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We'd play hopscotch in the wavering light of the sun.
Rode our bikes for hours down Decision Way,
Ate supper, but not before we washed our hands
Took the stairs two at a time and prayed

good night, was all she would say.

A feeble matter of those few hours
Between dusk and dawn. It was 1998.
They lingered like the scent of moth balls
In the red of brick alleys
.. as my mind was bombarded with visions.

Monsters.
Found places that would allow their bodies.
Where, in the darkness, they could "be"
Grotesque skin and toothsome smiles

So I'd grind my teeth and clench the sideboards
And sleep became nothing but a bag of bones.

I knew then that there were evils
that stretched the boundaries of science and reason
and somewhere, amid the land of Mr. Boogey Man
I was forced to grow into biggers shoes.

Now it seems the most hellish beings
Come never in vain, only business, and unabashadely so.
On the backs of black-winged devils
Shaking their ashes on a sleeping world

"There is no life here
but the slow death of days"

At the height of adolescence
a sufferable limbo of sorts, fears converse
Their words scaring the faith out of folded hands;
Brandished knees

Leaving nothing but silence come daylight