I wake up in the morning,
with a pit where you should be,
And the air I breathe isn't filtered like it was.
I walk through the day with two broken legs,
And my feet drag along the broken glass.
You say that you're empty, but I'm hollowed out,
And I hate what's left.
I'm innocent, and that's the worst thing I've ever done to myself.

Breath in, breathe out,
Forget all the problems you're thinking about.
Live in the moment, swallow your fears,
Close your eyes and see with your ears.

I grip the barbed wire that I use a rein,
For this beast of a world that I cannot yet tame,
I grit my teeth and I hold my breath,
The name of my lover is death.
I kneel in the salt as I am abused,
With cables and whips, yet I am amused,
Blood hits the floor, and I smile at the stain,
The name of my lover is pain.
I spit out the words that I hear in my soul,
Reciting them from this internalized scroll,
I gather my demons and open the gate,
The name of my lover is hate.

I bleed through my fingertips.
I am a poet:
I stay awake, by no choice of mine, and I bleed onto the keyboard and into the world.
A tribute, if you will, to the wars within.
I am a musician:
I sneak into the woods, so my family cannot here, and I bleed on the strings of my black, battered guitar, and the music is heard by no-one.
I am a scientist:
I stay at the school, late into the night, to type one last line of code, or ***** in one last bolt. The whir of the motors is a release. Here, control is more than an illusion.
I am a person:
And I am full of so much blood.
Sometimes, it wells up in my heart until it is ripe to burst,
And sometimes it is as empty as poetry, or music, or beauty.

The nuclear winter fell on this place,
This broken desert glen,
And whale bones serve as carcass homes
For the very last of men.
Oil runs like blood,
Across the broken, lifeless dune.
They siphon it from ancient cars,
And howl at the moon.
Corpses rot abandoned,
With an X upon their palm,
Irradiated from the night,
They call the Night of Bombs.
One man who lives forgotten,
On the taste of human skin,
The man exists in all of them,
The evil deep within.

Love is, fools may say,
As a warm, softened kitten,
Mewing pitifully.
Gods-men may say it is the snake,
Poised venomously in the tree of knowledge,
Tempting gleefully into sin.
Some say it is a peacock,
Strutting high upon its perch,
But running away at the drop of a pin.
I say it is the owl,
Flying above on wings of terror,
And its glowing eyes turn to the grass,
To swoop down and
devour
that
***.

Night falls upon the sleepless one,
who stares deep into the void.
He cannot yet be overrun,
He shall not be destroyed.
On the precipice of the blank,
He has lost all hope.
The riverside with either bank,
But while on land he cannot cope,
And so the water engulfs him,
He is drowned but still he breathes.
Light without him is now fading,
But within him it still seethes.
Destruction lies upon the sleepless mind,
Until it pounces on the light, resigned.