Once upon a childhood scream,

Where darkness blurs with reality.

The beginning felt like only a bad dream,

My heart is cracked and dirty,

As I fall with broken wings.

The voices in my head attack,

Slowly taking over me.

I shut my eyes wide open,

Hoping to not see a thing!

Trapped inside the shade,

I lay in wait,

Haunted by what tomorrow may bring?

As anxiety and depression creep,

Through my veins I slowly sink,

Into the deep,

Bound by the ropes and chains,

That keep me under lock and key,

An echo of an eternal charade,

In the struggle to stay alive,

They watch as I continue to fade,

Through all the twists of fate,

That turn into this endless maze,

I feel the pressure of every past mistake,

And,

I know there’s no future to which I can escape,

I forget myself in the mirror’s face,

A masquerade of a ghostly charade,

Invisible to all,

Like a fly on the wall,

Their web a siren’s call,

Is this a trick or a treat engulfed?

Cloaked in adulation,

That gets stuck in the throat,

I choke!

On self imposed strangulations,

A plague within me that opens up,

Deep below the heavens,

Where the crows keep crowing,

And,

The ravens are always raving,

Betrayed by the tabulation,

Of dinoflagellates preying,

Are only self-reflected faces,

Consumed by the red tides raising,

Lying and advising are but waves,

Disguised in a plain sight hiding,

A cry stifled in a dark sea,

Full of unshed tears,

I’m baptized by the waters that be,

Floating oh so effortlessly,

In the wreckage a childhood scream,

I slip away quietly,

In the violence of the stream of,

The thoughts and things that are bleeding,

Into secrets torn between the pieces,

Of the death of me is,

The fall of the beasts and,

The rise of the machine,

That festers in the memories that,

Lurk just beneath the surface,

With the hopes of a promise,

That claws through the darkness,

A fleeting plea of desperation,

That wades through the marshes,

Clinging fast to the walls,

In this lifeless carcass,

Drowning in the little white lies,

That come across seemingly harmless,

They slice through the truth,

Leaving a trail of broken bottles and,

Bloody footprints!

A symmetrical difference,

Wrapped in countless riddles,

That dance just beneath the surface,

Lost amongst the ripples,

Of life and death,

Caught on the edges of a whisper,

That escape the lips of Charon,

Carried by the wings of a whistle,

A hymnal dagger dipped in poison,

Keeps us adrift on the winds,

Across the river,

Leaving us to shiver,

Like the cold on a midnight December,

Or the warmth of love that’s found,

In interlaced fingers??

—TerrySalmon—