And when every star in the night has been brought into question,
You'll see that it's nothing more than a masquerade of phosphorus in the skyline.

Happy thoughts?

I forgot the meaning of the word!
I mean, seriously, look it up...
The dictionary is a labyrinth of contradictions and segues,
Webster's a better politician than Trump ever was/could be,
Giving redirection a whole new meaning,
And in all the lights and showmanship,
We've failed to realize that happiness is no longer the pursuit we've been after...

Pen to paper.  No words come.  There's no flow.  This wall has been built too high.  The calluses on my hands are proof enough alone.  My jeans are stained.  Cement doesn't come out with bleach.  Someone make sure we tell Martha Stuart (she'll want to know).  There's a rushing of water.  Roaring.  Don't let it deceive you though.  Niagara's retreating in fear.  The lion's roar has always been worse than its bite.  I pat the last brick into place.  Someone call President Hoover.  Tell him he's been removed from history books.  You could say he's been dammed.

Everyone laughed at that right?  At the wit, dripping with distain, when I ****** the man who constructed history for his time.  Don't be pathetic, because the truth is it was nothing.  An attempt at genius.  Lost to those too slow to comprehend.

We're powered by the stream of endless, pointlessly directed lines of juxtaposition, where (in the end) this river begins to run dry.  Nothing but a trickle will be left.  What happened to midsummer rope swings and skipping stones to the beat of old country songs?  They are only fantasies we never cared to elaborate on because writer's block was worth its' weight in gold.  We're sinking fast.  Another pebble lost among a sea of faces.  A stream bed prism.

Or is it prison?  Where this dam became more of a hell then a sanctuary for the hopelessly romantic and desperately pathetic.  Where have I heard those words before?

Are they original?

Doubt it.

I watch as the lines fill empty pages, knowing that in the end it won't be my name that readers read.  They'll pull me from this river bed, polish me until I shine.  Give me a new identity, one that isn't mine.  And I'll sit on your finger, a prize to gush over when the truth is…I am nothing. A savage wrapped tight in bed sheets, screaming out dialogue of brilliance.  Of emptiness.  Four walls are all I have left.  There's no control.  No easing into this.  We spill out ink until it coagulates.  Then the process is repeated once again.

The dam was never a dam, but the ****** stays locked in his comfort zone.  Four walls…an eight by eight cell.  Solace.  White washed with endless possibilities. You'll find me there this day.  Like every day before.  The straitjacket tossed to the side.  No longer needed.  My complaints (like howls to a deaf moon) fall quiet too.  A mixture of grace and devastation sprawled across the floor.  One single rose drawn along the edge builds the words…the last words I'll ever say.  Where the walls have their part to share.  Guess writer's block died with the drying of crimson stains.  And in the silence, you'd swear I was laughing.

Remember the age of innocence?
Nine years old and invincible
we were ready to take on the world
with best friends by our sides
and a road ahead so unknown,
so treacherous yet so inviting.
Where siblings were our own worst enemies
yet the only hurts we ever knew
were the skinned knees
from bike crashes and the numerous trips
we took throughout those leaf strewn falls.
To think we wanted to grow up so badly…

You see, innocence faded like our happy thoughts
we turned from lollipops to cigarettes to worse,
just to keep us high.
cuz let’s face it, the swing set wasn’t cutting it anymore
And heads-up took on a whole new meaning
when liquor was introduced
The innocent were tossed to the wolves.
****** turned to g-strings,
kisses turned into seven minutes in heaven,
and most of us struggled with the concept of protection.
helmets covered different kind of heads
and cooties weren’t something to run from anymore
they were something we begged for

Yet, now we’re grown
best friends are strangers,
and race issues are more than who made it to the finish line
wars more than a card game
and cough medicine is the go to drug when money’s too tight
to think we wanted to grow up so badly…

As children
it was so easy to play innocent.
I was Peter! You were Wendy!
And who could forget the Lost Boys?

Always dragging us through adventures we never expected.
Never dreamed of.
But time isn't easy
and our voices cracked with age.

It was no longer cool to fly.
Fantasies crashed as hard as we did
when happy thoughts became tattered and torn.
The teddy bear left forgotten in the corner, abandoned like our dreams…

I found my faith on the chopping block in this abattoir* of unanswered prayers and twisted beliefs.  One moment of indecision taking me to these crossroads and down a path I don’t dare to follow.  Yet, have no choice but to take.  It’s crazy where desperation leads...somewhere between salvation and another hell station, lacking the “S” standing for any amount of security or any sense of solutions.  I find myself lost.

And there may be no valleys, but I am surrounded by all these shadows of death.  My innocence has been crucified, a sacrifice to some far away claim of something better…better than this.  Yet, there doesn’t seem to be any happy endings in sight and no hint of helping hands guiding the way through the turmoil of these trials.  God, or whoever may be listening, why have you forsaken me?  Or is my blasphemy the orchestrator of my damnation?  Do my sins author the ending of this book?  If so, turn then my *** around and help me elude the epilogue* to this hellish nightmare.  Because you see, there are no footprints in the sand, only bloodstains from where I crawled on hands and knees and clawed at any kernel of truth I could surmise in the sands of fate and in the time between cigarettes or every chaser following now forgotten shots.  Those spirits are a poison that burrow into my faith and a rot at the edges of my sanity.  I need a doctor.

So wrap my soul in the Hippocratic Oath, because you look less like the surgeon of my destiny and more like the butcher tearing me to pieces.  Facts that I refuse to face, you’re cleaving away at any fat that you deem inadmissible.  And who is innocent in your eyes…?

Or am I the judge?

If shadows had a face, they’d be the one staring back at me in the mirror.  My inadequacies could fill books and Freud would need a lifetime to decipher what’s wrong.  Is that what they mean when they say “throw the book at you”?

Is this my trial by fire?

Is the monster in the darkness one of my creation?

God…I need a miracle when I crash...

Rock bottom comes with some scars, but with realization as well.  It’s that final moment of surrender, and then you are there.  And maybe I’ve been wrong all along.  Salvation was never meant to be easy and faith always spelt the truth.  Fighting All I Thought Habitual.  It’s eerie how your Word has a ring to it when ears finally open to listen.  It rolls off the tongue with a sweeter taste than any curse.  And hindsight is truly twenty-twenty or maybe you’ve just lit the way, or maybe…I’m just starting to see.  It seems like those fingerprints look a lot like yours.  And the bloodstains are a sacrifice you offered to maintain innocence I thought stolen.   I was never really lost, just bad at reading the road signs.  You ask where my faith is.  It was never gone.  Just misplaced.  And there was never a straight and narrow, only the arrows He continues to use to guide me.


A/N:
Abattoir – Slaughterhouse
Epilogue – Ending chapter which sums up the tale and ties loose ends.
Habitual – Doing, practicing or acting by force of habit.  Inherent in an individual.

A broken heart feels like a missing limb.
You know they're gone, but you feel them there.
A shadow, a ghost limb...that takes too long to get used to.