Hands clawing outward from a mass grave
Mouth gasping for air,
Lungs filled with invisible smog
Mind too indoctrinated to care

Pressed in against the walking dead
Face to face, toe to toe –
Clammy fingers entwining by seeing
Unseeing eyes staring into a blank void you well know

Drifting with the metal cage
Jerking back, coasting sideways, never flinch
Some escape, more cram in –
Nearing hellish Purgatory inch by inch

A screeching halt, your turn to flee –
Into the glass maze obediently file
Skinner's rats – jolted by punishment
Yet tomorrow you’ll do it again – another card on the pile.

I can feel hurt, and I can feel pain:
Yet I Am Trouble.

Treated like dirt, tainted with Jezebel’s stain:
It seems that I Am Trouble.

Alone in the midst of my inevitable abyss, I shy away from the blame:
Yet I Am Trouble.

A moth billowing, drawn to the chaos – my face seared by my shame…

I try to deny.

But I Am Trouble.

Music in my soul, in my veins, in my ear,
Rhythmic hunting, a low pulse that only I can hear.

Separate seats, separate lives,
A brushing meet, competing prides.

The force pushes, always peering,
The pressure mocks, its grin is leering.

Crawling upwards, invading the interior
Onwards it claws, I’m nearing hysteria

My stomach churns, my throat is tight,
My chest burns, my mind alight

Souls all around, but souls are worth dust,
Empty and worthless, ****** dry as a husk

Eyes averted, pointed blank gaze
Still my mind flames, calm in its rage

The stations flicker by, spiralling down the hatch
The names pass too quickly, too quickly for me to catch

Closer to home, a new home I’ve built,
Borne out of upheaval, decorated with guilt

Stepping towards a future, try to shoot from the hip,
But it’s all a façade – loneliness has me in its grip.

There is absolutely nothing about these words that will, or should, make me famous.

They are just words – an outpouring that means everything to me, and not a thing to anyone else.

You see, I’m not the only person that has felt as though their insides are barrelling down into a bottomless void. I’m not the only one that feels a tightness around their chest whilst they flail inwardly – cursing at their longing in the face of indifference.

I’m not alone in staring beyond seeing at an inanimate object – echoes of significance attached that only make sense to two people, and one of them doesn’t care anymore.

It’s easy to say that I opened my heart – the hard reality is that the invited slammed the door.

It’s easy to say why me, what did I do, what didn’t I do, I did everything… but it’s not what I did. It’s not what I didn’t do. It’s not who I am. It’s who I never have been.

I don’t fit. I don’t fill the mould. I never met the criteria, I invented my own. I was there at the right time – and I was still there, when it was the wrong time. Still waiting, still fighting, still working, still figuring it out.

Apparently it gets easier. Apparently I will move on. Apparently there are fish, in a sea, and I hear that one of them will be right for me.

I see the logic, I am lucid enough.

But I also see him saying “no”, when I ask if it’s me that he loves.

The flag hangs in the window, only three corners tacked down
- Forlornly it droops, its patriotism stooped –
As the red and white stare out at the world, wearing a frown.

The ivy smacks of Eden, a paradise in a cage
- Entangled in the wire fence, snaking exotic and dense –
Coiling its way past the bouquet, an epitaph to a grieving mothers rage

Warriors of the Empire, heads bent low to the driving rain
- The fight ******, their defiance bucked –
Sheep bleating in time, soldiers marching in line, to the shepherds refrain

Spirituality without religion, politics without opinion
My knowing soul blinks into the ebbing light
Outrunning the plodding clockwork:
My inner intrepid sprints into the hazy night

All at once, the arc slits the velveteen,
The searchlights are pounding
Their harsh silence crashes in my ears,
My beatnik – she’s drowning

The magician holds a rope ladder
Spun of parotted truths and ink print thoughts:
My knowing soul blinks,
And stays its lonely course