"Darkness" by Eric von Bayer Darkness, hard and cold like a blanket of ice the world in black and white flat featureless roses, skies, sunsets... all washes of grey this reality blotts out all else Sitting alone alone in the grey world feeling empty aware of my aloneness... my days, like distant memory... I lived another life. That other person and I somehow sharing a body but when the day is over it is just me me... me sitting alone looking into the mirror of my life What brought me here every night? Why? Why was I here? Burried inside the walls of my brain addict of helplessness. Addict of exhaustion... I understood... sometimes I understand when the world is crashed and broken I see lucidly... simply... I see what's wrong... But then the world becomes motion... grey blurs of confusion... I lose sight and fall. Addict of helplessness... so much more I could be for want of something to desire beyond these possessive bonds. There's no fault when you're helpless Things are just how they are... Simple... Fatalisticly simple so strong are the charms. I cry... helpless... wanting to get out... but here is known. I hate this hole, I've fallen in it time again. How can so many people see me every day? Don't they know I need help? Can't they see the scared child in my eyes? How can the world be so blind! I don't blame them. I know... I know the other me looks happy and well, maybe a little tired. He doesn't plead to them for contact. He doesn't show his need for a hug. He seems to come alive at contact, He is like a bright sunshine, with an off switch... Life is borrowed... Light is borrowed... Gone as quickly... I don't blame them. Sometimes he cracks... sometimes I come through... my birthsign Cancer how fitting for the water that flows from my eyes for the blood that drains from my heart This other me, how can he see color where I cannot? Maybe this just proves I am a shadow. I've never felt part of things, always alien, different, marginally welcome Too innocent, yet too twisted... Addicted to helplessness... I loved a woman to the very heart I never let myself love like that before Never let myself want... I never let myself desire... I fit myself into a sexless shell... like a hermit crab, slave to his home. Life is so much simpler that way. I let myself love this woman... I let myself be free... I let myself desire... I let myself be a man... I let myself be sexual... And for a while, I saw color. And even though things were askew Things were a little brighter. But all light and color faded and now I am a shadow again My heart aches with the memory of color to not be alone in the dark to not remember those things to not still feel sexual, but now empty... addicted to a new helplessness. This is me.