Can you feel me as I approach you?
                                                            ­                                                                 ­                     It's me,
the same person who has been there for you,
every time you've needed a hand to pull you through,
or a voice to help decide what you should do.
Can you see me?
                                I'm still here for you.
                                                            ­          I'm by your side, where I'm supposed to be,
totally there to help you face adversity
or just plain whenever you may happen to need me.
Well, look next to you!
Can't you see me?

I've always been in your shadow, in your wake,
watching you trot this earth, treating it as yours to take.
I've always admired you, the way you can live your life,
the way you take and release all the trouble you get, all the strife.
I've always wanted to be your friend,
to call myself good enough to know you,
to be able to look back at a time in our lives and say
                                                             ­                                "Yeah, that's what we used to do..."
I have secretly always wanted to love you,
because you have changed me.
Just through knowing you,
                                                talking to you,
                                                                ­           you have made me who I am meant to be.
I'm with you and the world is sweet bliss.
Can't you see me as I tell you this?

Can you feel me as I stand here beside you?
As I stand here, viewing in awe at the slightest thing you do?
Can you hear me as I stand here next to you?
And do you choose to deny my endless pleas of                                                               ­ "I love you"?

You would never do anything to hurt me
                                                              ­           so why did you?
You would never do anything to put me down
                                                            ­                        so why did you?
I looked up to you, you were "all that".
Look at me now, and you'll just see the brim of my hat.
Can you see me here next to you?
                                                            ­ Hear me?
                                                             ­                  Feel me?
No,
you can't.
I finally, on my own, do stand,
and you won't find me now and you never can.
I stand out of your shadow and in my own light.
The world is always a clear, serene place with you out of sight.
I am my own person, my own self, my own Me.
I am not you and that's how it was meant to be.

I have so many friends, it's really quite amazing.
They make me laugh,
they make me sad,
we have arguments,
but we always make up afterwards.
They really are the best.

I have the best home.
My friends come over all the time
and we jump on my bed
and tell each other stories.
We all hug each other too, it's nice.
I'm pretty sure all my neighbors
are really jealous,
but don't tell them I said so....

Sometimes, when things get bad,
my friends like to hug me.
I don't know how I got such friends.
In fact, I can't quite remember a time
when I was without them...
ever....

My friends have been weird lately.
They keep trying to get me
to do weird things.
I don't like how they talk to me now.
I don't know who they've become.
I'm lost, and I don't know what to do....

My friends hurt me today.
I couldn't stop them.
There was so much blood....
The ambulance didn't take me
to the normal hospital, though....

Mom and dad say there's
something wrong with me.
They keep saying that it
wasn't my friends that hurt me....
That's ridiculous!  I saw them do it!

They won't let me leave the hospital.
They say it's for my own safety
or something.
My friends haven't been happy
that I'm stuck in here.
They tell me so, all the time...

I made a big mistake today.
I ripped off my ears
because I was tired of hearing
the mean things my friends were saying.
It didn't work.  I can still hear them.

Mom and dad don't live with me anymore.
The doctor says this is my new home.
I don't like it, it's too depressing
and the clothes they gave me
don't fit quite right.
But he said it's for my own good,
so that I don't try and
hurt my friends...

You've taken so much,
and yet it seems you must
take even more from me.
It was not enough to waste my

time chasing you, you silly dream.
No, you need more it would seem.
When you were in my life, you took
up enough space, and now look.

You're all I can think of.
How can I move on
when you won't move out?

I am lost and adrift
               on a sea of endless gloss
                              and the air is rank with putridity.
                                             The fog rolls over and on end,
                              a sleepless infant afflicted by illness,
               and I cannot see where I have come from.

A light shines off and away,
          in a losing battle against the billows
               that engulf me where I float.
                    The boat is easy to rock and sway
               and would be an easy victim of the waves
          were there any to rock it.

The light beckons and weeps, relentlessly,
     her tears lost on me in the mist
          that now coats my entire body.
               I've long since lost my oars
          and there are no waves to speak of,
     *I cannot reach her....

I

can't...

When I asked you
to return my love,
I expected
your open arms.  Not
a brown package
of all that we had.

I sit on my couch, look to my right,
ruffles from your feet get caught in sunlight.
I look to my couch and think I don't care,
but I just can't stand that you're not there.

I get in my car, I pull away slow,
empty CD cases where the passengers go.
I drive as I do, and see what I see,
but I just can't stand that you're not next to me.

I look at my bed, not touched since the morn,
it cries out with imprints of bodies held and worn.
I look at the pillows, see some of your hair,
and remember how much I wish you were there.

I look at my side; my shoulder, my hand,
cry lightly that they're all alone once again.
Whether it's been one hour, or an entire year,
I'll never get over how you aren't here...

Bedtime.
Defenses are down.
Now the only thing between me
and the Wickerwax
is Agent Ted E. Bear.

It lives under the bed,
but can't survive in light.
When you think it's safe,
he grabs you tight
and pulls you
in the blink of an eye.

Many have fallen to the Wickerwax.
Dinosaurs, ponies, a Spongebob doll
(although it was a little creepy anyways).
Agent Bear is all that remains.
I know I'll be safe.

He's escaped my grasp,
where is he?? I gasp.
Oh, he's right next to me.
Too far for comfort, just let me-

Oh no.
He's fallen off
I rush to the side to see how far away he is.
He's out of reach...

And as the room fills with the smell of rotting meat,
a lone hand stretches out from under the bottom of the sheets.
The hand is skeletal, and crudely thatched.
The fingers are thin, long, sharp, and the arm to match.

It grabs the bear and pulls him under,
its nails dragging deep veins in the floor.
I want to scream, but the odor chokes me.
It'd have blinded me were it not already to dark to see.

As my bear's last paw slips away,
I hear the faintest, foulest voice say,
                                                            ­     *"There's not much else you can do,
                                                             ­       but down here,
                                                           ­         there's always room for you."

When the Shadows begin to disappear,
and Darkness fills, with all its fear,
The blackened Sentries stand their ground,
and keep me safe all around.

But as they too will fade to black,
and no one has my back,
the Darkness comes to get me,
when I cannot see.

And when in its embrace,
this truth I'll face:
there's no god here;
only Fear.

And by the day,
I may
give my last
breath
to Death.

An unseen hand wraps me in my blanket
but the blanket is so cold.
They cover my eyes and everything is dark.
I do not see a way out.
So I stop fighting
                               and slowly
                                                    fall
 ­                                                            asleep

I have a ticket
on the train of thought,
leaving 0810, platform 4, Logic Station,
heading to the
Farthest Possible Conclusion.
I hope it doesn't derail.

Waking moments to sleepless slumber,
hours upon hours in between,
you plague my mind with an inescapable essence,

dreamlike in its appearance, always out of reach.
Only in my wildest fantasies do we exist,

You and I as one, as We.
Oh, but should that fantasy come true.
Unfortunately, I could not accept it as fact, as life.

How could I doom you with such a burden, such a curse?
After everything I’ve put you through, you’d be gone and I wouldn’t be surprised.
Until I sleep again, you escape me but
not even the deep leagues of my subconscious could will us to be.
Truth is a hollow victory to attain;

many seek it and few find it.  And as for me,
everyday I wish I could deny it.

Yea, though I go off to war,
I will not be alone in this fight.
For I know my friends are beside me,
even when concealed in night.

The stories have been passed down,
the wearing of time shown heavy and thick.
The battle marches onwards
with the unholy drumming of snare and stick.
The ears of the innocent deafened
and from all was turned a blind eye.
And no bells were rung nor
salutes raised for they that died.

My body scarred, my mind defeated,
only my soul is left to take.
But I know my friends are beside me,
and together, this journey, we take.