a stranger wears my face, but with less decay;
in the distance, hidden in the summer’s maize
I see an imposter that answers to my name,
and in rapture he watches as the yellow rots away.
A decade ago, I recall the same.

in the distance, a stranger who seems closer today -
idly, I wonder why I’m walking his way.

intervals with irregular timing,
disquieting; I’m lost in imagining,
happy to be agitated but still, we despise it.

church bells that cruelly silence;
appliances and cold reminders,
our head’s filled with needles and thread.

a virtual walk in the real world,
we corrode as the people grow old;
we see the sky as we never could, now.

seven days; two of relieved pressure
and five with each sense inundated
but that’s normal, I gather.

at quarter to nine, untimely to my ears,
the bell rings - an alarm that only agitation hears -
and I’d do anything just to become unfeeling.

an empty classroom; a seating plan with no direction;
to my name there is a slight tremor, fidgeting to distraction
with a brain that has no intention of hearing.

I awoke with a need,
with presentiments from bad dreams;
detached from feeling, I hear it sing:
a grandfather’s clock, untimely,
boxes and a piano with no tuning.

a walk through high hills and chalk walls,
towards a fervid green memory -
no ash to see and no burnt bodies.

now, with this perturbed heartbeat,

the     ghosts and    
goners      will  
meet

Still Fighting It
- No Surprises
- Motion Picture Soundtrack
- Mad World
- Pyramid Song
- Mr. Blue Sky
- 4 Minute Warning
- Daydreaming
- Right Where It Belongs
- Something I Can Never Have
- The Day The World Went Away
- One More Light
- I Giorni

tremors so troubling,
once more, and debilitating
with a promise that stays.

cold thoughts shadowing my day,
an obsession with such urgency
and a voice too tired to remain.

perhaps my dreams never came.

Lower me down, as I sleep -
I’ll get there eventually
And this next time it’ll find me,
assuredly.

Tell me one more story,
One of happier days
As I smile with eyes deadened and grey.
And as I hear old voices, I know
I can’t stay, not as they beckon me
So today is the day I’ll go away.

In the dark, I am no longer taken,
No more pursued by those judging gazes.
Absent from this world I stay, forsaken,
But existing - hiding from dead faces.

In the dark I am suspended, frozen
Forever in this world which feigns to care;
Time has been lost, the days and weeks broken.
I stand still, decaying into nowhere.

In the dark, I waken to the calling
Of one too many thoughts pulling me down.
This place of solitude - it means nothing,
Not when tomorrow's the day I will drown.

In the dark, I can hide for no longer,
Those dark thoughts grow forever stronger.

a building so run down;
a building of damaged dreams,
with nothing more to see.
once full, now too old for memory
it falls finally,
so tired of everything.

A feeling that developed long ago,
Now surfacing to encumber my hope;
Confusion born from derision, those looks
So foreign - a language life would not endow.

I just shut my eyes to the glare of life.

I walked in a sea of gazes, flailing
In a world bereft of understanding;
In this place, my existence is entombed -
A piece that won’t conform to their puzzle.

I just wait, weightless, until life subsides.

a rope that tightens as I walk;
an audience that ardently awaits my fall
in a mausoleum of flawed thoughts.

I suppose I have an apology
To the loved one whom I didn’t know,
The soft anchor that I couldn’t let go.

I will hold your hand, even as I drown
In an ocean, all alone.

Sinking in a stifling room, sunken eyes
Staring at sights that were never seen,
I torture this being that was once me.

With tarnished skin taunting, innocence
Inflamed, I lose myself to that madness
And in this demise, I dwell, desperately.

No more energy can I embrace, no more
Can people force forgiveness on my failings -
In this worthless state, so weak, I plead that the breath begone.

I want to rend this mind from within, cut it free
And leave it to expire with an ounce of clarity.

I want no skin left pure, I want it ripped until raw
If it would only cancel this human mistake that I abhor.

I want resentment to reside, to agitate these thoughts
As they race towards a destination that, for so long, I had fought.

Writhing in this reality, we cry, retching
From fumes that pervade society;
The clear skies that had been, mutating
Into an inferno that bleeds tragedy
As we lay in a sinking world of deceit.

In quiet days that hold me
With a pulse so gentle, declining,
I can’t find my final outcome.

When days are trembling, and hours are out of place,
I look for faces that aren’t in sight
And for those warm rays that were somewhere mislaid.

As the day breaks apart, as the night is all I know,
I shall imitate that smile I once bore, that life tore away.
As discomfort reigns, I shall let my memories suffocate as they fade.

In this daze I stay, breathing shallowly,
Waiting for my friends to send me away.
In this barren space where thoughts interlace,
I accept the past as my resting place.
In this ruined form that ceased to belong
Was a child’s plea so starved of life, soon gone.

a walk alone, a day that won’t find me;
people so far way, a life that depletes,
i’m losing everything so slowly.
i’m finding this path so steep, just want to sleep
but there’s no bed for me.

tomorrow will be sunday just like i wanted,
but something feels different,

a walk through the woods, a roast dinner and rice pudding,
jam so sweet and seconds if I want it,
the warmth of someone who wants me
but the cold grips,

board games before school begins,
before the world comes to get me,

the sun looks so weary as my bedtime beckons,
one more story please, so I can remember it
‘cause I know this’ll be it for me.

one more story, holding your hand as I'm lost in fantasy.

so tired,
so torn;

lost, malformed;

one day more,
too many gone;

stolen, silent.

and so they saw him that day, his body
floating downstream, to where sodden memories lay;
as the currents carried him, years fell like leaves away,
and so they saw him that day, smiling softly.

i’m not here,
i’m just letting this dream wander;
tomorrow, these thoughts will be lost to my innocence
and everything will have the shine i remember.
i’m not here.

this coveted feeling,
just take me completely -
to it i’ll surrender everything;
just take my feeling, swallow my reality
until life leaves this damaged property.

a child asks for sympathy,
whether it’ll be okay.
repeating a sacred lie, we don’t know why;  once and again, until we grow -
until we’re taken someplace we’ll know.

here we lay, strings left in disarray as another puppet cast away;
constantly cold and the words stained,
a tool to never find its place.

don’t decay with me,
not as this stay subsides.
don’t stay and see,
for I won’t confide.

let the silence accompany.

eyes that don’t seem to see,
hair that no longer bothers me
and i’m finding it a little harder to breathe.

a paranoid mind that can finally sleep,
a multitude of quiet thoughts that now scream at me
and i can hear that child’s choked plea:

“i can’t breathe.”

My mind spinning, insanity brimming
From the voices that chant their tune;
In the glass, a husk, sanity leaving,
Cast from its remnants, discarded too soon.

Incessantly, the vultures devour me,
Gorge on this fractured mind, let it expire.
And that feeling consumes - the agony,
And that feeling burns - the scream of liars.

The fire has died, now a dullness looms;
The vultures but a cry, leaving me here
With an emptiness that all but consumes.
Consumes until the voices chant their tune.

alone again
at distraction’s end,
so low, i can’t contend
with this aching within.

A nagging, a pulling that won’t relent,
Condemning my mind and body alike.
Throwing each into a deadly descent,
It casts us both into that faceless night.

Long I could hold, but now for no longer,
The thoughts barrelling their way through instead -
I can feel my mind being torn asunder.
Asunder it is torn, forever dead.

Friends I see, but they see a memory,
A manufactured person I used to be.
For each fake smile, the cold reality
Beckons - a future I will never see.

Now the pull grips me, it’s hard to resist,
It invites me to the waiting abyss.

In a dream, I awoke to a scene so serene;
All the people I knew, they were by me,
Gathered by a collective unity, no anger to be seen.
I had not noticed those faces so damaged, fractured by apathy.

I was struck by a morbid realisation as I saw the bridge below,
And the downcast eyes that were looking at a place I could see too.
As though paralyzed, I saw all the ones I knew get washed to and fro
Before I too could say the final words: “I do”.

The wind embraced me, I felt as though it was eight years ago -
As though everything I came to be was released suddenly.
But in that time when uncertainty was to die, the dream let go
And in its wake, I am claimed by feelings of a certain serenity.

All I wanted was to be released, to be myself once more,
So in that vein, I shall smile in those final moments before.

Sometimes I wish to slip away, unknown,
Fall away from everything that I know;
I would etch pain into every last bone
And cast the fire out to dwindle and go.

Sometimes, in an hour that becomes daunting
I wish to banish my mind away to nought
And lose the cold thoughts taunting, following.
But the cold - it will never leave these thoughts.

Sometimes, when my will gives in and topples,
The fear hastens as the anguish thickens
And that feeling fastens, the cold throttles -
Choked words are lost to voices so hidden.

As warm colours merge to grey, distorted
I  see a world so distant and thoughtless.

a walk, so long it seems
and so lonely, a weird feeling.
the lights and water dance together,
something so beautiful but never seen
and they are never lonely.
the fallen leaves washed away, alive yesterday
but forgotten when the sun came -
they looked so lonely.

when the night visits again, the same question repeats:
how can i undo the failings that define me?

this reality, the inevitability cannot be escaped;
not as a game developer beaten by his imagination,
neither as a child who lost the only one who mattered.

i was born ill-fit to survive in a world of social dances,
forced into a place where facades took priority.

these failures are consequences of my personality,
so to undo them would be to resign prematurely.

one last door that will let me in,
one more place but still, i’m uncertain -
that room, it looks so stifling.

i just looked in, but no one could see me anyway.

one last dream that i’ll watch begin,
one more dream beyond my comprehension
so it ends, but i never saw the ending.

so i just look again, but no one could look at me.

find me a future in nothing -
i can’t see a thing.
find me something -
it’s such a cold feeling.
please, i feel it coming.

i'm just so tired;
tired of being,
so tired of seeing colour
i cannot reach.

leave this being be;
full of dead things,
it ceases to be me
so let it expire slowly.

i'm glad of all i could see,
of all the colour that flew by me
but it has all but gone to grey.
now, let this child inside sleep.

when our world is shattered, when silence finds your call
remember that emptiness was here before.
when i’m out somewhere, when the barriers fall,
find these belongings; take them home once more.

i hear that voice again, begging,
sobbing at the world i chose to see;
choking at my apathy, looking at me, pleading
but all i see are the things that won’t be.

i’m sorry;
together, we’ll go silent,
for all eternity.

it’s a place that rings familiar
but is a counterfeit conman of peculiar pallor;
in this place, day explodes into a mesmerizing orange like no other, with churned clouds that smile in pain,
laugh with blood-stained lips as they creep closer.
in this place, the laughter comes easier.

something is tearing,
something that i can’t see.
i can tell you of the pain,
that living is no certainty
but apparently everyone else feels the same.
they are still here though, aren’t they?

I’m scared, with no more words to say
As I reach for an existence that fades away.

I’m alone again, and cold breaths begin
From a body stiffening like a statue, so sullen.

I’m crying, but no tears will leak
And into these bones, nostalgia seeps.

Into this stupor, I can let apathy take me -
To feeling's demise, to the edges of sanity.

This vessel to which I am bound, it wakens
To a world where misery lays, profound;
In its path are broken smiles, forsaken,
And trailing hands that tell of unheard sounds.

Lost in this place of wretched lights blaring,
I hear words of comfort and derision -
Voices that are lost to senses failing.
To the scream that follows, none shall listen.

Musings, dreams - they come and go, ebbing so;
Waves of grey that **** me in, detained colour
Washed ashore a beach with sands that swallow.
Here, those thoughts beset me: now, forever.

As the haze falls, the memories beckon me,
Hands now numb as they reach for nobody.

are the clouds really flying somewhere,
was the birdsong never really there?
i could be the only one who hears
in a place of noise, a place where words disappear.
i could be the only one who thinks, who doesn’t surrender;
the only one to see that something isn’t quite right,
that surely i don’t exist here.

**** those smiles, the pleasantries;
let the blame blossom and inflame,
for when tortured
a painted face will become contorted.

so, remember that laughter, so joyous
as it distorts into insanity’s haze,
and cradle a false picture
as we fall together towards despair’s happy place.

when i wake from this, will i still exist
or will i be mistaken in this?
if i am dreaming, will school come again
whenever this ends?
will i wake from this, this nightmarish place
or will i stay suspended with this fabricated memory.

i’m sorry for thinking silly thoughts
but these thoughts won’t be wrenched away.
i’m sorry that i can’t see things clearly,
that i’m an imposition to society.

are these poems drenched in self-pity?
is there a save point, a place to respawn?

see this wreck i have become -
isn’t it amusing?
see this mess of failed thinking - watch it succumb;
watch as it writhes, cries for sympathy nobody can find.
just as this mess was born, someday it will be undone
and hope will blossom from a corpse forgotten.

In contemplation,
I’m unsure of how to proceed
When voices of doubt speak in harmony.

I’m shackled in this charade of living,
Unable to appease this mind of forgery.

In consternation,
I’m unsure of anything within
When these sardonic thoughts are my certainty.

Is it really okay to be redeemed
Within this shell of violent tendencies?

this heart beats, but i loathe it
along with this body that shouldn’t exist.
i long for something, but my mind resists,
even as a weariness embraces me.
a deadline that I cannot contend,
it chokes me of all of the living left.

i won’t forget that failed wish,
not until that failed breath.

that your god has no gods,
and that with mercy, they are endowed.
rejoice in a despot's blessing that enables the obscene,
gives you power that only you can perceive.

pray, as your numbers dwindle under uncertainty’s gaze.