Jesse Ellsbury

Depression is something nobody gets,
not even those afflicted with it.
With the sponge on your eyes and the veil on your head,
you’re too busy wond’ring what it’s like to be dead
...

Poem!
How dare you defy me
the words at my command.
I am your creator,
...

I revel in the world around me, in the trees and clouds and oceans,
I romp around and call to the hills and the hills call back to me
in unspoken languages, the pangs of this are anguishing,
snow has melted, flowers wilted, I thought that they would bloom
...

The bubbles fly so fervently,
Down my parched and painful throat,
The straw amidst
The blocks of ice,
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Why does quicksand exist?
Why does the lightning strike like a wildcat
growling from the midst?
...

When the smoke
clears and the fire engines
disappear I’ll find that my house
still remains
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There’s no point in teaching
the rats on a sinking ship
how to swim…
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Bumblebee, how do you soar
with a body so big and wings so short?
The physics are ungainly,
the angles don’t add up to one-eighty
...

It was a day in early May
When the two sat on a hill,
Staring into the sea.
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The sparrow flutters with a broken wing,
one working oar spinning it in circles.
It has no idea what the future holds,
a bleak and broken condemnation,
...

I don’t want another chance to fail; I’ve proven I can do it,
I’ve had plenty of chances to succeed, and with every one I blew it.
Why when things are looking up do I always look down?
I tell myself I want to fly but I’m staring at the ground.
...

When morning light comes streaming,
Touching on your eyes and gleaming,
And the birds outside start screaming,
And dew in the grass starts steaming,
...

I see them aging every day,
and every day it breaks my heart:
the people who raised me,
the people who saved me
...

The lessons I have learned I'm still trying to confirm,
through the fog of my mistakes that cling tight to all I make.
But with the fog of inebriation lifting, I now see what I've been missing,
that the potential I so treasured was the potential that I severed.
...

Strange ghosts stalk the city,
Haunting up from sewer grates.
Scarcely recognized memories
Traverse the park in autumn.
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I refuse to let this nightmare win,
I’ve done and am doing all I can,
death ends here so life can begin.

Some people phrase it in terms of sin,
...

I saw the past destroy itself and rise again as the future, guttural, drowning, in smog and regulation, the pastoral trees finally breathing free
while the cars smoke on tobacco-black streets, past the lights searching to bring down anyone going too fast or thinking too slow.
In the middle drive those who don’t deserve a license, running at the right speed, predictable as the air we breathe,
arriving on time, a dead heartbeat or chime while those without cars are exhausted by the fumes of hearses driving by.
...

as gray as a storm-strewn winter day
or smoke coming out of an addict’s mouth,
every day is full of doubt
and it’s impossible to tell
...

Does a friendship fade when a friend goes away
never to return?
Or so it seems, I met him in a dream
of convenience,
...

To love is to surrender
to a person, to an object,
to an action, to a concept
love is like a time capsule:
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