The slightest breeze
Brings the gossip of pines to my ears
I'm bolt upright
My sweat runs cold
My eyes wide and glowing in the semi-darkness
My heart races
A cardinal beating red wings against it's cage
Mountains loom with the muffled danger
Of sleeping giants, or a nest of dragons in slumber
My diminutive cabin shrinks with the terror and awe they deserve
The fire sputters and coughs
A sickly old man with lungs full of ashen phlegm
The night doesn't end
And I feel uneasy
Ready for the night's horrors to begin

The music pumps
and flows through my veins like blood
  my nerves are electrified
   my eyes are seared with the flashing multicolored lights
    my ears throb with the beat
     the bass splits my skull
      and makes my feet jump on the floor, though I stand still
       the heat and press of the bodies
        around me
         moves and shifts as they dance, arms waving in the air
        sweat rolling off their skin
       the energy is a suffocating humid cloud
      from which there is no escape
     it hangs in the air close to the ceiling.
    Someone slams into me, falling to the ground
   and as I look down, I catch a glimpse of their eyes
  glazed and bloodshot and dead
I realize that's exactly what they all are
bodies
empty bodies
  with nothing left except the music
    to fill the empty shells
     in the place that once held their souls.

When I don't want to stay
And I don't want to go home
Where do I go?
I don't want to leave here
I don't want to leave home
I'm mentally stuck
Between here and there
And there's nowhere to go but...
Where?

"Would it **** you to get to know them?"
Honestly?
Yes.
The disorganized, fumbling  army of we
Their shared, glazed  eyes
That look the same
The clothes that are all stitched together
So they stumble as one
Their one slackened mouth.
They speak as one.
When one gets too close it becomes contagious
A disease that spreads on their one breath
It spreads like mint scented wildfire.
It floods your soul and like acid
Dissolves what is there
To replace it with them
And what they pretend to be

I wonder is he notices me
Staring at him from across the room
His beauty fills me with emotions
That I don't understand
His voice makes my heart
Soar... sore
If he was truly Death
I'd die for him to notice
My eyes on his face
That golden god before my
unworthy eyes

Lying wide-eyed in the dark
Why am I not asleep?
The mask on the desk grows bloodshot eyes
The little noises that insects make
As they crawl across the walls
Fills the room
I can’t breathe
The stench of the grinning corpse in the bed next to me
Is unbearable, suffocating
The sweat rolling down my skin
Feels like ants on my skin
I can’t move
I’m bound by my own flesh
I’m screaming through lips sewn shut
This madness
This terror
It’s eating me up from the inside

She was a candle
Tall, willowy and well grounded
She gave off warmth
Her face shone, and
With the help of another flame
The light would grow
But the wind came
And whispered
Dark thoughts and perfidy
Into her ear
And she flickered
Sputtered
And went out
Plunging us into a darkness
As night with no morning

It’s my armor
My protective shield from the
Outside world
When the stress of their attacks
Becomes too much
For my weak vulnerable body
I turn up the volume, close my eyes
And disappear
Into a world of sound
The waves of power course through my veins
Becoming my blood
Thick and red
Making me superhuman
Fearless
And for a while I feel invincible
A goddess
I can take on the earth-shaking beatings
Of the outside world
As they beat at my shield with their cold, dead hands
Trying to break it
I reach out and smash them to pieces
With the sword crafted from the music inside me
And they fall away
Like so many pieces of glass

A drop of water falls from a leaf
Splashing to the ground
To set off the fliers in their game
They rocket forward
Their dangling feet graze the dew-soaked grass
And a tiger-cat chases their toes
Her belled collar makes sweet noises
In the crisp morning air