watch you brush your hair through your bedroom window. You probably have something shitty on the t.v. that would distract me from watching you brush your hair anyways and I would have wasted a courageous effort on Montel Williams selling life insurance.
I won't send you weird love shit in the mail either. Mainly because postage is expensive and i hate going to the post office because they always look at me like i ate their puppy, but I'm not even Vietnamese. Since I don't follow you online i don't even know what you like anyway. So i could send you something that you'd completely hate, or possibly be allergic too. You could die. I don't wanna kill though. I just wanna copulate with you and talk about X-Men. I love you, I just don't care. So I'm keeping my stamps to myself.
If you are a musician, or other artist that i love don't be alarmed. As much as I'm a fan of yours and know all your work front to back, I'm an avoider. To show you how much i love you I won't die for you. I will not make a video from an empty apartment proposing to you with a ring I stole off my dead grandmother while i plan out our future. I don't want a future with you. That would require disillusion.That's not who I am. Yes, if you ever wanted to copulate on your tour bus I would be ok with that, but it would require all your effort and none of mine. Basically you'd have to be Bill Cosby to get me to have sex with you. To further show i love you, when you're playing a show in town i go the bar next door and listen through the muffled walls just so i don't have to see you. Hell, you may be dead right now and I would have no idea because i don't search your name on Google every 18 seconds. If that isn't real love and dedication, then i don't what is. So please stop thinking that I'm thinking about you.

Future Dead Person.

The cat is on the bed. There's muffled sounds coming from the television downstairs. The wind is hitting the wood frames on the windows like a softly thrown bowling ball putting down the alley. I'm overthinking tonight because I'm feeling sort of lost. Not in a dismal way, but more of a reflective thought. The kind of thought that isn't analyzed before materializing. One that just appears and is immediately transcribed  into word. I gave up being addicted to depression, but I don't deny myself the pleasure of looking inward. A healthy cleanse is all it is. I guess I'm a little tired as well. I'm at a massive peak of creativity and drive so my brain is gasping. I gotta embrace these peaks and milk them for all they offer since one never knows how long the muse visits. Being more levelheaded is huge for creativity both for art and other purpose. I've utilized it lots in building myself up. Working on aspects of my character that i felt needed growth and development. There is a long way to go, but i am enjoying this quiet thinking because it doesn't involve thoughts of harming myself, despair or a broken heart. I think when you secretly enjoy being depressed because it's a built in excuse for not succeeding or even trying at life you're doing just as much harm as you would by cutting your wrists.
I like that i can be alone with my thoughts and they can just be random. It's a good kind of somber because I truly love my life. I love everyone in and around my life. And once i let go of my addiction to being depressed I truly began to appreciate everyone and thing around me. Especially myself. I'm stuck with me forever so i gotta learn to love me.
I love the freedom my mind brings me now too. There's all these branches sprouting up. It's a slow, but fun process because I'm seeing and feeling the change every day. I am becoming life. I can sit back and reflect without falling into an unnecessary sadness. I allow other perspectives to cross paths in my mind. It is so quiet right now and i LOVE it. I can hear the smallest humming on my screens from the wind and fans blowing toward them. It doesn't take me to a dark place anymore. It's not scary, or hopeless. It's now. I love now.
I love that i can be lost in thought, swatting at butterflies in my mind as I'm smiling at my cat trying to fight the dust particles floating above my lampshade. I love that i can look deep inside my soul and realize that it found me. I love that i can flick my finger on my cheek and it sounds like a water drop. I love gum drops. There's trials in life that may make me angry or frustrated, but i love that i can turn those emotions into a creative expression where no one gets hurt. I love that my bathroom is 5 feet from my bed because i pee so often.
Even as I'm lost in thought, I'm here. The wind blowing through the leaves makes it sound like rain. This isn't a phase either. I checked. There are no more passing strangers. Just life in unison. I am Dan and I'm a future dead person.

buried.

I buried my sword. In the ashes on my accord. I left it beneath the empty streets and the sudden acceptance that walking away is not defeat. I can't keep visiting ghost towns, because i know you're not a ghost. I can still miss you without getting a lump in my throat. I could feel the emptiness encroach , and i was fighting the wind with feathers in my coat. I was kicking up dust, i was blinded by hope. I was burning energy and bridges all for the sake of scratching the surface with broken glass of this piece of shit periscope.
I needed to see life eye to eye. I needed to return to that ghost town one last time, to lay my own demons to rest. Goodbye. I'm eating toast with honey and butter, there's crumbs on my chest. I know it's not your flesh. You can haunt me forever, i concede i'm a mess, but I'm standing tall now, the lone resident of this address. I've put down my weapons, and admitted success.
My ghost is now buried with my sword and love letters. My strength now comes from within, as my eyes blink like camera shudders. When i say i found myself you will not hear me st-st-stutter. I'm surround by life, emotion of all colors. My weapon is my heart, and the love from countless others. I buried my sword in the ashes where the embers no longer hovered. I cleaned up the blood from the wounds that took moments to make and years to discover. I buried the past as i reconciled there would not be another.

Normal side of depression.

With suffering from a borderline personality disorder you experience all emotions at their most extreme. Even the normal feeling. That is what i am feeling at this very moment so i need to capture it to compare and contrast.
So many times i find myself fighting certain thoughts out of my head. Mentally pushing them off a cliff because i don't wanna think that way. I don't wanna say what i think in most of those instances. That constant war in my head is extremely taxing on an already depleted soul. I can't stress the agony enough. You've got thoughts of suicide, rage, hopelessness, lunacy, anxiety, doom, absurdity, loneliness, fear, the yearning for seclusion, self hate. All fighting for sole custody of your mind. 24 hours a day. Each feeling and thought screaming over the other. Pulsating the shit out of my temples. Whatever thought wins for that moment are the words that I say and or write for that moment. Today I am balanced. The feeling i wish i could have everyday.
I see things with so much clarity and feel like an actual, functioning adult of 36 years old.
My sense of empathy comes to the forefront and I'm able to act on reason rather than emotion.
I would assume that's how most people operate naturally on a day to day basis. I enjoy this short window of being to articulate a point without the extremity of any side of my personality hijacking my intent.
This doesn't mean i don't stand by what i say. Or stand by how i act and think. It's all in the delivery though. I've always considered my mind a messenger of chaos. Beneath an insult, improper joke, angry jerking of the knee, lies my message. And today has been great because i could get every word out with full clarity. It may be less entertaining or amusing to others, but i can't help but savor the moment. And I learned from moment's past that i can't take these normal days for granted. I used to analyze them, and rack my brain on ways i could recreate this feeling every single day. In doing that, i wasted a completely normal day.
Today was far from a waste. I woke up well rested. I was able to have 2 cups of coffee and get all of my stretching in before work. It was a solid, and accomplished day on the job. And i really felt accepted when I was noticed and thanked for specific tasks i completed. Especially when my boss looked to me for feedback and advice on a work related situation. Little things like feeling wanted really stick with me. As much as it's important to be an individual, and be content and secure in your own actions, the acknowledgment from others makes a huge and positive impact on my day.
The normal side of depression is a great time to truly appreciate being alive despite some of the not so pretty people, and feelings that attack you on a constant basis. My mind has been moving at a Sunday drive's pace. There's nothing ahead of or behind me. No tripping over thoughts as i navigate the landmines that my self destructive side planted in haste. Today there is no haste. There is no haste. I feel so free.
Not everything about depression is bad.

tired beyond tired.

my eyelids are magnets. If i were to say i were falling asleep i'd be lying, because i'm in bed and can barely move. The music is the only thing keeping me awake. I need it to decompress. It massages the tension in my soul, loosening the knots. If i could tie as good as i could twist i'd make more sense. Everything hurts. The lines around my eyes are racing across my face and my joints are cast iron. I would break if i took a break. I could swim the ocean to avoid the lake. I could do so many things if my mind wasn't a water bubble in my spine. I can't bend. I have been absorbed by the feathers in my mattress. Quicksand, sinking me to slumber. Repose is my first glance at peace. My body is a ghost swimming in bed sheets.
I can't stop twisting my beard. It's my new security blanket, i guess. It's like running the back of my hand across fresh cut grass. It feels like wheat. I couldn't date a girl with celiac disease because if she kisses me and accidently ingests part of my wheat beard she would have an attack. I haven't been trained to deal with such attacks so i'd probably just leave her to die.
Sometimes, when my sadness is really strong i can physically feel it. I feel the butterflies dropping dead inside from bad trips on stomach acid. I feel the tears being ripped from the corners of my eyes because i dared peek into the corner of my mind. I saw love. It was so far from me. A place i couldn't reach because my arms are planted at my sides like roots in a flower bed. My sheets are gray. My pillow is a head case so i rest upon it. The blinks get longer, but i'm a conscious driver. My mind is a fading signal as the eyelids sink into ocean's bed. On the ocean floor i brought the sandman a dream.

The chaos of depression.

I am a screen door in a tornado. Tied to an abandoned house. An enthusiastic tsunami , trampling the horizon from the ocean's mouth. I do it for love as the world drowns, and I'm unable to stay stable. The lighting with no sound, i stole the gravity from the underground. I am unfinished business. no screws to call loose. a conduit for fleeing marbles down a spiraling chute. My life is a loaded gun , but i'm too afraid to shoot.
I am a dirty soap box, stepping stone for those who are all talk. I'd throw rocks, but I've long since been cast. If i had a heart it would be made of stained glass. My thoughts are winds of pain, a whim's crow on a paint chipped window pane. Life hit me below the belt, i'm nuts. Mental illness sucks. I'm out of my own mind before my eyes are shut.
I am a quivering mass of panic. my blood is screaming murder, my smile calm as a hammock. Faking my way through the day i can't stand it. I mask every stabbing, painful jab of sadness , cause by every gasping breath i take on this planet. I go to the deep ends of the shallowest scenes, so that i can be seen as the flashes of lighting whose thoughts are not clean. My baggage is packed with wooden spoons and butter knives, fluttering to my own beat like a seizing butterfly. syncope at the lunch rush of my day job, almost got me laid off, but a faint whisper from an old demon i thought i paid off....there's no method to my mind, it's the shattered heart of chaos.

The Dark Side of Depression.

Pickles are delicious. Not the sweet pickles though. I hate relish too. Kosher dill and sour are the best. I love to drink the pickle juice as well. Even before the jar is empty. I love the giant pickles you can get in the old school sub shops. I would always get a large meatball sub and a large dill pickle from the jar on the counter. I would take some of the meatballs out and cut up the pickle so i could  put it on the sub roll and then put the meatballs back. I've got heightened senses, so just talking about meatball subs has made me really hungry for one. I can taste the marinara sauce and Italian seasoning right now.  The tart of the pickle, the sweetness of the sauce, the warmth of the bread. I can really taste it. Sometimes i would crush up potato chips and spread them across the top of the sub. Having a heightened sense is good when I make food because i can recreate what I've eaten elsewhere. Piecing together all the things that make me content is my most relaxing of all tasks.
I try to apply the piecemeal recipe approach to other aspects of my life as well. Whether it be fitness, positive energy and knowledge, or creative writing and art. I can take elements from moods, days, feelings and piece them together into a writing, a workout, or even research project. I've always felt it important to apply all your senses and capture their meanings in time to use toward a lesson in life or just a silly joke. It makes it more authentic and convincing. That heightened sense also helps me remember the dark places i never wish to return.
The thing about the darkness though, it's the most deceivingly comforting. It makes you feel safe because you can be yourself without fear of judgment ( or so it makes you think.). People can't see your flaws, insecurities, and demons. I have demons. The darkness makes the blackest of clouds look like a guiding light. Thankfully I've found a true guiding light and have managed to escape the cold embrace of my own darkness.
Admittedly my mind does travel there sometimes, but i quickly use my tools of recipe making to snap back to reality. The biggest mistake you can make is to feed that darkness with drugs or alcohol to numb your pain. All that does is weaken your wits and bury you further into the lonely corners of your mind. I know this because i tried to bury my dark thoughts, and myself with excessive pills and alcohol. It really was a dark time. A time i welcomed rather than escape. I thought i would be safe. I created my own space inside my head where no one could through. To me it was a sanctuary, while others saw it for what it truly was: a tomb. To escape the noise i would go to that place in my mind where reason and love couldn't find me. I saw reason and love as my enemy. As someone out to get me, and destroy like the rest of the world. I blurred the lines between help and harm because i was wounded. And if i was going to go, i wanted to be the one to say how and when.
Sometimes at work I'll be holding a knife doing on of many random tasks and I'll lose sight for a moment and imagine plunging the knife into my stomach. My heightened senses can make me feel the cold steel bonding with the warm blood as they absorb my hands. I visualize this as if it were actually happening. I sort of like it. And the acknowledgement that i sort of like it brings me back to reality , and the guiding light ( not a religious reference, simmer down.). I need this little lapses in time to remind me i never wanna go back there. I never want to live that feeling again. I never wanna be alone on a pull out couch with a tattoo machine, permanently scarring my hand, because at that moment i thought i could catch a shooting star. That mark still remains on my body as a reminder. A reminder NEVER to return there, but also never forget that it always looms. Lonely like me.

The Lonely Side of Depression

I often take great pride in being an island, and sort of wear it as a badge of honor. Some days i just can't bare it though. There really is the undesired loneliness that dwells in me and there's moments where i let it overcome me. I'm not saying this for compassion. Reassurance is nothing more than a passive aggressive barricade between who i am and who you think i am. Fear of being rejected for who i really am has made me in to an island. I still, at 36 years old am completely insecure and unsure of my role, and who I am supposed to be.
The thing i hate the most is that i know i am expressive, and frequently display it. Inside though, I know it makes me look crazy. And there is no bigger stigma in the world than being thought of as crazy. It means no one takes me serious, and I'm quickly dismissed from groups, cliques, teams, and so on. That can be a massive pill to swallow. To know that you don't fit in anywhere. Even with the outcasts. I am so alone, that sometimes my thoughts don't even speak to me. And my fear of rejection, and failure causes me to take my expressions to certain extremes because I'm trying to push people away so they can't get close enough to hurt me, or see my flaws and ridicule them. It's not that i wanna be alone. It's not that i don't like people. It's just that i feel so out of place no matter where i am, and who I'm with. Everyone seems so secure and certain about themselves and their decisions. Even if they're not, they create the appearance that their ducks are in a row, and their lives fulfilled.

I am so ashamed of my failures and shortcomings that even the scariest of masks can't hide it. I am too vulnerable for my own good. Again, i don't seek reassurance. I don't know what i seek. All i know is that this feeling, this weight of loneliness that accompanies me on this dead end walk is starting to hurt. How does one go one not loving themselves? Especially when I don't know who I am. How do i find my own comfort? I get so defeated by my own thoughts that i sleep the entire day when not working. I see others my own age and younger leading normal lives. Even if they're battling a war inside, they navigate the fiery maze with confidence.
I don't feel human. I go to pick up my son at his school and i don't feel human. I see all these parents gathered and talking to one another about sporting events, fundraisers, their kids grades etc. and I'm just a fly on the wall. Even if i try, i feel as if no one sees me at their level. Even close friends. Even when i try, i know I'm just a misplace grain of salt on the feast of life. Shades apart from any light.

To watch life pass me by from this vacant island is crushing. A crushing wave of hopelessness, and a sobering reminder that i feel like the sand that doesn't get pulled back in to the ocean. I feel stuck as you all move on.  People I know starting families, owning homes, set in careers. I've isolated myself to the point that i may never discover a way off this island.
I don't know who I am, and there is nothing more lonely.

Celery Stalkers

i can't step away from the pain. I can't walk the unbalanced beam without falling from refrain. I shake the wind and drown the rain. The predators descend on barren fields. I'm sunburned but you can't have the peels. You're hungry, and you're stalking your meal, but I'll starve you to death by making it all real.
You lurk in shadows, i AM the shadows. You hang in desolate fields, i am the gallows. Abandoned by life so you steal cupid's arrow, haunting the innocent, but there's no " maybe" old sparrow. I'll clip your wings and ground you 6 feet. No means No you fucking parasitic leech. Howl at the moon, but she's too good to speak. Crawl back in your hole before i rip your tongue out through your cheek.
Watching like a crazed lone celery stalk. Never picked, so you try to chop. You try and walk. You delusional piece of shit, stop trying to connect the dots. the setting sun's orange sky see's you no more than after thought.
Don't confuse with vengeance, it's sleeping. I'm just here on the behalf of remembrance for those who's innocence was stolen from safe keeping. You're a drunk fucking chipmunk screaming in to an elephant's trunk. No one can see or hear you. You're lost like our lunch. You make me sick, and every thought you have of prey, is an action that i take to take away your light of day. back off.