I took her to the water

She weighs heavily upon my heart,

She is the very essence within me,

I know her manacles must chafe.

After a period my feet falter.



I carry her, as she once carried me, stooped

An orb, and the inside was all good and bad

Some of us from the world come from a sinful act

Babies born of abuse, of any sort, you see? To see it, to breathe

And sin is dense, and sin is heavy. And so is she. And they weigh upon me.





She carries the sins of all those who rose a hand against her.

Of those she rose a hand against, including me,

She can no longer move due to the dark dreams that paralyze the fingertips,

She cannot find truth, she wraps herself in lies like cobwebs and pretends them silk,

She finds she cannot breathe under the weight of all,



If it is not logic and love than it isn’t light,

Those of the dark often dream of worse things than the forest has,

For although the nature of the dark is wild, one could not count it cruel

In the darkness she inhabits she paints the painful memories of her past.

The backdrop is filled with other sufferers, dragging their legs forth

The demons assigned would be happy to escort them downhill

Walking along, dragging behind, and even occasionally you might be so lucky

To see a fighter, or a fleer, like me, a bit of both I guess.



That is why I took her to the river, not to let her fall.

Water is heavy, but it makes us feel all light

I thought perhaps if she could not walk or run, then she could swim

I’d of happily have beat her demons away,

But a tortured soul haunts itself, and it was she who most plagued us

She never stopped dragging me into the night

And I was forced to let her hide from the day



For light wanted no part in her guilty face, or so she says

But the river is good, and bad. Unlike light.

She is not strong enough to swim, just float along

Drugged and somewhere in between, morphine,

The river's mouth would have swallowed her whole

Except that my fingers do not slip.



It tires me to hear her sad song.

But at least she can sing, my mermaid.



I eat from books, and trees alike

I revel in the foliage and enjoy the light

There she sits in the muddy shadows and waits

For the kindness of death to rid her from her cruel fate





I have waited and lived with my eyes shut

I have dreamed rather than waking and I have dreamed as I walked.

I have let the water swallow me, for I had nothing to give

But the river spit me back out for it is my friend.

And the moon finds me in the darkness

and that almost manages to lift me up.

I hear my elders’ prayers and wisdom in this darkness

I bless my fortune in this darkness.

I ask for healing in this death.

It was they who led me away from this land.

And she weighs me down.



Perhaps my bottom is muddied as well

You will find there are no comfortable seats in hell

Just jagged rocks and cyclical pain,

done to themselves and others again

A place I pass through every now and then

But during the day, I take time to enjoy heaven.

Where everywhere you fall to a place soft enough

And I have learned to revel within hell.

Accept the darkness and bless everything.

For hell does not torture visitors, it just makes us watch

And when left too long, it is enough, and we will not leave.

Haunted simply by the haunted. As was done to her.

But I keep perfect time, eat the mushrooms from the ground, shut my eyes

Then time is up, and I must walk back, she does not want me to go

And yet she wants me to be free of this place.

She can only follow me till the border.

Sometimes she’ll follow me in, and get confused,





Turn back home. I walk in heaven, gallivanting in glee,

Prosperity, luck, opportunity, I live in the land of plenty

Where all can be good and right, if one has the time.

But we must fight for our place here, and for our place further upward.

We claw our way to the source.

Hell drags you down, but you must work for heaven.

So much easier to roll downhill than to climb ever upward

As angels fly on by effortlessly, laughing at us, with us.



I do not forget the price of heaven.

I pray for those suffering in their own district of hell.

Those on the upper levels, those further down.

Those who have forgotten happy sound.

I miss their faces, now much changed. Wrinkled, leathered, stained,

Their eyes deranged.  Forever changed. Scars are permanent.

I bare my scars and stains well, with hardly a flinch.

I live in the present and that is one of my blessings.

I have many.



She denies her soul breath, water, worship or respite.

She babbles again and again spinning around my head.

Telling me that all is good in the land of the dead.