Mental Illness. The unraveling nature, of thoughts beyond your control. The way your head eats away, the way it flowers with cancerous thoughts. Dead skin and daydreams, too much saliva and not enough love. Your mind is not your own. It is, gone. There’s a poltergeist within your brain, thinking things you don’t want it to think. Drifting away, the day is absent. Your eyes always open, never closed. Even when you shut them tight, all they do is see. Too much sadness, too much sorrow, drowning everything. Knives out, mouths spilling words you’ll never hear. All sounds rendered dumb, all forms of communication pale and translucent. Braindead and damaged, your skull is broken. Every bone, limp. No hunger, no memory. Flesh is too dusty, pleasure too distant. Curled up on the floor, it’s too cold. Palpitations and heartbreak galore, ladybirds and boredom. Masturbation brings nothing, your gaze is vacant. Like all those buildings from your past, trapped in the hell of yesterday. The hell of yourself. The body is a cage, infected with poison. Seeping from every pore. Gasping for air, fingernails pried clean off. The maze of indifference, the spiral staircase that never ends. Descending, impending. Doom, and gloom. Always gloom. Sunken, submerged. Inwards. Temporal lobes, tightened throats. The ghosts are everywhere, they scratch at your face, they pull you back. Dead people. Dead children. Dead hair and blankets, empty cribs and empty prayers. The spine of what you are, reduced to holes. Too many holes, always letting stuff in. The ocean, the rim of sin, always collapsing. Always reducing, what you are. Salt Lake City, the victims of Ted Bundy. Dancing against the circular landscape, grains of sand between their toes. A million tiny rocks, a thousand lifeless souls. Rage, constant rage. Head down, hands clenched. Blood boiling, veins blocked. The things we do. To escape, and to save. Hopelessly trying, to deny the inevitable. Being still, being motionless as those around you move ever on. Stationary, cautionary. A vision of dead desire. Dead sex and happiness. Pleasure machines and human graffiti. The maelstrom of human sickness. The great big toilet that we exist in. There are no stars here, there are no angels. Banality is king. Everyday, in every way, things are falling apart. Sometimes you try and stitch yourself together, but it never works, and nor do you want it to. Revel in it, stick pins in your hand. Cut yourself off, cut your hair. Crawl on the floor, open the trapdoor. Down there, in the shadows, the place where you break yourself. Naked before dark glass, subdued by loss. Everlasting, and repeating. Retreating, within. The mess of decades, a painting of horrifying proportions. Laid bare, you’re a hell of a fuck, and fucked is what you are. Upon the leaves, and shifting down every lonely road you’ve ever walked. Silently, regrettably, solemnly. Leave it all behind, swim in the sea of make believe. No more footsteps, only the water, moonlit and true. Calling you back, home.