Wasted Youth

Life is a cell with beige padded walls, and the sky is an upside down painting by a paranoid schizophrenic… Every breath is cement, clogging my throat – And my heart beats a withering dirge Devoid of passion, I ooze through these halcyon days, Bewildered by the emptiness, By the pure blood singing in my veins – By the quiet… Solitude wraps her gossamer noose around my throat, Chuckling girlishly, gives it a playful jerk Death slips me a Mona Lisa smile, and I start to wonder – What if I smiled back…? I have become a caged animal, accustomed to the bars, Resigned to an empty existence of scratched walls And fetid food My heart squats in my chest smoking a cigarette – it wishes – And remembering erratic flights of madness, When life and oblivion got tangled up in knots And screwed their way into a blood-red dawn My skin hangs like sludge off my coat-rack bones, A shabby overcoat concealing the decay, It yearns for the illegitimate caress of a stranger… And my soul, poor lost child, she lies on her death bed, Translucent with dismay, And pines for a last-ditch stab at the glorious tournament Of tender self destruction, Masochism’s giddy thrill, And the blood-iron scent of my own mortality – Life’s too short to spend it wishing you were dead