Vile photos and sounds play on 'palace' walls;
mud in her fingernails form shapes of the night's sticky, grubby events-
a twisted, ****** Rorscharch-esque blot.
Knee-deep in grit and grime, soot on her feet,
she sludges on, puking night after night on assorted side-walks
with soaked, soily calves.

'Just pretty pictures' painted on a wall
show her a true reflection of her mind;
she seeks familiarity, hides/searches in them for herself.
In distorted jumbles, she looks for her kind.

The splayed stuff stutter and splutter
and stop and grind.

Insomnia and intoxication,
a victim of lack of inspiration-
life falls into a slow degradation.

Nothingness swallows all once more.
She thrusts against the shoddy shut doors
while the slimy sticky dross glues her shoes to gory floors.

-she trails off with a wince
at the hat man's scoff.

Foul filth fills the squalid air; and
sullied and smoky, sighing, she (s)tumbles
halfway to sleep.

A dizzy flake of snow falls,
perfectly balanced, upon
one outstretched finger's squat end.
It clings tight for a second-
a sticky, icy second
where I hold with fragile care
the weak sliver, and my breath.
Yet, the next moment, only
water my digit holds up.
It melts away instantly
with the dry warmth I supply,
and I find that, always, all
the delicate, pretty ones
with exquisite tender grace
burn out ever the fastest, first.
So snowdrop kisses, on the
frosty, red nip of my nose
now only make me shiver.
It's all just skin and ice,
and more ice and skin.
Peels of snow and chips of freeze
make chilled my blood and glazed eyes.

I'm only lukewarm, marginally mediocre.
Not quite laid-back enough to be considered cool
Nor adequately exciting for red hot.
Just going by, average, as a rule.
I'm much too old to be reckless and immature,
Yet not as old as wisdom and a good war story.
Not so rich to live out luxurious abandon
but far too rich to be tragically sorry.
I'm unremarkable, uneventful, uninteresting,
Uncool and unattractive, unfit and unaware.
I assume I'm just not- I'm everything 'un' already,
A stale glass of water, gone oddly warm in stagnant air
I am lukewarm, at best.
Perhaps some day I'll be blast frozen
Or I had once been boiled hot.
For now though, there are no cubes of ice
That I can swallow and be more than not.
I am the everyday masses, lost in the throng,
The not-particularly-bright, non-slacker, no-name brands
That believe they're not good enough- or quite the sharpest prong.
We, the herd lost in the middle bench lands-
We're wild and we're sober,
Frightened and unafraid.
We're nothing like you, but we're just the same.
But we, the ones who spend our lives
In the middle bench,
                                                          ­ will be alright.
           We can persevere, *we can.

Often people,
mesmerised by
the depth of others,
comment that they had
no idea they had so many layers,
that such profundity existed. I have myself
been likened to a coconut with a hard shell,
with undiscovered realms within. Hah.
I think perhaps though, that I
am more of an onion.
You can peel all
that you
want
but
-I'm just the same inside.
Maybe I could even
make you cry.