He dips out from the world of swords and spears

Dropping his shield

Dropping his head between his knees

He watches the colours floating behind closed eyes

Swarming and flooding the well-worn tears

The claustrophobic chain of events played out

Twice three times a day

Until with all of his heaving sobs he jumps right in

Into the numbing pools embrace

Lost in a journey of underwater swimming

Away from the screaming nags

And hackneyed phrases

What’s wrong with you

Get yourself together

The sad and angry faces

The silent moving mouths to which he is

Deaf dumb and blind

Until one day the well runs dry

And he is left standing sodden dripping

Soaked through to the bone

Shivering and snivelling

Shaking gasping for breath

A fish out of water flapping choking on his own words

Help me please

He closes his eyes he thinks forever

Allowing the only hit he can find to take affect

One last dirt brown bag of bliss

Baked drawn and impregnated

And all becomes a smudge mud pool of breathless life

As he sees, his sisters and grandmother

All standing at an open grave

In amongst the heaving stench of rain and blood

And so, he screams and wakes in a place he hates

All sterile and clean

With oxygen and trolleys

And he wants to run and dive back in

To swim and find relief from all he knows but cannot go

The silent placations from his mother now heard

Crying out to him to anyone who will listen

And a spark becomes a flame

A torch to burn down the tower in which he has

Been confined

So that he can for the first time meet life full on

Allowing the sunshine of the morning

To slap him in the face 

As he feels the rays

Soak in deep below the skin

Between bone and flesh

Between heart and head