Tabula Rasa

 Shell

A child is born into this world,
Innocent and naive to its evil ways
Grasping onto hope, fingers tightly curled
A hopeful child, some might say

And that child grew,
Until pain and anguish was all he knew
The mother ran away to party,
The father no where to be seen
He was left alone in monsterous household
That ripped that child apart at the seams

Stole his courage, and beat him down
A shell of a man is all he is now
Afraid to find out what his life will be
Sadly, the child in this story?
It's unfortunately me......

 Comment  to Shell:

But there's one thing this child didn't know.
He would grow up to be a parent unlike his could show.
He was the man at his daughters side,
when she'd get hurt or even fake cry.
He grew up as a child so lost and deprived,
that when his child was born he vowed inside.
That his child would always be the reason for his being,
Because he wanted her to know she's the reason he stopped grieving.

-Nora Forrest

 Kyle Borsheim's Poetry

Dustin Cleary's Poetry 

 Beauty In Hindsight

The heat of this melancholy swelters inside my skull, and the weight of these new digs makes me feel powerless to reach past my savaged defenses and put it to rest. Always sure, but never swift; the ties that bind me to myself (and I wonder) stretch luxuriously when tested, flexing my hopes and dreams, and the promise of freedom has all but been spoken (when I sing along with you) when the recoil knocks me on my back at my own feet once more. Didn't you hear it? The soft falls of new shoes on old roads, the crackle of new joys (if anything could ever feel this real forever) in old fires, and I bet if you knew what to listen for you could just make out the hiss of substance leaking from a wild and beautiful dream. This is how they guide me, the calloused palms that shaped me..this is how they humble, when I fall astray. But this is my beating heart, against the odds that stand before me, and this too shall pass.. and this will be the last.

  Metamorphosis

I bring my Klave into battle,

Shifting into Crinos,

I slay wyrmfoe

Then I step sideways.

The air grows heavy again. Life creeps toward a static equilibrium, though what I've heard is that all things in life tend toward chaos. I belong to a strand that at least minimally must embrace that philosophy in order to remain comfortable in our skin.

Skin..

Pulse; flex; adapt.. change. The tension beneath my flesh is no longer restlessness, but the emergence of wings. Shape shifter, norm wrecker, deviant, embrace the light and the dark as they coalesce and unify to infect the shackles that bind me.

Those of us who are beginning to know happiness also know that its face is ever-changing. Know your boundaries, and know that you could never place their horizons with your eyes alone.

Jeff Tirrill's Poetry

 An Excersise In Restraint

The shade of impending loss of all control varies; the point is moot. The flavor is something we'd better pay attention to.. the copper is usually blood. Flex, lock, grind. Dig deep to find the power to steel the heart that directs my calm. The mind is difficult to elevate above the flesh that we occupy when the sum of adversity builds up to thirteen feet of concrete and a digital brain doling out blind, unfeeling justice by the pound. Exhale, inhale, tissue tense and defensive of my center. Tranquility. You buy it cheap, sacrificing only presence and notions of a way out.. but no one there will miss you, and the vacancy in your gaze fits comfortably after you've settled.

Institutionalized, I think is the word.

An exercise first in humility; second, limitations. The ultima thule of your capability to (lose yourself for a while) resist the creeping tension.

Which brings us to the flex.. grind. Cracking, but never broken. Not because we're strong, but because that would be too merciful and the pound of flesh has become a lungful of air that you will never get back. Wasted, like your aspirations of transcending and evolving, becoming better than this-- all the second you share the rest of the world's oxygen once more.

Culture shock. Overindulgence. Feeding frenzy for our flesh. Story of this life.

Bought this ticket though, didn't you? (displacement)

Relax. Let go. Decompose. Lose all responsibility.

(I suggest you) Invert. Feel what it is to believe that all crimes should be treasured if they bring thee pleasure somehow, so when it's your turn to take part in the slow exodus to autopilot you can laugh at those who find God at the end.

 It's Not Late, it's Just Early

Pistol grip slick in the hands of paranoia, it's another beautiful night in an oxygen deficient atmosphere. Panes of gazing sand reveal a meadow full of wolves with wool loosely draped over their hunched backs, each trembling with anticipation, ready to spring on the other to eat their fill.
Ohhh, man. Eyesockets sizzle and spit, boil over in the heat of the night, sensory overload. Silent killers wear grins ostensible for the lens of madness, pupils dilated, gray matter pulsing and full of malevolent volts. Ponytail said so.
Click clack, take a few steps back.