3am; I look out the window and all I see
Are lights - my one and only company

But these lights are unlike me
They never have to worry about blowing out
Because they do and they will
And I wish that I, too, would fade away somehow
To belong with the tender imagination of my swollen skin
Or even a nightmare
Give me one of these
Give me all of them
Anything but the blank limbo of nightspeak
The loud voices in my head that break the silent peace
Long before the call of the first free wing
Signaling the rising of the sun
And the dark of the day to come

4am; I am dancing with my devils
No longer counting sheep
There is futility in savouring
A darkness we cannot keep

5am; I am battered beyond belief
Swollen wounds and sunken cheeks
As if my fists were made for this

6am; I awake from consciousness
With bones that feel too heavy
I watch the last star flee
And wait for the cycle to repeat

What has become of us
Amidst the hustle and bustle of city life
When did evolution condone us to regress into a state
Of uncalculated caucus
As we meander our way through the rapids of life

Rapid
Is hardly a best-fit descriptor
For we are past the point of speed
We mill around like headless horses
Buzzing bees
Stinging roaches
Fallen leaves
Roaring lions
Try to lead
But fail
Like cottons fighting breeze

Is this all we are?
Is this what we were made for?
To quickly climb the climb
And await the graceless fall
Parachutes prepared for praise
But our pride prevents and prevails

Till the day I climb the ladder
Shall I not attempt to see
What the view at the top might be like
I fear it enthralls me
But then reality strikes like a maddening blaze
And suddenly I see
That I'm well on my way up the hill
As I swing from bridge to bridge

Is this the way to live?
Uncautious steps with kleptomaniac ease
As we take what we desire
From our capitalistic divider
Though we hate to be the same
Not at all do we differ
Are we not all blinded mice
With a tetra-human vice
Spiders apt at spinning lies
Banking life on Friday highs

All around me boring beasts
Lost to whims, to say the least
What I fear most is the day
I give in and join the race
Is the day I eat my heart out
Just to enjoy the highest gaze

Till then here trapped in the zoo
Enclosure encasing truth

Finding fault with every human till the day I conform too

I knew you were different
Right from the moment you wondered
Why the Sun had to come up
Everyday
Religiously
And sacrilegiously
When darkness had such beauty

As the world looked on in amusement
At how you went against the grain
I knew all of the reasons
Every fibre of your brain

Everytime you stopped to admire
The things that went unseen
Like the bubbles in the river
As they smashed to smithereens

As you spoke in tongues so similar
To the ones I didn't give
I knew you were building barriers
From the people who couldn't read

The people you knew
Would never see your world
And still love you the same
Would shut their windows from you
And leave the way they came

A different one to call love
A different way to sin
So crude and void of self-worth
A king and not a queen
Arrest the fallen angel
You almost heard them say
The baby in the manger
Shall not atone such sin

But heed not what their mouths say
They're not the one who made
You full of imperfections
The potter without clay
Made gardens without rangers
Raised demons from the dead
No soul without a soldier
Shall come between this faith
This rock across all ages
For bloodshed has been laid

So child when you next quiver
How shall I comfort thee
Shall I sing unto you a theme
Of calming clemency
As clemency shall not be given
For none there needs to be
Now speak these words of wisdom
From bare to arid lands
And spread these words you've listened
To each and every man

The next time you go thinking
That all of hope is lost
Just bear in mind the promise
Borne for you at the cross

We were like broken skins
Tatter tales
Smithereens
Smashing perfect
Broken seams
Flashing splinters
Cut our lips
But we will never bleed

Hold my hand
In this instant
Sing me deep
A lullaby of finished dreams
Slit me in
We cut the sins we cannot clean
We do not sleep

In the stars
I see our rings
Half dust and broken links
Creator of broken things
Chalice of golden limbs
Promises released

You to keep
Locked away in a grid of greed
The darkness screams
Let her be
And I concede

You to lose
Everyday
I wish I hadn't seen
The way you looked at him
And not at me
We breathe
But never breed
We leave
We cut the sins we cannot clean
Until the red turns green

Deep in the silence that cannot speak
There is a sadness that blooms and breathes
Battered by twigs and fallen leaves
Lungs of air thin and bristle ribs
Blossoms of dark trajectories
Skeleton figures in submarines
Drowning in lies of jubilee
Halos to hold to sink or swim
Beauty in scars of skin cut deep
Loving the thrill of broken swings
Capsuled in valleys far from dreams
Living on salt and crystalline
Lucidly slipping on ice so thin
Autumn in winter summer springs
Nomads run free on vast prairies
Flowing through veins of tributaries
Tasting the new blood on their lips
Lining a cusp between their hips
Blade descends slowly tongue in cheek
Building a palace with their twin teeth

Deep in the silence that cannot speak
There is a sadness that blooms and breathes
Sadness in brooding symphony
Sadness in chants of majesty
Sadness that rises like morning glory
Sadness that flourishes like a disease
Tracing our bones from link to link
Constellate like stars and planet rings
Sadness that thrives on melancholy
And the synthesis of metal and skin

Cover up
So they can't see the scars
Oh foolish child
To think that they
Would bother anyway

Welcome to the garden
Of forbidden fruit
Caring is costly
And happiness is *****

Don't ask
They'll never see the scars
Don't tell
You're a blasphemy from hell

Life goes on
The moon proceeds
With its waxes and wanes
Ice grows thin
But yet it does not break

Trapped in a crowd
Of soulless faces
Didn't they ever tell you
Continuity is the opposite of change?

Oh foolish child
You never learn
And once again
The silver burns

Not pain that begets memory
But joy from trapped blood being set free

Not skin that never will be stitched
But velvet pools and satin strings

The silver burns
You love it so
Now wonder what
If they could know

You'd think they'd say
'Always be there'
But child oh child
They do not care

You'd beg for queries
In the most subtle way possible
But child oh child
They do not care

You'd sell your soul
To Lucifer
But talk is cheap
And you're not cold enough

To cut off all ties
Fallen in the ornate web of lies
Intricately spun
But the Black Widow is on the run

And then you see your face
On the underside of the blade
Look how far you've run
Toward the monster you've become

Not a devil of dark descent
But a storm
Well-hidden by the cascade of clouds
You're a hologram with a heart

And the cycle repeats itself
Butterfly with broken wings
Skeleton of stealth
Risen from the broken links

Lost in translation
Awaiting a pilgrimage to Hades
The petal that dries before it blossoms
Eternally anticipating its turn

Oh foolish child
You never learn
And once again
The silver burns

It is fragile
It is us
Teetering on broken glass
Figure skater pointed blade
As we draw our figure eights
Figure eight is what it seems
It is inverted infinity
Infinity is a new life
But from birth we live to die
Figure skater lies in wait
Till the day last grace is said
Figure skater life in traipse
Figure skater draws last eight
Though the funambulists unite
Figure skater falls from grace
Charting vulnerable territory
Thinking glass will never break
Then the grand tribune arrives
Figure eight is half a piece

And I never fully understood the gravity of life
Until I watched somebody leave