Once again, walking life’s tightrope,
What’s keeping me up here?
Is it love? Is it hope?

How many things can karma throw at me?
How many more rounds before the ref steps in?
Gives me a ten count. TKO?

Keep putting one foot in front of the other,
It’s not the height that worries me,
*It’s the fall over the one I won’t see coming.

We know it’s coming, just as inevitable as life.
Is it enough to drive you back to the God you disowned?
Where do your loved ones go if there’s no heaven?
Life is for the living and death is for the dead.
Is the destination more important than the journey now?
Was it ever?

Box me, plant me, carry on in life.
Burn me or sink me, surely it’s all the same?

One less soul to be saved.
One less soul to love.
One more to add to the great silent majority.
One more to hear our prayers.

Horror and torment around every corner,
Love & compassion in the shadows,
Empathy a screamingly silent partner,
Begging for release.
Crocodile tears against a gathering of flowers,
Teddy in a football shirt, imploring why?
Was a decision made?
Or were fifty-seven lives caught in the same tornado?
They can be seen now, scattered all over the blood soaked street.
Stunned at the act, emptied by the loss.
Of another one, gone before life had really begun.

Words, words, too many words.
Smashing inside, trapped and bound,
Screaming at me to let them out.
Picking the wrong target,
Releasing the wrong ones.
Creating a mess of pain and hurt.
So I shut them in again,
Suffer them myself again.
Talk less, think more.
Love less, lose more.

I open up and show emotion.
Measuring levels of friendly devotion.
Self-analysis, mindful and all.
Driving change through the thickest wall.

Listeners smile that indifferent smile,
Awaiting the end, expression banal.
Change the subject, cheer up, be thankful,
Would be easier if I had a broken ankle.

A broken mind is harder to mend,
Hopefully before I go round the bend.
Where there’s life, there’s hope?
Or another cliché to avoid talk of rope.

The sun is out, the days are brighter.
Muscles in atrophy, smile no whiter.
Separating dark thought from obvious fact,
Or maybe I should improve the act?

Smiles that do not touch my eyes,
Surrounded by my paranoid spies.
Time to lift it, time to change,
Seems normality is out of range.

Now at days end, the cold sets in,
Still battling and thrashing the demon within.
My head’s still full of fear and doubt,
But everything’s fine when they’re without.

They don’t have to listen, nor even care.
Just be gracious,
And
be
there.

Why does my poetry ****,
When life is good? Luck?