I keep my thoughts in crowded rooms
with peeling paint and humming lights,
where every idea talks at once
and none of them are ever right.
There’s order here, I swear there is,
it’s just arranged in broken stacks,
like books re-shelved by trembling hands
that never quite remember facts.
My mind is not a storm, they say,
storms pass and leave the ground intact,
this is a fog that learns my name
and calls me back when I escape.
I think in spirals, loops in loops,
a sentence eats the one before,
I start with truth, end up with jokes,
then wonder what I started for.
I rhyme by accident, on purpose, both,
my thoughts collide and multiply,
a chorus made of inner notes
that harmonize then fight then die.
There’s laughter stitched to panic seams,
a grin that doesn’t match the eyes,
I’ll joke about the rot inside
while carefully avoiding lies.
Because lies are tidy, lies behave,
they walk in straight and quiet lines,
my truths arrive with muddy boots
and track their mess through all my time.
I talk to walls, but not like that,
not voices whispering commands,
more like the wall already knows
and nods in ways you’d understand.
I lose my train of thought a lot,
but honestly I like the walk,
the scenery is strange but rich,
and no one tells me when to stop.
Some days my brain is quicksand slick,
each step a risk, each pause a sink,
other days it’s fireworks
that never give me time to blink.
I hold six emotions in one breath,
they tangle, strangle, then align,
joy rides shotgun next to dread
while reason sleeps in back, resigned.
I overthink the way I blink,
the way I speak, the way I stand,
then miss the obvious entirely
like it was never in the plan.
My focus fractures into shards,
reflecting angles I can’t name,
I see myself in every piece
but none of them look quite the same.
I am not broken, not exactly,
I function, mostly, more or less,
I just run different operating systems
built on chaos and excess.
There’s beauty in the overload,
in wires sparking just for fun,
in thoughts that sprint three miles ahead
and trip before they reach the sun.
I write to trap the buzzing noise,
to pin it down, to make it still,
but every word just splits in two
and multiplies against my will.
So here I am, a crowded mind,
a labyrinth that learned to sing,
insane, maybe, if that means
I feel *too much* of everything.
If sanity is narrow rails,
a straightened path, a muted tone,
then let me keep my crooked roads
and call this madness mine alone.
Because inside this tangled head,
this mess of rhyme and broken sense,
is something real, and sharp, and loud,
and painfully, beautifully… me.
