Thirty three stones
stacked and painted
neon green, purple, grey.
The sun's blaze shimmering heat waves
back toward the flat landscape.
The magic pillars attract disciples
to their path,
bring color on a desolate drive.

The ancient rose
still dips in a still dew
it will not dry.
The seven seas sway
rock on the way!

Twenty seven club is coming up
I'd worry they'd take me out
But fame isn't looking to erupt.
I'm just the one who kept breathing fine,
Walked out of the hospital too many times,
Too many times.
What's the point, I'm searching for purpose
I'm looking for someone to say that I'm not worthless
Stuck pouring from a mangled mind.

I drink too much caffeine,
Keep wearing my skin so thin
They wonder where my bones have been.
Here's my thoughts I jot to sleep
Here's the beep that wakes when morning creeps.
****, my mind's a cloud in weightless air,
Floating up to know why I'm here.

They want a story, here's a life
Pull back my layers and read the chapters
The television pollutes the ones it captures
They asked where's the rapture?
Sir, we are our own rapture.
Look at the mess we left after.
Leave this mess for a generation after.

Rest is Reprieve
   from the burdensome curse of futile toils
Rest is Restoration
   of the perfection of life freshly bloomed
Rest is Return
   from Edenic exile to its fullness of beauty
Rest is Remembrance
   of Seven, an artefact of Mind
   a Mystery and a Measure of Time
Rest is Today
   for as long as its Today
   until the Eighth Day dawns.

There are seven stages of grief
The first being denial
We deny that we are here
In this hell on Earth
We deny that some of our family members have been taken into the hands of death
We deny that we went through what we went through
In hopes that we will forget it ever happened
The second is the pain
The pain comes when it finally hits
Your family is dead
You will never be that same happy kid as you once were
The happy-go-lucky kid you were before the camps
The realization that your body will never work the same way
The next is anger
The frustration you have been holding back
Not at the Nazis or the Germans
You are frustrated at yourself
You are mad at yourself for being in that situation
You do not know why you are mad at yourself
But you refuse to place the blame anywhere else
The next stage is depression
The hole in your heart where your happiness used to lain
The realization that you are now by yourself and there is no one who will understand you anymore
No one will speak the language that us survivors speak
No matter how good of a therapist you are
It is a foreign language only select few speak
There is another stage we went through
The upward turns
The realization that you will be ok
You realize that you do not need your family to be ok
You do not need anyone who survived with you
You only need yourself
And that is all you have
There is another stage
This being particularly the hardest
It is working in an everyday life
With your new setbacks and PTSD
The new you starts to work properly
There is one more stage
It is acceptance
You finally accept what happened
You accept the fact that everything that you went through
Is not fiction
It is real life
You accept the fact that we went through inhumane treatments and tortures
And we accept all of it
We realize and accept that we were almost all killed off
Weather by sickness or ******
We accept we were the lucky ones
And never look back