Anxiety

There is a scream inside my head

And it will not let me rest

Around me, the silence is maddening

Inside me, this scream is deafening

 

It envelopes every resting thought

It swallows my imagination

Around me, others walk contently

Inside me, my heart paces rapidly

 

This scream in my head is rather needy

Time of day or responsibilities are not priorities

It decides when to come and go

Not satiated with yes or no

 

It needs complex answers to impossible questions

To hear it’s echoes in places unmentioned

Legitimacy, it needs

For the anxiety and guilt, it feeds

 

So where’s my release?

You tell me

It’s certainly not in this 10 x 12 box

With chipped walls and ceiling rot

It’s not in this endless stream on my laptop

 

The stream of sound that lives in me

So loud I can’t remember to breath

It’s the cancer that rots my bones

The substance abuse that kills my soul

The scream that none but I know

That slowly etches its toll

 

These content beings in their silence, kill me

Just shut up and give me peace

If not peace, give me apathy

For once, let me feel nothing

 

Or find a way through the synapses of my brain

Down my left or right membranes

Through my fists or my mouth

Please, just get out

 

Quit tainting my every thought with dry rot

Quit drowning me in negativity

Distracting me from possibility

Let me be

 

When I try to muffle the cries

This screaming, I can’t subside

Like it lives deep within me

In parts I can’t reach

 

So I carry on in this 10×12 box

With chipped walls and ceiling rot

All the while, this scream in my head

Steals the night from me again

Ode to Social Media

The digital web of egos shout, “I’m right”
While logic drowns in digital noise
Submerged in static, too blind to see
It’s not bombs, guns or military toys
That’s not what will destroy

This arrogance, This ignorance
Talking with our ears closed
Trust me my friends
Our weakness we’ve long since exposed

Poems of my past

We’re tiny vessels in this big machine

Moving product and paper disguised as dreams

Fueled by fear and cheap champagne

Smuggling anesthetics to forget the pain

—

We walk these roads of self-deceit

A mix of rain and oil swirled beneath our feet

Glowing bright to distract our eyes

From our bodies crumbling into inevitable demise

—

Brick by Brick these walls grow higher

Wall after wall we simply grow tired

Of breaking down these barriers

It’s a disease and we’re all carriers

—

We’d rather slowly rot from inside

Escape behind our walls to hide

Than stare love in the face

And break down these divides with grace

—

We’d rather slowly rot from inside

Escape behind our walls to hide

Than admit that we care

And lay our chests bare

—

So I’ll keep you at an arm’s length

Manipulate the definition of strength

So that it fits my present tense

So that it fits this perpetual state of loneliness

And I know you will do the same

It’s all the same baggage with a different name

We’ll lie naked like lovers

But we could not be any more covered

Fall-ing

As the leaves change

Strange as my moods

Green like insecurity

Yellow like promise

Red like passion

–

My branches can’t shake em

Can’t shake this itch; this feeling

Something big is approaching

My body would die for leaving

–

My body fights its stubborn roots

Something’s missing here

As the green falls around me

I know you feel it too my dear

–

I’m rooted here

In love and memories

Shade and comfort shedding

Bask in this with me

and say you’re staying

–

Cause this war is all but civil

I can’t be the only one who sees it

See this war is deep and it is buried

I won’t trust those who can’t feel it

–

But you’re beautiful like rain

Rare but familiar in a way

Like you’ll wash it away

Oh please don’t go away

Sink deep and move slow

But please don’t go

–

My dear technically I’m dying

But it’s merely just the season

There’s life left here

I can’t be the only one that sees it

I won’t trust those who can’t feel it

My Thinking Spot

Here I sit

Where imagination meets reality

They crash together a million pieces

And I don’t know which is which

Here I sit

In the place I call home

But it doesn’t feel like home

Its absence of love confirms I’m alone

Here

I sit

Where the flickering jungle meets the absent sky

Where cars fly by and I don’t know who’s inside

But I wonder if they’ve felt this pain in me

And where they sit to let it bleed

I wonder if they know they aren’t alone

That they have left their mark some place

They may not even know

Because no one ever lets you know

Here I sit

Where expectations meet reality

And the difference nearly shatters me

They don’t know

I’ve stared at this paper too blurry to see

I’ve let this cynical world tear at every ideal in me

This relentless hope is quite possibly killing me

My imagination sees what it wants to see

And so desperately wants to be reality

So I sit

I come to grips

Let the ice cold certainty wash over me

You had your way with every part of me

I imagine setting fire to the bridge in front of me

But that’s not reality

You’ve left your hand in the way

And I don’t think you’ll ever know

A pain shoots in my chest when I wonder

If you have too felt this blow

But no I won’t let you know

And that is my truth

So here I sit

Where my present meets my past

And I try to find light in the shadow its cast

Punch-drunk fools

By: Chelsea Montes de Oca

–

To be so consumed with hate

Must be a miserable fate

In a glass house armed with infinite stones

Constantly surrounded yet forever alone

Loneliness takes on an ugly form

Yours crept its way into my norm

Till I was more fear than fight

Till I was more dark than light

–

So rally rally round her side

Run dizzy circles round her pride

Loyally fight for her honor

Blindly stripped of your armor

Punch-drunk fools, you’re all goners

–

Always acting a saint in these vicious systems

So gifted in your art of playing victim

I lived in a state of apathetic captivity

Fueled by injections of toxic negativity

I watched you rot into infection

Disguise your disease as warped affection

Static eyes and a mind full of delusions

So skillful at blending reality with illusions

–

So rally rally round her side

Run dizzy circles round her pride

Loyally fight for her honor

Blindly stripped of your armor

Punch-drunk fools, you’re all goners

–

I often wonder what it says of me

To keep such unstable company

I’ve walked too far evading these cracks

Ignoring the heavy hatchet in my back

Ironically in a twisted act of pity

You pulled what I needed to bury

A deed who’s intentions may never be showed

Until you reach the end of this rock bottom road

I hope you aren’t too bloody and broken

To remember the words so kindly spoken

Not just by me but by all those who warned

Of this world of pain you’re walking towards

–

So rally rally round her side

Run dizzy circles round her pride

Loyally fight for her honor

Blindly stripped of your armor

Punch-drunk fools, she’s a goner

Perception is reality

By: Chelsea Montes de Oca

I remain always in my head

Growing up it’s where I fled

Reveling in the possibilities ahead

Breeding thoughts to drown realities dread

–

Close your eyes

And misplaced rage is erased

Close your eyes

Your world is a blank slate

–

When my home couldn’t be a safe place

My head provided that escape

Resulting in a mind so fast paced

But the captain of its own rat race

–

Close your eyes

With them you can’t win

Close your eyes

Fuel yourself from within

–

I often feel my heart might burst

If my head doesn’t first

You see my comforting mind is cursed

I’ve trained it to see beauty in the worst

When I find a reality to quench its thirst

I swear I’ll submerse myself head first

Without consideration or thought

Because it’s what never could be bought

That prevented internal rot

Imagined opportunities self-taught

Turned self-made realities for which I’ve fought

Tooth and nail, weary and sore

And I remain hungry for more

With passion fueling my core

And a myriad of doors left to explore

–

Close your eyes

But start making plans

Open your eyes

Your worlds in your hands

–

Maybe the hardest dreams

Are the ones life’s gifted to me.

Paths from which either way gleam

And where infinite possibilities team

So loudly I could burst at the seams

At least that’s how I see

And this perception is my reality

Codependency is a hell of a drug

By: Chelsea Montes de Oca

–

Codependency is a hell of a drug

It’s the imaginary bugs that you dug

From under your skin in panic

It’s the mobile itch that makes you manic

–

It’s these words you write

Blind in the unknown night

It’s the biting cold

When you can’t stand to be alone

–

It’s the excuses and ties

Used to piece together the lies

Its warped love that you can’t stand

But the fix your soul demands

–

So fuck it, I’m out

I’m choosing another route

Ignoring your texts and calls

Please know you did nothing at all

–

Because whoever is by my side

Is the voice that resides

In my head telling me I’m worth it

The voice that tells me I’m important

–

That voice needs to be mine

And it’s in no way defined

Enough to hold my world’s weight

To carry my heavy fate

–

Your words paint a lovely view

But one I can’t run to

Insignificance consumes me indefinitely

And my soul that can’t live this way irrevocably

–

Your words won’t be here forever

So these ties I must severe

Stunted growth may exist without pain

But self-inflicted shackles are less than humane

–

Everyone I assign a place

Time will write in then erase

Not everyone is a lifeline

Either a reason, season or lifetime

–

You can’t be all three

Codependency will be the death of me

Because I always hold on for far too long

To a reason or season already gone

–

So let me become my own voice

Sharpen my tools to make noise

Let me live truly independent

To stop from being so love dependent

Make room for what you deserve

I feel like this is better when it’s read aloud but still posting it.

–

I’m convinced

This world is in a perpetual state of loneliness

Since about the age of three

Disney movies have been telling me

Without a man, I’m nothing

My observations have allowed me to see

That an influential man didn’t help birth me

So let’s see what the dating world brings

A lack of results and sheer colored panic

Lovely

Thusly disappointment after disappointment

Reveal this skewed perception shown

It’s all too well known

You see, either you settle or you are alone

But these desperate undertones

Shake and rattle my bones

Fake moans and un-atoned sins

And again it begins

I can’t seem to win

Feel like a snake in this skin

Sick of sleeping on pins

And needles waiting to feel

Dreamed reality from the movie reels become surreal

And these layers are toxic deals

These layers whose ever-changing colors appeal

To everyone except me

But I don’t know any other way to be

Dysfunctional loyalties rooted so deeply

It’s like I’ve been sleeping

If a tree entrenched in its ways

Finally uproots and walks away

And nobody is there with attention to pay

Does it make a sound?

Does it shake the ground?

Call attention to lonely souls around?

Cause I could really use a rebound

But wait

Fuck that predetermined fate

Fuck this perpetual weight

Have some faith

There’s a reason it’s called a clean slate

Those sound waves will translate

To the language of my soul mates

I’m not sorry if I struck a nerve

Or for feelings I didn’t conserve

Cause I’m running on reserves

There’s no time to waste

I’m comfortably close to what doesn’t serve

and miles away from what I deserve