The Workings of a Convoluted Mind

Have you ever felt the pathological need to be left alone

And held at the same time by arms which no longer exist for you?

Have you felt the shackles of your existence pulling, and pulling

As step by step you drag your feet forward because the forbidden fruit

Of the past makes you mad with desire to go back, back, back?

Have you had dreams of fairy tale loves and princes singing songs,

Saying all the right things, riding in to save the day, to catch you,

But known all along that the bone shattering fall will be cushioned

By just you, your own mortal body, your own fragile mind,

Waiting, waiting to crack into little pieces like a time bomb ticking down its final seconds?

You break, you mend, you break again, mend again, with technicolour cello tape;

You hide the spider web of cracks with new colour, superficial, grandiose,

Until all one sees is colour, flashing brightly, glowing, trying too too hard,

And underneath lies a world black and white and grey, where you wait, wait, wait,

For the coloured fetters in which you bound yourself to be torn away,

For someone to brave the journey to the very centre,

To the centre of you.