Starving, bones poking out;
Unraveling, loans choking you out.
Carving a niche, trying to survive,
Struggling to find a meaning to being alive.

You lie in bed,
Thinking about the tears you’ve shed,
The sweat, the blood you’ve bled –
The tough times scraping by,
The close calls you’ve had.

Hunger, a nauseating pain;
What would you give up for a single grain?
You strain your brain,
Rack it trying to find a way –
Trying to find a way out of this life,
A life that is dull and grey.

Your soul does not see the light of day;
Your faith starts to shake,
You manage no more than a mumble,
Your beliefs start to crumble.
Concerned, disturbed,
Angry at the world, constantly hurt;
Cornered, perturbed,
Life is but a whirl, with death we flirt.

Cursed, deserted,
We thirst for that which we will not quench;
Dispersed, disconcerted,
The sewers of poverty air their stench.
You pull the covers up to your nose,
You shudder like a victim from an attacker’s blows.

Travelling royalty, a princess with no home;
Inspiring love and loyalty, everywhere she goes.
A radiant smile, captivating eyes,
Flagrant beauty, the kind that never dies.
A lover of life, an enchanting presence,
An overflowing fountain, wonderful decadence.

The princess met the peasant –
A man from a land where very little is pleasant.
Clawed a path out of the dirt,
Flawed, yet always hungry for answers,
An explanation as to why we’re all scarred and hurt.
Temptation incarnate, freedom given life –
Impartial, a storm about to deliver strife.

It was a spark worthy of Zeus’ thunderbolts;
Worlds apart, yet tolerant of each other’s faults.
Equals in their intellect, conjoined at their hearts;
Immediate and mutual respect,
Together, they could make the seas part.

The peasant got blessed by the divine,
The princess was impressed by the sublime.
Her, with her presence,
Him, with his essence –
Two people who, despite their charms, don’t fit anywhere else.
They found shelter in each other’s arms,
A respite from their personal hells.

Yet, the princess needed to journey once more,
An ending to a story that leaves the heart sore.
The peasant lay there, looking at his fields,
Reminiscing, bitterly sipping comfort in a glass.
He could do naught but shed tears, and think:
‘I’d give up every harvest, all my work and what it yields,
To have you by my side; you gave me peace and strength,
You made me feel like I can bend swords and crack shields.’

The princess could only stare,
Right at where his hand once held hers;
She could only think of the dare,
The night where they both let down their hair,
And think:
‘I’d give up the road, all my walks and journeys,
To have you by my side; you gave me sweetness and kindness,
You made me feel loved, breathless and weak in the knees.’

Haunted, yet I am undaunted;
Infuriated by this world we created.
One drink turns into seven,
On the brink as the world burns,
Denied entrance at the gates of Heaven.

I close my eyes, but my mind’s eye still sees –
I chose to stifle my cries, part the seas of tears,
To stand when I wanted to fall on my knees.
‘You’ left a poisonous aftertaste,
Truly, a treasonous exit, made in haste.
I was in pain, with nothing to gain,
Like a dragon in chains waiting to be slain.

Now, as I spread my scaly wings,
As I light a fire in my belly,
Blow out smoke in rings,
There still are a few things I want to say.
Every thought of ‘You’ brings dismay,
A memory that still rots and decays.

Ingrained inside my library of perceptions,
Stained all over my heart,
A long catalogue of assorted deceptions.
I know every new day is easier,
For life is but a spark and a show,
And a fresh dawn just marks the next tier;
Yet, sorrow on every morrow follows like a pet.
One day…
One day, I will forget.
I’ll fill my cup with joy,
And drain it of regret.

A rolling stone, hurtling down a hill;
A smoke-blowing rogue, with infinite skill.
A bearer of ill will,
Tumbling down, in these demons I drown -
I'm just hunting for a thrill.

I am a man fully grown,
With a depth of thought previously unknown.
In touch with the void,
Cold like an android,
Floating through emptiness like an asteroid.
Open your ears if you want your mind to be blown;
Spoken word and a gaunt face is all I own.

Nothing to lose, went through years of abuse,
My body is a slave to my muse,
Helpless, an illiterate knave trying to read the news.
Wilderness incarnate, running amok -
Gunning with no luck, giving no *****;
I'm just here for the drugs and the carnage.
Hidden pain, glossed over with varnish;
The soul is deeper than the oceans and the seas,
Yet it lives in shallow bodies, heavily garnished,
In narrow alleys governed by the Grim Reaper.

Kick your ego off its throne,
Realise that the time we have is merely a loan.
From realities we cannot see in any degree,
Our souls have flown.
And thus, the stone stopped rolling.

When I die, I hope none of you pretend you cared.
When I do die,
When my own hands seal that goodbye,
Don’t act like you don’t know why.
Don’t you dare imply that it might have been a bad high,
Or that my dreams were impossible,
And that I was flying too high.
And don't you dare say 'I needed help';
No, I needed a way out of this hell,
A better life than this constant retreat into a shell.

I gave you visions for the future.
Grave expressions, co-authored by the truth;
I aimed for your soul like a range target from a booth.
You may not see it, but I do;
The gap between what is, and what could be,
Like comparing a gas lamp with a radiant star’s energy.

It eats up my happiness from inside,
Like a parasite stretching my intestines wide.
Many of you don’t ******* care, in actuality –
Some of you just want the fame, in reality,
To get your tasteless name ahead in a winner less game.

You wouldn’t understand revolution if it sat on your face,
Hell, you wouldn’t if you slept with it, reproduced,
And created a whole new pseudo-race.
We’re so far up our own *****,
We could basically regurgitate ourselves –
I’m just the guy giving you reality,
Getting the truth off those dusty shelves.

Don’t act like you knew me if you really didn’t;
You chose to turn away, when I wanted you to see right through me.
Don’t think of the good times we had;
Think of all the nights spent discussing the sad and the mad,
The broken and the beaten,
The stolen lives and the reasons we misbehave,
Like a heathen in the Garden of Eden.
That’s what I would want you to think about.
And before you cry and mourn,
Think about why, and learn.

Or, just move on, after I’m gone.
I won’t ******* care either way,
Just as long as I can stay away –
So this darkness can cease,
And my soul can see the light of day.

My head feels like a visit to the cranioscopist’s,
Like someone bored through it with a drill.
Inflamed and ill,
Like the ego of a billionaire philanthropist.
Flashbacks of “You”,
Got me off my tracks and feeling blue,
Stumbling around in pain, without a ******* clue.

My neck is aching,
My body is shaking,
My ******* soul feels like it’s breaking.
Volcanic unrest, putting my heart to the test,
Got manic anger strapped to my chest like a suicide vest.

I’m the spectre of truth, a hard hitter,
Like that last, smooth drink that fails your liver.
A lone wolf whose claws are made of words,
A man grown bitter and whose heart hurts.

My legs feel heavy and tired –
Is it now accepted to not have energy to even exist?
For that certainly isn’t how we’re naturally hard-wired.
I don’t know how to accept the illusion,
There seems to be no solution –
I look desperately, amidst the confusion.
I look for similarly empty eyes,
For those who do see the lies.
The only truth left is this;
He who murders lives, and he who loves dies.