The crooked mirror which hangs on the black wall fills my eyes with tortured pictures of myself
I stare at it every hour and I see ME!!
I see the views of what is inside and out
The scars, the bruises, the mind and the heart

I have tried many times to look away,
but I am forced to face it head on with my empty blank stare, while my head is strapped against the boards .

But what am I really looking at? You tell me

The eyes, the nose, the mouth, and the ears
I am confused by the gray, pixelated portrait of this image that is staring back at me

There is no emotion or temperance
Only a stale, black and white image of me
Nothing more
For I have accepted this cruel view for which I have been dealt

So now I will close my eyes, close the chapter and sleep forever

We wait and wait, we wait til the time travels forward. The time, when tensions rise past the rows of gratitude and the fallen.

One young man asked me the other day "When will I see the elephants"
My humble response was with a resolve, "I don't know son, but when the parade starts, you will shortly know"

Gratious souls scurry in lines to defend their homes against the tyranny of the enemy.
Days would pass, one after another, waiting for the call of action, waiting for their turn to fire back.

A warning shot was heard from across the horizon. Clusters of smoke peaked through the forest trees,
arms exploded with each pull of the trigger.

Dropping like flies on a hot summer day. Men of all ages laid dead on the battlefield.  You could smell death in the air as the winds of change shifted ever so slightly.

That same young man, to whom was waiting for the parade, had been shot next to his heart. He laid fallen across my lap. I held his head ever so gently. My hands quivered with sadness and solemn tears.

Pierced just once by the bullet, a single hole in his chest bleed slowly across his body. With his glazed over eyes and a slight smile of his face, he whispered to me, "I saw the elephants and tell my wife goodbye"

I held his hand as he took his last breathe.

That parade was his final battle and seeing the elephants was his final moment.

A pull of the cord illuminates the neon sign
Invisible gases pass through the glass tubes
They flicker for a split second
Then they begin to glow

It reads, "NO VACANCY"
A glowing symbol for "leave us the **** alone"
or "get lost" .. to which one applied to me
HELL I didnt know.
Each single red letter determined my fate

I needed a place to lay my head down,
to rest the troubles of my life
You know the ones
The torment, the abuse, the bullying, the screams and the pain and those are the easy ones

Pounding on the keymaster's door,
I yelled at the top of my lungs
"Please give me a key"
But still no answer
Then my ears deceived my brain..
Finally, words that interrupted the silence

I waited for more
But silence pursued my mind once again
I pounded harder this time
Slamming my fist into the wooden door, my face turning beet red with anger and the veins pulsating in my neck as if they were about to burst like a balloon

Crash!! The tender glass shattered, breaking into a million pieces, ricocheting off my face as each piece began to dance waltzes on the distant floor

The door creaked open
It was then, just as I was about to ring the bell
My eyes opened wide
I woke up blurry from that nightmare
Strapped tight to an asylum's gurney

I couldn't move, pressured to the bed with ruthless white straps
Imprinting the cold metal buckle onto my forehead
I was trapped insane

That red neon sign glowed once again
This time in plain sight
Only a few feet from my eyes
My sight grew weary and my mind grew numb

The sign was clear and read "NO VACANCY INSIDE MY BRAIN"