Welcome To The Mind Of A Narcotic

And I become a ghost, a total, social, phantom, with nothing to do, but choke…

Today, the words, still resonate in my head, and I’ve got the word ‘shit’ engraved in my throat for every word I never spoke for you, but tonight I am telling your story, My step-father found you there first. My mother, second. Me, I raced myself home, dodging traffic like the ideas in my head of where you might be, how you might be, what you might be right now, floating concepts, convulsing, asking myself questions I already knew the answer to like, Did he kill himself? Why would he do this? For the next two weeks, surrounded by questions I already knew the answer to, like why, would he do this, I felt like I was the only one who knew the answers. Answers like how my mother was practically donating your half of the duplex to you, and on those off days you found work, you could make a hundred bucks to pay my mother, our first priority was that you always had food on the table, and a bag of weed, between you and me, but we always took care of that. Answers, like when we wouldn’t come by, your only friends were your dog, and your turtle, and I could see how alone you were but didn’t realize how heavy the weight was. Like how you were a laborer, but when your body began failing on you, you knew that that was all you had and you were losing it. By the time you left, you were pulling teeth out of your own skull, your fingers had swelled up to balloons from frostbite because you were just trying to shovel, just trying to make the couple modest bucks you needed and it costed you your hands, you could hardly roll yourself a cigarette. How when we were training your dog, we talked about the process, two years it could take, and you said “Nah, I don’t think I got that much time left”, and that was when I learned what you meant, and saw how you really felt. Then I found myself home once again. I found you third. You were there, in your truck, right in the backyard, the scene was plagued by the police. you had, a pool tube, leading from your exhaust pipe to your passenger window, slipped through the thinnest of cracks, bringing me to your face, inhumanly still, cocked to the side your mouth, was hanging open, you were so lifeless. You were so dead there, right before my eyes, and I couldn’t move. A third moment,. lasting a far-too-long forever, I wanna know what the fuck you did before you died. Did you walk your dog, did you feed yourself, did you get high, did you clean anything, did you think of us, did you think of me, did you even think about the note you left? Began with one word; “Sorry. I’m just too cold to go on. I’m with mom and dad now. Take care of my turtle”. And you scrawled this, on the back of a used envelope. Even until death, you lived only practically, only taking just what you needed because I think your biggest fear was being a burden on us. I hope somehow you can hear me because I miss you, and I’m calling you back to myself now because I need to remember what you felt like because I need to remember how to value my own life.  So I can feel you again, I’m still stuck in that car, that day, staring at your peacefully empty cadaver. I know now that you’re where you want to be. This moment will always feel the same. The weather never changed on the day you died, only we did. I hope that you are at least warm now. That grandy gave you a blanket and grandpa made you a coffee. I hope, above all, that you didn’t choke. I hope, that the gasses that slipped into your lungs did you justice, that you left me in peace, that the last memory you ever had was of our home, our house, that before they took you away I hope you looked towards the window and saw my face. I see yours in it every day. I hope, that you’re not cold anymore.

It’s February 1st and the snow is melting. It’s 2016, and Donald Trump is running for president. It’s Wednesday, but every day feels like Monday. Classes started, and I can already barely keep my eyes open, too tired now I’ve been turning towards time tables to tell tales of times turned towards this everlonging exposure, and Idunno if it’s cuz I’m just older or, the worlds just colder, but I’m seeing the print just a little bit bolder. I’ve forseen our smoldering essence, just remnants of American Half-Dreams, and they lean between the picket fences and the picket lines that define a time, a future-less present when our past becomes a composition. The American dream, deposed, our disposition, misimposed, misplaced, who knows this place? We face it with our eyes half closed. And it shows, with this process that forgoes the small steps to hold on the concepts lost by the era we onset, too far gone, yet, the concepts we lost put a cost on our progress. Now I’m lost in it, like this lack of eye-to-eye contact has got me confused in delusion, and I’ve got my name etched into every crack in this place and I still feel like a stranger. Child, don’t you feel no fear in walkin the streets, these feet, are all we got and baby I got, mileage between my toes, remember that noone knows those soles but you. And they gonna take you wherever you need to go, so, don’t y’all ever stop stomping your prints into the pavement in these places, they will lead you here, where fear, is not an option. Fear, is just an inhibiting four letter word to describe any two eyes that yours will ever meet, but not these. They’ve known us to be as small as soil and as tall as the willows but here, fear, is not an option. We will not let it be. Lately, we’ve all noticed shit not making any sense, but it’s always the job of the poet to organize the times, with our own two cents, with the rhymes, so we turn to the pens, and now I think I’m finally finding a purpose in this perfect little circus, because tonight I see me in you, I see my mind in your eyes, and I see you in everything I do, every more that I make, our names, are etched into every fucking corner of this place, this, is our home, and you’ve taught me, for the first time, that home, is where the hope is. And I hope this stays with you in every moment you can’t find where home is and you remember that we, are the poets, and we will rest our hearts in any damn place we please! And when you’re weary, and the cost of our humanity loses you your direction, poet, just, remember. It’s your feet that brought you here. It’s your pen that brought you the mic. But it was your hope, that brought you home.

I hear of another death in my community, a concept constantly feeling less new to me. I quickly recall every soon to be fleeting memory of the deceased, and come to conclusions of, ‘We didn’t have very many to begin with’. Is this still not a reason for remorse itself, or do I shelf this stickling affliction? Because no prediction, sifting through past to calculate the future could prepare you fully for what comes next. See, death is still a mystery, an inevitable repetition of history, yet I can’t help but feeling like this comprehension’s just outside of my periphery. No class ever taught this. No professor, ever majored in death to rebreath his strategic mechanisms of coping to the youth, and what use would it be? We’d still feel just as confused, just as alone, just as angry. It is as impossible to accept as it is futile to reject, but we’re still expected to find lessons within the depression, the countless moments of guessing what happens next. All things considered, death, is still an emotional anomaly, closing in on every one of us like moonlight, always feel as far away as the stars. All of these feelings, they’re all normal. And it will cross each and every one of us at least once. Now, do yourself a favor and look to your neighbor. Absorb the life you see, admire every stray hair, every abrasion and protrusion, mind every movement. Because that, is life. And nothing brings out life like remembering where it once was. So now that I am crossed with death yet again, I will do my best to remember all of these eyes here today, and appreciate the life in every one, something I've failed to do so many times in the past, missed to many lost chances, wasting life until this demon dances in front of me again, and so I will move on, and live every day as if it is my first, and my first for the living, my constant crutch of experiencing, may these lessons move from heart to heart, and always know, that if you are not dead, you are still young enough to live.

Thezipperdicks.bandcamp.com Please and thank you, friends

When you fall in love, you never really care to write a love poem. Not like when the pain settles in. Not like when your heart is aching. Not like when you're hung up, stuck between lust and emotion, and some kind of propriety from the other side, it's tiring to confide in these silent goodbyes that we say are true love, whispers in lullabies that guide us through limits of love, aging thereafter, heeding heartsickness, it just, doesn't come out the same when you're in love. You see, when love beseeches you, you take love by its hand, and you show it warmth. You show it kindness, and protection, and you care for that love. But be weary of your fingertips, for may they turn cold, the covets of darkness will sheet your aura, and your skies will become grey. And be weary of your fingers, for may they grip to tight, the love will collapse into itself, and the greens of your soil shall become the rust of your well rod, and your rivers will run black with spite. The sweats of your anxieties will let your love slip through your hands and you will lose it. The fruits of your labour shall become the rot where a heart used to sit. But when you're in love, you dont really think about all that. Or, at least, try your best not to. See, what I have learned Is that with every passing of passive possessive breath, every 'I love you', every 'never leave me', every 'stay by my side' is another 'Love me now', another 'Stay at my hip', another insecurity instituted under ephemeral waves of self-consciousness, I tell you that I breath to tell you that you're the reason that Im alive, that when I speak, I boom with all the emotion I can muster up just hoping you can hear me, I, i-... When you're in love, sometimes love causes the worst to come first. In mumbling manifestations between accusations and lack of attention, you take your love, and your care, and you let yourself transform that into final hopeful hellos passing from heart to heart like, through frozen teeth you take the last bit of warmth in your body to pass from your lips, to her throat, so that she may know that even though these roads do get tough, no winter moon will send a single chill up your spine before I do. No shadow, from any midnight light shall brush your cheeks, like my fingertips, no winds shall keep our masts from holding in any direction but forward, but what lies beneath these floorboards, is enough under rug brushed, home crushed emotional disharmony from lives passed to completely topple any empire built around my heart, and that even though even a hellstorm of cupids arrows couldn't penetrate this stronghold, you manged to unlock me from the inside, to split me open and spill the ink from my veins, spill the soul from my chest so that you may put it with yours, and as I lay dying and rebirthing in a pool of ink-blue blood and blood-red remorse spilling from every severed artery on my heart, my only thought, the only single thought to be, my simple inquiry, will be "How can she still possibly be keeping me alive?" And we die, and we die, and we die, in and out of love, in and out of life and just when death becomes more familiar than breath, what's left of your body will be nurtured by love. You see, I've found that these things are all related, and the most that one can do is to be as tender, and mindful, and understanding as you can be. You need to know what you mean and to mean what you feel and what you feel must appeal to the spirit in your other, you must work together, you must listen and you must love, you must love me today and listen to me now, for that every ember pattered pump of blood in these veins may raise the heat in my head, my cheeks may flush red and what I may say or what I have said will be diluted with misconstruities and Im sorry. Im sorry that I can't trust, im sorry that I cannot believe, im sorry for all the lives that preceeded mine with you because after every woman in your live wraps her iron fist around you so tight you feel like a million snakes are snaring you into infinite density, Adam never really got along with the wildlife in the garden of Eden, but the soils of our garden have been soiled with burden and for that, I apologize. But im trying. Im trying to love for you im trying to breath for you, and these words are just symbols to appease the burning in me, Sometimes, when you're in love, you just, cant write a love poem.

Poetry Defined, a masterpiece.

What could floor you more? The concept that our childhood is long behind us? Or the idea that some of us never get to experience it? Never get to, experience young life Never get to, experience experience, deleriously heeding consequence from said experience and, never taking a step themselves. You see, the youth is plummeting. Are there’s not quite much I can say, cause, hey, I had those days, and I took them for granted, gloriously if I may say so, and I, Hear elementary children writing poems about war and, Hear middle schoolers writing poetry about anxiety and self mutilation, Hear high school students write poetry about rape, and death, And it scares me to death that what’s steps we must take to take care of our kids is simply, Not offered in schools. Textbooks and television play the parents while we’re taught to be slaves, Because what trivial transference of experience we see through tv, what demeanial depression, what methods to live we experience in a box is enough to keep us stuffed to the brim with what we perceive as knowledge without ever learning at all, but being on a constant path of half assed discovery! Because what we need to know actually would be much too practical to be taught in a land of intellectual and permenant sabbatical. Put, these lives, in my hand. Put these schools in my hands and you have paths to enlightenment, Transference of knowledge on how to stay alive. Practicality, has never seemed to overturn authority in the halls, These walls are painted white with nothing, And that is what these kids learn from.

Everywhere I go, I see young faces.I see youth advances with no traces, go places to face this determinate faceless race of youngsters,I feel them wonder, i feel them growing as if these heavy feet have found themselves rooted to the ground,  I have found that no matter where I go, the prodigies of where I’ve been will be ever catching up to me, When the anomaly itself perpetuates perplexity, the question in question that is contentiously besetting me, Is how did I get, from there, to here? I feel like only yesterday, my simple, modest getaways,Would turn a ton into featherweight, Dark paths into a faceless gate I wandered through my childhood like it was a forbidden forest, But I lived like I actually knew it was the only time in my life I’d ever be free and if you ask me, What’s given as resources, coursing through courses in schools and academia are hardly constitutional of life, good health and intellect And, I find myself confiding in this dying notion of a futureless past, this, passing of present, this, filling of time we try so hard to get ahead of it to only fall behind we get lost in the idea of being adults.I say we, as if that still applies to me, but I can see that those days have longed to be but nevermore, nevermore. What could floor you more? The concept that our childhood is long behind us? Or the idea that some of us never get to experience it? Never get to, experience young life, Never get to, experience experience, deleriously heeding consequence from said experience and, never taking a step themselves. You see, the youth is plummeting. Are there's not quite much I can say, cause, hey, I had those days, and I took them for granted, gloriously if I may say so, and I, Hear elementary children writing poems about war and, Hear middle schoolers writing poetry about anxiety and self mutilation, Hear high school students write poetry about rape, and death, And it scares me to death that what's steps we must take to take care of our kids is simply, Not offered in schools. Textbooks and television play the parents while we're taught to be slaves, Because what trivial transference of experience we see through tv, what demeanial depression, what methods to live we experience in a box is enough to keep us stuffed to the brim with what we perceive as knowledge without ever learning at all, but being on a constant path of half assed discovery! Because what we need to know actually would be much too practical to be taught in a land of intellectual and permenant sabbatical. Put, these lives, in my hand. Put these schools in my hands and you have paths to enlightenment, Transference of knowledge on how to stay alive. Practicality, has never seemed to overturn authority in the halls, These walls are painted white with nothing, And that is what these kids learn from.

I still feel sad, feel real denial,

Step one, step two, and step three.

I look in front of me, and I see my dashboard. I see lights, I see meters, and I see numbers, In the forms of contextual content, a red photograph, a blue poem, In the form of lists, and club pages, and bar graphs determining how many people actually like what I have to say, telling me how many people think that it is with saying again, i In the form of address bars, and binary code. My steering wheel is scrolling, and scrolling, and rolling down as I begin to Tumble through time. My ignition, locks, My gears hit WASD four key drive. And my attention span snaps loose and spins out of control. And I look forward, and look forward, and I stare, and I stare, And I fear death because I know its not safe to check your dashboard and drive, but this is the only kind of cheap thrill I can find. Clicking, tapping and scrolling my life away so fast that I may just become part of the plug. I know hashtags and data so well now that I've forgotten laughter, and community. So instead I move from stage to stage to page to page judging books by their faces, Trends so contagiously catching on its bringing a third new meaning to the word virus. I do my, reading on reddit, save face up on Facebook, do the talking through Tumblr, while browsing for love on matchbook.com, I got, Acronyms replacing cadence, from sadists to memes promoting racism and violence, and the crimes are in the eyes of those within the guise of Handles, and Screen names, and emails. Keep back from me, I'm Sending a text, Be the complex, Live the project, Float on the surface. Keep namesake, play fake takes for the matrix on your webcams, plug in, relax, take a second and clear your mind by sending it to amillion different places, And may there never be a moment of silence. I'm beginning, to lose my mind, binded only by the chance of quiet, the ideas, the pen and the page, sitting down and breathing, breaching the surface and sourcing myself. Im beginning, to lose my sense of touch. My tounge, is so understimulated by lack of communication, that I fear the future I see where the only speech is from our stephen hawking talking wheelchairs from behind our computer desks, While recieving minute-to-minute updates from all the people that actually love me. 1:42, my best friend is at work. 1:45, my girlfriend is going to class. 150, my mother os having a good day. 2:01, my grandmother went to a doctors appointment for chemotherapy and things are looking down. 3 oclock, the kids are out of school. 4 oclock, its going to snow. 5 oclock, theres an accident on 95, I wonder if I know them. 6 oclock, a bomb goes of in Boston, so I scroll and I scroll to make sure my best friends are all okay. I scroll, to make my best friends know I'm listening. I scroll, to make sure my best friends are still alive. I scroll, just to see that by this menial method of the sharing of ideas and opinions that just maybe, I am still alive in the mist. I scroll, and scroll, and scroll, until I stop and look confused becuase I just realized. I have no idea what alive is.