Is it so much to ask
for just a tiny bit of change?
One little shift
to come from weeks of struggle
throwing myself up against a wall again and again?

It feels like I'm incorporeal.
Stuck in a state of stasis
where nothing I try makes any difference.

No matter how much I push
not a single pebble shifts.
Not one tiny stone
that might skitter down the hill
and start the avalanche I need.

I don't even have the benefits of being a ghost
whisked off this world to whatever comes next
or at least left without the physical parts of living.
I still have to go through the motions
​but never get anywhere.

The dice go rolling, falling, stopping
on shapes that mean so much more than
just numerical figures.
Heralds of luck, life, death,
delivering wounds
of flesh, pride, wealth.
Never mock
the dice
​gods.

Right now, my mind is silent.

Empty on the outside
but secretly bogged down by too many thoughts to process.

I've got a million things I should be doing.
Dishes piling up
projects half-finished
job applications to punch in and send off
friends and family to call.

But instead
I sit in the silence of my mind.
Because every one of those things has a weight
crushing and poignant
making my heart beat too fast
and my hands shake.

I can't tell if the silence is better
than the flood of thoughts.
If floating along on the very top of them is any better
than tumbling through their midst
head over heels with water in my lungs.
If distancing myself from panic is any better
than getting lost in the growing list of things I should be doing.

Silence is deafening.

Worlds end every day.

Snowglobes fall from shelves and shatter.
Anthills are flooded by the rain.
Meteors strike and shatter planets.

I don't know when this one will end.
I can only keep on living
​and hope it's not tomorrow.

I did it again.
I let myself be carried away
launched on the back of honeyed words and brilliant screens
flung off into the land of the ever-wakeful.
You'd think I'd learn by now.
But changing your behaviors
isn't ever easy.
Especially if they've wrapped themselves around your insomnia
and woven a nice protective seal
that you really don't have the motivation to shatter right now.

It starts as a sinking feeling.

You can't really tell if it's in your throat
or your chest
or the very pit of your stomach.

All you know is
something's coming
rushing at you
and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

You turn to look
and still
you can't see anything...
it's just a normal day.

But trust me.
Trust that feeling in your gut.

It'll come when you least expect it.
After you've forgotten this warning
and gone back to blissful ignorance.
It always does...

I dreamed that I wrote last night...
but I woke up to a blank page.

Not sure where the words went
or if they ever appeared at all.

Maybe they faded into the empty text box
stolen away by the techno-fae
to be savored only by them?

Or perhaps the whiteness crashed over them
an avalanche of emptiness
that swallowed them whole.

Either way, I better work harder this time
put up more wards
to guard my words against the dangers
of the world behind my eyelids.

The soothing lullaby of raindrops is beautiful
nature's way of telling you to chill out
and drift off into dreamland...

But when you're trying to type out a daily poem
and all your eyes want to do is droop
because of the white noise provided by the outside world-
it's obnoxious.

How do you resist the urge to sleep
after a day of pounding the pavement and breaking your brain,
when the very weather is against you?

If you know the answer,
let me know.
​I'm still working that one out.

I'm having that nightmare again.

The one that always starts
with me standing outside an old, decaying mansion
my hand hovering over the doorbell.

There's nothing wrong, really.
Nothing to tell me it's a nightmare.
It's not a dark and stormy night with thunder crashing
there are no graves bursting with the living dead
and I'm standing their fully clothed and uninjured
like a normal day.

But for a reason I'm unable to determine,
my palms are sweaty
and dread's wrapped tightly around my lungs.

With the way I'm feeling,
you'd think the doorbell would ring with shrieks.
But when I press it
those all-too normal chimes ring out.

And when the ringing ends
the whole world goes silent.

I can't even hear air enter or leave my lungs.
Can't even tell if I'm breathing.
Not even my fingers will twitch.

And I watch frozen
as the door inches open
taking what could be days to reveal the shadows inside
inch by inch.

I don't even see your face.
Just the skin of your fingers as they wrap around the wood
stained and rough.

Then I wake up
and I still can't breathe.

Dragging, aching feet.
Step through the door, ready to
collapse into bed.