The sky,
A blood-like sunset
The fjord,
An endless, black chasm
Fire licked the place
All hell on Earth.
They left him behind,
Alone.
On the edge of madness,
The fear consumed him
Creating distorted images of reality.
Trapped in this swirling world of violent colours
A scream out of nowhere,
Voices, voices clawed at his mind
Desperate to be freed from this cacophony.
The light faded,
Hope went with it,
Until he submitted
To his delusional world.

They call me the Girl Down The Lane
And they say I'm a little insane.
They say that I seem a little tame
Until I poke dead things that were recently slain.
I like to dance in the rain,
And I like to mess with people's brains.

They call me ******, bipolar at times.
They don't understand this mind of mine.
They don't know that I can shine
If I wasn't so confined
In this society where I have to be kept in line
With Lithium and Loxapine.

They say that I'm a nutcase,
That I lost myself up in space.
I can't help that my thoughts race,
That my hallucinations are a replacement
Of others; I'm down at a basement level.

But they don't care.

So I'm that girl down the lane,
That will always, always remain
The same;
I'm forever insane.

He's nothing but a few words and a few stares fixed together.
He's nothing but some black ink on white paper.
This should be enough to throw him away from my mind.
But I keep him as closer as I can and I let him take me away.

The voices inside my head are taking over.
These u-u-uncontrollable quirks I have.
My eyes twitch as many times as a heart beats after doing a triathlon.
In my head of runs a marathon of thoughts that don't belong,
things I can't do because they're wrong.
Within my blood stream flows 1.26 grams of dopamine given to me by doctors who don't know how to fix my situation,
only mix prescriptions to intensify vexation. Pharmacists eyeball me fearingly because I appear to be nothing but someone with chemicals wandering around into the little bit of a brain I have left.
Serotonin to regulate my mood, appetite, and sleep but I still only wish for all of this to be nothing but a dream.
All of this making my intestines mutilate, slowly dying inside as if I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Otherwise known as I.B.S. but I know for a fact that this is all just a bunch of B.S.
My enterochromaffin cells may just burst, I am often told.
If only I could tell what was real from what was fake.
For I also have A.D.H. - whoa! What's that?!
Sorry, where was I?
Oh. Tourettes Syndrome.
I guess I just twitch it off.
Maybe these are all figures of my imagination from the hallucinogens.
Who knows?
After all, I am a schizophrenic.

The split personality which exists within us,
constantly battling for the spotlight of your mind,
feeding off your acquiescence to their imposing forces.
Beating like a drum at the sides of your skull.

I
"We spoke of men
as often as of poems.
We tried to legislate away
the need for love –
that backseat ****
& death caressing you."
–Erica Jong

ah, this side of paradise!
there's no comfort in the wise,
no comfort at all. I roll it up how I was
taught to, half cancer half plant,
wait around for the next one.

ever feel like a ******? I'd asked her
once, waiting on a corner, fishing for a lighter.
no, but I feel like Sylvia Plath.
I had responded: can I be Anne Sexton?

it seemed right, that is, my severe rejection of emotions via denial, via wanting to tear out my hippocampus,

stomp on it, trying to forget every walk to every room and back, to every house and back.

she herself was severe, though, this friend, more sad in an intrinsical way, more dull and rotten than I, via bad chemistry, while I was just a
case of depressive charlatanism gone bad.
Right?

I searched for acceptance in every bed cover's crease and dollar bills I handed them to buy me smokes.
I searched for it, hands on me, and then before then I had searched for it while he asked what's wrong?
You need to tell me what's wrong!

I love you! You need to tell me! Are you ok?





You are funny if you think I responded.



I likened my staring state, I fixed it in my head as a piercing quixotically sad one, once.




My silence was a story in itself.

II*

"You loved a man who spoke
like greeting cards.
'He ***** me well
but I can’t talk to him.'"
– Erica Jong

It was ultimately guilty,
this time removed from pleasure.
The whole situation, blows to the face
and little slaps of course,
I felt the need to send myself into
a sort of temporary sleep so I forgot
but then would wake up again
because that would mean they won
and this is why I concussed myself once.

He tells me he cares and it's not
that I don't believe him but
it's that I don't believe myself.

I apologize for my being a burden and
he asks me why.
I suppose I am used to it

and if I could stare at him
it would be the same old stare.





"We shared that awful need
to talk in bed.
Love wasn’t love
if we could only speak
in tongues."*
– Erica Jong

Mozart,
Shakespeare,
Picasso.

Auschwitz,
Hiroshima,
My Lai.

Two sides;
one culture.

"Everybody's shouting,
which side are you on?"

   mce

It couldn't get any worst.
Use to be a shadow in the corner,
a few steps behind me,
never close yet always in my line of sight.

Its darkness mimicking the
movements of my body.
Day or night,
the thing that never sleeps
it weeps in laughter as it creeps
each time closer, closer
slithering its way up my bed
as I clutch the blanket and tightly
shut my eyes in vain.

Tonight it sits by the edge of my bed
staring
staring
waiting in the darkness for me.
My heart is in my ears
a scream between my teeth,
I try to pray but remember I've forgotten,
I've got no more faith.

It's ragged raspy breath echoes in the void
of my alien room
and it just sits there
as my frustration and fright grows
a bit madder and wild each ticking second.

Morning comes
the sun raises from the crust of the earth
I've not slept a wink.
Yet, I've got to follow my day pretending
not to see the beast getting each time closer.

Remember I said it couldn't get worst?
Sorry, I lied.
Its bony,clammy hand has grasp my ankle.
Tonight will be longer,
the frigidness of its ebony, wispy hand seeps slowly
through my skin.
And once more as dawn breaks through my window
I am not relieved because its putrid hand has left
a dark imprint on my skin.

This routine continues,
I am becoming the shadow of its figure.
Its madness is dyeing me of darkness.
Scrubbing beneath the steam of the water won't make
its mark wane.

I understand now.
It is possessing me,
slowly,
bit by bit,
adhering to my body
until all I see is ebony in the mirror
and I know I've got to bleed this beast
out.

So, I take a blade and begin the process
trying to rid and purify my body
of this malign creature.
But they don't understand me!
They won't let me carve out this
madness!
I try and try but they come and stop me.
My mother, the men in white robes,
everyone is against me
letting the beast reclaim my sanity!

I'm confined within these walls,
together with this creature
but they feed me little pills
and I forget why this all began.
Sometimes, I hear my mother and a man
whisper of silly things,
they say the depression gave away to schizophrenia
but they don't really understand
because they have not looked behind
to the shadows lurking on their backs.