Can you hear the fireworks?
Those unrelenting cracks?
The 4th of July celebrations
The sound of a whip over an audiences’ backs
Can you smell the gunpowder?
That fumes the cold night air
The stench of politicians sweating
Pretending that they care
The idea of peace and freedom
An illusion shot once again
The white hot pain of a lie
Doomed never to end


Can you see the flags?
Red poppies staked in the ground
Plastic yellow daisys
Spread for miles around
The remains of melted chairs
Resting on four steel legs
Tables trying to hide
Where helpless casualties begged
The booming roar of thunder
As lightning tears through the air
One more six feet under
Dark red paint brushed by pieces of hair
One final crack again
The signal of an end
As silence fills the library
Yet the cycle starts again

Stare at the looking glass

Shards,

Which tear at my

Eyes, and I can't

Find

Myself

But here I am
I'm flesh
I'm blood
I'm cells
I'm human
I'm sadness
I'm glad
I'm love

Here I am, looking
Staring, at myself
All the time thinking
Wondering how the hell

I came to be
Anyone but me

Here I am

I'm a mind without structure

I'm a shape unfamiliar

Its limbs of somebody else

And it's eyes are just empty shells

A blood red brick building
Windows barred and barricading
Any glimpse of sunlight
Old oak floorboards
Twisted
Splintered
Broken
Screams staining the sides of corridors
Paint
Sick, pale green paint
Dims the tiled walls
Doors
Doors
And doors
Doors steel
Doors locked
Doors broken
Doors with bolts
Doors with slats
Doors with no keyhole
All rooms empty of life
Their souls killed long ago
Never even to haunt
Tables
With belt restraints
Crush and tie down their minds
Stale white light
Poisoned fluorescent bars
Hanging from the ceiling
Caging them
Stars
Dying stars
Held as lamps
Burning their eyes
Where they lie
On a flat, steel tombstone
A flat, steel stage
In the bloodied room of the theatre
The audience goes silent
To watch the play begin
The steel arm
Lunges into their sight
Through their eye
And tears out their mind
It twists
It pulls
It pushes
And it breaks
And it takes the life from what are now just shells

Winter told me it was cold
It held its threats by my single-pane window
As I lay sleeping

Winter showed off
Its iced forests
Its hilltops, painted in a void of the sky
As I left my curtains closed

Specks of white gliding through the chill of the air
As children clamour to catch it
Workers fussing to their phones, to let their bosses know
As I went for a walk in a t-shirt

News channels bleeding
With the shards of broken records
Weather forecasts hiding
Embarrassed of their failed efforts

As winter rested its breath
On the white, ice path below us
And I looked down, towards my hands
Saw them blue and now knew
I was cold

My bedsheets
Are a dark, deep, blue sea

Let me sink
Beneath its surface

No more dreams
Just an unending sleep

Wash me away
Pull me from this land
And its dirt
Clear my mind

And drag me down

And I can’t sleep
And I can’t stop sleeping
In
Too late

My hair hangs down in spider webs
To hide my eyes
And cover my head

My eyes stream blood
Like open wounds
Torn by love
And all I’ve viewed
My minds breaks
And starts to scream

Asleep this day
And then I’ll wake
‘cause I can’t fall
When time’s so short
But the days are long
As they lull their song
It’ll play for years
And prey on my fears