The snow has melted, now.
The skies are turning gray.

Rain is pouring down.
What a horrible day.

Although you make it better,
My life is a disaster.

To my heart, though,
You've become keymaster.

So even though the snow has melted,
And the skies have gone pure gray,

Somehow I will always remember
You've made this a perfect day.

I try and try to tell my brain,
We're no longer in that place that caused us pain,
But no matter how many times I do,
I still end up back there with you,
You're the demon that rips me to shreds,
Makes me wish for a painless death,
Because I've been hurting for years,
Drowning, suffocating in these tears,
For you are the tormentor,
Holy than thou keymaster,
Never letting me go,
In my mind, no,

You have a hold on me,
That no one can see,
And I hate it so much,
Please just give it up,
Let your grasp go,
It's more painful than you know,

Your nails they dig in, ripping up carpet in your pleasure,
While I sit here confused about what going on, so sinister,
This plot that you executed, it must've taken time,
Planned out and carried out, not straying out of the lines,
If Satan had a body, I'd believe it was yours,
You're my hell on this ******* earth,
And I hate you so ******* much,
I hope you know at least that much,
You're a disgusting waste of space,
With an angels deceiving face,
And I will always be in that basement,
Wondering how to please escape it,

You have a hold on me,
That no one can see,
And I hate it so much,
Please just give it up,
Let your grasp go,
It's more painful than you know.

A pull of the cord illuminates the neon sign
Invisible gases pass through the glass tubes
They flicker for a split second
Then they begin to glow

It reads, "NO VACANCY"
A glowing symbol for "leave us the **** alone"
or "get lost" .. to which one applied to me
HELL I didnt know.
Each single red letter determined my fate

I needed a place to lay my head down,
to rest the troubles of my life
You know the ones
The torment, the abuse, the bullying, the screams and the pain and those are the easy ones

Pounding on the keymaster's door,
I yelled at the top of my lungs
"Please give me a key"
But still no answer
Then my ears deceived my brain..
Finally, words that interrupted the silence

I waited for more
But silence pursued my mind once again
I pounded harder this time
Slamming my fist into the wooden door, my face turning beet red with anger and the veins pulsating in my neck as if they were about to burst like a balloon

Crash!! The tender glass shattered, breaking into a million pieces, ricocheting off my face as each piece began to dance waltzes on the distant floor

The door creaked open
It was then, just as I was about to ring the bell
My eyes opened wide
I woke up blurry from that nightmare
Strapped tight to an asylum's gurney

I couldn't move, pressured to the bed with ruthless white straps
Imprinting the cold metal buckle onto my forehead
I was trapped insane

That red neon sign glowed once again
This time in plain sight
Only a few feet from my eyes
My sight grew weary and my mind grew numb

The sign was clear and read "NO VACANCY INSIDE MY BRAIN"

Nighttime is perilous
pestilential predators lurk
evisceration entropy envelopes everything
wounds are collected like keys to doors leading underground
and I can hear a jingling in my pocket
so I denounce the nighttime
unlocking the door to a home
where one can sleep at night.

But once I go outside in tomorrow’s morning
the sunlight shines into my soul, cooking my sutured skin
along with the keys I’ve collected
burning through my clothes
and into my body
flies can smell subcutaneous sizzling a mile away
they yearn to feast, buzzing all around me
crawling through my insides
multiplying
while vultures fly laps around me from above.

So I throw a nocturnal drape over the tumultuous foothills
and begin imparting my basement keys onto others
an imposing locksmith
a charitable safecracker
Johnny Applekeys
prowling with pouncing predators
masking my petulant bitterness with false wisdom
my edgy perception of maturity tells me to be jaded
hey, that’s just the way it is
I call myself an honest realist
a self ordained keymaster
I wear my key ring proudly
and distribute keys to those around me.

Stuck between persistent motion and paralysis
my key chains start swinging like pendulums
dancing like an opposing militia
like my eyes once I start getting nervous
waiting for the receipts to my exchanges
reflecting how I’m living in the red
and the debt I owe others
I can only pay in keys leading nowhere.

I try to convince them that the doors I unlock lead to riches
but we all know they’re paths to the hell from whence I came
my words are for myself
like the hell I man the ferry for
selling keys to scary doors
used as lifeboats in my shipwreck life
surviving off of other people’s strife.

The keys are overflowing from my makeshift pit
they poke into my veins like needles from the past
suffocating me like a rat in an hourglass, buried in sand
I imagine it’s the beach to the shore I can reach no more
unlike my swamp where I act as lifeguard
to a lagoon no man inhabits
I say “the water is fine, hop on in”
when I don’t even know how to swim
so even the trees think that I’m dim
when I hang my keys on their limbs.

Surviving night means eat or be eaten
yet my decisions effect daytime treatment
when scars put me behind bars
I inquire as to the depth of the dungeon
digging a subterranean home then diving deeper
finding company at the bottom with grim reapers
where the ostrich that flies is ostracized until it’s fossilized
so I sit in my estranged egg
not wanting to ever hatch
but no matter how much I beg
my keys unlock the latch.