Today is National Poetry Day, October 6th—a beautiful, terrifying day in the most haunting month of the year. Because so often the words that touch your soul will make a permanent home in the part of your brain that stays up late at night, remembering the charmingly dysfunctional moments that make up your unique life. So let’s kick off this month of darkness and creativity with a haunting, twisting playful labyrinth of words.

1. Art

Music scream so loudly
In my ears
So I can no longer hear
My toxic thoughts

Art fill my mind
With questions
So my brain is
Distracted, if only for a moment

Books take me away
Transport me
To someone else’s mind
When my own is going mad

I am finally
Who I am meant to be
A broken soul
Drowning in devastation and poetry

For now that you’ve left me empty and alone
I have the music of words to fill the you shaped hole

2. Love Letters

Everything I write
Will be a fucking love letter to you
Because you will always be
My reference point for pain

3. On Poison and Peace

Take your poison
Make it mine
I’ll turn your heartache
Into wine
And drink it
Till I’m soaked right through
With emotions that are black and blue
And I’ll give my peace of mind to you

4. En Vogue

Blue looks good on you darling
You haven’t eaten in a while
Your tear stained face looks thin
And everyone knows that’s what’s in
Don’t lose that sadness now
And go back to being plain

That broken heart suits you
Blood spilled from where the shards cut
Are this seasons colors
Stain your lips
And contoured cheeks
Your look is complete

Sadness becomes you my dear
Miserable and beautiful
Learn to live with your madness
Sustain yourself on melancholy
Beauty is pain
Peace of mind is for the weak

5. Wanderlust

I’m here in this moment
But I can’t stay much longer

I want to be everywhere at once
Because wherever I go
My heart has already left
For the next place

6. The Story of Us

How does it feel to know
That so many people have read
The story of you and I
The story of
Once upon a time