Pain.

God and Devil co-exist in a tortured soul, deep within, and pain alone the medium that takes us to the depths in which they live–and makes us see the truth of our reality, the faces of our personality;

Pain alone the conduit that let’s God and the Devil go, up into our minds they roam, causing the confusion that makes us irate, and letting us know the difference between good and evil is a choice between love and hate…

Wisdom is only obtained by a journey through hell and back again–but the unfortunate truth is that return is not something all the Broken can do;

Twisted in their own eyes beyond redemption, there is nothing left for them but their pain, and so in that they glory–those are the ones for whom my heart cries;

They are the lost, the Broken, whose darkness is their light…

Far from evil, usually with hearts of purest gold, demons simply rode out of hell on their backs and refuse to let them go;

And so their actions stem from Fear, Unforgiveness, and Rage, and the other relations of their ever-present Pain…

They, too, are Children of God, the ones lost on the Way, those fallen in the battle of their Father’s design, the Lord’s most precious babes, who He wishes the most to save–most Beloved because they broke and cannot mend on their own, but…the lost, the fallen, the Broken have to choose to be rescued from their inner night’s addictive embrace…

How sad it is when they refuse and choose to roam alone, and inflict upon their souls more suffering they dont deserve–because they can no longer see better awaits them if they’re free…

Pray for the sick, pray for the poor, pray for the widow and the orphan…but most of all in need of prayer are the Broken–who’ve forgotten Heaven because they’ve fallen in love with Hell…

Dear God, I’ve lost my way, and in this darkness I cannot see your face;

I see this journey has gone from from the sunny plain to the darkest forest, but when will you lead me out again?

When will I once again call you Father instead of just my God, when will I ’round my spirit once more feel your loving arms?

I have felt alone in my insecurity, pain, and fear for so long…did I your presence drive away in my desperate need for love?

Or is because I like to dabble in the dark?

My romance with shadows, my trysts with the night…did my affairs cause your Spirit to abandon me to my despair?

Father, let me know you’re there…

Not lead into gold, but paper into lead, that is the true alchemic mystery;

The Word of God is the real Stone of Philosophy;

When you hold that volume of paper and leather, and in your hands it feels like a tome of lead, what can be said?

Its weighed down by the sin that your guilty conscious brings, weighed down by your rejection of God’s choice to forgive, weighed down by your belief that your negligence has made you unworthy, and weighed down by your fear of the renewal of purity that comes with opening those pages holy…

And so rises the gorge as I look at the Book of the Lord, because I know I’m wrong for neglecting Him so long;

I’m still angry, confused, and questioning, but, now that Im in need, His face I want to seek, and that, to me, is a dishonorable deed;

But I cannot continue to let life do its best;

I must do as I feel and beat upon my breast…

Yet how can I stomach these words of loving lead?

Prison strips you of all you have to take, and traps you in a place of timeless space…

It strips you of your memories yet leaves you nothing but;

It strips you of your drive yet leaves you the desires of your mind;

It strips you of the freedom to be who you really are, and leaves you a mindless number trying to survive as a shadow on the wall of stolen pride;

It strips you of your human dignity and leaves you with degradation as your daily bread–my, that’s a book that’s been well-read as I creep along the Halls of Dread…

In this place of timeless space, I put my past away, like closing a book after folding down the page…

All you have left is the pain of your experience, yet you cant clearly remember all the times, faces, or the places that made you so serious;

It left me my talent but made me forget how vital it was to my existance–memories like a drop of rain falling into the mist, so much is fading, and to top it all, the pen is ripped from the artists’ grip, like a branch from a tree’s drooping limb, no way of communicating…

Looking through the glass darkly, your blinded by your suffering–you cant remember the love that made you it’s all, nor recall the arms that would lift you when you’d fall;

Happy memories–oh, how you used to smile–stolen by the thief within barbed wire, too painful to remember now that you exist alone within a patch of briar;

You cant see life’s beauty, and forget that Godhas blessed you truly…

You exist within the stagnancy–a year can be contained in a day and eternity in a year, or it can all pass you by, like a mad train on the track to a place where time is meaningless and your content despite your lack…

It’s a place where your personal space is reduced to the top bunk in your cell, but sometimes your unlucky and dont even have a room to escape the hell–you cant cry because of prying eyes, chaos reigns to distract from pain, and your sleep is haunted by your fucks and the fights, and let us not forget your brother’s sorry plight, as well as the yells coming from your neighbor’s cell;

All your morals and your views go with your clothing and your jewels, off to the property room;

Your individuality is left at the gate, and to survive you must yourself deny and recreate–but who knows if from the web of lies you’ll recuperate in time?

Sensory deprivation and humiliation is their game, but the one thing they cant take away is the depression, like a virus in the brain, eating your sanity like a candy cane–at the end of the decade you’ll grow fond of your misery, and your god will be inflicting pain as your release…

It is a place where love is turned into a comic travesty–“My life, Your entertainment” is scored onto the rusted locker door–yet you need the delusions to survive the tragic story of your life–though it corrupts you at the core and turns living into a chore…my existence is such a bore…

Prison is filled with broken souls…

It strips away the societal mask and leaves the anarchist bare, showing the pure hearts of those that shouldn’t be there, as well as the dark hearts to whom Justice was fair;

Prison shows your true colors as well as teaches one to be fake, flaw, and phony to all that one meets–

I’ve loved the best;

I’ve befriended the worst;

And lost myself as well as found what I’m made of upon this ground…

Monster that is my mind;

Beast that is my heart;

My soul’s Beautiful Misery, that is my dark trinity;

Werewolf, tiger, elephant white;

Barbed wire, flowers, wolves in flight;

Howling, snarling in my head, impale me on tusks of dread…

Entrapped in a prison of jade with roads of amber and beds of sage, I roar within my brain, and my only pleasure in my pain are the insane whores covered in gore that sustain me with their veins, and thereby crave my body all the more;

They’re twin sisters and their names shall be Sweet and Sick Depravity

They say any animal can be tamed…

I’m like a wild animal in a cage–

A tiger pacing, fearing, needing out, that is what his pains about;

How many times have I felt his claws tearing at my soul, trying to make a hole?

Escape, escape, that is is goal;

I look inside and see his eyes, blue, green, yellow swirls in a face of fiery whirls, trying to mesmerize…

His prison is one of flesh, blood and bone, like an incantation of sorcery from days of old;

His lair is within my heart, and once or twice he went without, ranging far and wide;

The havoc he wreaked was too dreadful to speak, bless his destructive tendancies…

He was a cub when I was young, purring in my ear;

Gentle, loving thing that he was, from whence did his rage come?

He used to lay meekly at my feet, now to rampage is what he seeks;

But, barbed wire and flowering vines keep him trapped inside my mind…

Nothing can tame my Beast but the touch of Beauties whose hearts he’ll someday eat…

Darkness is seducing me;

The Night unholy matrimony seeks;

The Moon a devilish love affair;

Bloodlust is in the air…

I hear the beat of the savage drum–is it real, or is it the heat of my blood?

Pounding, pounding in my head, a tattoo fit to raise the dead;

My teeth, all sharp as hate, my tongue, swollen, they salivate, thinking about your rape;

My jaws clamped around your throat, ripping, dripping, that is my hope…

Who is this monster that is me?

From the cover of a darkling forest canopy, my wolfish eyes, fever-bright, gaze at a midnight sea shining with a starry sheen;

There is no more beautiful sight than the landscape of my insane mind…

They say still waters run deep in me, that I am healed because your eyes I can meet, but they dont know of my insanity;

The windows of my eyes dont show the monster torturing my soul, they seem only as pools of ore, containing painful, precious lore;

And the waters so still and deep seem still because I cannot speak, and no one knows the battles that rage within the depths that make me sage;

Abandon a sword in the flames and the metal will see a stronger day;

Iron will is what keeps me still, and that depth they speak about is a fathomless abyss with angels and demons glimpsed through the mist;

What kind of fantastical magikry is this?

From the leagues of my inner sea come all my thoughts and all my dreams, but beware the sharks that lurk in the murky deep.

Look in the bathroom mirror…

That demon leering at you behind your shoulder, peering at you from within your very eyes–where does he reside, in hell or inside?

That angel towering behind you, enfolding you in his luminous wings, that light seeping from your own pores–how is it possible for God and Devil to exist within the same core?

No wonder humans dont feel comfortable in their skin…

A man’s soul is not his own, only a battleground for the divine;

And the conqueror decides whether that man lives or that man dies;

Not in body, but in mind…

And no, if God in all His “goodness” wins, that does not mean the man will live;

The Light in all its glory can and has illumined the path not of happiness but of utter misery, and led to defeat at the hands of the same Dark Force it sought to beat…

The dance of good and evil, those two lovers in their eternal embrace, to them love and hate are one and the same;

So, Saint or Sinner, which is it?

A balance between the two must be struck, if there is to be harmony amongst the forces that rule the Dawn and those that rule the Dusk…

Master Magician, how well you play your games;

Weaving your spells of love, hate, sex and pain, believing your own lies–your a madman, what a shame;

Master of Illusion, standing in your hall of mirrors, playing your tricks of smoke;

You think your feelings are real in the single-minded focus of your lustful will, you play with Woman’s heart;

Until you reach the end you seek, then the created fantasy dissipates even as you speak;

The smoke clears and the mirrors crack, the delusions fade away, the scales fall from your eyes and into the flames, and your left staring only at your face in your hall of hell, and you ask yourself, “From whence comes the sound of that ominous bell?”