Your eyes strike the dark and
hanging trees cut the night like scars.
You run and run.
Exert toward the existential as
meaning glows in the moonlight.
Embodiment lies in the lightless stretches where only instinct can see.
Your gut reads the signs.
Ah, the city fills your lungs.
The stars feed your muscles.
You are never more truly yourself than
when language is useless and blood rush kills the striving mind.

You trace the contours of mortality at the slightest pleasure.
You write the death poem at 36.
Self-importance is your mascot and sits on your shoulder.
You pierced your mask.
Now gaze upon your face and pierce it too.
There is a mass at your center covered by layers of time and resistance.
The child waves to you and runs deeper into your heart.
You chase and get lost in a light you haven’t yet learned to see.

Deja vu as aesthetic.
You cross a street and memory caresses like a guiding hand.
Sometimes you think there is wisdom in repeating the past.
Second chances don’t grow on trees and you’re on your fourth.
Recursion is the essence of growth and you’re a master of repetition.
Repetitions to fill the emptiness shaped like a father until you see all you’ve done is carve it out in your own likeness.

Draw a line between suffering and strength.
Wash your face and comb your hair.
Face the cold wind, the crawl of time.
Stop wearing your pain.
You love like it redeems you; love like it’s your right.
You cut scars into your scars in pretense of meaning,
but even the mightiest fall to an obstinate stomach ache.

Let fantasy collapse.
Let your dreams disappear.
Your cells attach to phantoms of thought.
The year of great grasping dissolves and what’s left?
A beast in the wild fighting shadows under the killing moon.