Phaethon

Content warning: drugs, suicide

I’m falling forward in the sky

All around me is a periphery of madness

And everywhere I look is nothing but faces

Twisted faces gargoyle faces changing shapes

With every layer of the atmosphere gravity pulling

Every aspect every layer of my skin closer to the heart

Of the ground and I feel myself tugged and I feel myself

Desperately stopping you I feel myself judged every time that

I buy myself drugs or go to smoke weed or get too drunk and pass out

And so I do it in secret and still I feel myself horribly intensely judged by

Your eyes that are looking at me and hating me as I’m falling and I’m angry

Because I know in some way you are right but this libertine madness is all that is

Keeping me from combusting with the ground all that is keeping me from completely 

Breaking

Because I’m falling forward and I can’t see anything

I’m falling forward and there is no one here with me

Every night I cry myself to sleep and every night I ask

You to forgive me for all of my new sins and vices and 

It keeps getting worse and worse and worse and I don’t

Know what to say to you or how to fix it or how to make

You love me again because I can see how scared you are

Of me and I don’t know how to change anything and I

Am scared of me too scared that I could do this to you

I’m scared I could let go of all direction and go to go

And not to have any place to go TO at the end of it

I’m scared that I’m abandoning capitalism, abandoning

Everything that was taught me and plunging toward

Something I’m not sure what and I’m so, so scared

That I will have killed myself before I can control the

Sun

But if I don’t die everything will be incredible everything will be magical if I don’t die

I feel like I’m living on borrowed time I really should have died back a year ago

When I tried to kill myself I should have died and now I live on borrowed time

Just getting closer and closer to that day when all my risks catch up to me

And I’m no longer a Beat I’m just a dead still heart just a piece of meat

Meat falling forward I don’t even know in what direction please

Tell me what direction I’m falling I’m surrounded by stars

Pinpoints of love and connection I can feel them

Moments like getting high in the amphitheater 

Like that song blasting in the car at night

Like hopping the fence in the dark all

Alone

I feel alone so terribly alone  alone when I hug you  think of kissing you alone

When I don’t think of you alone when I’m eating alone when I’m throwing up

Alone when I’m smoking in the parking lot alone when I’m smoking in the park

Alone when I go on walks and listen to music and the stars are blotted out by light

Alone when I laugh and make jokes with all of you and try to be part of things

Alone when I listen to you alone when I talk to you alone! Alone when I am alone

And all the things I do to let myself out of myself when I’m alone in there I can’t

Do them without hurting other folks I can’t cut or throw up or smoke or scream

Or tear myself and everyone else around me to shreds because then I set the whole

Entire sky on fire and take the world in a blaze away with me  I can’t do it I can’t

But part of me wants to so badly I want to paint the world with the pain that I

Am feeling so intensely right now I want to set everything on fire I want to

Share the sun if it’s not beautiful fire it will have to be destructive and I want 

To say something because so many people manage to live and die without saying 

Anything

We are all plunging forward

But I can feel myself falling it’s

Like a free fall I want to feel okay 

With feeling this uncomfortable I want

To FEEL every single emotion good and bad

But I can’t press pause and this feels so intensely

Suddenly I remember everything all the horrible times

When that old man groped me in the house full of toys

When dad left me at the park and the parking space was empty

And now I don’t like toys and I don’t like parks and I remember 

Too much of everything and it adds to the weight of falling I’m FALLING

Forward and I can’t press pause I can’t make it stop I can’t hold off this dire emotion

I can only feel and let myself feel and the feeling is burning the feeling is like plunging

Through an eternity of sky like passing through every layer of pain and memory again

Thermosphere is how cold I felt the night my best friend left forever and I lied to him

Mesosphere is lying in the park getting high thinking of how I should’ve asked you out 

Stratosphere is trying to kill myself and bleeding out all over the closet and crying alone

Troposphere is breaking up with you and you blocking me on everything and losing a friend

But I’m not quite at the earth and it’s a cycle it’s like circles of hell like Sisyphus but more

Absurd everything is absurd and I try to rebel but rebellion is exhausting and I can’t even

Tell if my rebellion makes any meaning or just makes me feel the emotions more intensely

And is that meaning?

I’m floating here somewhere above the ground thinking about

All the missed opportunities limbo won’t ever give me back

Because I’m so far from you on the ground but I’m so far from

Orion in the sky as well I can’t hold hands with gods or man

And this is how it has always felt how I’ve always felt misaligned

I’m the meaning in between the lines I’m the in between space 

Not Greek enough or American enough not masc or femme enough

Not smart enough to get somewhere but smart enough to be bored

Fucked up enough to fuck up everyone else but not enough to die

And I would sacrifice my death for the sake of meaning for you for

Anyone I love but it’s a lot more meaningful to sacrifice your LIFE

And I’m falling falling forward and I don’t know if I have much life

Left to sacrifice to anyone or if it would be a service at all to you

Because I feel myself

Getting closer to the ground

I’m seeing all these parents crying

Their kids left at the border all alone 

Kids crying over parents’ medical bills

Parents crying with fights over nothing at all

I see so much love but so much more anger and 

Hate and it’s all just so black like smoke singing the

Ground so I don’t know when I’m gonna land I just know

It’ll light the ground horribly on fire and I think of my dad

And if he’ll get all burnt up in the fire I hope not I hope he dies

Peacefully never knowing all the fire I burned in the ground and I

Think of god who doesn’t exist and I think of Orion whose hand I still

Haven’t held except that one time I tripped on shrooms and I think as I get

Really close to the ground of the other things I saw that day I swear it was a 

Spirit realm all these gargoyles and lions in lavender colors the earth is breathing

Alive and so much more tangled than we see and the air is full of life and I can feel

It breathing next to my head and setting the fields on fire with me and burning everything

Up and I feel it put its arms around me and promise me that even though we can’t press pause

Maybe just maybe we can set a beat to the madness of the world around us and listen  listen so 

Softly until the world around us fades to that heartbeat that bass tone that blue hit on yellow trumpet sky

Listen to me

I’m just sitting here taking a hit out of a pipe (my dad used one too)

Thinking about the world and ignoring all the missed messages because

Honestly it’s so damn exhausting to try to be speaking all the time

Just listen  because when you listen to the world it starts to make more

Sounds  all the pieces you were missing start to fit together when you

Stop listening to the sound of your voice talking and start to hear it all

Just close your eyes and you can start to hear the music that’s the heartbeat

Of everything kind of taking over and melting the smoke from my pipe

Into the tremors in the air and the angry discourses in the neighbor’s yard

And all the pain of all the conversations and the falling all boil down

Deep inside me  a sort of deep inside falling forward but it’s okay because

Smoke falls upward and my mind falls downward but holdin it all together

Is my body and I know it’s on the ground and I know when I touch you that

At least that’s real and maybe if you hug me hard enough I’ll know that

My body can’t be falling unless I choose to make it and that kind of 

Grounding is somehow so comforting because I don’t want to be falling

Anymore