Jaded Poet

Explore the ideas of life through the eyes of a jaded poet

[jadedpoetry]

Stars

There are around nine thousand stars clear to the naked eye scattered amongst our night sky. Growing up, I heard that most of the stars that I could see were already dead. Burnt out, gone; hollow. This felt indicative of how people were around me. The ones who burnt the brightest, the ones who did the most, crashed the hardest. When you shine so bright, you have to run out of fuel eventually, right? I figured this must be the way of the world, if even our heavens that looked down on us followed the same patterns. If I wanted to be something, I should expect to end up as nothing just as fast. But did you know that isn't actually true? Did you know that less than one percent of the stars that we can see when we gaze upwards to the night is gone? Less than one percent. Less than one, so why do I feel like I am burning out so quickly when I haven't even begun? I feel like this want, this desire, this burn to be something more will eat me alive. My insatiable hunger to exist will be what kills me. Like the stars in the sky, I want to be ethereal in my existence. I want more, and yet I find myself out of fuel, running on empty. I thought I shared this with the night, but apparently I was always hollow alone. If not a star, maybe I'm just a broken street lamp. Flickering hopelessly, burnt out, waiting for a change. Waiting to throw out this broken light, and trade in for a new one that will crackle with fresh electricity, to shine bright and new again.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Holy

I'm not religious but I pray to the dark like it's my god. I beg it to show me an unseen path and answer unknown questions. I let it envelop me completely and ask it to hold me for a while. I'm not religious but I look to the moon like it could be my higher power. I bathe in the reflected light in awe and drink in my desired divine. It looks back like a pastor with a message I will never grasp. I'm not religious but I raise my eyes in worship to the stars. Bright spots fill my vision through rain and clouds. They stare back like a congregation of eyes I may have once known. I'm not religious but I attend this alley like a church. I bring my lighter like a bible and each cigarette a verse. I'll hold breath in hollow lungs to see if my flimsy gods will answer me tonight. When I finish my verse, and leave my church, I'll remember, I'm not religious.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Brittle

I feel fragile in a way I never have before. I feel hollow, a shell of myself. I don't know how to talk about it, and even if I did, I don't know what I'd say. It's like I'm an empty nesting doll, my smile painted on. I look okay, but everything inside is missing. I'm here, but only just barely. I'm going through the motions on autopilot. My mind has checked out, so it's good my body remembers what to do. Brush my teeth, wash my face, go to work. Smile, make small talk, go home. Take my medication. Stare at the wall. Tell my friends I'm fine. Cry empty tears with soundless wails. Sleep. Repeat. I don't know why I'm this broken from this little. It feels like it should be nothing, I'm treated like it should be nothing. There's this expectation that I should just go back to my life the same way it was, slide back into routine flawlessly. So I'm trying, bending my fragile fragments to form familiar figures. I'm ignoring the itch in my brain that screams that I'm not okay, and I'm doing my best to glue myself together as I fall apart. It's getting harder to gather broken pieces when I'm losing more of myself every day.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Sick

Every breath I take feels shallow. My ribs are cast in stone, refusing to expand. Anxiety is gnawing at my concrete laden bones. I'm suffocating in my skin. It's pulled taut like string, stretched thin as paper. Every movement I make threatening to rip me to shreds. My stomach is filled with lead, heavy and poisonous. Nauseatingly violent turns, leaving food tasteless and sickening.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Grey

I had this dream of gentle kisses and fleeting touches. It was foreign and familiar all the same. I felt soft hair that I haven't seen in ages, and I hope to never lay eyes on again. In this dream, I was called lovely, and it echoed in my brain. I felt happy and whole for a moment in time, but it was like watching a movie through fogged glass. These days, that word makes me feel ill in a way I can't describe. In my dream, I saw soft kisses I'm not sure ever belonged to me. I felt a memory of my breath being stopped in its tracks, caught in my throat over the sweet intense intimacy of it all. All I feel now is a hollow pit in my chest.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Advertisement

Strip away my package, pose me like a doll. Cover me in paint, and touch up my display. Sell me, I'm a product. Convince them of my worth. Have me fake my smile and put the light back in my eye in posts. Make me palettable. Make me consumable. Make me a consumable. What is my price? Give me to the highest bidder. Make sure they pay more than I cost you, or I was worthless in the end.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Desperation

Tell me I'm allowed to yearn. I crave love, I'm a romantic at heart. I desire a taste in my mouth with a sweetness I have never known. Tell me I'm allowed to hunger. There is an ache in my blood. I am hollow in a way that invites someone to fill with a passion I have yet to see. Tell me I'm allowed to covet. To beg to be held with tenderness. Let me be cradled under stars by hands I still have yet to meet. Tell me I'm allowed to want. To understand what it feels like to be the center of a world. I want to be thawed by a sun that has risen a thousand of times, but this sunrise has yet to warm my face.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Someday

The battle I'm fighting with myself isn't one I'm sure I want to win. The tug of war of emotions and emptiness is haunting and hollow. This torturous turmoil is something that gives my mind purchase. I worry whether I win or lose this fight won't matter, because I will have lost a reason for survival. I exist to try and and conquer this mind of mine and if I win I will have nothing, but if I fail I will lose everything. It is easier to live in a limbo of pretend then to truly try and be better. The "maybe one day"s being pushed further and further into the future, and the "I'll try harder"s being left far behind in the past. I find myself fighting just hard enough to not be left on the sea floor, but not hard enough to get to land. I live amongst the waves, crashing over my head and pushing me under. I will swim with just enough effort to reach the surface to breathe in one lung full of oxygen before being knocked back below. I know that going on like this is dangerous, I know that it is precarious. Yet I find myself living -enduring- just to crave that feeling of complete detachment like it's a luxury. That beautiful limbo between existing and not, where there is no life, but there is no death. I feel untouchable by even the gods there, in a place so unstable but so sweetly serene. For that one moment, I feel nothing and everything, and I don't feel the need to run. But then I try to breathe and realize my lungs won't work and I am panicking and flailing. I am grasping at nothing and for another moment I think this time, this is it. Then I surface. Then I take my one deep breath, and I hold it for a second. I consider maybe it's time to stop, to find the shore, to scream for help, to do anything but this. My lungs start to burn and I let out my breath, and the waves bring me back under. I think "maybe one day", but that feels like a lie even to me. For now, I will keep fighting just hard enough not to drown. For now, I'll ignore the feeling of water in my lungs. For now, I'll keep saying "maybe one day, I'll try harder".

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Counterpart

Aren't you tired of hearing about how broken I am? Why are you still listening? I bitch and moan of struggles that don't exist and languish in my misery. I say I wish I was happy, but maybe that isn't true. Maybe I like being broken, perhaps I enjoy needing a vice. Being bitter is my only compelling trait, anyway. Yet you still sit in the rain with me, have a smoke on the steps. Misery loves company, after all. Still, I can always see how resentful you are, staring back at me in the puddles. You know, at least you pretend to understand. You carry the same face as me, twisted in disgust. I can see your eyes rimmed in red and purple; vacant, empty. I repulse you, I make you sick. Nevertheless, we are stuck together, you and I. Where I go you will follow, like a prisoner of my desire. I'll see you in the corner of my eye, passed in windows and mirrors, always lurking, never quite hidden. Aren't you tired? Why are you still here? You never answer me, you just mock my words. Opening your mouth with me, screaming without a sound. I'm sorry we're stuck in here together. I'm sorry you can't leave. I'm sorry I can't let you. I'm sorry I hate you, but it's just so easy. So natural, almost. It's in my nature to hate me.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Haze

I have a tendency for self destruction. I crave a burn in my throat and a fire in my lungs. I've been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was twelve, I breathed in the smoke from a campfire, and watched the broken ash dissipate from my lungs in the aftermath. I found myself chopping wood with a dull axe just to feel the comforting pain again. At sixteen I was collecting shitty cornerstore vanilla tobacco vapes, because the cigarettes had stopped finding my hands. I was trading in for a convenient fix that never managed to scratch the itch. I still remember my first time eating a roach behind my middle school, because the joints weren't getting me high enough. It tasted like acid and mistakes, but I still swallowed. I don't remember the first time I blacked out, but I do remember crawling up a set of stairs, and waking up on my friends floor. I smelled like vomit and sweat, and I wanted another drink. I don't know what I was running from, or maybe I forgot. Now I'm just running. I know if I stop moving it will catch me, it will eat me alive. My bones will turn to dust, and my skin will be peeled away. At the end of the day, I will always find my way back to the butt of a cigarette. I'll find comfort in having an amount of control over how I manage to poison my blood and destroy my body. Truly, I think this is what I am meant for. I'll numb my despair in liquid and quiet my mind behind varieties of smoke. Maybe one day I'll stop running, but for now, Anybody have a cigarette?

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Detour

Sometime I miss who I used to be, stumbling into a dingy diner at 3 in the morning, laughing and talking. Sometimes I miss walks in the dark through parks I was told to avoid, and laying in the grass to see the stars. The stars always seemed brighter when tinted with misdemeanors and misbehavior. I come from pallet fires in the woods and parties by sandless waters, I hail from the land of somewhere that felt like nowhere. Sometimes I miss the lack of expectation, the belief that I didn't need to grow up, and the shock when I did. When 3 hours of sleep and 3 monster energies was all I needed to get through the day. Sometimes i miss when everything was numb. The feeling of emptiness that made my smiles seem bright. Why would I want to feel anything, when I was riding so high I could touch the moon? Sometimes I miss not caring. Not caring if I was safe, or if I would make it home. You see, sometimes everything feels like too much, I feel like too much, and the void beckons me seductively. This call and response of numbing my mind and forgetting my worries, only to wake up battered and bruised on a bathroom floor. Sometimes I miss who I used to be, but most of the time, I like who I am now better.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Mantra Pt. II

I've always said that I'm fine. I repeat myself like a parrot, chant it like a mantra. I've always been fine, I've always had to be fine. Instead I'll drink where you can't see me, and smoke where you can't smell me. I'll cry where you can't hear me. Being anything but fine has always been a luxury just out of my reach. It costs a price I can't afford, nickel and dimes me into a fare I can't provide. So instead I am fine, I will be fine. It's nothing, I'm fine. Truly, to be broken is beyond my means. I have bills to pay, groceries to buy, rent that is due. I'll cope behind closed doors and hope no one ever sees. My not fine is my shame. How dare I be damaged? How dare I be defective? My mother raised me crueler than this. So instead my messy bun is stylish, my baggy clothes give an air of indifference, my poor posture a profession. I don't know how to not be fine. If I can't prove my state of being is not deficient, then I think I'll break like grenade, splintering into a thousand pieces and taking everything down with me. So I'll look you in eye, and promise, I'm fine. Ignore the signs, trust that I'm fine. I swear, I'm fine. I'm fine. Really, I'm just fine.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Where my breath hangs infront of me Like a cloud without a cigarette, Let the cold hold me for the night. The way the air grips my exhale, Then slowly lets it dissipate. It scratches the itch in a way A dart never could.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Memories

Sometimes it hurts that I've left a part of me behind. A portion of my soul abandoned in the past, just out of reach. Sometimes I wonder who I might have been if I never walked away from that version of myself. Would I love and laugh, would I have dreamt my joy into existence? I fear that I have left the version of myself that knew how to feel happy. On the other hand, the person I left all those years ago was so very sure I'd be in a coffin by now. The unknown is hard. The not knowing who I should have been if I had just submitted to the hands that wanted to mold me. Unfortunately I am not clay and the forceful sculpting left me cracked and brittle. The spinning on the potter's wheel had made me nauseous and dreading the kiln. The world I am in holds little joys that the abandoned self never thought possible. I truly left everything I came from with no notice, and simply stopped calling the people I thought held me dear. This thought was soon proven wrong, as my phone never rang, and I learned I didn't need a new number to escape an old life. So I skipped town, cut my hair, and changed my name like every lonely child dreams about. I changed the colour of my soul, and laid the old me to rest. In this regard, I guess the abandoned and depressed child was right. They were laid to rest, buried six feet under my memories.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

Why would I speak ill of the dead, When the living is who harms me? Why should I berate the sad souls Who are beyond saving?

The living are the ones Who haunt my sleeps And the ones Who hunt my dreams.

Why would I speak ill of the dead, When I can tell horrors of the living?

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

I am the thorn on a rose, And the sharp edge of glass. I fear I don't bring destruction, But simply am the Devastation it causes. How could I be meant For more than this? Watch my world crumble, And see my future shatter. You can tape a broken window All you like, but that won't Truly make it whole. My anguish is harsh, And my soul is burnt. Some things can never Be made new again.

-jadedpoet

[jadedpoetry]

I hope you feel at home in my words. May they bring you a sense of peace, And show you're not alone. I'm sorry if we share the same pains, But perhaps the knowledge of joint suffering Will make you feel less burdened. I hope my writing fills you with tranquility, And I hope you feel embraced By a silent yet distant understanding.

-jadedpoet