The Stairs

What do I have left to offer?

Am I a pig that’s off to slaughter?

Well-wishing for a better future

Doesn’t make this noose looser

It tightens around my neck

Constricting and restricting air until death

My life is filled with abasement

Everything in my life is adjacent

I’m so used to all this displacement

That I can only pray for abatement

From my life I consider a dark basement

Nothing to see down here except your fears

A single step into the dark starts the tears

I scream into the shadows,

“I’m scared to conquer more darkness.”

The darkness softly whispers back

“You must keep going to go somewhere,

you don’t matter to anyone,

so why care?’

Each step down the creaky wooden stairs

Echoes throughout this demonic lair

I get so anxious, I start gasping for air

“For the love of God, just send me to the chair!

I’ll sit there and perish without a care,

Just don’t force me to continue down these stairs!”

The darkness replies,

“There’s no other way to go but down,

Your life is a funeral, as all you do is frown.”

I make my way down the stairs with haste

Darkness starts to envelop my tortured being

Becoming scared that you’re packing your bags and leaving

The darkness sings to me, softly, like a Siren

The song is so beautiful I start crying

This bliss I’ve found in constant affliction

Is something I can’t explain through diction

And that’s what drives me to write fiction

To cause social friction

With the words I cook up in my literary kitchen

And to compose prose

That shows where my life goes

And the poor choices I chose

Which leads me to this pain that I go through

It hasn’t made me strong

I don’t desire to life live longer

This pain made me see

My brain is slowly growing like a tree

With thoughts ripe for harvest

All this pain made me, undoubtedly, an artist