Well, well, well
Hello there.
Let's be seated

There's something we have left undone
That needs to be completed
Nothing you say can persuade me
So you'd better pray
Today will be a good day
For the monster that you've made of me

You know...
I realize that by this time
Things might begin to fall in line
In your mind
And you're beginning to comprehend
That this is it for you, "My Friend"

I'm sorry you're frightened
(We were afraid too, thanks to you)
I'm sorry it hurts
(It's not what we do, except to people like you)
I'm not actually sorry
(It could be much worse, We can't ******* lie)
If you live, I hope you suffer
(But we won't care if you die)


Now, now, now
Don't be scared
The fight has been conceded

There's nothing left that can be done
You've all but been defeated
I guess I can say
It's been a bad ******* day

And Monsters can't silence their Demons.

I look over my shoulder
And the shadow at my back dips away
The moon sways
And behind me in the darkness
I hear
An empty sound
Too hollow and profound to really understand
Too backwards and garbled to comprehend
And yet I pretend
That the nightmares don't make me sweat
And I pretend
Like the spirits will make me forget
But they don't
And I won't
It appears
I'm not done here yet

Ah, Mania!
Welcome back my friend!
I've been waiting for you to come back again!

I must say
It's been too long
I have spent too many nights trying to "be strong"

Without your smiling face to guide me...
...With grace to a place somewhere inside me

Where you hide me
And I suffocate

Let's not wait another minute more!
I have the keys,
There is the door

Places to go
And people to see
Things to do
Places to be

Oh

Mania.

There you are again.
I've begun to wonder
If you're really my friend

But you know I'm not ready for this to end.

We're here, My Dear

..Let us begin.

I seem to always be in a constant state of fight or flight.
The worst part is that there's no one to fight,
and nowhere to fly to,
because the enemy is Me.
My own thoughts, my demons, they cling to me.
They've
     embedded
        themselves
                   into
                       me
like parasites.
Feeding off of my soul,
day in and day out until I am nothing but a husk.
The only way to escape the torment even for a moment
is to
    cleave
          my
             mind
from the present,
to float somewhere between this reality
and the one that the devil on my shoulder
tries to convince me is true.

But there's always still a part of me that holds on down below, in the present, in the real world, so that I can reel myself back in again. So I don't completely drift away like a kite slipping through a child's grasp on a windy day. Drifting on an updraft, whirling and twirling upwards and into the clouds..

    Hell...

       Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

            Maybe next time,
I'll just let go of the string.

Oh my wretched heart
You vile, evil thing
Still beating out a rhythm of pain
Enfolding myself in your ink black
Darkness day after day
A spider in my chest
Eating me away

It doesn't matter how you hold it
or choose to show it
or how you know it

that Old Familiar
has a way of saying what you cannot say
of pushing you through every day
and being the rock in the path that won't wash away

no matter how hard it rains
that Old Familiar leaves it's stains
It's aches and pains
And far-reaching scars that threaten sane

And sunny days that still have those
Dark clouds tucked away
Just in the case
You should forget your place
On a better day

That Old Familiar
Plants its roots
In the soles of boots
that cannot step away

If you have never awoken late in the night
to a soul-crushing feeling you could not identify
To the hammering hooves of a racehorse heart
With a jump and a gasp and a fright and a start

If you have never felt a pillow of darkness upon your face
As you drift off to a silent place
Squeezing out every single breath
Playing hide-and-seek with death

Thrashing in your bed, reliving what's been said
Clutching to your head
In fear of an impending explosion
if you have never felt the erosion of time
or the way beauty becomes grime
to be wiped away on a windscreen
and if you have never seen

the pits of darkness pooling at your feet
and fully given yourself to defeat
if you have never laid down to close your eyes
certain that you would never rise again
then

You have never known the terror, the fear
Which bears down upon myself year by year
And never would you hear, with ears this pure
the screaming  of the demons which trap us here.