I have these voices in my brain
And I created them
And I hate them,
But I ask them to stay
'Cause I have this fixation
On death,
This fixation
On change,
This fixation
On three years I grew out of pain
This fixation
On sleep
This fixation on you and on me,
But who could I be?
I spent three years writing poems
About a fixation on the past,
And she told me it was worth it,
Because she told me it would last
But darling,
I will hold my tongue
As I hold you tight,
'Cause forgetting what you think
Love means
Is my sleeping pill every night
I remember when you woke up
And screamed
“Maybe our love is just laced with
LSD, because darling,
I’m high on life
And you’re just high on me.”
And as I tried my best to
Read between the lines,
Your lips shape words
I try to interpret as lies,
Only to see the
Devil behind
Deep inside the details
As Lucifer found his way back
Into retail,
My dear,
He sold us a product we
Didn’t want to buy
But we weren’t trying
To be original,
We just trying to survive
The voices in my brain
Telling me it’s all in my head
I will sleep with one eye open
But I won’t sleep until I’m dead
'Cause a fair assessment
Of a existence is
An inconsistent
Realist vision of
Selfish antics
Reduced to
Survival of the fittest
Defined by our ability
To avoid those caring any sickness
And these whispers in my head
Intensify to raspy screams asking
When my skull will explode
So they can breathe
They know that
No one has a voice
When no one is listening
And the violent riot
Of staying silent or quiet
Is torturous to those
Who need to hear something
And that violence has
Its own sort of beauty
And you are my beauty
And you are my violent smile
And you are my violent prayer
And you’re not my oxygen
But I breathe your air
‘Cause these voices in my brain
Remind me of past mistakes,
The beauty I found
Of being able to say,
“Look what I went through,
I survived.”
But is survival living
Or is survival just a placeholder
For a vacant mind
To cut off the threat
To coincide with the soil
While their blood boils?
‘Cause my biggest fear
Was never facing death
Or even facing what happens after
My biggest fear was never facing
Anything like that
My biggest fear was
Waking up in that coffin
With all these voices chanting
A chorus of remorse,
A forced abort
From the course I had chosen
And now I’m laying here
Frozen with fear
Staring up at a
Splintering slab of wood
Paid for with my life savings
Buried beneath the earth
Tath grew the weeds that poisoned
My families feet
What if I woke up
And walked back home
And it was like
Nothing had happened?
“We left your room the
Way you left it,
We just scrubbed the blood stains
Out of the carpet,
We just rubbed the mud remains
Out your pockets,
We just dubbed the tough claims
Out of your sonnets
We just evacuated your room
And hoped you would too
But your spirit haunted it too long
So we boarded it up moved along
And watched it become a guest room
A place for the non-permanent
Inhabitants to exist in this home
We created to raise our kid.”
That was my biggest fear,
Finding out something like that
Would happen
‘Cause the memories
Have come with this,
Only cause everything else to hurt
Deep inside of this dismissed feeling
I feel
But sometimes
You have to face the past
Maybe I’ve never faced death
But if I were to walk away
Then what would I be?
These voices in my head,
What would they say
And what would they see?
Did I survive or am I cursed?
Did I die or did I learn?
What if I woke up and
Nothing happened?
What if I never wake up?
My dear,
Then what’s my purpose?
What if I woke up and
Nothing happened?
And darling,
What if you woke up too?
-"Wooden Floorboards," by Hotel Books
