Silence

A single thread of brown,
Weaving in and out of my lips,
Keeping me locked away from sound,
Tightening me in its grips,

Stitching up my mouth so I,
Am not able to speak anymore,
Yet I can still dance the night away,
Out on this blood-soaked dance floor,

Information plugged into me,
As though I am an empty socket,
Download the information given,
Kept secret as though in a locket,

Wrists bound with duct tape,
Can't move, can't speak, can't breathe,
Every motion poised to perfection,
While deep inside I seethe,

Watched by cameras all around,
I know you're watching me,
Waiting for the moment to come,
Where I am not what I appear to be,

But that moment will never come you see,
For I am the ragdoll held together well,
By stitching that winds around me,
So bitch, you can go to hell

Alice in Wonderland (The Last Hurrah)

Liquid stupefaction emanates from large, empty irises. They are littered with red spiderwebs that lace through the snowy white globes that are far away and sunken deep into hollow sockets that are fringed with thick, black lashes. The gaze bleeds through the atmosphere while a million miles away, sitting next to her, the crowd of people smears against her consciousness like lipstick on a wineglass. Somewhere in the background the ill noise of the television slices through to her. Bold yet empty laughs encased by mindless chatter and upbeat scores of music.

The trance that has kept her captive, like a madman in a straight jacket for hours on end has temporarily been broken, and beneath the black velvet night she remembers where she is and why she is there.

Another crack house, another pipe and rock, another wasted night in Alice's Wonderland...

Turning in slow motion, her glassy eyes meet the canary diamond smile of the Cheshire cat. His white-powdered nose matched the jagged-nailed finger that had been dipped daintily into the cocaine that was then run across his gums.

To the immediate left of her tiny thigh, caressed softly by varicose veins, lay the Mad Hatter who had gone entirely mad years ago from the vast array of glittering bottles of Vodka he had consumed. The thick syrupy liquid that sloshed around in the half empty bottle in his hand, matched perfectly, the clear dreamy liquid in the tiny little syringe that protruded from his arm.

Somewhere in another room the March Hare was tripping and drinking whiskey...

Moving slowly with the thick, grey smoke clouds that hung in the air, she made her way to the balcony to sit for a breath of fresh air. The cold, bashing her senses at first, grew tolerable after a moment. Tiny tendrils of white breath escaped willfully from her red-stained lips that parted ever so slightly. No one would ever know that just behind the doors of the motel room from which she had just emerged, would be creatures of the dark, of the violent, of the addicted - having just one more night of empty fun.

Years ago, many long years ago, she had been a queen in this world she now hated. They had all been such different people. Not so tainted, so hard, so brash....so miserable. They had been young and beautiful and summer burst through the spring in hot, thick, sticky breaths. Long days and even longer nights spent driving across the sizzling hot blacktop that ran through every town within 100 miles. The bottles of cheap beer, the weed, the laying on cars at 1am talking about life, about having a life at all...it was just dust now. Dust that blew away with the first exhale of a crack rock.

Of course it hadn't always been crack - It all started with the cocaine. The beautiful, white powder that had caused her eyes to grow wide with wonder. Snorting the first line was like electrifying one's blood. The jolt of lightning that seared like a hot skillet through her mind, that had kept her up for days - was the beginning of the love affair gone wrong. The economy had gone bad, therefore the cocaine sold less and less. When the money ran out, the cocaine ran out. Leaving her with a hungry wolf that lived in her brain and beneath her veins. Something had to stop the madness...so there was crack. $20 a rock was better than $50 a gram. She could make a rock last hours and hours but after time she realized, that first rock had ended up lasting years and years. She had slipped beneath the surface of society one night and never come up for another breath since then.

They had all been sober for the first time in 5 minute, 10 years, 15 lifetimes - not too long ago. Sitting around before heading back out to buy more narcotics and alcohol they spoke of how life had become such an ugly thing, about how they had become such ugly things. How their souls had become hard and gummy like tar that hadn't quite set up yet. They all mused at how the cocaine and Brandy days had given way to this ugly crack, heroine, acid, vodka nightmare that drug them across life in such an ugly way. What had they become....?

They had all agreed to go to rehab when the sun came up, this last night being their big hurrah. However, as she stared through the grimy, yellowed window of the hotel room, she saw what was left of them and herself. On the other side of the reflection laid her friends, withered and worn, skin ragged and cratered from too many drugs, and yellowed from the jaundice of a bad liver. The Mad Hatter would never regain his sanity, Cheshire cat would never regain his smile, and the March Hare wouldn't live long enough to see next March even if he tried...there was no escape.

But in the reflection of the mirrored glass, she saw herself, too. Dry, brittle hair that hung limp and twisted over her face. Teeth gone from too much meth when the crack wasn't available. Her eyebrows were burned almost entirely off from the crack pipe & her skin was ashen and grey from never sleeping and smoking too much. She once was beautiful. She once had a glow about her. Was told she would go far in life. Was told she would marry and have children. Oh and she had children from selling herself to too many people. But CPS had taken them away years ago and she didn't even know where they went.

The last breath she exhaled from her crack pipe twisted from her like the last bits of her soul trying to escape from the shell that abused it so. So she decided to set it free once and for all. In the other room she bummed the Mad Hatter's syringe out of his arm. He likely wouldn't need it since he had passed out with it in his skin, still. It stuck out like an ugly extension of himself. Twisted and ugly and not where it belonged. But then, did any of them belong here? No. They never had. They belonged in homes with their families that they never had bothered to have.

She emptied the needle and went into the bedroom to lay down. The room was black and silent, shadows dancing on the ceiling and walls from the night life out beyond the window. The needle glimmered so beautifully in the dark. "Just a little shot of air," she thought to herself while spurting out the rest of the heroine and pulling on the needle's handle. When it was halfway filled with oxygen, she rammed it into her Antecubital vein and sat for a moment. She never knew how her life ended up like this. How everything had become so grimy and filthy. How she had become so jagged inside...& she then pushed the air into her veins.

Velvet Whispers

Whispers - silent as the muffled rustling of leaves in the shadowy trees at night,

Wake me up to tell me something, barely audible,

Dr. Mayrose, can't you fix this? Can't your holy presence scare the demons of my darkness away?

You sly devil, you,

Keeping my brain wrapped up tight in this chemical lobotomy-like straightjacket called Thorazine,

That dispels all sense of my humanity and reasoning but does nothing to dispel the blackness that forever encases my normalcy,

Poisoning it to death, slowly - I am losing myself again,

Have you ever been to the market, voices surround you, drown your thoughts?

Gripping your attention the way a black patent leather strap grips your ankles in a pair of lovely stilettos,

My mind is like a market place,

Forever buzzing and swirling into everything and nothing at all, just noise and bustling,

It never stops, it never sleeps,

Always watching and waiting for that supreme moment whilst lying supine in bed at night,

Eyes flittering open and closed, curtains drawn back to reveal the icy moon,

Waiting - for that moment to whisper the magical words into my ear,

"One perfectly placed slice to kill the pain...." and I am off again,

Off to make that perfectly placed slice that cures all of my ills temporarily,

My addiction within myself, my addition to myself,

Beautiful scars upon soft skin decorate me like homemade tattoos,

Tiny mouths that have drooled pain upon my fleshy arms and legs,

Twisted and jagged like my internal hurt,

& like every other addict I spew words of hope and light,

Practically vomiting up the 12-steps of self-recovery to anyone who will listen,

I swear to never let the silver of a razorblade touch my creamy body again,

Yet when the burn begins I rush back to my crack pipe and suck it for all it's worth,

Then lie awake in that same bed,

Satisfied, sated, saturated...

Knowing this miserable affliction will carry me to my grave...

Voices

Can't you hear the voices?

Is it really only me?

Don't you hear the whispers?

Don't you hear the screams?

"Cut yourself," they tell me,

"Bleed so you can be free,"

"Split the veins beneath the epidermis,"

"Join us in eternity,"

They call me from the great beyond,

Where I know that I should reside,

I shouldn't have lasted in this life this long,

By now I should have died,

I should have taken the final jump,

From a tower high above,

I should have slit my wrists with blades,

In a hot, water-filled bathtub,

The bottles of death that sit upon my desk,

Should have been emptied down my throat,

The rope that lays in the garage, you see,

Should have already made me choke,

So these voices call me to them,

Scream and wake me up at night,

To wake from slumber and overdose,

So I can be gone by morning's light,

But my Dr. tells me otherwise,

Tells me the med's will make me alright,

But I know better, by now, you know,

I know they only make me lose sight,

Of the truth I know to be reality,

The truth that keeps me bound,

By my wrists and by my ankles,

I shouldn't be around,

I should be gone away with them,

Into the realm, whatever comes next,

I know they're slowly winning,

I know that I am hexed,

So one more pill to stop the screams,

One more cut to stick the blame,

Upon my shoulders where it belongs,

Hoping someday I'll be sane

Writhing

Through the blue light brilliance of a perfect morning,

Sterling silver splits the cerulean dome of the heavens apart,

Revealing a red-eyed sky that cinges and sears through my sense of security,

White hot and burning down my beautiful handmade world that is held together delicately,

By a false sense of hope and recovery,

90 days of fresh white blood cells pasting together to form a beautiful scar,

That screams at me memories of the euphoria of a razor blade's love,

Remembrance of that last syrupy, thick, intoxicating experience of severing all ties with sanity and reality,

And severing the flesh stretched over the expanse of my bones,

It tides me over for 90 days longer,

Until the burning sensation in my veins begins to simmer and creep up my soul,

Wrapping up my body and digging its talons into my face,

Locking its fingers behind my eyes and pulling my very will towards its own,

I writhe, twisted and demented, in pain upon the sparkling marble floors below me,

Screams roar upwards, from deep within my belly,

Feverishly howling like a rabid wolf for relief from this disease of mine,

That eats my self-esteem, my light, like a cancerous tumor that has grown out of my ability to control,

And as if posessed by some demonic force from the fiery pits of hell,

I place the blade to my wrist ritualistically in a calmed trance,

Press and drag, press and drag, press and drag,

Being an addict is so much fun....

Addiction

The needle-sharp pinprick of pain pushes its way into my brain,

Veins burning at the sensation of the sound of voices that berate me into submission,

A struggle, the rape of my innermost silent place where I hide from you,

Trying to remain locked away in my safe world where you dare not tread until it's time,

Time to teach me another lesson in the ways of addiction

You grip my ankles with such force that I am stuck in place,

As though I have been captured by quicksand in the dark,

Tears burning hot paths down my face and throat as I realize once again that you've come,

Come to bury your poison beneath my ivory flesh,

That burns so hot from the venom that you've injected into my body that I fear I will melt away,

Bubbling down into a tiny pool of humanity that turns sticky with ugliness,

Slow and slower still, over a period of days your disease creeps like a thief in the night,

From my ankles to my heart that explodes in a vast array of fiery hues of red and black,

Heart pounding from the withdrawl-like symptoms that make me sick and feverish,

I find myself wretching into the porcelain goddess, sweating and smelling of vomit,

Resisting to the death, your will that threatens to consume my own,

And more days pass slow and painful, like a cancer patient awaiting their final breath,

Until your infection reaches my brain where you take over my will and wants,

Placing the razor to my veins, I give in just one more time to you,

While you lay, so callously, rotting beneath the surface of my skin