he is lying on the grandest marble floor,
in between two pillars as he cries out.
Yet none hear him, the door is locked.
He looks for a way, he was told about
by his older brother years ago, do
you want to know how he found it at all?
He stood, his hands were stuck like glue.
He cried out, tried to show the world his call.
His voice like a used marker,
his nose could not smell, he couldn't taste.
His bright thoughts and mind sadly grew darker.
His bones growing weaker, a waste.
And not one reached down to pluck him
up, none extended their arm to him.

I am thinking. and there is a pain.
Like a large wooden door, metal hinges and all, sitting locked in front of me. But I can't open the thing. I pull and tug, and twist and try so hard. But I can't open the door. No I can't get in.

So I back up and trip over some barbed wire, out on the concrete courtyard. Large red and black flags swing all down the large hall, with buildings as it's walls. The sky today is so blue and sweet, but I can feel eyes search me for a reason to pull me, berate me, hurt me.

I need to look within myself  they say, and fix the demon
that has been released to devour the man living there. But I couldn't bear to **** the thing, it's eyes look just like mine!
And his hands are the same dry, cracked ones of mine.

Do you remember when you were young? It asks me.
Do you remember when you were young? It asks me.

I don't. I can't. I only see bits and pieces.
It's finished it's daily checkup, now it will eat some more.

Kohl ash sings in the wind, I can see fire.
It's all rising around, jubilantly consuming faces and buildings.
I run down the street, I push a man over, I hit a car door as I try to escape it, the rising smoke. But it covers me from head to toe.

I slowly walk in the ash, the darkness, feel grains of it
run down my throat and matte in my hair,
I want water. I want to take a shower.
But nothing is in sight, I'm gone.

I run now, but it is quiet and I know I've been caught.
I listen to the wind, I listen to my heart beating.
I Listen to the clock tick away, yet I can't find it.
I run towards a building's wall, for what seems like hours.

I am never getting out.

I sit down, open my mouth, and let the ash cover me.

Sometimes the wisest words will come from the pieces of you that can't speak. Like a knife with no blade; no means of expression.

Sometimes there is a happenstance, however.

Sometimes.

If I could feel no pain,
maybe I would comb my hair,
run my fingers through it like curtains.

If I could feel no pain,
I would be unstoppable.
No story unwritten, no person unnoticed.

But if I could feel no pain,
I would not be me.
I am a refraction of my feelings.

Sometimes the fragments--    of myself
like shattered glass reappear.
My old glasses, my weight, my memories.

They all pour like dark rainwater down
to the waves, when I am alone and I am
teetering on who I am and who I see.

And in that darkness, in that cacophony
that screams "Worthless! Nameless!"--
I can see someone else behind the haze.

A little kid, no more than ten or eleven,
with his backpack on and a smile on
his face. Innocent annoyance in his eyes.

I can hear him too, hear his sense of humor
as his mother loads him into the van. The
sun just rising on the horizon behind the house.

The early summer air is like a fresh bouquet
of roses, but then I look slowly around.
Notice the other people surrounding him.

Remembering the late nights, the slow declines.
Remembering; but every thought slipping away,
like a nightmare where the hall is eternally long.

And I see my fingers, their callouses, taking my
eyes from the broken things around my feet to
the messy counter; the room I've grown inside.

The lock was shut, always. My hands always
dry and cracked, the mirror fogged and the
lighting as poor as the terrifying feelings inside.

And it yells again, "Worthless! Nameless!"--
and I am still sitting and watching paint
dry on my mirror. Watching me decay.

Seeing now, my cheek bones as they sink,
as my face begins to turn ever paler,
as my hair begins to fall out.

If I could leave this pain I would throw it all out.

If I could feel no pain, I would be a jester; sitting
high in my palace, no bitterness, no faults.
I would be a fool in a hat and suit with money.

If I could feel no pain, I would still be afraid of
everything. The siren sounds coming from my
own mind at night; the horror that I left locked in.

The buzzing of the locusts' wings on my window
flicker through my ringing ears, my destroyed,
ruined atmosphere. My meditative chamber/pile of ruins.

I listen to them tap on the glass, their wings turning from
buzzing, to fingers scratching, to accusations of my lies.
They tell me I'm unsure, that the world is as I see it.

But why would I listen? What insanity in the dead of night!
Isn't it pretty to think so? Isn't it pretty to think so?
I can see the drilled abscesses in their skin.

I crawl beneath my bed, escaping them. But I feel
their talons all over my skin, trying to pull me into
the world that I can't see, that I can't reason with.

They scream "Worthless! Nameless!" and I crumble
like overly baked bread. I am the crust of the loaf
in the sink after it is cut, I am the vessels' thoughts.

They are all within my mind, they are all within my
own delusional world; where I can see or not see whatever
I want. Where I can forget about the people I've loved.

And where I am in my little place, my mindless thinkless
chamber above the clouds, I don't have to think of the
beautiful people I've destroyed, consumed, manipulated.

And they yell "Worthless! Nameless!" until--
I can't bear to hear them all scream out loud--
Their teeth and eyes glaring, the torn twill--
I feel it around my fingers bowed--
like a great ship, the edge phased--
Sinking beneath sodden roaring waves--
I can't hear myself think, I'm amazed--
I will end up in the same graves--
SO WHERE DOES THE OCEAN MEET THE END?
OR HAS IT BEEN MASKED ETERNALLY?
I CAN FEEL MY THOUGHTS WHILE THEY TWIST, BEND--
IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL INTERNALLY.
But in the real mental insurgency,
I am losing my mind in urgency.

So if I could feel no pain at all,
I would be the same.
Bitterly, utterly similar.

Boring, worthless, nameless.

I've been hit in the head with a frying pan.
There's a bit of a ringing in my ears.
All thoughts stem from depresson,
so I sit inside my room.

I watch the walls
yellow and I watch the
shadows change for hours.

I've been hit in the head with a frying pan.
They kicked me to the dirt, hit me, crippled me.
And I can't bear to weigh my options.
I can't bear to leave the house.

She was a model, but now she's terrified.
She looks in the mirror, scratches all the imperfections.
A day rolls by, and she looks again.
She doesn't see herself, doesn't see Lisanne Falk.
She scratches all the imperfections, like her face is
a guitar's fret board and she is soloing. Like her face
is a test where she got every answer wrong.

A day rolls by, like the hills past her parent's car on those old
recordings she keeps in 35mm.
You can see reflections of the 70's in the grainy film, an odd beauty to the young girl in them, and the long days at the beach.
There's this one where her and her mother are walking along a
narrow bay, with rocks everywhere. They're looking for shells.
She picks one up, holding it to her ear. Her mother stops her, and
she mockingly says "Lisanne, the ocean's right there!".
For a brief moment, as she turns around to look back at the camera with the softest, most soulful smile a child could muster, Lisanne stares at the screen in the dark. For a little while, a fraction of a second maybe, Lisanne is back in 1972, with her mother and her father picking sea shells off the beach and listening to the waves crash against the shore.