Sounds are magnified.
Words slip through my brain.
I touch my feelings probingly... tenderly
like a tooth freshly missing.

The pain is held at bay for now
though I know that all too soon
humming lamps and creaking boards
will give way to sorrow and anger and fear

My attention drifts away and back
on the tide of consciousness.
Losing contact with a painful reality
and returning... curious... to see if it remains.

The dark within me swirls
and dredges up old memories
to take me away from the losses of now
and into the dealt-with abandonment.

Trash lies heaping about me
in bundles and piles and disarray.
Useless artifacts of useless days
doing useless things, to forget...

The clock ticks and words from songs
dance through my head
I look for some anchor, some handhold,
someplace to tie my sanity down

Ramblings put in permanent form
fill the ticks of the clock and
the light of the humming lamp
and mar the pages before me

I light the fire and set heat
to burn away the uncertainty
of decision based on too few facts
and I float on the heavy scent.

Reality - always a short distance away
becomes hazier and more distant yet
like ashes in the mouth of god.
Eternal soot rains down in my soul.

The mirror only helps to see behind you
and the eyes are the mirror of the soul.
Ninety percent of all suicides are caused
by looking back into your own eyes.

Senseless chaos leads to emotional withdrawal.
So does purposeful order, if taken too seriously.
What, then, does it matter how we reach
so coveted a state as denial?

In the end what is there,
in this cumbersome world,
that is worth holding on to?
Yet, still we struggle to hold on...

Why can't I turn off my head
and lose myself in sweet oblivion?
Even those dreams that come
give fair relief from reality gone bad.

Time passes, but slowly,
so very slowly does it creep up
behind us and plant its heavy
boot in our nethermost juncture.

Observations made in this mischievious vacuum
of intellect and humours, ill or well,
cannot lead me to the peace
that I pray waits on the other side.

Light leads us from darkness,
but darkness shelters us from the
harsh light of truth when we
cannot stand the perceptions it offers us.

Lingering and malingering are the same
when describing thoughts, and memories,
and all things immaterial, and all
things that feed (or feed from) the soul.

The soft light of a meditation candle,
a focus, and the scent of a familiar incense
cannot make the taste and smell of
corrupted memory or lost devotion leave me.

The numbness in my joints
gives me pause... reminding me
that physical reality does not ever
really leave us to grieve.

I have too often wondered how the
great bards and poets of history
managed to turn out such wit and wisdom -
They were depressed and oppressed into it!

In the minimal input of this place
I find that running from the trancw
and the revelations that it brings
is my first and most desperate priority.

The pages fill quicker and quicker
the ink darkens the page and overflows
the darkness of the mind whence it flows.
Still I fear and grieve and hate and...

The intensity has, at last, begun to die down
ad soon the worries of the day will
take their toll and I will slip into
a better world of my own making.

Do not allow the words of others to succor you
into desperate belief... for they lie.
Do not allow the fulfilled and satisfied emotions
to lift you too high... for you shall fall.

I am so tired now that perhaps
I should lie down and take the weary
thoughts out of my head until they -
and I - are no more.