#deep poetry

So, listen.

All my life I’ve been doing my best to keep up with others, to get things done, to move forward just fast enough. Now I’m 24, I finished school but I have no further education and I’m far, FAR behind of what other people achieved at my age. My mental illnesses got in the way and forced me to go much slower.

I grew up believing that I’d be something great, that I’d be successful and normal and fine. Now I’m a 24 year old self taught ghostwriter, still struggling with addiction, suicidal thoughts, social anxiety etc. and that’s not what I had in mind. But guess what? It’s ok. I’m alive, I’m slowly learning how to live this life and I’ve learned one thing of importance: life is not a race nor is it a checklist you can go through step by step. You can’t outpace your own abilities and the sooner you accept your limits without limiting your potential, the sooner you’ll move in the right direction.

I got better. I stopped cutting, I’m clean, I have a job, a fiance, an apartment. I have a life, a good one. I’ve spent the past four years creating it step by step, far slower than everyone around me. Just to wake up today, noticing I don’t want to live it anymore.

On the wall right behind the place my therapist sits during our appointments is a quote of Max Frisch, Swiss author. It says that crisis is a productive condition. You just have to take away it’s taste of catastrophe. I’ve spend a lot of time looking at that quote and even more time thinking about it. I hope some day I’ll be able to follow Max Frischs advice.

You ask me ‘who are you?’ and I collapse. Who am I? I have a name, but I can’t put myself in words. I’m changing. Every day, every single moment. I’m trying to accept, that I’m a work in progress, yet a masterpiece. I’m more than you could ever understand and still less than you expect. I don’t know who exactly I am and I don’t think I’ll ever find out. That’s ok. I am. I just am.

I am.

Five years ago I wanted to die. Three years ago I thought life would never be worth it. Today I’m still struggling, but that’s ok. I’m still here and I’m finally glad that I am.

At the moment I feel like dying. But I won’t. I’ve felt like this before. And I’ll survive.

After all these years of ‘I can’t’, saying 'I can and I will’ feels like finally breaking free.

Recovery is worth it, I promise.

Sometimes it’s my own temper that scares me most.

Way too slowly I realised that no one’s gonna save me this time. No one has to. I’m finally strong enough to save myself.

You know that feeling of stupid heaviness weighing down your heart with emotions yet unexplained by the greatest of all writers, that lump in your throat making it almost impossible to swallow, so you wither with each passing moment -becoming a different version of you. Are you still alive? You’re not even sure. You’re a ghost -a memory within a memory. And that is your fate -so you haunt the cascade of happiness, turning sunshine into a dark dawn. An echoing silence, getting louder and louder. You shut your eyes. The silence isn’t peaceful. It’s deafening. And then you finally hear a scream -a cry before it all ends. But it doesn’t end. You wake up again. 

ABook of Poems & Other Desires by Keagan J. Larson

~Blame~

I was a Phoenix burning bright,

Though ashes took their turns;

You wrapped your arms around my life,

Then cursed me for the burns.

.

~Reigh Lynne

~Tidal Wave~

Destruction rises up to fall

Upon your cities safe and tall

No time to run, no faith to save

It crashes in—A Tidal Wave

.

Your towers strong and built with trust

Are crumbled down and turned to dust

The walls fall down, fear floods the grave

It crushes life—A Tidal Wave

.

This pain’s a force you can’t control

It’s breaking borders, splitting souls

It wakes the dead, it drowns the brave

Comes rushing back—A Tidal Wave

.

The barriers arise once more

Built thicker than the ones before

The lies it told, the loss it gave

This is its strength—The Tidal Wave

.

~Reigh Lynne

~Autumn Gothic~

Leaves of patterned chaos fall

On cells of hay bales—Blackbirds call

O'er fields of empty stalks and spice,

Where gourds and apples hide from ice.

.

Straw-stuffed strangers house blank eyes:

The Hollow Men that search for skies

Of crystal thinking—Meaning lies

Within the fragrant harvest pies.

.

Homeless winds cut without trace

Whilst sun and chill engage in chase;

A lost aroma sweetly rots,

Then slowly dies in parking lots.

.

Webs of smoke curl through the trees

And dance with myst'ry in the breeze;

The rains of loss and memories rise,

As Twilight’s cratered mistress cries.

.

~Reigh Lynne

~Hands~

Hands

They hold volumes of stories:

Chapters of encounters

With the world,

Narratives of tales.

.

The fingerprints of other titles

That they have changed

Meld with their own;

Every line, curve,

Imperfection, and scar

Holds legends

Of battles won,

And loves lost.

.

Hands

An engraved account

Of life.

.

~Reigh Lynne

~On Hope~

What am I to do with hope?

I know it reeks of tears:

I cling to lies and wishes to

Dissociate from fears.

.

~Reigh Lynne

Imagine writing the most depressing poem written with the most beautiful handwriting, but no one is really focused on the meaning of it. Everyone is more focused on how the handwriting is so perfect.

Sometimes we tend lose ourselves, concentrating on the irrelevance of something more meaningful.