I want to just hide
Away from everyone
Maybe I do need meds
I'm not sure if I can make it much longer
I just don't know how to speak up about it
How do you hide from yourself?
Is it physically possible?
If it is someone please help
Tell me how
I just wanna be gone

Whenever I say something you ignore me
Whenever I do something you hurt me
Whenever I think something you yell at me
I have had enough
If you don’t like how I am then leave
I do things how I want
If you don’t approve
I don’t care
I do what I want
You say that you care
But actions speak louder than words
You of all people should know that
Your the one that drilled it in me
So quit yelling
Quit hitting
Quit hurting me
Even if you don’t see,
I need you to know
How much you hurt me
Every time you yell
Hit
Hurt
I just can’t take anymore
I’m sorry
But it’s true
Whenever you yell,
I flinch
Whenever you ignore me
My spirit deflates
Whenever you hit
I take it
But it HURTS that you would hurt me
And I don’t know what to do now

Here I am bleeding again
Taken aback by mortal fear.
                     Staring at faith
                   Staged by hope--
Pouring rain on visceral cage–
               The sound of deep
                       Calling to deep.

Repressed feelings buried by time.
Epitaph reads on the forgotten grave:

"Here lies the child now grown.
  His hopes and dreams
       Dashed to pieces.
  This is where the child died."

I often hear the Mystic Keeper
        Calling from night
And tradition calling from artificial light

As I run through scorched barren
                          Fields of doubt.

Walking barefoot over these coals
    Crouching low
                   To hide my eyes

As I run    
         And as I hide    
  From what has already been revealed--
The tombstone says it all.

When I am out on the water
Lost in the Channel fog
I often see fleeting glimpses of
                White cliffs of hope
Like the white cliffs of Dover
Shining on the edge of Melancholy Sea. 
But they often turn out to be
Withered white
     Seeds of religious platitudes.

      And then there is the ready reflection
Of the looking glass
        That often tricks the beholder.
For in it truth is not seen.
What is seen is graffiti of soul
       Hiding the crumbling
                         Cracks of age–

The threshold where
         Sanity meets its end.

Isolation has become
       A shining steel blade
Cutting deep
    Into the heart of hearts.

Nothing lives after amputation.
Depending on emotional prosthetics--
Phantom pain
                  When nothing is there.

But in the midst of these devastations
I am learning to take--

     Howbeit reluctantly--

The hand of trust and grace.
Allowing
            Hope to build
      A fortress for dreams…
Set boundaries better
       Than no control at all.