My eyes are burning
And my *** needs some space
This kid is staring at me
He has a big grin on his face
For 6 hours he's been awake
Bouncing around on three seats
It almost seems like someone
Has given him **** to eat
I stuff myself with pills
To try to get some sleep
But the kid is keeping me up
So soon I'll make him weep
I will whisper in his ear
That santa isn't real
And I'll describe to him
How chicken-pox will make him feel
I'll tell him about the dentist
How bad it hurts to drill
And how much he'll have to work
To be able to pay his bills
How hard it is to get a girl
How expensive a driving lesson is
The statistics of failing marriages
And how you can get ****** from a kiss
I'll tell him all of this and more
If he doesn't sit down and shut up
And if he still won't calm down
I'll show him *******

Mouse claws on plastic; a scratching sound,
A small pallid face on a merry-go-round,
The wheel trundles on unstable ground
As the empire falls, a fresh king is crowned

Head spinning; hair thinning,
Revolution by minute is no beginning,
And now the man behind the lattice is sinning,
It goes around, and around
Swinging, we come around

Mornings follow familiar dreams
Afternoons clink with routine and caffeine
Evening curtains rise to the same static scenes,
And night rings out the strain of the machine
Round and around
Evergreen; never aground

Our scratches on the wheel grow loud now
Two more eyes swallowed by the shuffling crowd now
Despite strain, the steel walls unbowed somehow
By a thousand pallid faces beneath a thousand sallow shrouds
We go around, and we go around
The mice remain humble: the king has some proud vow
It comes around and back around
The world keeps turning; we all fall down

He saw one evening a young woman in a red dress, and he remembered being in Luxor, sitting on a hotel balcony, looking out over the Nile, watching all day as the shadows shifted on the cliffs above the opposite bank, as the colours changed from ochre to gold, from pink to violet, and how he had felt so completely at peace. And seeing the girl in her red dress, with her hair up showing the curve of her neck and throat, with her easy, natural smile and her confident air of self-possession, he knew the same feeling; he could have sat and looked at her for hours and asked for nothing more to make the evening perfect.

There was a deep sea I once dared to cross,
                           Pitch black and devoid of life.
                           The cold, bitter sea cannot be bothered
                           with almost certain uncertainties.
The tips of the waves were razor sharp,
                            Imposed is a gentle reminder that my flesh is not steel.
                            What exists beneath the water's ragged teeth?
                            ..I don't need to be told,
                            for I am well acquainted with that darkness & that fear;
                            We've shared a bed, twin-sized, for twenty-two years.
The winds lashed and the waves churned.
                          "Get out now!", they screamed at me.
                           But where, how, when there's nowhere to go?
                           The only possible direction is down, straight below.
                           The ocean stole my soul, as it swallowed me whole.
Down here,
air is a luxury that I'm denied
again and again,
regardless of time spent
begging for the weight of
the water to relent,
and set me free.

But, it took water filling up my lungs
                     for me to finally feel peace--
                     to live where silence exists without grief.
I am at the ocean's whim,
                     I follow, and it leads.
                     All the while, I beg and I plead,
                     "Take me home, wherever home is, please...."
The current reacts violently to my request.
                      I'm spun around, turned upside down
                      and I have lost my way.
                      But my way can't save me anymore.
 The waves push. They pull. I give in to their will.
And they surrender me to the shore.              

A watery tomb left behind.
The surface is near.
       hurry
         quickly
           I gasp for fresh air,
                                                            ­                  Inhale
                                        ­                                      a deep breath,
                                                         ­                     an incredible breath
                                                          ­                      
                                                    just breathe..
                                   I found what I was searching for.