You'll Need To Go Mad Before You Get Better

‘It’ll all come right before long,’
-that’s your favourite saying, isn’t it?
No one believes you,
but you know that, don’t you?

So long as you think you’re doing the right thing,
which you’re sure is entirely wrong,
you’ll get by, won’t you?
But did it ever occur to you that
you’re being played like a harp?

How can you just sit there
and let it all happen?
You turn your mind to indifference
when rightful thoughts arise,
and read books on fishing,
to stop yourself thinking
about all the rubbish
they put on your plate.

But as long as you may think
that whatever it is you fear
will never ever happen to you,
you can be sure that it will.

You believe your own lies
and each has come true for you,
but while you reminisce
those painstaking holidays,
you wish you could have left yourself behind
because it was all for nothing,
apart from that one
beautifully tender steak.

You watch grown men kick a ball
to register that it’s the weekend,
a time set aside for truth in your voice,
screaming to the heart you betrayed
with the spirit you bought at the bar.

You think you’re alive?
You’re not alive.
You’re death waiting to happen,
and no one will notice when you’re gone,
least of all you,
because you hardly even lived.

You just breathed
and shat and farted and stole
from yourself.

You shake your head at the world,
at the homeless, the youthful,
the wayward and the drunks,
wishing them all away,
but the one you pity the most
is the fairminded lad you left behind,
who you can’t even look at
in the mirror,
even with a blade in your hand.

You laugh away thoughts you know won’t leave you
and there’s always someone to blame,
but you hide behind umpteen masks
that you juggle between the bastards
who keep the wolf from the door,
all because you can’t tell them
that you owe them nothing.

Your smile has become a smirk,
your heart a darkened hole
and your head is a heel.

You’ll need to go mad before you get better.