Don't be the fluid
that slowly fills my lungs
and makes it harder for me to breathe

Just because my problems
Are smaller than yours
Does not make them inferior
Or insignificant

Dont you dare tell me
I am over exaggerating
Because you are not in my skin
You dont really know how this is

Just because you've gone
Through millions of miles
Of problems and successes
Does not mean my achievements
Are measly or amount to nothing

Just because you are numb now
Doesn't mean you should numb me too
I can't have a life full of anesthetics

**Just let me be

I cast my mind back to my formative years
the simple life of a child, no real dangers or fears

No play stations or TV we made our own fun
Our playgrounds the fields and the forests under the sun

I often think back to those halcyon days
When we had unwritten rules about the way that we played

Eleven years old and wasps in a cloud
fourty eight stings later and boy did I howl

Now aged fourteen and a change for the best
Two years of training as a professional chef

At sixteen years old and a big change had begun
because I decided to make the army my home

Two brothers before me had taken up arms
and if needed would fight to keep our country from harm

Nineteen and still innocent in a strange foreign land
a place of death and destruction,  sharp rocks,  burning sand

I still have the dreams about what I did, things I saw
I guess such things happen when teenagers go to war

Twenty two and another change in my life
because I'm no longer single,  I now have a wife

On valentines day in 74
the midwife delivered a son to my door

A miracle of nature this beautiful boy
the first time I held him my heart filled with joy

And so long years passed, the good and the bad
at fourty from the army I parted, neither happy nor sad

I had travelled to lands I would never have seen
if I hadn't chosen to wear khaki and green

So at forty I made another life change
and decided to enter the security game

Several years later I decided to teach
to pass on the knowledge that others did seek

Well now approaching my sixty seventh year
its time to embark on another career

It's time to relax and grow gracefully old
a time to take up my pen so my story gets told

What fear, what fear,
What fear to turn the page.
I know not there nor here,
I fear nothing but a cage.

Onward, onward,
Let the climbing never cease.
When silence goes unheard,
The climb has reached its peak.

Such tears, such tears,
So haunting as they fall.
Numbering the wasted years,
And each unanswered call.

Finality, Finality,
Finally it is near.
Become the abnormality,
The dreaded cage is here.

Standing before iron rods,
I've reached the point of no return.
Struggling ever against the odds,
The chain on which I yearn.

Words now fail me every night,
When sorrow pours out in thought.
Hope abandons with the light,
Leaving prayers left to rot.

I've tried so many times to say,
What exactly is going on.
I put talent upon display,
But my heart dies with every dawn.

Ten thousand words and many more,
I've left laying, only half said.
The rest are strewn about the floor,
Lifeless, soulless, dead.

I tried to show what I couldn't write,
But neither did that suffice.
I chained myself, cuffed too tight,
Each strain another slice.

Without pause, again I failed,
Letting eyes command my thought.
Delicate plans brutally derailed,
All my work and heart for naught.

I struggle to climb from the ashes,
Like a pathetic, weakened phoenix.
But I again bear new lashes,
While the flaws go on unfixed.

My fate is sealed by my weakness,
Though I knew what to solve.
I'll never recover from the abyss,
I've fallen, even devolved.

Looking up to precipice,
I've reached the point of no return.
I couldn't swallow my pride and ego,
Now too late to learn.

I will
never
forgive myself
for forsaking you
little howling
wolf girl
with madness
in her eyes
and anger in
her voice
and a face
carved by the gentle
hands of nighttime stars

I remain constant,like black and like white
Words from me spoken have leapt into flight
Spiraling swirls of colors and mist
Have crossed over mountains
That fair sun has just kissed

My creation gives pleasure
It also brings pain
Seeing destruction and tyranny reign
Will you forsake me? My world I create
You give rise to the decadent
Have I made a mistake?

You ask of my name
For this I've not said
I am Alpha and Omega
Beginning and the end.

Alienated from this world,
It's as though I'm invisible.
Its like... I'm a ghost.

Perhaps I'm dead – or more like an undead.
Consciously breathing,
Yet unconsciously living.

Unachievable demands too plentiful
For bare shoulders (to bear).
Words carelessly strewn
Cuts into the soul
leaving a void.

Countless wanderings,
Trying to find a home.
Yet left stranded alone;
Always on the toe, ready to go.

I need a complimentary ticket
to depart from the mundane
to the destination – into the moment.