–
How many times can one heart burst?
How many stars are in the sky?
How many grains of sand on earth?
How many tears can one heart cry?
Maybe there’s a number. Maybe it’s plenty,
But what happens when that person is empty?
Do they cry endless tears? Do they even cry any?
For sometimes no tears at all, is, far, far worse than many.
–
Amidst the chaos of our lives
Lies a stillness in which we break.
A moment beyond repair,
Of silence, pain, and despair.
Enfolded in loneliness,
We suffer.
At times, with sorrow so great,
Even our right to tears is taken.
Othertimes, with such an ache,
We hope not to awaken.
–
Bright crimson ribbons,
See how they run,
Pretty red representations
Of what I have done.
Twisting like streamers,
Cheering me on.
It’s my personal parade..
Made with a scalpel and a #26 blade.
–
Oh, my friend, I’ve broken it,
And I can’t seem to find,
Strength inside these shadows
Where nothing ever shines.
And what it is I’ve broken?
My life, my soul, my mind.
So, my friend, forgive me,
For not holding on,
There’s nothing left to cling to,
Or even stand upon,
When bad has outweighed good
For so very, very long.
And, my friend I’m sorry if
I can’t catch you if you fall.
It’s not that I won’t be there
To help you if you call,
It’s because I just won’t be
Anything at all.
–
Dear Alice, I’m ‘fine’,
Hope this finds you in kind.
I’ve been writing some time
To you now, and I find you
Strange but the best friend of mine,
At least here in my mind.
Here inside of my mind, at least most the time.
Dear Alice, how are you?
If I am to stay true,
Then I have to confess
That I’m lonely and blue,
I don’t know what to do, but I couldn’t care less,
When the sky..The sky I swore would stay blue,
Is gangrenous in hue.
Dear Alice, I’m dying,
Lost and I’m crying,
No amount of applying
Myself
Really matters
Anymore.
And I know that we swore..
Dear Alice, I love you,
But I hate your guts too.
Everybody assumes
I suture up in my room.
With some string and old glue,
But I’m confessing to you,
There’s not much left I can do.
Dear Alice, I forgot,
To tell you just what
You really want me to not.
I sliced completely through our promise knot,
Along with my flesh, veins and a lot
That when I cut it apart,
All those stitches and knots,
Can’t put Humpty back up on top.
Dear Alice, don’t you
Feel the very same too?
It’s not just things I go through,
But all the things , all the things, all the things I’ll not do.
So I’m cold. On the floor bleeding out
In so many different ways,
And every wound is deeply laid
By every single wasted day,
The thoughtless things that people say.
And I don’t want to stay, no, don’t want to stay.
Not like this, not here anyway.
Hope you’ll forgive me some day.
My Dearest.
Love, Alice.
–
My mind’s become my enemy,
Playing all these tricks on me.
Is it now, before or after?
Each waking day I’m walking through
Makes each nightmare
Seem softer.
Mixed up, used and self-abused,
My screaming sounds
Like laughter.
Am I collapsing in, or
Falling apart?
Wherefore, my happy-after?
–
–
If pressing blades against my skin,
Until they cut right through,
Pushing them still deeper in,
Is how to talk to you..
Start counting cuts.
Try to see what they might say.
You think I don’t have the guts,
To cut myself away.
But listen hard, no, harder, because before too long..
I’ll be gone.
–
Lately I’m not doing so well,
Thought you should know.
My mind’s half heaven, half hell,
But there’s no difference I can tell.
I’m standing still as life speeds by,
Thought you should know.
I’m lost in the wood, no bearing.
Bleeding out in the cold, uncaring.
It hurts to be alive,
Thought you should know.
It’s overloaded all my senses,
And I’m left without defences.
Lately I’m not doing so well,
Thought you should know.
In case I go.
–
I’ve mistaken me for someone else,
Someone I thought was more myself.
But as always, it seems that I was wrong.
I’ve been nothing like myself all along.
–
I can smile at a party.
After the turn out, I
Turn off my burnt out
Holographic face.
Who
I can greet you on the street
And you won’t even ask
About the chosen mask
I look at you through.
Am
I can attend a family event,
I’m still quite able
To sit at a table,
Pretending to be me.
I
See the palette spread before me,
Choose a colour, it adorns me.
Pick the right one, I can be
Anyone I want to be.
?
If I can be anybody, oh so easily,
No difference that any one, not even I can see,
One face or another, all so equally..
Which one is really me?
–
When your mind is broken
And the world is wreckage
Inside you,
They tell you to say:
That you’re not ok,
No, you’re not OK.
So I said it, I wrote it,
Used my blood to draw,
And what the fuck for?
Nobody listened, nobody cared,
Nobody got what I shared and I shared.
I guess that was lucky,
Because although I had tried
To express how I wish how I really had died,
Express how I hated myself and my life,
How my pain got less with each cut of a knife,
It turns out I was actually, really, OK,
Compared to how fucked I am now anyway.
–
Vicodin? Percocet?
Still not sure which to get.
If only oblivion tasted more
Like raspberry and chocolate.
Why are these things so hard to choose?
Although nothing really matters when
There’s nothing left to lose.
Vodka? Tequila? Fifty year-old Scotch?
My favourite song that hurts just right,
Put on ‘The Crow’ to watch.
Video diary? Hand written letter?
Email or text?
It doesn’t matter, it will won’t change
What will happen next.
–
Unsure, I feel unsafe.
Former pillars and paragons of my life
Now indifferent to my demise,
Pretend to care just enough
To avoid aspersions and lies,
Potential implications of associated guilt.
The small signature attached to the bottom
Is cutting and carelessly impersonal.
A full stop to the note :
‘If you do it, don’t make a mess inside.
I’m the one who has to clean it up.’
Suicide reduced to an inconvenience.
How fitting.
–
Scared and cold and dripping red,
A knife cut to the bone,
Something echoes in my head,
‘..don’t want to die alone..’
A gentle wind begins to stir
My Angel whispers low,
“Silly girl, you were always were,
You simply didn’t know.”
Her final words hang in the air
“Just like a glass that shatters,
You’ll always be beyond repair
In every way that matters. “
–
The cold air stings
Like a slap without sound.
Head thrown back,
I watch storm-clouds gather ’round.
Freezing wind whips over me,
I feel it through my shirt,
The pain it brings is welcoming,
No wounds, but still the hurt.
And I hear the rush
Of the breeze,
And the roar
Of the free-
Way beneath me.
Close my eyes, and I know
I could do it.
Just another one,
I could become
A statistic.
I could become the delay
The commuters all hate,
Cos I ruined their day..
With my eyes closed.
–
Two days up,
Two weeks down.
Mixed episode, Mixed episode, lost count.
Three hours up, two down, two up,
Mixed episode again..
Two hours up, two days down..
Etc, etc, etc.
Rapid cycling is not given to record keeping.
Half a day up, 3 weeks down, 4 days up…
Blur. Blur. Blurrrrrrr.
Insanity, Insanity, Insane.
Smile Alice, we’re just getting started.
–
I smile and pretend like I’m ok,
And everyone I know
Views me that way.
But my masks are made from stone and lead,
And I carry them all
Inside of my head.
I know there’s something wrong with me,
But I don’t know what, and
No one can see
The cuts that run across my skin,
Where my soul seeps out,
And the world creeps in.
I don’t know about this thing called life,
Seems like it’s just a metaphor
For suffering and strife.
I’ve tried to see the beauty others see,
But I’m really not so sure
This world is for me.
–
I’m not often given to crying,
I bear my grief stillborn inside.
In truth though, I’d be lying,
To lay claim to emotionless pride.
The genesis of these unauthorised tears
Is to look back over my life,
Regretting all of the wasted years
Spent fighting fictional chemical fears.
Not the existence I once had planned,
Trapped the entire time,
In a fake and broken Wonderland
Within my troubled mind.
–
I died a little more today,
A smile on my face.
Nothing seeming out of place,
Secretly not ok.
Part of my insides withered away,
While grinning all the time.
Just pretending that I’m fine,
Secretly not ok.
No I can’t come out to play,
I need a place to hide,
Somewhere I can die inside,
Secretly not ok.
Underneath My Skin 