In the dark hours of the night,
When your heart is breaking,
When you’re losing the battle against the pain,
When your mind is giving up on hope,
And you pray to the God above that He take you away….
In those darkest moments of your soul,
No one is there.
No one is there to hear your cries or heed your calls.
If I’ve learned one thing in the trials of this existence,
It is this:
In those moments when it hurts too much to live, to breath
And tears fall, scalding, down your cheeks,
No one is there.
During those nights when sleep is an elusive escape,
Condemning you to another night of punishing thoughts
And that empty ache in your heart is torn open,
Stealing your will to live, like a black hole,
Snatching away all the lies you’ve comforted yourself with.
Leaving you bare, exposed.
Ripping apart the wound that has never healed,
The wound of all things lost and never had.
The ******, gushing red marks of a wanderer butchered and left for dead.
In those seconds, minutes, hours of agony in which your heart shatters and breaks and comes undone again and again and again
In the pouring, raging storm of your pain unleashed
No one hears the desperate pleadings in your mind.
No one hears the howling screams of your soul.
No one hears a thing.
Because when you call in your darkest moments, no one answers.

I’m repeating history and drowning in the replay,
This constant storm I call home.
I’m regretting my truth and the lies I've made mine,
A clap of thunder for every false word and a flash of lightning for every forced smile.
I've gone deaf and blind to this world.
But I won’t scream from the pain eating me alive.
Pain that begins as an aching in my bones,
A chill that seeps through my skin,
A hollow aching in my chest.
Oh, but how it aches.
Aches until it suffocates.
Suffocates and smothers, until I’m left gasping for relief.
But I won’t scream from the pain leaving me in pieces.
Because there is no use pleading for help.
Because in my travels I have come to learn:
No one can pick up the pieces.
When no one can see those pieces.
And no love is enough to put me back together.

When I close my eyes the world burns with the embers of a fantasy fire
That keeps at bay the chilling hands of loneliness.
Like the sun and moon at war;
I live in the cusp between worlds,
Waiting on a sign from the light that I may finally dig my grave in its pure land,
Even as I continue to cling to the one I've called home in the depths of midnight.
Because that fantasy fire keeps me warm, safe.
Threats of flame consuming my soul lie in reality.
And when you carry your life unlived in day dreams,
No one can burn your soul.

She’s looking through blind eyes again,
Letting the noise of life passing by
Lull her into this sleep, this coma
That comes upon her more often as the years go by.
And the same question is plaguing her:
How do you know if a life is worth living?
When you can say hello to a goodbye
Knowing that tomorrow shall never replace yesterday
And your today will never come to an end.
And maybe that coma can save her
From searching for the missing piece in her puzzle.
Because lately every today loses its shine after the first hour.
And the love she is looking for
Is taking the wrong forms, leaving her empty inside.
And yes, maybe she is ungrateful
But that pain that is burning holes in her soul
Is turning to ash all the good that is left inside of her.
And with her bare hand
She’s trying to keep the pieces together
And the shards are leaving gashes on her palm
Leaving new scars over old.
And she hopes if she holds her heart long enough,
It’ll mend itself back together.
But she knows deep in that broken heart
That the damage has been done
And she’s learned that in this life, you only get one.

Cry into the arms of the figure who isn't there.
You're running into darkness,
Searching for the light.
And in the days of silence,
When leaves won't stop falling,
Can you hear the hearts breaking of desolate ones?
Who haven't learned how to breath
Without bleeding from shattered dreams.

It's 1:15 and I can’t sleep.
The world of dreams doesn't want my company.
My thoughts are chaotic and blank all at once
Every night it’s becoming harder and I fear
The escape of sleep will no longer be mine.
Have I become so hallow inside even my mind is left grasping at straws?
Colors are no longer vivid and music has lost its melody.
Who am I?
I feel and yet I am numb.
I've become sick of myself,
Sick of the thoughts that only tear me inside,
Sick of the actions that bring no satisfaction,
Sick of the empty life I have forgotten how to fill.
Where the night used to bring solace
Now it ignites endless cycles of self-recrimination
That burn from the inside out.
Another minute has come and gone,
Dawn approaches and life goes on.
1:15 is not giving any answers tonight.
Maybe tomorrow the night will be my friend again.

I see their faces like a blur on the window of this car.
They stay in these towns we visit before hitting the highway again,
with gas in the tank for a thousand more miles.
Memories the souvenirs that clutter the dashboard.
Guitars keep strumming through the speakers,
As faceless voices sing melodies of broken souls and forgotten lives
Held together by soft piano and sad words
That play above the rumbling of an aging engine.
As rain pelts against the windshield again and again,
Leaving the world a hazy sight only seen by headlights.
The sun lost the battle against grey clouds and a howling moon,
Tomorrow it shall continue the war.
And who knows, maybe it will win.
Maybe then the sun can end the rain,
Maybe then it will shine through the night and quiet those melodies.
Maybe then it can slow down the blurring strangers and exchange souvenirs for friends.
Maybe then can that aging engine rest and maybe then can this car find a permanent town.
Maybe tomorrow the war will end.
But the trouble is: tomorrow never comes.

The words we don’t say
Fall to the ground like dead leaves.
To be trampled and stepped on
Barely making a sound over the wind
Of the lies we whisper;
Too afraid of the truth beneath our feet.
And when storms begin to build,
Lifting the leaves to dance around us;
Those words crawling across our tongues
Fighting to be heard.
The rain of our tears beats them back down,
And the leaves fall flat, soggy, and drenched  
To the cold, hard ground.
Beaten into silence,
To be trampled and stepped on,
Without even a crunch.
Those words we don’t say
Remain on the ground like dead leaves,
A reminder
Of dying souls we meet on these streets.

The light is on, I can see her through the window.
Like clockwork,
A shadow passes, cup in hand and hair in a bun.
The routine continues as the days melt into each other.
That shadow has become a friend,
A companion I meet on the path I walk.
She has no name and the only story is the one I have created for her in my mind.
A story of sadness,
Of a lonely silhouette the world has forgotten.
Why is that her story? Why have I not given her happiness, love, companionship?
It is in the way she walks across the lighted window.
Her head hangs down as if she lacks the strength to hold it up against the world,
Shoulders hunched as if she hugs herself because there is no one else to do so.
It is in the way her hands seem to grasp the mug,
As if it is her only anchor in this life.
It is in the way she stands, dark, against the light around her,
As if she is trying to light a fire from ashes.

The light is on; a shadow passes through the window,
Like clockwork, every day as I pass on the street.
Days come and nights go, the routine continues.
There she is again though I barely see her, like the painting on a wall you stopped seeing.
Until the day I pass on the street,
The clockwork stops.
The light is off, no shadow passes the window.
“They say she ended it herself but no one knows who she was.” A stranger murmurs to his friend.
No one did, the wind whispers as a shadow crosses the window one last time.
*But you could have.

We live our lives with shuddering breathes,
Hoping tomorrow will be as fulfilling as today never is.
Open wide are our eyes
And yet closed all the time.
Blind to life passing by.
So bright is the light
Yet only shadows rise.
You welcome the day
I welcome the night
But are any of us alive?

Smile. They are watching.
Silence. They are listening.
Run. They are behind you.
Hide. They are coming.
Deny. They suspect.
Admit. They know.
Give in. They have won.

They won because you smiled,
Because you allowed them to silence you.
Because you ran,
Because you denied,
Because you admitted.
You lost because you gave in.
Give yourself a round of applause, they caught you.

Do not cry, do not lie, do not let the guilt eat you alive;
You are already dead.
At their hand, at your own.
Look at the bodies lying around you,
The ruined souls who too gave in.
You are not alone,
Your weakness is shared,
Part of the fabric of our ****** reality.

Do not blame them, they are not the only culprits.
You chose to be blind, to be deaf, to be something you are not.
You chose the disguise.
Now you cannot shed that cast.
Welcome to your new reality....
The reality of greed and pleasure;
Is it everything you dreamed it would be?
Or are the casualties staining your new life with their blood and broken bodies?

Welcome to Utopia.

The world is too bright when it’s full of lies.
Darkness lacks without any trust.
How I wish to dim the deceit,
For too much can hide behind florescent lights.
Cold penetrates
What once was kept warm by the golden world in the celestial sky.
Soon to be a myth of long ago.
Pity will cease
For not a tear will be seen
For cries will be lost
In the midst of agony,
Felt by a world too far gone from all verities.
Rain will fall to wash away
The remnants of falsities
To reveal, even to blind eyes,
All the truths long forgotten.
A world of fragile things
Hidden by far too many a luminous glow.
Rapture all the shadows;
No longer apparitions of the hidden psych.
Free they are
To roam a deceptive world,
To spill every obscure secret.
Like the crimson blood shed
By countless who fought
Through the murky seas of deception.
Shattering is all will be
When the sun fails
And we must confront the face in the cracked mirror.

There was a time when the path I walked was wide.
The cliffs on either side were far away.
As the years have passed, it has narrowed.
Now my sneaker clad feet are at the brink,
Toe to yellow line.
How easy would it be to fall?
I’m afraid to find out.
I’m afraid I’m about to take the final step.
My heart beats a fast tempo in my chest as I pass another lost soul on the street.
How long ago did he step off the ledge?
He hasn’t found a way back up to that narrow road he left behind.
Has anyone?
I glance behind,
To see both strange and familiar bodies that walk along their own paths.
How wide are their roads?
Can any of them see the way my feet hug the edge?
My eyes travel back to the abyss below,
And morbid humor takes hold.
No one can guess, no one can see, no one can feel.
If I fall, I fall alone.
Why do I find pleasure in that?
Maybe because I know….
I know in this world we walk alone.
Even as we hope, we yearn, that another human, if only one, will fit their soul with ours.
Even as we know it’s a lie.
We live, we fall, we hurt, we die.
Alone.
The humor, the pleasure fades.
I don’t fear death but I fear the fall.
I fear this life because I fear myself.