FEVER (Happy Birthday)
And it seems to NEVER leave, this internal heat, apparently no reprieve, will I ever get better, NO, I don't believe, blackened and SCORCHED
My outlook on existence is TORCHED, the smile contorting my face is a thing that is forced, feelings of well-being are medicinally coerced, therefore, what you see-
Is not myself, it's not even ME, it is not I, it's NOT A THING to see, it's mutation before the walls that be, it's a craftful pretense, executed carefully
Pinpricks and surgical tape and life has taken a winged shape, dive bombing beneath a frigid gust and no escape-
WITHIN THE WIND, I AM DROWNING
And of those pills I'm daily and nightly downing, they've made me a pharmaceutical monarch, they're bowing, they're crowning me as their sovereign host, parasitical, noses browning, "Oh, sweetheart.. You are EVERYthing we neeeeed…"
But, wait- what IS this..? I thought I needed YOU; oblong, tablet, capsule, white, yellow-brown, red and blue- you all TOLD me that without you, I couldn't do what I HAVE to DO: consume, sleep, INHALE
But even with you, I desire to lift every nail, to drip so everlong my shade adopts the reaper's pale, to make still my ship, to set fire to every sail, to sink and be left ALONE
And I could pick up the phone, express that the demons are attempting to come 'home', TRY to tell him HOW MUCH I MISS HER and that again beneath the bed beasts stir
I WILL NOT INDUCE MY OWN PAIN, though, no, I won't walk down death's row, go lick my wounds solitarily so no one
Can shake
The salt
Like him, I have become cobalt, they say 'baby blues'- I say ALL-ENCOMPASSING ASSAULT, and, no, no, NO- this is NOT his fault..
Tiny one with skin smooth as malt…
I'll take a breath as demanded and I'll take the pills as commanded, I'll keep quiet so we're not reprimanded as 35 heavily looms..
So, when I say, "I love you." I MEAN IT, it doesn't come lightly, I never KNOW, which is why I ALWAYS hug you that tightly, why I keep from you this, my distasteful, MY UNSIGHTLY, yet thank Him for another year
The fever rises, so I hold HIM near, above all else, even you, my dear, my eyes burn against this heat, hunger, this FEAR…
But in Him, I can see, it's clear
That there are reasons for which I'm still HERE