I know the toothless women
Who crumple on the streets
The rain bleeds through their cardboard,
The cold drips through their feet

I know the dying children
With anaesthetic arms
The angels crowd around them
With time that burns their palms

I've hugged the brainwashed gangsters
With money drenched in blood
I've heard their broken weeping
While digging up the mud

I've seen the starving faces
Of the tired girls at home
The broken, hectic psyches
That eat them to the bone

I know the burning poets
With a desperate thirst for life
The need for finding soulmates
That pierces like a knife

There's weary public servants
Who risk their lives for good
And prove compassion every day
Yet stay misunderstood

Human love is buried
Beneath the plastic weight
Of angry allegations
And a world that feeds off hate

These people may be messy,
But they're beautiful and real
With hidden dreams and secrets
And ability to feel

We have a place to run to
With lights of peach and gold
Where all the weight is lifted
And all our tales are told

We live in total freedom
So safe beneath the moon
And though it seems ambitious
Our dreams will save us soon

Though you've barely had a ramble
are no wayward canine daddy of note
that brief encounter in our brambles
has left the experts fearing a cancerous growth

So we starve you of your pine nuts and bacon rinds
so we can feed you anaesthetic
and betray you to the thief of time
only to make you, I imagine, feel pathetic
And you often so full of life's exasperate scurry

I worry
will the shine stray from your eyes
those hazel pools of so much of
my feeling mature, just for
pertaining to a creature's care

 we all seem in too much of a hurry
to stifle what little spirit
that surrounds us
to wear
down on every minor aspect
of childish delight
in this silent sacrament
of the aging process
and with arguably years
of your fatherhood left
in the very ***** some dry eyed savant
decides it correct we should tamper with

Tomorrow I will snuggle you in favoured, bouncy eiderdowns
that will blanket your unknowing
and treat you as if
you were an eastering child
on cured hams and other saltiness
after you awaken
from those strangest enforcements of sleep
and through our eyes we will trade more secrets to keep

And we will hope, as we only can, that it was for the best
For you, Yorkshire's son, or Sheringham's
And consider with all of your
exhuming breath
That we meddled, stilling over life
To cheat a slightly delayed death.

Cold.
I was waiting
but I’ve changed my mind.
The whole world fell away, left just me/us
and it felt OK.
All the stuff I thought mattered;
age-gap, gossip, housing, education-
when it was just me/us- it didn’t.
(she’s awake)
For a moment we were everything.
It was beautiful.
I love me/us- even with
complications pushing
into my mind,
cramming themselves
around me/us euphoria-
I’m not making an Angel today.
Going home.
(what’s she doing?)
Jelly legs aren’t working,
feel hot and slippery.
She’s holding me
down.
(Sshh- you’re fine, just a bit woozy)
I don’t believe in Angels.
Crap.
(it’s the anaesthetic, makes them cry)

Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.
They talk about it as if depression sweeps them in its arms that they are so used to it.
They talk about it, but never realise that they have mistaken their sadness for depression.
But don’t they know that depression is not sadness? Depression is not crying?

Depression is that shadow that only sticks to you when you are happy and in a bright place, and would refuse to let go of you until you are in the dark, embracing it.

Depression is that hard smack you get across the face when you are laughing with your friends, that leaves you in shock for a few seconds until you realise that no matter how hard you laugh and no matter how many happy tears you have shed, you are still empty. You are still a mess.

Depression is that anaesthetic you get when you are in pain, that leaves you in a ***** tub facing a hateful mirror eying that razor and begging God that you have the strength to feel, only to be able to move a limb and make your delicate skin meet the crude razor. But you still fail. Because you aren’t sad. You aren’t wretched. You are empty. You are numb.

Depression is that exhaustion that is in love with your body and jealous of your anxiety so it always picks a fight with it. When you are spending time with anxiety and trying your best to get your work done but feeling as if it is not good enough so you try and try, depression bursts in and pleads that you come with it. And you do. You go back to bed, wrap your cold blanket around you and trace the cracks in your gloomy ceiling, watching your life flash right in front of you and you can’t do anything about it.

Depression is that smile that is planted on your face when you have written a perfect ****** poem on your skin using your favourite razor, that makes you trace your shaking fingers over it feeling so proud of your poem. Feeling so proud because your blood that is seeping out is applauding you and telling you that you wrote a perfect piece.

Depression is getting into an argument with the one you love the most but once they reach the edge and start saying what is meant to be hurtful words, your only response is silence because you know your feelings are not valid and your words are full of *******. So you keep it in. You never open up and you never let them know how hurtful they could be.

If love is pain and pain is pleasure,
Then these bruises she shall  use as,
your affection measure.

To visualise love,
To feel your feelings,
To sense it as her wounds are healing.

Seeing, hearing,
Following Your  scent,
To know just what it represents.

She’ll take the leap,
relinquish control
As further she delves down your rabbit hole.

Enjoy the journey
but were’s the destination?
Your marks, your love? The correlation?!!

Some want to hurt,
some want to bleed.
To watch the inner anguish freed.

A world, a life,
A religious order?
His canes the relics to to this mental disorder.

See external pain,
is internal anaesthetic,
His marks she believes to be truly stigmatic.

I SIT HERE DRENCHED IN THE
BLOOD OF ONE OF THE NATIVES.
WE CAPTURED THE LAND AND
HIS MIND WITH OUR ALTERED
EDUCATION, IT WORKED LIKE
AN ANAESTHETIC, OR BETTER,
A SEDATIVE. HE PONDERED ON
WHETHER OR NOT HE IS HUMAN
WHILE WE BEGAN PLOUGHING
HIS SOIL. HE AWOKE FROM HIS
DAYDREAM, TO OUR AMAZEMENT,
WE THOUGHT WE HAD HIM FOILED.
HE RALLIED HIS MEN, THEY DID NOT
HESITATE. I WILL GIVE IT TO THEM,
THEY ARE ARMOURED WITH THE BRAVERY
AND THE STRENGTH OF A THOUSAND APES.
BUT IT WAS TOO LATE, WE SLAUGHTERED
THEM FROM A DISTANCE, AND TOOK CONTROL
OF THEIR CHILDREN, WIVES AND MAIDS.
SPEAKING OF CHILDREN, HOW GOES OUR
SWEET DAUGHTER ROSE? I MISS HER
DEARLY AND I LOOK FORWARD TO
EMBRACING HER WITH FATHERLY
LOVE WHEN THIS WAR COMES TO A CLOSE.

UNTIL WE MEET,
__

- t.m

“Here’s your morning PSA,
Laced with saccharine and anaesthetic,
Unfortunately the missiles are on their way,
So leave the sick and try not to panic,
Ignore the hysteria, and those calling your name,
Avert your eyes as the world sets aflame,
We apologise for keeping this from you,
Secret for all of these years,
But please keep in mind, though we’ll aim for your rescue,
Death is the least of your fears
This will be our last transition,
I’m afraid the president must catch his flight,
You may wait to hear from us but until then,
Goodbye, goodluck and goodnight.”

We were the PVC plastic barbie dolls,
Waiting to be burned alive,
Unlucky enough to live,
We woke up to an absence of we,
No Nevada left to test in,
So I’m a model mannequin,
Melt me down,

Tick-Tick-Tick,
The light was white and empty,
Tick-Tick-Tick,
My madness steeped in silence
Tick-Tick-Tickety,
Geiger is telling me to run,
Tickety-Tickety-Tickety,
But it’s no use now,

I threw up on Monday,
Tuesday, I choke back fallout,
Ignore the bubbles when it hits my skin,
On Wednesday, my gums blink bright red,
Thursday I know I am all alone because the wind has ceased to blow,
And Friday I realise I am not,

They came with rubber masks,
Silicone,
Respirators and coils of filters,
We both had ******* eyes,
But neither of us saw people reflected in them,
I counted three,
Alpha, Beta, Gamma,
One smiles by exhaling clean air,
Reaches out a hand across the barren wasteland,
Fingers tipped with lead and tells me:
“There’s a prize for the last standing.”

I am not ionised,
So I bruise every time they touch me,
These guides through plagues of acid rain,
The graveyard of monuments stripped bare by a world of rot,
My hair falls out as I breathe dead air,
I don’t remember what PSA stands for,
I don’t remember my name,
I bleed sand and the echo of a failed civilisation,
But with heavy breathing and a muffled voice,
Gas masks filtering what used to keep me alive,
I wonder if there is anything behind those masks at all,
I know there is nothing behind mine,
None of us are human anymore,
And we haven’t been for quite some time,

Together, we watch the sky rain black ash.

Clickety clack, clickety clack go the perfect white plastic teeth as they clip together
Reality bites like a pair of comedy dentures sprung from the pocket of a sad faced clown
Look again; are they plastic? Or are they waterloo teeth plucked from the warm corpse of a cold friend
Either way they are far too close to my face for this to be funny.
For redemption he squeezes his droopy flower between finger and thumb
But to no avail.....The comedy squirt is missing; it is as dry as the tears on his powder white cheek
Squeak, squeak, squeak goes the wheel on his unicycle as he painfully pedals away
But it is not he that failed you....No it is those that stole the part of you that used to be easily pleased
Like thieves in the night, feasting on your happiness and enjoying the thought of wonderful you falling from your erroneously perceived perch
Well let them take their pound of flesh, if they can rejoice in my pain it will only erode them from the inside out
I renounce such bitterness because before long I will find me again, I will be stronger and better
I will take flight and alight a pedestal far higher than the one they imagined I thought I was on


“Just words!” screams that child in my soul...Actions are stifled like the image of a five year old you with a cloth clasped to the face; breathing on the anaesthetic evil of life.
You want to help but you can only see him through the one way glass of time, what is done is done and can only be undone through reliving this terror and fixing the damage
His struggle is short lived and the monsters descend, dragging him by a foot naked and bruised, head banging the contours of this corridor of depravity
He cannot hear your screams but his fill your ears like the blood of a million paper cuts, not one measured but together a pain like no other
Where was his saviour? Or was he always considered as a low risk category a misconception of strength and need
Was his ***, the white of his skin, the bread on his table, the money in his mothers pocket and the education he received render him ineligible for salvation
In short...“Yes”...he was expected to save himself and learn to save others...Those less fortunate.
Little do they know in some ways, once you’ve scratched the surface, they were far luckier
Their vices were less harmful than his own devices, as a little knowledge is dangerous
With great power comes great responsibility but some can be responsible for others without learning to take care of themselves.

pain loves the present tense
it loves gravity so that the clouds
are turned into geological strata
sometimes I use my hands like an anaesthetic
between right and wrong the pain dillema:
to feel or not to feel (the unknown)
we discover clever remedies or illusions
quiet cannery in the storehouse of flesh

it comes in circles mixtures all kind of names
it has rythm texture electric blackness
each unshed tear an orb of contraction
compulsive excavation of the void inside
sometimes I feel I have canyons of salt in my heart
on the edges of safety so much to learn about terror

this pain is a blind Robinson on Hope island
(with his bare hands he sets pyres in his heart)
was it pain that invented this language, these holy wars?
love you, hate you, nonsense, can't stand it anymore
I know my father lied to me that he doesn't feel pain

bodies in pain can't dream the water slide of life
that might take us further away into the night of day
time to say thank you, say farewell,
love everything that simply is
it is time to

Mine became a life of chaos
Lived on the edge of a knife
Balanced for eternity
Caught between death and life

In the end the fear of living
Burned me to the very core
Without my anaesthetic
I knew I could take no more

There was no fight left in me
I had no heart that I could give
I had no way of surviving
It cost me too much to live

Into a well of silence
I breathed a desperate prayer
Uncertain of an answer
Or who might be out there

As I listened in confusion
The solution came to me
Live a life of honesty
The truth could set me free

So I stepped in the future
I discovered my true worth
And after the death of winter
Came spring my season of rebirth

What an intriguing opportunity a trip to Rose Cottage,
Sure sounds magical to me,
It's not a woodland haven or a diminutive house by the shore,
Came out from anaesthetist's trip,
I drifted, in and out,
A crazy dream it seemed,
Woke in rose pink room,
Thought I hadn't made it through,
For in the land of work,
A flip side of such a romantic image seen,
Rose Cottage, delightful though it sounds is life's penultimate stop called mortuary,
Before undertaking on one final trip,
Final destination, last stop guaranteed!

I wrote this as I left work after work and heard a porter discussing coming to take a patient to 'Rose Cottage'......It made me think....Hence writing this....and the anaesthetic bit is true...Freaked me out at the time!! Livvi **
By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
So through the anaesthetic shows my life;
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke
And sicken at, it is so foully sweet.
Faces look strange from space--and disappear.
Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear--
And hush as sudden.  Then my senses fleet:
All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain
That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly
Time and the place glimpse on to me again;
And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty,
I wake--relapsing--somewhat faint and fain,
To an immense, complacent dreamery.