I've been drinking about you baby
trying to drown you out of my head
but the poison makes you stronger instead

I've been smoking about you baby
inhaling you into my lungs
i miss the feeling of touching each others tongues

I've been pill popping about you lately
to make me feel more numb
the fact that i still need you is really pretty dumb

Everybody talks about depression as if they know it.
Like they can feel the blood dripping down their skin,
And they know the sick thought of "Oh -- look how beautiful the red is."
(They always say red is my color.)

As if they laid on their bed for hours on end,
Salt tracks lining their face like the scars on their ankles,
Because tears just won't come anymore.
As if they know staring at their ceiling, tracing patterns in the paint
And thinking "Maybe if I stay here awhile longer, I'll go away --
I'll cease to exist" because they're past the point of suicidal thoughts --
Accepting death in life with this hole in their chest and thinking
Death is a reward, an escape from this pain I deserve to feel.

I know depression. The kind that goes unnoticed --
The kind that takes the metal from a hair tie and not cuts --
But scrapes at the skin on her arm, lying on her bed,
Tears not yet dried up with a mother screaming "MONSTER"
Outside of her door.
I know the kind that cuts on her ankles, not her wrists,
Because she's scared she'll get in trouble but she
Desperately needs to be seen.
And never is.

I know depression. The kind that stops cutting because
She gives up hope that she ever will be.
The kind that accepts being alone, that accepts the pain
Like a gift because she deserves it -- that didn't smile for a year,
That went so far into herself that she forgot what connection was like
Not that she ever knew in the first place because

I know a depression that's always been there.
That started some time before the age of 10 but
She can't remember because the monster inside her chest
Stole those years, those memories.
And that monster took the place of every connection she might have felt --
Stopped it, muted it, because it wanted to be her sole companion.
So it was, and has been for 19 years.

And no one ever knew. Or --
They did, but they'd call her crazy.
Demented. Pathetic. A creep. Tell her she had no right --
That because she had a family, a home, money, whatever,
Because of this, her pain was irrelevant.
Fake - selfish - vain - wrong - she hadn't earned it -
So no one cared.

I know that depression.

Six feet under,
trapped in a see through glass box,
people can see you,
they can hear you scream,
but they walk by as if they see nothing.

Six feet under,
buried beneath the pain,
hiding under the sorrow,
merciless cries come close to shattering,
the glass in which you are concealed.

Six feet under,
conceited, twisted lies,
cannot be forgotten or lost
hearts forever broken
as you see yourself

Six feet under,
the glass reflects the pain in your eyes
yet your stare is emotionless,
your heart ceases to beat
blood no longer pulses through your veins.

Six feet under,
You forget how to scream,
you lose your sense of sanity,
the glass swallows you up
lost, and always forgotten.

The tips of his wings stained a crimson red,
the light drawn from his eyes with his final breath,
a loathsome look upon his shame filled face,
forgetting all his amazing grace.

he's fallen from the tips of heaven to the depths of hell,
the angel his face stained with an auburn glaze,
captured in the battle just lost,
his nobility failing at his own great cost.

they whisper in his ear, the superficial beings,
they speak so mellow yet there words be celestial,
they scrutinise him, tempting his weaknesses,
their ****** eyes divulge his very being.

"Come my son ill give you peace" his father calls from above,
at this his tepid and tedious ways at once are banished,
he takes his fathers effluent hand and he is made clean,
saved from the superfluous for all eternity.

There's no keynote
Or some particular issue
In my mind
It's just the void
Trying to fit in
There is no predicament
Its just these words
Trying to find space
Provocatively engaging my mind
To work on something
That ought to be done
Like it's some imperative assignment
Just these consonants
Camouflaging and slaughtering
That empty space
These characters from one
To twenty six
Continually withering
In search of a place
With Some connotation.

Awakened in a strangers bed
by a breeze through a skylight
dusting traces of rained-on geraniums
and newly cut grass across my face.

My lips taste like salt-rimmed margaritas
when I lick them and the flames
from giant candles that danced
and flung our mad leaping shadows against the walls
the night before have all blazed out,
cried themselves into waxy puddles
overflowing into a stolen hotel ashtray
full of half-smoked cigarettes.

The comforter slides off,
silk whispering as it pools on the floor
and I am naked beneath,
hips dotted with tiny bruises from fingertips,
hairy belly still sticky with release
and I wonder what possessed me hours earlier
to so savage the worm,
that ridiculous prize
lying at the bottom of a tequila bottle.

I could die of thirst.

I spy our spent casings on the night table and remember.
Thrown clothes, then skin.
Reloading during the battle.
The hot breath of secrets over a white-flag pillow
when the cease-fire came.
Then no sounds at all.
Adrift in a shamble of blankets,
sleepy kisses till dawn.

I hear the shower turn off
and remorse sets in
making me wish hard for mints,
a better memory than this,
the removal from my chest
of that hive of angry bees
grieving a dead queen,
and God only knows who’ll walk
through the door so I brace myself.

Wrapped in sheets, I wait.