The numbness is taking over again
I don't like the way it "feels"
But in between the desolate expanse
There is only solitary bouts of intense torment
Burning like a supernova
Only to be abruptly replaced by the numbness once more

Do you know.
What torment means.
Is it the sad song.
That darkness sings.

A mournful tune.
To witch the words are long gone.
A shallow feeling.
A depressing song.

Is it empty.
Like a black hole.
Like a deep dark trench.
That will never be full.

Is it pain.
Like a rupturing heart.
Or a poor vein.
Popped with a sharp dart.

A tightening in your chest.
Like your heart had stopped.
Does torment feel.
Like being dropped.

Can you see torment.
In the eyes of man.
Slowly burning.
Like food in a pan.

Is it blood running.
Running from your neck.
When from your dead body.
The bird does peck.

What does torment.
Mean to you.
You'll never know my meaning.
Until you've seen what I've been through.

I've spent too much of my life
hiding behind a shabby, wooden fence,
dodging greetings and words of admiration
out of fear
and a longing for a comfort that exists
exclusively in my imagination.

I see no use
in apologizing for my urgency.
please understand, my dear,
if it weren't for you
the torment in my chest
would have settled deeply
within the threads of my mattress.

When the burdens of the world have all come crashing down,
when there's no one left to hold no comfort to be found;
when daylight seems a blur and the only peace is dark,
I'll leave you to your metaphors and pierce my breaking heart

I wash the world from my body.  Thick in its desires, its wants and needs.  Heavy with grief and suffering.  I try to purge myself of the violence and greed and the fascination with death and dying.  

I shed clothes as a knight shedding his armor in hopes that the light will find a way to cleanse my soul.

I lie exposed for all to see.  No barriers, no cover-up, just me.  But you turn away.  Do I disgust you?  My head hangs low.  The water pouring down my back.  Should I wash away too?  Would you know I was gone?

My sins are cleansed but the water continues to pour.  There is no friend, there is no love, there is no god.  I am man, incomplete.

As I wash away, I see you coming.  Will you rescue me?  Or am I already lost?  A trickle, a tear, a drop of water in the shower.

I didn't have a lot of choices growing up.
Not unless you count the way I wanted him.  

Painful or excruciating.

I didn't have much power either.  
No amount of prayers, wishing, hoping, begging would change his mind.  

Not to say that I didn't try though.

I have a difficult time conveying just how strong my memories and flashbacks are.  I appear calm and collected to the passerby.  I have to.  But peer into my soul and you will see the claw marks of my pain. Scraping their way down into a collective pool of boundless grief and torment log jammed by the planks of fear and shame.

I long to turn myself inside out and bare my rotting scars.  To have someone besides myself witness what bubbles to the surface just long enough to be squelched again.  Power and a choice.  That is what I beg to find within those murky waters.

A choice to change.  
A choice to pull the planks and let the stagnant flow.

The power to persevere.  
The power to put them in their rightful place.  
Forever.

When the burdens of the world have all come crashing down,
when there's no one left to hold no comfort to be found;
when daylight seems a blur and the only peace is dark,
I'll leave you to your metaphors and pierce my breaking heart