I still miss you.

I find traces

hidden across the shards

of the web,

across the powerful notion

of nationality

pride, maybe values.

With you inside, hiding,

in that way you have

like you'll get a laugh

by bending rules

until I break.

And maybe I've learned to miss you

or maybe its only an idea now

just trying out new wings.

Juxtapose what sings

over the dying screams.

But maybe.

I find faces

in these places and

reconcile just for a while

within the smiling

aces -

only a short day's graces

bend and break

nor give nor take this

facade away

not now, never today.

Only tomorrow,

the way we promised to

return to the past

broken moments

maybe meant something

to someone

anyone

no one

I'd believe again, but I'm me again,

too far away to be seen again

if ever

if only ever

belief comes from never knowing

only holding

only hoping the present

won't break into

mosaics.

Like the bits and pieces I

knew from when sky dyed

blue-grey-green - the sheen

of sun over the taste of lies

might as well be

the truth, or both of us

will die.

Swiftly, maybe, gently, save me.

Seeking Asylum.

It was all in the way they looked at me. From behind bars, as if those bars could keep them safe. Or keep me safe. as though padded walls and white - brilliant, blazing, god damned white - could prevent my mind from visiting corners in the shadows.

Shadows are everywhere. Everwhere, neverwhere we expect -

They came and stood, twittering like mad birds outside until their voices blended into the surrounding air. Until they were not there.

The hallways were bare, and all the bars were gone. Unless I tried to reach through. Then the bars came back, clamped down, like the angry jaws of some forgotten man eating-beast.

Sirens sounded, then, and men in white - so much fucking white! - came. They held me against the white walls. Shined white light in my eyes. Took notes on white paper clipped to a white clipboard with a white pen and they stake of paleness and death. Mental decay.

"Easy there," one man in white said to me. "Easy," as he took his hands off my throat and the padded floor stopped holding me when the man kneeling on my back got off. And the floor gave me my breath again.

(("You keep that one here much longer," he said, "and things'll go rough."

"What d'you mean?"

"See that?" He pointed. "People like that aren't meant for places like this. Suffocating in open air. Y'hear the raving at nights. Always the same - 'White, white - goddamn white!' I'm telling ya...it'd kill to keep 'em here. ))

I heard voices but they were far off, and the walls had eyes, so the voices were no longer important. Only the eyes - red and blue. Rage and violence.

(("This place isn't natural for someone like that," he said.

"So what? Set them free on the streets? Are you crazy?"

He shook his head. "No. But they're not either."))

Fifth floor.

And I'm alone still.

Again.

But I can hear the screams down below. A few floors down.

And if I close my eyes I can trace them.

Like that high pitched one a few moments back was from third floor, cell six. She's been here for two years. She's a youngster. Barely begun.

They move you up with each passing bit of time, each human being who passes over. Gives up. Goes under.

Those are the lucky ones.

You know when they go out because you can hear them start to sing, and it's fucking eerie. Like an opera singer when whale, or something with a bit of wolf howl thrown in for flavor.

To explain why they always sing more on a full moon.

And after a month or so, then they stop singing.

And we never hear them again.

But the screams on third are softer now, and there's a bottle of isopropyl on hand for all your painful needs.

Cuts, scrapes, burns. Cleaning, waking up, getting sick. Burning shit.

Except the only way to bleed is to claw through your own skin, and they try to keep us from being able. Smooth walls. Smooth enough to go mad against, and the only other flammable substance is thought. Everything else just seems to wait, laughing.

But as torture poured into sinuses, it does the trick. It hurts, and it's impossible to sleep through.

But I wish there were more matches. It feels so wrong not to have the graze of fire on my skin.

Like a bit of me has died. They tell us the need will go away. We know it doesn't. That they don't know what they're talking about.

That these men in pale green and alien suits have never known the touch of a knife, or match. Have never dreamed what release it brings.

Have never -

Singing.

It's coming from the seventh floor. May souls rest in peace, in a hell less hellish than this one.

And as for me,

I'm sleeping now.

Don't much care when,

Don't much care how.

And when I wake

I'll sing a tune

And laugh and play

My own soul's doom.