The door to freedom opened,
Yet there he still remained,
For the will to fly has atrophied,
And the bird is finally caged.

A once blissful state of mind
Corrupted by emotional knives
Cutting deep within my brain
To break me in my sleep again.

The steel bends to form a cage
Trapping in surreal thoughts and pains
And images of who I was.

I become a creature
A subject of my mind’s devices
A reflection of the monster inside
To succumb to its every whim
Be a puppet on its strings.

I’m dragged along by words
And drowned by tides of pain.
No matter what I try to see,
The creature shall remain.

I writhe and wiggle against the cage
It wakes me from my sleep
But in the dark of midnight,
The cage escapes my dreams.

my veins are the cobwebs of my soul,
intertwining and winding around my thick bones;
i'm like scaffolding, tall, and rigid, and ready to come down.
thick ducktape binds my seams together.
my eyes are the keyholes to my soul, they stare out and wonder:
what happened to the bright blue skies and thick, green trees?

my fingernails have rusted, cracked and sharpened at the pain.
long years of clawing my way down a winding road have led
me here, sewn together by dreams once wished upon a star.
my ribs have caged my hope for so long, bared iron,
protecting my heart and all that's left of what once was.
i hold my breath, and i'm ready to come down.

sunken eyes like the grave of my mother,
dark, rough and duller than cake at a funeral. i hold my breath.
living is like drowning, the anchors of my dreams anchoring
me down into the void. i scream out. i kick out. i claw out.
i come down, shaking and aching and ready to break.
cobwebs cover me, dust coats my lungs in pain.

i'm ready to come down.

my chest is no longer a chest
but a cage which my deepest of feelings
find themselves trapped
with rugged locks offering the glint of freedom

they swell from deep within
their waves lapping against the iron bars
screaming into the darkness
begging to be heard through their piercing of my silence

but who is around to translate their cries?
who might speak the world’s language
well enough to decipher the mystic codes
in which my soul communicates?

these words will never escape their holding cell
and will never reach the surface
water will forever seep into their lungs
and their cries will become gurgles under the unforgiving pressure of the tides

no matter how far down i swim to their rescue
or countless rings of keys i try
my tortured words will never reach their page
or escape the deadly prison of my mind