monsters under my bed
monsters in my mind
masters in my head
whispering to me blind

voices that are gone
come back to remind

my heart begs to mourn
afraid of what my eyes will find

the silence begins to roam
and i'm back in rome
on a colossal tide

travelling back and forth
between love and loath

i'd rather have them both
open my scars fresh and wide

in a room so silent
where sound travels
faster than light

here darkness resides
in lust and fright

wandering all night
with stars to hide

photos to like
memories have lied

to all those who have died

since past

when it all began
with plight

of all those who have cried
but died

yet, i want to be there still
wide open
when a lonely heart
begins to beat

begging to be free
but in a delusion
that cold is just
absence of heat

give me a pill to be enlightened
and i'll set fire to every thing

for the chaos is
just a form of silence
some thing's aren't
meant to breed

so, have you been
in a thought so violent
that everything around
starts to bleed

filling the emptiness
with opulence
a forest made up
of lonely seeds

ready to feed, steady and asleep
in this silence
you can taste the essence
of the universe rearing to be free
telling tales
of men and monsters

and of everything that came to be

My friend signed on to a coastal ship
His name, John Escobar,
He said, for only a week long trip
On the Steamship Southern Star.
While I worked out of the office of
The Southern Shipping Line,
To keep in touch with our fleet of ships,
But the Southern Star was mine.

They said that ship was a special case
It was fitted out so well,
They joked of equipment so refined
It could sail clear through to hell.
I’d noticed bulges down on the hull
But under the waterline,
They told me to keep an eye on it
When they said that it was mine.

It sailed on out of Ascension Bay
When the tide was running high,
The motor gave out a whisper like
The sound of a woman’s sigh,
It wasn’t supposed to leave the coast
But it went far out to sea,
And kept in touch with the dit-dit-dit
Of John on the morse code key.

He tapped a message out every hour
And I let him know I knew,
The ship was sailing way off its course
And lost to the coastal view,
He said the Captain was acting strange
He was locked up by the wheel,
That all the maps had been rearranged
And that something wasn’t real.

At midnight there was a message came
To me in a darkened room,
It said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on
But we just sailed past the Moon.’
I sent, ‘Just lay off the Bourbon, John,
If this is John Escobar,’
And he replied that the Captain died,
‘And I don’t know where we are.’

He sent more messages on the hour
And they seemed to grow apace,
By midday out on the second day,
‘We’re somewhere in outer space.’
I didn’t know if he’d gone berserk
But we’d lost the Southern Star,
It disappeared, and the thing was weird,
When I lost John Escobar.

The messages gradually petered out
So I don’t know if he lied,
He said some things about Saturn’s rings
And then the battery died.
I lost my job at the shipping line
For they put it down to me,
They said, ‘your ship was the Southern Star,
And you’ve lost the thing at sea.’

David Lewis Paget

The writer's life
Consists of looming strife
For a writer's eyes are keen
To the suffering that usually goes unseen

All writers are bearers of truth
Wielding their pens like a scalpel that cuts through
All the **** we tell ourselves
That keeps us in denial

A writer seeks truth incessantly
And eventually comes upon the somewhat ambiguous answer
That all truth originates from Love
How does the writer's analytical mind
Grapple with such a fluid concept?

The writer sees beauty in the invisible
Writes poetry on bathroom stalls
Lives life solely for stories
The writer feels things deeply but doesn't speak them,
But rather scribbles her thoughts fervently in a notebook
The words dancing on the page
As they are released from the tip of the pen
The writer knows, sadly, that even though she writes stories to make people feel less alone
That these people will never truly ever understand her and neither will
She ever be able to fully embody the experience of another human

The writer has wounds that go deeper than you could fathom
When no one was there to turn to,
She picked up a notebook instead and released the toxic emotional build-up in her head
Made art out of her sadness on the page
Through poetic words,
Elusive and enigmatic,
She could tell her story, indirectly
And still set herself free from the ******* of unspoken miseries

The writer's life is a privileged one indeed
For we see things, but don't speak them
But rather transcribe them forever in our memories
Until we find a clean sheet of paper,
And write
Write everything we've seen, heard, tasted, felt, known and intuited
Every struggle and every victory
Meticulously crafted upon the bare canvas
Like a war zone with an abundance of pent up zest
Finally unleashing itself upon the page
So, write, my fellow Writers
Write fearlessly
And our stories will prevail
They will impact even just one person
Who thought they were all alone,
Perhaps like we once felt.

i love words
and you had a way with it
besides, you're a writer
the first few months we were together
you'd bask me with your sweet voice
i was blissfully, happily intertwined
in your arrangement of sentences

but

i didn't know you were a painter too
you lose your pen
and started using your hands
you'd paint on me, your favorite canvas
fingers and knuckles as your brushes
i figured you liked red and blue
purple and black when you got creative

abuse is a picture that I am forced to paint
with colors I have never seen.
if I draw fists into open arms,
if I sketch an apology in between berating,
if I fill in every empty space with love,
no one will come running for
the child who cried help.

abuse is a phantom limb
still covered in bruises.
white coats and clipboards wonder
how it can still ache when it is no longer there,
infecting me with their doubts.
sometimes it feels heavier
than it did when it was a part of me.

depression eats at my weight until my skin is taut,
boarding up my eyes and locking my mouth.
blame has found solace in this blood,
guilt mutating my thoughts.
my potential used to live here,
but abuse has a reverse Midas touch
where everything that could have become gold
withers in its hands.