It's 3 o'clock
And so begins
My perilous descent into the underworld
I'm slipping into
The abyss and
Nothing
Can stop me
And nothing
Is trying to stop me

The witching hour stallions
Race through me, charging like a battalion
And trampling my heart
Tearing my every heed apart

The fury of a fiendish demon possesses me
My soul takes its flight from my body
My thoughts are shaky, my dreams are gaudy
I am convulsed and feverish with frigid melancholy
I know myself no longer.

Something malevolent is hanging above the bed
My heart is hollowed lead
A cargo ship for unwelcome stowaway thoughts
My brain is black and reeling
And tangled with a thousand knots
As my hands ***** the obscurity and reach for the ceiling

Day is so far away, I can't feel sunrise advance
I'm trapped in this horrid trance
My soul is reeling, wretched and lost
Forced to think the most unspeakable things
The panic and despair that each new night brings

I've had so many nightmares, but who's counting?
It's back again, I'm drowning
In a turbulent, sinister sea of terror
Fear is the message, I am the bearer
Like great black birds, the demons haunt my room
I'm choking on all these acrid, bitter fumes

My lids flutter like feathers of a pheasant
I can feel the pain so sharp and omnipresent
Like slaps given by a hand of black steel
**** it, Satan works with incredible zeal
Stinging, burning like a devilish eel I long to repulse
I can feel my wrists throb and my stomach pulse
With the beating of this hideous heart
I can feel my spirit depart
My nerves thrill like throbbing violins
Laden with angst, jealousy and sins

Deep into that darkness I am peering
Wondering things no mortal ever dared to wonder before
I wish I was disappearing
I am breathing an atmosphere of sorrow
And I know the remnants won't subside tomorrow

There is a murderous monster deep within me
That nothing can soothe
There is a hungry well
That nothing can fill

I open my battered notebook
I break my pen
And crumple the pages of inadequate words

I choke and listen to this light-forsaken chamber
And see a tocsin of silence, like a wicked stranger
Loneliness strikes me like a blow
Oh night agony, panic attacks, endless woe!
This pain so deep and unbearable,
These visions so raw and terrible

In these linen sheets I feel
Apprehension, slick, electric like an eel
The mortal coldness of the soul
As life takes its morbid toll
It takes in not only the body
But weaves between heart and soul a fabric so shoddy,
The somber cloth of misery

I don't want to grow old
To feel my memories fade and get cold
To feel my thoughts overridden with mold
To carry life on, which like a heavy chain
Drags behind with many links of pain
I want to end it all here, now
I can't and I won't
But I wonder how I'll survive from dusk to dawn

Day has opened its golden lids
To the light that night forbids
I've had my sip from the death cup
I wake up
With remnants of hell's dark lands
Sunken eyes and twisted hands
The witching hours are swept away like ashes
But it'll all come back in flashes
Tomorrow night, and every night
Horrors will always come back to haunt me
Between the shadow and the sheets
The endless phantasms, these endless defeats
There is no relief.

It is how it is
we all just laugh it off and go home
to our spindly bed frames
and our burnt out Christmas lights from last year
It was how it was
a home that once held a soul
a dog that **** on the carpet whenever we left
and even a few fish
It is how it is
the coffee is, and always will be
too strong
and I keep getting holes in my socks
from the one nail that keeps trying
to jump from the ground
and land on the wall
to hold a painting of you
when you were okay, too.

Wandering through mornings
Cloaked in night
Silence resounding
 Pausing for a red light



                                                        ­          Camels running through a desert  lung
                                                    ­                          Iced tea becomes an oasis
                                                        May­be smoke, Maybe air, a need-to-know basis
                                                           ­          Harder to tell as filter meets tongue


Cloaked in night
 Silence resounding
 Wandering through mornings
Pausing for a red light


                                                         ­                                                                 ­                       Thought to think
                                                           ­                                                                 ­                               of opinions
                                                        ­                                                                 ­                                    in spite of
                                                              ­                                                                 ­                            reflections.
                                                                ­                                                                 ­        Notions and concepts
                                                        ­                                                                 ­                                 birth ideas;
                                                                ­                                                               grandchildren of the mind.




Silence resounding
Wandering through mornings
Pausing for a red light
 Cloaked in night
                                                           ­                     
                                                                ­          

                                                     ­                      Purpose lost within frosty
                                                                ­          air through a thin white T.
                                                              ­          Crashing thoughts parallel E-
                                                              ­                 Y-E lids amid empty
                                                                ­                  lots and streets.

                                                               ­               
Pausing for a red light
Silence resounding
Wandering through mornings
Cloaked in night

Grey clouds billow from your plum mouth.
A painful memory hanging in the swirls.
Times forgotten list; names scrawled in evil's ink.
Linked to your past indifference's.
For-going, all rhythm or rhyme.

I wish of you, Damon;
To be a purest of heart-
Not selfish, an self serving,
But one owning forgotten presavasion.

Continue your demon ways, smoking your damnation-
Scribbled with hazy mazes, rippling forth.

I beseech thee--
Save yourself from this sin.

But at last, show me mercy, scorched angel.
Rip this rusted dagger from my back-
Let me bleed this infection from my very soul.

No more, I tell you.

Let me be at rest.

Red lips tinted from a sinful kiss, eyes bluer than the cerulean sky  hanging from the heavens. Roses; roses; roses the smell of them hanging on the air in-between two pillars of insanity. Love; what was thought to be the feeling. Buried beneath shallow water; lust lingers into reality, smeared on shades of scarlet and amber.

The infidelity of the fallen angel; daring to ask forgiveness from the Devil. How do you say you're sorry? A lie on the wings of a demon, or was there a simple explanation dripping from a vile acidic mouth full of falsity. The ripe apple wrapped in nefarious green poison, waiting for a bite from the unsuspecting victim.

No, not this time, all your trickery lays hollow and exposed like brittle bones picked over from the birds of prey. Lay in your bed of dirt and soot; lay in it because you have made it. Shovel by shovel you've dug your hole. Now it's time to crawl under your blanket of lies, and rest your shameful head.

My first memory is of dying.
I felt like I'd lived a full life
And now I was gladly fading away.
My first last words were
"Tell Elizabeth I love her"
I don't remember knowing Elizabeth.
I love her though, or at least I did in that moment.

The next thing I recall is being twelve
Sitting on the toilet in the girls' room,
thinking to myself:
"It looks like there was a war in my ******"
I sat in there by myself until the last bell
Too embarrassed to face the classroom of sharks
With their hungry eyes fixed on me - bleeding in the water.

Which makes me think of another first -
I was eighteen, never smoked **** or even drank ***** before.
"Son, there's a time and place for everything - and that's college"
my dad always said. So I took his advice.
I ate like 3 of those mushrooms.
I saw music, like music notes, coming out out the stereo.
They tasted like stars - like longing and hope.

Like how felt outside of that reststop in North Dakota.
When I ran away from the boarding school with Sofia.
We sat there on that bench in the rain.
Hand in hand - a truest love we would let no adult tell us wasn't real.
We were whole in that moment.
A wholeness I'd never know again.
One time, after going down on me
She told me I tasted like music.
I laughed out loud
I didn't know why.

She broke my heart.
I was a business tycoon,
A man of great wealth
I could have anyone I wanted,
but not her.  
She didn't know what she wanted. She needed guidance.
So I found her, and we both got what we really wanted.
I always get what I want...
...I don't like this memory.

I was one hundred and thirty seven
Days sober.
When I got the news.
My only daughter -
Barely a woman.
My fragile little doll -
Was ripped to pieces  by monsters.
No reason.
Just evil being evil
No one can deny who they really are for too long.
Some people are serial killers,
Some are heroes,  
Some are alcoholics.

I don't remember much about that night.
I woke up the next day,
and I was 21 - officially.
I'd probably have felt better if I wasn't so hungover.

I'd puked in the store's bathroom.
My nerves were shot.
My body was shaking.
I couldn't believe what just happened
- this was just a part time job to pay off student loans.
This Is not the **** I signed up for-
The guy came in - skimask and all, like out of a ******* movie -
His gun pointed directly at my head.
demanding all of the money in the register.
I reached for the panic button, all subtle like they taught us in that half hour seminar...

"You press threat button kid, you die today - now give me the money and this will all be over soon -"
I recall saying in the most macho voice I could muster.
I didn't want to shoot her. Hell, she looked cute, I'd rather date her.
But that would be another life.
One I can't afford to ponder.
This was the reality.
I had to do this -
She had what I wanted - what I needed.
It's dog eat dog out here.

"Good girl"
Shadow dropped the bone at my feet.
I picked it up and tossed it back into the endless grass
As it spun like boomerang in the air -
For some reason, couldn't tell you why,  I thought about Frankenstein's Monster.

Some parts are really fuzzy,
I hold it close to me - the fuzzy parts against my skin.
It's a quilt blanket, stitched together of pieces and parts of found cloth.
My father made it for me.
My very last first birthday gift.
I cocoon myself in it like a womb.

Thy soul shall find itself alone
’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
Be silent in that solitude
  Which is not loneliness—for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
  In life before thee are again
In death around thee—and their will
Shall overshadow thee: be still.
The night—tho’ clear—shall frown—
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given—
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee forever.
Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—
Now are visions ne’er to vanish—
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more—like dew-drops from the grass.
The breeze—the breath of God—is still—
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,
  Is a symbol and a token—
  How it hangs upon the trees,
  A mystery of mysteries!

dry fire,
dry ice,
quiet liar,
quiet mice,
rendered humble,
rendered missile,
sharp rumble,
sharp thistle,
total jarhead,
total *******,
something guarded,
something makeshift,
fastened underneath,
fastened monopoly,
melting dragonsbreath,
melting catastrophe,