Something Real?

*This poem is intended to be read centre aligned* See a penny, pick it up, And all the day you’ll have good luck, Or use it to purchase private thoughts, An evening of thrills and spills and nasty shocks, Or maybe even give it away, But you’re left feeling cheaper, And debts due to pay, You know the worst guilt isn’t the lies you told your friends, Or your mother with her trusting eyes, It’s the lies you told yourself, Reality blurs, You’re drunk on denial, Stumbling, fumbling, Through rotting records of an aching brain, A walking disaster, A walking cliché, She taught you to laugh at the absurd, So you laugh at yourself, And the ugliness dulls, But the fear’s still left, Hold it down, Bind it up, Bury it deep, It’s not healthy, But it’s easy, Pray it heals itself while you sleep, And you’re so tired of being tired, The drugs don’t help, They were placebos anyway, Oh how they stick in your throat, The pills are piling up, Making mountains in your stomach, Filling up your pipe, Full to bursting, Or that’s how you account for the pain at least, Purge it with your pen, The paper’s heavy with word vomit, Cry it, Sweat it, Bleed it out, Your temple lies unchanged, Frozen bones and hardened vessels, A veritable statue, With a pretty face and granite for guts, They said religion is for the dying and the desperate, Well we’re all dying anyway, I’m desperate for the truth, Clinging onto saving graces, And slowly losing grip, Hard to guess how bad you’re broken, It’s been years since you were whole, Watch them bask in your phantom light, Beautiful mind or beautiful soul – They say it’s in the eye of the beholder, But I’m decomposing inside out, You can’t measure what you can’t see, Hold your judgement, shut your mouth, So turn away from love, Affection, empathy, Wound’s salt, Because you know that they can’t change it, And you know it’s all your fault.