For Those Who Are Still Tirelessly Pursuing Happiness

Happiness is an elusive cunt.

The carrot dangling in front of your face keeping you hauling these bags forward. Always pursuing happiness, have you even thought of what you'd do if you caught it? Have you considered that maybe you can't catch it with your arms so full of luggage?

Have you considered just being happy instead of chasing happy?

What a bitch smack those words are. The people who say things like that, they don't understand. They think it's as simple as just picking up your luggage and taking off. They're even glad to tell you, happiness went off in that direction. Wait, you dropped a bag. It says "depression" on it. It's heavy and clearly high quality, and it looks so good on you.

Do you think they have it in my size?

The luggage is heavy. It didn't start that way did it? The first bag was easy; I mean you weren't carrying anything. So you picked it up and you started walking; a nice walk, with plenty of people all carrying their own bags. After a while when your arm was tired you decided to look inside.

Remember what that felt like? First the feeling of utter relief when you set that bag down; the pins and needles as the circulation started massaging the numbness back to life. Remember how terrifying it was to reach in and pull the second bag out? When you started carrying both of them it still wasn't that bad. Sure, they were heavier but nothing you couldn't handle. Until the two bags turned into four; which turned into eight which turned into ... tell me, how fast did your arms get numb this time?

Maybe you should take up juggling. Everything might not be so heavy and cumbersome if you just keep it all in the air; and you might be able to reach out and grab happiness with your free hand at just the right time. After all, you've only got two hands. Just be careful looking ahead, you might trip over now. Maybe a forklift.

Do you think happiness has a forklift?

This goes on forever. The luggage just gets bigger and heavier while you fall further further behind happiness and you realize you don't have the right to, only the right to pursue happiness. No, this this problem goes much deeper than anything you could have seen or could have controlled. And no one can tell you where happiness really is. But I can tell you what I've heard:

1. I've heard happiness in laughing with a toddler about something nonsensical.
2. I've heard happiness in the raindrops hitting the roof of a covered porch warmed with hot coffee.
3. I've heard happiness in the beat of the drums around a fire of dancers.
4. I've heard happiness in the music of lights that shine from my fingertips.
5. I've heard happiness in a lover's voice wishing me good morning after a wonderful, sleepless night.
6. I've heard happiness in dark at midnight.
7. I've heard happiness in the first light of dawn.
8. I've heard happiness in the company of the friends who erase the concept of "inappropriate."

I've never caught happiness. Not once. I've seen it quite a few times and it's beautiful; and I can tell you that happiness isn't carrying anything. Happiness is always just a step ahead because maybe happiness knows something that I don't; because if happiness is traveling without baggage, what do you suppose happiness is chasing?  The only way to find out is to drop your baggage, speed up and grab it.

Borderline

I used to sit down and the words poured out
The depths of my soul carried so much dark pain, beauty, love and poetry
I couldn't keep it inside.
These days,
The muse plays hide and seek
Showing its face to whisper in my ear
In that place between asleep and awake when dreams are real and life is hidden away
Today, I walk like a strung out porn star
Spilling out tried and true poetry with hat in hand for just a little coin
Exchanged for the good service of my verses
Interruptions to the process create a disjointed connection in the words
Taking me off course
Up, down and all around
Into the places I never wanted to go until
I'm here
Alone
Battered (but unbowed)
Bruised (but unbroken)
Bottled (but unbridled)
Now I sit down and the words are trapped inside
With no poetry to explain the things that are happening to me
When there are no words to convey the black and white shades in which I see the world.
I never thought a rainbow of gray would brighten my day
Yet here we are
On the Borderline
Approaching this crossroads 
And it finally becomes about choices
Do I choose to burn out?
Or do I choose to fade away?
Is it better to rule in hell?
Or is it better to serve in heaven?
What is real?
Or What is imagined?
I write like a child afraid of the dark
With just enough light to keep the monsters away
Sitting amongst all the broken mirrors
Never looking It in the face
But always scratching the itch left from healing wounds
Some self-inflicted and some received cash on delivery
When I already have IOUs instead of fucks to give
And I find myself praying for the peace of a coma
The calm of knowing I'll never let you down again
Instead I sing the words
"It's just a trip not a way to ease your pain"
Coming down to place the mask securely over this facade
I realize that the Monster's Muse is shared through the magic of alliteration
And I no longer need a mirror to see
The twisted parts inside of me
And the face only a mother could love
As she walks out the door
Promising a better life
Delivering better lies
And so here we are
On the Borderline
Drawing me closer
Ready to sell my soul
Signed, sealed and delivered
Soaked in the blood of innocents
While I pretend I'm amazing
Walking in the empty trail left by my lies
Toward the promise of a love
Secure in a sense of belong
Until that secret weak spot shows
And I'm left
On the Borderline
Standing alone while I fall
Just to feel better

Please Don't Kill Yourself

Please don't kill yourself
The simplicity of the words shock me
And in the moment I hear them I realize that no one has never asked me not to do it.
I mean, sure, sometimes people would tell me it was dumb
or that I shouldn't be thinking that way or even giving me the laundry list of things I have to live for which proves that they don't understand what depression and suicidal ideation are like to begin with
but to say "please don't kill yourself"
Never
And in the quiet and simple request I found a pause
A single moment
Frozen in time and light as leaves fluttering on the autumn breeze
And I danced in raindrops that would never hit the ground
Moved between my own thoughts that would never reach my consciousness
I  shouted poetry so loud it echoed off of the walls of my own empty mind
Taking up the pause with the simple beauty of realizing
Everything that broke me no longer makes me who I am
And in the quiet and simple pause I found a fear
A single thought
Running through my veins like ice frozen to sharpened stakes in the cold winter wind
And I dodged them as they fell at my feet
Until I stood caged in a wintery prison of my own making
Bashing my head against fear itself never knowing
That breaking is not a reason to bleed
This juxtaposition of pause and fear
Holds a quiet dignity and beauty all its own
A majesty and poetry that I live for
And as I write the words
I know that therein lies the key to my salvation
And I dance in raindrops that would never hit the ground
And I dodged them as they fell at my feet
Everything that broke me no longer makes me who I am
Because Breaking is not a reason to bleed.
Please.
Please don't kill yourself.