Distant cries on cheery nights;
That ever-growing sense of creeping destruction
When all is well
When all is too pleasant.

It rises from the hearth on chilly days
Like fiery remembrances of past decays
As pain found its way
From comforting warmth
To a slowly sizzling burn,
And the heat of water turned to rot
On ceilings lost to decades of neglect.

It is fleeting eyes and unsteady hands
During summer weeks
Of seemingly nonchalant song and dance
Where the next step
The next breath
The next laugh
May be the last.

And no hand upon the skin
Can calm the quaking of the heart
Inside it’s cage of tectonic plates
As it sings loudly to drown out
The reverberations of fate.

It is the vicious fear.

And it makes every hour of open eyes
And every dream under the dark sky
Another deadly parade of
Who, what, when and where
As the living pretend
To be alive.

<Warning: This is brutal, I apologise if i upset.>

There is a scream beginning to resound in the caverns of my mind
Echoing around, bouncing forth and scratching at the walls
There is no sound to this unearthly yell, no form or function precise
It gives it's life to all i have seen, existence in calamitous expression
It cannot be ignored or pushed back into the depths
To writhe and tremble with the other demons thirsting for a chance
It exists as much as i can be, as real as anything here
Within i see many things, for the scream, the scream is me.
My mind is breathless as i am crushed by the lives i am responsible for
The empty accusing eyes stare sightlessly as they pin me to the floor
My scream is soundless here, however theirs is not
The empty lungs sound continuously, a cacophony of regret
This is not my scream, not my sound but theirs, for my grief
For they made their choice, as did i, it was me that walked away
It is for those that could not choose, had no choice, no freedom to exist
The children that paid the toll for the choices adults made
I've seen their tiny bodies bleeding out into the dust
Eyes in desperate incomprehension look at me hope i will make things right
And i cannot do anything but sigh in self disgust.
I didn't take those little lives i was supposed to protect
But it was i that had to watch them die, filled with remorse and regret
To yell within my echoing mind, why not me my life for theirs
And there is no power watching to make a deal with my despair.
That is where the scream began, all those years ago and far away
For every experience similar it has grown and developed teeth
And now it warps around my mind, suffocating thought
Because children are dying is an acceptable phrase and i rage because it's so
Rage again for i am powerless to change such a fate, mine and theirs
So i roar back in fury at the scream resounding through mind
For it's my face screaming back at me in eternal, cacophonous agony.

We've got highways of heartache beneath our skin
Because our heart is always everywhere all at once
And the steady beat is not culture bound
Unless you relate it to the way it jumps in all of us
To match the music that pumps through our arteries
At any given place or time.
And I will inject only love and confidence into my bloodstream
To defeat the fear that has threatened to halt my living,
And to travel along the endless stretches of roads within my body
Solely in search of the Self but also accepting
All the revelations that flow in steady waves around it.
The fingerprints that have dirtied the exterior
Of the ***** that brings equal bouts of joy and pain
Will be left to mark their place in its past,
For the memories of cruel lovers can only serve as reminders;
Suffering is only temporary
And even though lost heartbeats cannot be regained
New ones can be cherished.

I found a crack in the sidewalk
That I didn't have the urge to step on
And I passed this crack every day
On my 4.40pm walk
For what seemed like a lifetime
And I glared daggers
At the thing that made my skin crawl
And my neck ache
And my fingers twitch by my side
Because cracks in sidewalks
Were meant to be tread upon
Every single one of them
Even partially
Not to break a mother's back
But to cover the imperfections
And to fill the void
That made me uneasy
And to fill it
Even for a millisecond
Before I moved on
As if the sole of my shoe
Could somehow heal the
Sadness that the ground must be feeling
But there was a crack in the side walk
That I didn't have the urge to step on
No matter how many times
I passed within stepping distance
And no matter how many times
It caused me pain
And maybe that was the period of my life
When the obsessive compulsive part of me
Decided to take a break
Because maybe
Maybe some part of me
Saw that the grass that grew
In the messy line that pointed east
Was something more beautiful
And more honest
Than any hidden disfigurement
Could ever be

A moment’s pleasure is worth
A year’s pain
For the happiness of a moment
Is completely immeasurable

However the pain of a century
Doth bare its mark
On the backs of many
The ones that have been weighed down
Not only by the misery of themselves
And the tragedy of life
But by the shame of the gratitude
That they have failed to bestow

Just as the happiness of a moment
Does not bring eternal joy
Similarly, a life without suffering
Surely does not guarantee eternal freedom of the heart
And so it comes about
That one cannot truly appreciate life
Without having first suffered

The beatings of the winds of darkness
Always meet an end where they rest
Offering an escape to the hopefuls
And thus calamity only befalls
Those who lay in wait
For them to begin again.