A collection of poems inspired by the song "marching bands of manhattan" by death cab for cutie.
If I could open my eyes
If you live in a fog for long enough you soon grow used to not being able to see your shoes.
You can't seem to see what other people are so vividly aware of.
You spend your days lost, sometimes you don't even realize how lost you are, I didn't.
I knew I was an addict, I have for some time, but I couldn't see the ways in which I was peeling back the bark until it was over.
Everything slipped through the cracks.
I guess I didn't love her that much anyways. I guess my writing doesn't have to be anything but raw. I guess I can live with a runny nose and a lying tongue. I guess I don't need to feel that closeness we used to have.
You talk yourself out of everything that was once so important to you, you never wonder why because you put that in a box in the back of your house of a mind.
You didn't realize how visible it was, you aren't as smart as you thought you were, your secrets won't leave your mouth but they drip from your fingertips.
Everyone sees it, everyone catches on, it feels as if you were to last to know.
It's not like you woke up and chose not to look in the mirror at the mess of a man you had become, you knew how densely the ink stained your fingers, but you hadn't had a mirror in your house in ages.What a beautiful view
You have been trying to escape your little dark age for what felt like a lifetime.
You wanted to be better and feel better, but you didn't ever think you would.
You grew accustomed to walking through puddles and feeling the raindrops hit your face.
You befriended the stormy weather, you made peace with this gloomy life and grim fate.
In a moment you cannot put your finger on, yet one you will always cherish, you realized your little dark age had ended.
You stood at the top of the mountain, you looked at your pain from above. You looked at your past from great heights.
What a lovely view it was to acknowledge the aches of the forest with the understanding that you had made your way out of it.If you were never aware of what is around you
You hold hands with reality as it is, you embrace the world around you, you hug under the light of the sun and write poetry about the rain.
You are learning to embrace life in the raw form, life untainted by the honey that will never fill you, life unfiltered by a past that is a dull ache.
You hold hands with someone who lives outside the past, present and future.
Your shoes remain in the present, not in today or tomorrow. Your mind is elsewhere, your mind is in a fading dream.
You plant your feet in today, but your mind is elsewhere.
Where my mind is, I couldn't tell you, where my heart lies is a question I could not answer.
I do know for sure that I am not here in my entirety.I live like a hermit in my own head
I wouldn't be wrong by saying I spend much of my life within the walls of my mind.
It's where I live, sometimes more than the bedroom where I spend most of my days.
I have a house of a mind, an active imagination, a thought process that likes to peel back the layers.
It's almost always been like this. I retreat into my mind when I walk away from the noise, I retreat when the party's over and when the music is too loud, it's always there for me.
It's hard to recall how you spent your day when most of it was split between reality and lost in thought.
I go into my house of a mind when it's quiet, when it's bright and loud. The list of moments I feel like I'm truly here and with the person in front of me is a short one. I always have the sense that I am somewhere else pretending that I am not.
I don't like to pretend, but I can't peel off the mask, and in my head I don't have to.
The mask is glued to my skin, I couldn't wipe off the face paint if I wanted to. I do want to have the sense of being seen but when someone sees me I stop returning their calls.
I want to be known but I do not want to reveal all that I should, I don't think I ever will.
I have a deeply walked path of being scared of being seen, so I will keep myself separate, I always have and I don't see a day in which I am not somewhere else.The sun shines again
I thought the day I felt the sun's warmth on my skin would never come.
I didn't see myself being happy, I thought I had reached a low in which there was no pulling my way out of.
I had dug myself so deep that I thought there was nothing left for me but to sink into an early grave.
I knew addiction was not regarded for its mercy on those who live with it, because those who live with it die with it, and I was no better than death.
If I could recall the moment in which my tainted perceptions became rose colored I would never let that moment go, but it was not one moment, it was every step I took out of the valley.
It is when I stop listening to the music I used to, it is when I think about what I want, it is when I acknowledge my pain and learn to integrate it, it is when I realize I am not the only person who got hurt.
With every step I take down the path with the flowers is a step I get closer to the sun.Your love is gonna drown
When the drugs first came into my life I felt as if every question that was gnawing at me had finally been answered in a way I could live with.
For a while it was fun, getting high was like summer in my backpack, anywhere I went was beautiful if I had enough on me.
I enjoyed feeling greater than I ever had, because nothing has ever compared
I couldn't feel this good sober, and this is a feeling I never wanted to put down.
I held it for a long while, I was in love with it, what a divine connection it seemed to be.
But soon you find yourself feeling blank without it, soon you find yourself being nothing but craving without it.
You'll turn into an animal, the summer is over, the winter has come and now you are to survive.
I couldn't tell you when the winter came but I will tell you I will never find that summer again.
I have to fall out of love with my summer in a bag because it's never coming back.
YOU ARE READING
Sincerely October
PoetryThis poetry book was written having multiple narratives, lots of happiness and healing, lots of aching and low points. I choose the title "sincerely October" to capture being authentic.