An ostensible oasis of optimism,

A farcical façade of fraternity,

A wry realm of relentless replays

Of remnant reminders regularly reminisced.

It's been years since I picked up my thumb

And dragged it across the millions of

buttons, and shut-ins

lacing my world,

In hopes of creating something that

befits an eye.

Pick an eye, any eye.

Pick an eye out.

Pick an eye out, and your misery halve.

Each stroke of digitized ink

Is a gallon of blood on my bookcase,

Each trick of the autocorrect

Makes a crippling slap across the face,

now easier to slap

than it ever was before.

I'm obliged to follow

Whole dreams of a half tomorrow.

Rage.

Bent, broken, irreverent rage.

Spent, unspoken, irrelevant rage

That vents, awakens an iridiscent image

of a demon, unfettered and unyielding

Flaunting a carton of guns, wielding

His insecurities at his environment, burning

Barely feeding an unquenchable yearning,

To be the best in the worst ways imaginable;

His hands, my hands, trembling with woe and worry

alike, cowering with hope and memory

alike, mouth quivering with denial and confession

alike, eyes withering with relish and depression

alike. A demon so conjured was never conjectured

And vengeance stands apalled

At what it has created.

Unexpected.

Unexpected but not unforseen.

And certainly not

Unwelcome.

For the chalice in my soul,

Empty and broken and whole

Now fills its parched old folds

with a need to keep the last human away

for it is humans that led my sanity astray,

Humans it was, that offered a helping hand,

Humans, it is, that now I cannot stand.

Friends, foes, fiends,  they're all the same

Futile masses of insignificant emotions and veins,

That balled and stabbed flesh

through conception and birth,

That won't leave a trace

Once they leave the face

of the earth.

And if they do,

The next generation will

So religiously wipe it away,

As a product of the inconsiderate

Ramblings of senility.

So why? Why the emotion?

Why the happiness?

Why the facade?

Why the rage?

When the best I can do is

Put it on a page,

And wear it in my name forever,

an added appendage?

Words won't get to me.

Feelings I don't let fester.

The only thing that remains close

Is phone, and night, and nest of woes

And my sleeping sister.

An ornate oasis of optimism,

That bounces off me like dew off a dead flower,

a farcial facade of fraternity

That I've long torn the essence of down,

A world without meaning, without function, without purpose,

Without love

That is driven on an insatiable need

for validation and primacy

Me scrambling at the bottom

Grinning through my tears

And rubber-thick formalities.

I know they've had it worse.

I know.

Which is why

When the door closes its sliver of hope,

the lock clicks into place for the night,

And the stars settle in,

So does a boy,

The tears digging a trench in his face, a trench that gets more pronounced

with each poem penned;

God turns his head,

Demons get bored of playing with him,

Loneliness feasts,

and not a sniffle dares to

pass the cracks in the wood.

He cries.

And no one hears him.

Because all they can do

Is fill his holes up

With tissues scraped out from

other holes.