I’m home now I’m sitting on the couch I’m thinking too much
Today I shared that I am struggling at an AA meting I am struggling with depression
I’m in a deep dark nothingness I don’t know why I write maybe it’s to numb the voices or make them louder
or to capture the tension I feel when everything around me breaks
or heals
with words I struggle to relate to be a human being in such an insidious world
There’s never a point to the things we do I want to say it’s all her fault but when I do I feel sad because I’m not taking full responsibility
but you can’t blame me for being a little jaded I run from my problems rather than face them
I’m unworthy to be here I’m unfit to be there
I’m so bad at being a person
Everyone gets it they understand the way things work but me I sit on this couch trying to digest the past and face the future
Together they thrive maybe I was meant to struggle everything happens for a reason     right
So my purpose is to suffer that doesn’t seem very fair
Last night I went to class and nobody got what my piece was trying to say I didn’t understand theirs so it’s okay
Maybe no one understands anyone and yet I feel so left out all the time
I have no morals I have no class I’m broken inside
These situations make me feel stupid I feel so cold I don’t know why I keep taking steps toward reparation when I keep getting knocked back two times the amount I put forth
I’m just so cold the fireplace is on and yet I feel so cold and hollow like if you saw me now you could see through me like I don’t exist or maybe I really don’t
I’m an enigma poison purposeless I try to find reasons but nothing seems satisfactory enough to keep me going
But still I keep trying I keep trying I keep trying and I’m bound to fly one day they say but the sky is black tonight and tonight I will fall

Pills
Pipes
Razor Blades
Pick Your Poison
Mine Is Fate
Minus Resistance
Will Power
Kill My Brain
Kill My Soul
Fueled by Hate
Fill the Ego
with Grandiosity
& Suffering
Dine with Poison
Survival
Escapism
Thrive on Little to No Purpose
Driven to Run
Brought on by Famine
& Concern
Don’t worry about me
I’ll be okay
I’ll be all right tonight
Let me escape
the baffling truth of
existence
Let me
break free from the restrictions
the human race has been given
I’ll be fine
Trust me I’m always okay
Even when you cry
I’ll make it out of here alive
Okay?  Fine by me
Nuances of Life
Faces of Death
Everything in Between
Facets of Existence

​I’m a child
I don’t want you to know
I’m a child
Do you want to know what
it looks like when
someone is just short
of losing their mind
I’m a child
raw and unhinged
I’m a child
and I’m on the fringe
of manic delusions
I’m a child
I beat my nerves raw
with poisonous resolutions
I’m a child
reclusive and evasive
I’m a child
Don’t look at me
Don’t see just how fucked
I am in the head
I’m a child
It’s all about the many
derivatives
of me and my needs
I’m a child
Look away!

She woke me up
reading the Bible
on my lap
I shoved her away
and reached for a beer
At breakfast I ordered
a beer with my pancakes
I remember the motel
We didn’t have sex
Too immature we just drank
all night
and in the pool
we swam
but there wasn’t a pool
at the Motel 6
 
There’s something magical
about self-destruction
It’s why all the poets
and painters and sculptors
try so hard to capture it
Ben cooked the cocaine
while I cooked the beef
and added spices
and he added baking soda
He burnt it so badly
that I wanted to die
He gave me head so I’d forget
that I wanted to die
I beat his face in
with a lighter
that one cold winter night
 
I loved her
But she only loved drugs
We had a lot in common
that first year we were
together I snorted Adderal
that Ben gave me
and walked up and down
the night
while she sketched a world
where the skyscrapers
cut holes in the sky
 
Sometimes I think
there was no point to
living like this I sat on a
rooftop
and maybe I fell
while she poured cocaine
down a straw into
my asshole and then started
tattooing BUBBA’S BITCH
in my ass with a safety pin
I remember the blood
gushing out of Ben’s
eyeball because that night
I didn’t care much for him
No wonder people
didn’t care too much for me
 
I got so inebriated
that I took off my pants
and showed off my cock
went streaking so that the world
would know that
I didn’t care
what they thought
When I was high
only death could revive me
I’d shit myself
wake up in my own vomit
after cowering against the millions
of spiders crawling all over
my face
I’d itch so hard that
my skin would bleed
 
I fell down
the stairs only so that
she would carry me home
and then we’d fight
and then we’d fuck
and then she’d cry
and then we’d fuck
and then tomorrow
I’d fall down the stairs again
She said I had no morals
Perhaps the woman whose purse
I found under the seat in front of me
at the movie theater
would agree
Perhaps she was right
but she’d only fallen for me
the night before I fell too hard
this time
and when I did she wasn’t
there to piece me
back together
 
In the decrepit waste
of this dilapidated home
I would have traded
so that she would love me
the way I deserved
I knew it was over the
first moment I set eyes
on another night
Will I make it
to another day///

Dear You,
 
You were maybe 14 or 13 years old when I met you.  I can’t remember your name but I remember the tears.  You were suffering.  A young teenager from a small town in Maine.  Lost on a train going through Boston.  How you got there, you had no idea.  You got on the wrong train and ended up in Boston in the middle of the night and had no idea how you got there or how to get home.  First, I saw the pricks in the aisle in front of you laughing cuz they thought it was funny that you were crying so openly on the subway.  I called you over to me and asked what was wrong and you told me.  I asked if you had a phone; you said it had died.  Sometimes I wonder if you were high, if this is how it happened.  Maybe someone talked you into getting on the wrong train and here you were, heading in to the darkness of the city.  I let you use my phone and you phoned your mom.  I told you to stick with me.  I knew what to do.  One night I got lost in Mattapan at 3AM—I had gotten on the wrong bus—and this older black guy protected me from the dangers of the innercity and kept me with him the whole time and eventually he flagged down a cop car and when the cops said they wouldn’t drive me and my girlfriend to a safer location, the black guy asked if he really wanted to risk turning on the news the following morning and seeing that two white kids had been murdered on his watch.  The cops told us to get in.  So when the train pulled in to the station that night, I brought you to the MBTA security guard standing there and he probably thought we were high but I explained him the situation.  I didn’t know if you made it home.  Two days later I called your mom from my phone since her number was saved on my phone and she was so grateful I was there to help you.  Those assholes making fun of you did not help the situation but I’d like to think if I wasn’t there someone else would have stepped up.  Today I was at the UPS store sending out some presents and there were a lot of people there and this woman by the door was struggling to get in while she held all her packages and no one helped her and I turned from the front desk and saw her there and hurried over and helped her in.  She was so grateful and I said don’t worry about it.  I felt it was just the right thing to do.  I guess most people don’t care enough to step up.  Most people don’t want to help out.  They want to laugh and point rather than do the right thing.  If I wasn’t there to help you that night, I hope things would have worked out still, but I don’t know.  I’m just glad you made it home safely.
 
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you again.  The world is a big place, with many people who never cross paths, but fate has a way of planting certain people in our lives at just the right time///or perhaps the wrong time, depending on how you want to view it.  I’ve only been to Maine one time since then, with my wife Michelle, to her hometown Bathe, MA.  Maybe you’ve come to Vermont at some point, who knows.  I was living in Vermont when I helped you.  I was in Boston visiting family and especially my on-&-off girlfriend Samantha.  She was the one who had suggested I call your mom the next day, although I waited a day and called her the day after that, after my dad had driven me back home.  I wonder if you still remember me, if I played an important part in your upbringing.  I’m probably just tooting my own horn and all, and I bet this event hadn’t even stuck with you over the years.  But it stuck with me, and I’ll tell you why::::
                              I know you might think I was the one who had helped you that night—I know your mom at least felt that way when I had called her—but truth be told, I needed some event like this to help me realize that I do have a good heart and a good soul, and I am someone who can be counted on at times.  I’ve done some bad shit in my past, and I know that doing things like this doesn’t exactly make up for all the mischief I have caused, but it’s a start.  For me, it was a beginning.  As selfish as it is to say, you being there in trouble and me being there to guide you to safety that night, was a major turning point in my life.
 
I said to someone I worked with for a long time in AA that I didn’t feel there was a point to helping anyone because it’s not like I can save everyone.  This guy had a very interesting way of explaining things to me; he told me of this fable where a young boy is walking down the beach and picking up crabs that have been washed ashore and tossing them back into the ocean.  An older man—of course it’s an older man who says this to him—asks the kid what he is doing.  The man tells the kid that there’s no way he could make a difference.  The kid points out into the ocean and says: I MADE A DIFFERENCE FOR THAT ONE.
 
When I spoke to your mom, I gave her my number and said that you were welcome to call me yourself.  I don’t know if she put you up to this or if when you called me you were completely genuine, but it doesn’t matter.  The fact that you called me yourself really made a huge difference in my life.  Played a huge part in my journey.  You were very grateful I was there that night.  I told you to keep my number and if you ever needed anything, you can feel free to call.
You were grateful I was there; I was grateful you called me because it made me feel so much less like the piece of shit that I was.
 
That was seven or eight years ago and I’ve never heard from or seen you again.  You’re probably an adult now, having graduated from college.  You’ve probably lost your virginity, dropped acid, drank whiskey till 3 in the morning with your friends and passed out and woken up the next morning naked in some strange woman’s bed.  You’ve probably left Maine and studied poetry in France, or became an engineer who had graduated top of his class at MIT.  You joined the army and went AWOL and got locked up in the brigg for the next five years.  You joined a band and toured all around the country in your beat-up van.  I wonder if when your band played in Boston, you remembered getting lost there and that weird older man you had met on the train who had helped you get home.
 
I hope you have an outstanding, adventurous life\\\
 
— Jeremy Void

It was a New England winter.  We were hunkered down in the Copley train station in Boston.  It was me, Russel, and Lacey.  When the night ended, I would have a new girlfriend.  Russel was the youngest; I thought he was at least 18, but looking back on it I realize he was probly more like 17.  He really liked Lacey--a lot.  He lived on the North Shore, which is a long way from the city.  Lacey was from LA.  She went to college near Fenway.  I was the oldest.  I was 21.  When the whiskey bottle ran dry, as it usually does, I braced myself for the cold and trekked out of the semi-warm train station and crossed the street and bought another bottle.  I’d known Russel for a while.  He and I went way back.  I met Lacey, however, the same night Samantha and I had broken up.  In the morning I had Lacey’s cellphone and she had mine.  No one remembered how or when the swap took place.  In fact, the night before I exchanged only one or two words with her, before Andrew led her off in the night with his arm wrapped around her shoulder.  We were so cold.  The brick-walled station didn’t offer too much protection.  But we didn’t want to pay to get in the station proper because then if we left we’d have to pay to get back in. So we huddled together on the steps leading up to the street and down to the station.  It was not as cold down here, but still it was brittle.  We could feel the excruciatingly cold wind breeze past us whenever the doors opened  : : :  we all shuddered.  Our teeth tremored.  We were shaking.  The whiskey made everything better.  We laughed a lot.  We taunted the people that walked past us.  We had our fun, albeit fueled by the whiskey.  When the bottle ran dry, I’d leave and go buy another bottle, until I was too drunk and the clerk refused to sell me anymore.  It was almost like the liquor store was the bar and the station was our stool.  They had to cut me off.  I really wished they hadn’t.  It was so cold and we had nowhere else to go.  Nothing else to do.  Of course, we could have just gone home.  Sleep it off, so to speak.  Fuck that, we were granted a gift.  A gift of self-destruction.  The point of life is to defy physics and see how far we can push it.  Test our limits.  Presently I’m sitting in an AA meeting and I recognize why the clerk had cut me off, but in the moment I looked at it like he was ruining our good time.  Maybe he saved our lives, now that I think about it.  I hated everyone who had ever saved my life.  Those who didn’t want me to die—fuck them!  They were not doing me any favors.  Life is a state of mind.  If you’re not living, then you must be dying.  I was on my way there.  I was living only to die.  Once I was in Connecticut and these two young boys asked me to buy them liquor but when I showed the clerk my ID he didn’t believe it was me.  He and his wife were Indian and they spoke poor English.  They said they didn’t believe I was the guy in the photo.  In the photo I had black spikey hair but the guy trying to buy liquor at their store had half-green, half-red spikey hair.  They didn’t understand that I had dyed my hair.  Eventually we did get going.  Russel hopped on the train to North Station where he would in turn catch a commuter rail back to his hometown.  Lacey and I were going the same way so we hopped on the train together.  We were both going outbound.  Her stop was Fenway and mine was Newton Highlands.  On the train we met an older guy with a black mohawk and a leather jacket covered in spikes studs patches paint & chains and he invited us back to his place.

Last night
I went
inside my
own head
This is where I came face to face
with
          obsession
I do everything to excess
Take love drugs and sin
I find myself walking
along the cobblestone highway
Cars are
bobbing past me full throttle
One car in particular
magnificently bright
in this darkness with no stars
no moon but the car
looks like the sun it shines
a void into the nothingness
I watch it pass
and then it stops
and I find myself lost
in my irises
Left right left right I stare
at the car as the driver
opens the door
and comes out and there she is
so beautiful her hair
it stands up like a ladder
her eyes fluffy and soft like cotton candy
She shouts: Hey, you coming
or what?
She beckons me     like a vortex
in the ground has
opened up and a forked tongue
is slithering out of it
I stop there and she keeps
beckoning me
I get in the car and again
come to the realization
that something
          is off
with this whole situation
I’m locked
in my own head
now
I know it’s a far cry
from the good and the ordinary as I
stare ahead at
the edges of my own mind
She is so beautiful like a daffodil
I want to wrap her up in
ace bandages
She drives steadily with one eye
bouncing off the window
and the other one
staggeringly bold
rolls around inside the socket
I say: Stop the frikken car!
She says; No way, dude.
My head is on fire
and suddenly I’m falling
toward the black hole inside
my own heart
I’m falling trying to grab
hold of something anything
I’m falling through
space & time
I tell you I’m a goner
but there she is again
with her hair like a ladder
and her eyes as warm
as a comforter
and that dress
so dazzlingly white
and bedazzled in fantastical glitter
I snort the sparkles with an emerald
single dollar bill
I sit on the edge of time
My head and my mind
spaced out
a razor cuts my throat
I realize then
that my heart is thumping even
faster than my fingers as I
thrum them against
my leg
I decide now that this was
just
          the way it was back then
I swallow the axe and roll
out the back door
She chases after me
Where am I going
I’m running through a portal
There are doors
all around me
I don’t know
which one to open
I stand there and wait
and watch and there she is again
The first door pops open
All that is there is a thick, black forest
and beyond that she stands
framed inside the doorway
with a dress that shines
with infinite flair
so bright my mind
immediately breaks
and all I can see is what the forest
encompasses in its blackened
state of distress
She walks into my world
and before I can gather my
newfound reason she says:
There is nothing in there
for you
Let’s go!
She holds her hand out to me and her fingers
like slithering worms
sliver around the palms
of her hands
I grip them and she kicks open
the second door and we are in
a place I like to call
the
          land of excess
We are facing it
head-on
Junkies in clown cars
ride past us wearing these
silly freemason hats
I watch in amazement
She looks at me and says:
You see that?
This should reenforce gratitude for
what you have now
But all I see now are
the glamorous tracks
of a road mainly forgotten
She says: No
Don’t do that
Stop right there
This isn’t real
My cock is hard as a sword
I stand on the ledge
that looks out
upon a dangerous path
Great thing about the edge
everyone who’s ever been there
seen it in its gloom and glory
had gone too far
to fully describe it
in the details it deserves
I’m preoccupied with this
moment I release her hand
and she screams: Nooooo
but I don’t stop
I see her vibrant reflection on
the falling raindrops
her hair like a ladder
her eyes as vicious as
a Venus fly trap
I feed it unbelievable stories
of a day when my head
felt like a hammer
Those eyes     I pet them when
I get her all to myself
but now I’m off on
another
          disturbing venture
I hop the first train and ride it
down the center of the universe

Tension
like a noose
holds me high above
a graveyard
That’s where the story
     starts
          here
above a graveyard
sort of like a mental prison
 
I sit here alone
in a house
That’s what I do
I go out
I’m alone
I stay home
I’m alone
 
Last night at an open-mike
everyone shared their struggles
onstage
I gawked at them as they mingled
off the stage
old friends
I left because it disgusted me
old friends
 
Now I’m walking
I might be driving
I’m going somewhere
anywhere
maintaining composure
what for
 
This is the story of
my life
Along broken train tracks
I walk the guilt
out of my mind
 
I sometimes feel
I’m destined to lose
I’m too sensitive to be
a man
lack the compassion
to be a woman
I’m running backwards
down these broken tracks
When I fall
I always
               fall on my face
 
I’m always leaning toward
the nothingness of life
sifting through the void
trying to find meaning
climbing out of the vortex
searching for purpose
 
In a room now
It’s a fellowship of lost,
sensitive souls
I open up my mind
become somewhat honest & willing
but where
does it end
 
I’m a magnificent being
when I try to be
but mostly I don’t care enough
to be anything but me
only I can’t fathom
this worthless reality
 
So I try to suicide
through nefarious practices
I do harm to
my mind body & soul
why
why not?
 
Sometimes I gaze in the mirror
I look myself up
& down
avoid the eyes
charge my hair
I’m naked and I
gauge my cock
my muscles are like snakes
I hate everything that I see
so I smash it up
 
and I’m back where I started
in the ashes of waste
in the fires of time
in the useless graveyard
of my mind
I’m running from the lies
falling from the sky
The past is a menace
I pretend that
doesn’t exist
The future is a relic
that is coming for me
and I try to will it away///
 
But it’s coming at me
and sooner or later
it will get me and the
tension will string me up
in a noose
that holds me
     above
          myself
That’s where the story
ends!

Today I saw the light
as I drove
through layers of consciousness/
I was very tired
this morning
          I’m practically deaf
save for the ringing and
the Punk rock
that has found its home
inside my head
 
At times I listen to the ringing
while I watch
the neighbors fuck
through their windows
                    But
it did not sound
like fucking
Perhaps they were
screaming
          or perhaps it was
just me
staring at a blank wall
so repulsive
I turn up the volume
in my head
 
In the moonlight everything
became undone
Someone had broken into
my car
while we
did not sleep
In the morning I was
disrupted by
the smell of cigarette smoke
and the sight of
peanut butter cookies
 
At night I often
awaken
I’m adrift, lost
in furious dreams
Some might call it
terror
I call it relativity
                    for
I’d much rather
my terror than yours
 
You thought I didn’t
see you
You were dancing
in my rearview mirror
I should be there
with you
I stop the car and
go home
We fuck while the neighbors watch
through the windows
They heard us screaming
Fighting
Then we evaporate
 
I realize
I don’t remember
what she said to me
in the bowels of anger
only how
she felt when I
put her down
That smile
It’s infuriating
          I hate myself
 
I’m driving through
the forest of thought
The maple tree
it looks like passion
The branches like hair
scratch out my eyes
A library of light
 
I know nothing of
     nature
The ignorance
is haunting
I should know more
but I know
nothing of peace
Only turmoil
I crash the car into
a bush but it was a tree
I’m lying in a field
I go to sleep
 
My toes tingle
My fingers shake
My legs hurt
My mind aches
I yell at my brain
for its ignorance
I watch as my eyes
fall out
of their sockets
 
But then I step out
into darkness
I feel free
because nothing
can touch me here
except for..
except for the dark
I’m afraid of the dark
 
I try to tell you
how each day is different
I write it on
your biceps
in a language
you won’t understand
It will be beautiful
                              but indecipherable
like all things beautiful
I will walk with you
through the dark
Thump thunk thud, you’ll see
 
I hope to stop feeling
this way
I wish to
never fall out of love
like has happened
too often
I want to be free
of self-doubt
 
The first time
          I ever
felt free
was the first time
I rode my bike
          Until I fell
Then I got back up
I pedaled down Upland Ave with
a scraped knee
and a bump
on my head

What is this thing
spoken of
in delusions
in sleepy reels
This thing that keeps us awake
or puts us in a coma
This terror among us
This feeling of grandeur
beneath layers of anger
 
What is it
when something drifts in and out
of consciousness
like a sailboat lost
sifting through mental rivers
My mind aghast with
white-water rapids
I don’t know why
I’m even here
A Thought constructed
by worries & fears
 
But
one day I might know
why we feel
so damn bad
But one day
I might not feel
so …
anything is better than
this dreaded sensation
 
What is it
when we dig holes
in the aftermath
when we smash hammers
into our own skulls
 
Why do we dream
when reality is so haunted
We imagine a better world
in a better time
when we didn’t have to feel
 
Why does she make me
feel better
or worse
or,
I don’t know
 
Why can’t I
cry myself to sleep
because in sleep I can forget
drown out my worries
with dreams
or nightmares
or whatever it’s all the same
A Fantasy that cuts me
 
Sometimes I smoke pot
I used to drink
It’s a shitty feeling getting high
It’s not worth it but
it feels so damn good
because that hell is better
than this hell I’m in
now
 
What is it but
a lunacy we tell ourselves
Love each other
Hate your enemy
Kill for Jesus
Die for America
 
Why do we feel anything
because feelings
taint the bottom of
my heart
with black paint
A Void in my chest
A lost thought so horrid
I try to forget
 
What is it
this past
these transparent infractions
so blown up by scorn
Why do I regret
that which I cannot take back
Why do I feel
remorse for
something that won’t happen
again——--
          but it might 10 years from now
          15, who knows
 
Why do I care so much
Caring is a great way
to get hurt
I quickly learned
not to care
because it’s so much easier
than getting
hurt
 
Caught with my pants down
Every day I fall
and pray
and every day I feel
disappointed because no one
cares enough to
get involved
in my life
I’m so torn by rage
& compassion
so hungry for knowledge
& ignorance
So contemplative I fall
again & again
through fashionable degrees
of unfathomable torment
          which I have depicted
          all by myself