mania

i am nothing

and nothing eats me.

i am the cracks that spiders

crawl out of in the night to bite you

i am the air holding the dirt

under your fingernails

i am the beginning and the end

i am god!

i am in a manic state.

i push and pull the world without 

touching anything

i am gravity and i am kinetic

energy pulling you back — to what?

— over and over again

i create the space that exists between the sexes

i am the color of not blue not

pink but verdant green

i kiss the north wind

as she shivers your spine

i spit on the walls and

i skate on them.

i hallucinate — i hallucinate?

oh yes i hallucinate.

when i pop oxy cyclobenzaprine

and tequilla and cocaine

— I AM METAL!

i’m a line crawling ever closer

to an existential asymptote

just! trying! to! be! zero!

instead of a line i’m the first taste

of withdrawl when nothing first

gives birth to oblivion 

i am tired

the shadows that crawl the wall frighten me

the darkness comes in around me

i am nothing.

—February 2022, Stanford, CA