Christine Ray
In a room so still and silent
That it hurts
Stark white walls
Razor sharp edges
Etch my soul
Draw blood
That drips slowly
soundlessly
From my mouth
I am trapped
Like a fly in amber
Time stands still
The air is thick
Holds me motionless
In this prison cell
I feel vibration
A silent scream building
From my depths

Rachel Finch
Barricaded, her aura stifles
in the quiet.
Walls closing in, silence
penetrating.
Her mind internally
burning, blistering.
His voice a faint echo,
worlds away.

Rana Kelly
I tell them they’re lying,
The monsters that cling
To the lobes and whorls
Of my ears.
They laugh and go on.
I pull the covers up
To my chin and let them in again
Until the tears are spent
And still,
They never repent.
Get thee behind me,
But I always look back
Waiting on them to pounce.

Kindra M. Austin
In a room so still, I draw mental images.
Shovelfuls of dirt are tossed and splayed;
loose earth lands with a dead sound
upon my ridiculous casket.
The images play in a loop like
spliced film–a silent movie.

Sarah Doughty

These bones have grown
weak and weary, while the rest
of the world has gone
dark and gray. Over time,
they’ve become more
than I can handle.
More than I can live with.
And these burdens I carry
are mine alone. No one
deserves to hold them
on their shoulders.
Which is why I’ll take them
with me. After the music
stops playing.

Eric Syrdal

In a room so still
I hear echoes of a former life
I hear the twisting and creaking
Of this thread I hang from
Knotted and frayed it
Binds my heart
In pieces that have shattered
So many times they no longer
Fit together
And their edges are so razor sharp
They cut me to ribbons
To remember what I once was

Ward Clever
I scream
I lost myself
The echoes dont come back
Ragged and raw, my chords vibrate
Revealing nothing from my insides
My voice swallowed up by the crowd
My inner voice silenced
I have become the echoes

Aurora Phoenix
in the silence
my shame shrieks torment
a piercing the walls drill
into my brain
the ceiling salivates venom
it licks the stiffness
from my spine
the floor nauseates me
as it breathes
rank sour breath
of the unlovable, whose caries
grew unfettered in an unkissed mouth
I shrink, a knotted ball,
from the reverberating stench,
the putrefying death knell
inverted, I am a tunnel
from which no light escapes
there is only the abject crawling
of my soul, face down
in the sewage
of my failed spirit

Dom
I hate this fucking room…
I hate being consumed with my doom…
As I sit here, looking at my shattered reflection in the perfect mirror
All I am  forever reminded of,
Is what I almost was…
Why can I not seem to get back on track?
All that was an almost happy life has gone to pure shit..
Blinded by the bright light at the end of the dark tunnel…
I should follow it…
Even if it means I am dead forever, and I can’t come back…
Even if it makes me weak…
I am just tired of being strong…
Maybe even tired of holding on…
There has to be another side..
A place where I can freely roam,
A place where I don’t have to hide…
Reality is overwhelming…
This room is so silent…that it fucking hurts
my head is full of too much traumatic memories…
I am running out of do-over’s at this point…
I have done everything to release
The only time I hear that I am good enough…
Is after I please a nobody…so I am just a good fuck…
I don’t believe in me anymore… I am out of good luck…
I need to be free from life… from turmoil…
I need to be free from being me…
I hate being stuck…

Aakriti Kuntal (Warped Kites)
Long hands, circumcision of thought,
Flailing flesh, fish sucking the rotten sea
The window breast is now red from approach
We hang there, we do
the captivity of bleached air is like nothing else
the death sentence of genes
Godless children of a different race
Our hearts are split and our brains feverish
slowly descending, soaked head to toe
into songs that contain only air
I twist the lock, your twisted face, a warped kite
Floating across ceilings,
You have decided to spread
a smile wide as the day, light up the dim structure of your face
Like blow torches growing mad above the taste of ashes
You have decided to smile
this one last time
And the ceiling watches,
its silence repulsive
And the walls judge,
their jabber exhausting
Men like to slaughter what they don’t understand
Common cold doesn’t dictate cancer
And neither mood nor perspective is the predecessor of mental sickness
The floor watches,
stained in a lovely red
The only living thing now
is you
and you, you bleed
Upwards into a cerulean sky

Lois E. Linkens
i don’t belong here.
they told me
success held the key to happiness,
a golden road through cloudy skies,
a nightingale’s song in the dead of night –
so i don’t belong here.
i don’t fit in,
i stick out like a black sheep in a field of white,
a pebble strung on a thread of pearls.
oh, that piece would be so fetching
with pearls alone,
and i am sure the shepherd grows weary of the sight of me.

1Wise-Woman
The anguish of aliveness
No one wins
Sterile, self-defeating
Shrouded in intense sensitivity
Silence, secrets, sadness, solitude
A welcomed stillness
Such sweet solace
The weight begins to lift
A final gift
Believe
There is a peace
In release
A freedom beyond
This relentless realm
A breakable bond
From devils and demons

Olde Punk
The melodies are
my legacy
I’ve won some battles
but I am losing the war
choose not to remember
my last act
but all of the victories
that came before
as a samurai chooses
death over dishonor
my sepuku is the solution
to stop the coming horror
the monster with my smile
I know that my absence
will fill a room so still
it hurts but better
still than to see the world
I love burn with my
dark needs

Nathan McCool
You know when I’m there, after all the blood,
after all my ghost begin to break up and
dissipate like early morning radio chatter,
after the loss
of every god damn thing I’ve ever loved,
I can tell you that I earned the cognizance
that this was never a room.
Rooms have an exit, but there is no re-entry
into what my life used to be.
It’s a black hole, and on the other side
there is a universe of all dead bodies.
So if I dissect myself,
if I show you all my organs that could never
have managed to hold this cancer,
if I do it here at the altar of all my great
rewards…
I just want you to know I’ve reached the
event horizon.
But here I do not struggle, I strive. I still
yearn to be a good man. Wish that my
heart would become supermassive,
and strong enough to maybe release
one singular ray of light into all this space.
Set one lone kite free of the gravity.
If I fall through the hole and I’m never seen again,
I want you to remember I wasn’t a coward.
I was the thing that withstood longer than
all else.
Because nothing can be here if it still
has a world to belong to.
And if you don’t understand that, in a way
I hope you never do.
But if you never saw my light, if I gave in
before it could break through
I’m sorry.
It’s not because I didn’t try.
So live or die,
Be free or killed by this monster of my mind,
I did the very best that I could.