Green Light/Red Light - Poem

Green Light/Red Light

I sit alone and wonder what I did to get here
To this place where there is only endless suffering
A nightmare that continues to unfold even in the daylight hours when I am wide awake
A loop that plays on and on every second of every hour of every day
I wonder what brought us together and how my heart ended up melting until in time it beat only for you and you alone
I put up fences, barricades to keep you in and strangers out but all they did were drive you farther and farther away from me
My efforts to pull you near where the very same ones that sent you scurrying like a mouse for cover
Running in the opposite direction afraid of what opening your heart to me might let in
You vanished into the night almost as if you were never really there
Some made up creation that I formed in my crazy deluded mind
To fill in the blank spaces
To give me hope and escape from my pathetic life
A life of darkness, horror and pain
A life where I was devoid of passion and love

You opened my mind to endless possibilities
You gave me a purpose but that purpose soon changed to something far more dangerous
A slippery slope to a place far worse that hell

I feel like we were two lost souls ship wrecked on the sea of life
United by one common thread
Floating, looking for a rock to cling onto
Dry land – safety and somewhere to anchor our troubled hearts and minds
Latching onto the nearest thing we could in order to survive – each other

The shackles around my heart can give no more
Restricting my breathing until only a gasp for air can be heard faintly on the summer breeze
The love in my heart for you overwhelms me, chokes me, steals my oxygen like a thief in the dead of night
Grips me until there is no life left in me
Boils over until all that I have left to give is gone
I never knew that love could feel like this or that I could experience such passion over one man
A man so far out of reach that he may as well have a brick wall surrounding him
Imprisoning him in a tower where I can only look from afar but not touch
Brought together but continuously torn apart
I can dream but there is no reality
Just false hopes that continue to be dashed
Beaten down again and again until I am too weak to rise
Whipped with an invisible cane until my body bleeds

My body held down by chains that cannot be seen with the naked eye
Waiting is like watching a kettle that never boils
Green light, red light
Still nothing just emptiness
My life on pause both day and night
No let up from this endless nightmare that has become my daily routine
Time standing still, the hands on the clock frozen
Every minute seems like a lifetime
Trapped in a time warp where every day plays out much the same
Immersed in a fantasy world
A game with strict rules
Full of pit falls and strategically made plans that crumble away like dust in the palm of my hands
Ashes that blow in the breeze like the remains of a body left to drift out to sea
As usual I am left with nothing
I act surprised, even shocked but I should be used to this torment by now
It is my life

As if on the edge of a cliff I look out to sea
Blue as far as the eye can see
No boats, no people just clear blue sky and perfectly clear blue sea
Engulfing me like a blanket of pain
Washing over my weakened body
Casting a cloud of darkness over your return to me
False hopes are all I have left to cling onto in these dark times
Draining all the joy from inside of me
Leaving me empty and motionless
I cry but no tears fall, I call out but my words just fade away
Carried away as if never spoken
If this were not a metaphorical cliff then maybe I would lose my footing and fall
End the torment you put me through once and for all
Be free to rise once again
To walk this earth free of shackles and chains
The ones I hang around my neck day after day
Free the ropes that burn into my fragile skin
Tightly binding me until there is no escape

My soul is trapped in a world where night has become day
The light that once shone so brightly has faded away into a flicker
A flicker that fights for survival
Pulled this way and that by anger, betrayal and hate
A fusion of negative emotions that eat away at me every waking day
Knocking me from side to side like gales on a winters morning
Torn, my body is black and blue
Open wounds that remind me of the pain you put me through
Beaten as if by waves crashing onto the shore
Sunshine replaced with thunder, lightening that reaches into the very core of my being
Cutting like a sharp knife
Ripping out my wilting heart
Leaving me dying

All I am is an empty hollow shell
Flesh and bone – nothing more than a walking zombie
Watching the world pass me by
Just to add to my pain, my eternal torture
Love, lust, joy and happiness added to the melting pot
Just enough to keep me hooked, to let me take the bait
Like a fish I hang suspended in mid air awaiting my fate
A choice between life and death
In the end it is you and you alone who gets to decide my cruel and untimely demise
You who decides if I live or if I die
My life in your tender hands
A huge burden to carry
A cross welded to your back, following you day after day like a shadow that never fades away

I see your face and I reach out to touch you
Of course you are not really there
It is all a cruel illusion
My eyes see what I want them to see
I call out your name but the words trail away
I know that you cannot hear
In my heart I know that you are gone
The invisible ropes that once bound us together like man and wife have been severed causing only more intolerable heartache and pain
We have been wrenched apart leaving scars that will never heal
A pain embedded in my very being
A reminder of what never was or what could have been

Thoughts of you enrich my body if only for a brief moment
I cling onto those thoughts so hard as if they are gold
I treasure every memory we ever made
Afraid that the images of you inside my head will in time evaporate
I picture every part of your body – holding me, caressing me
Driven mad by images I cannot share
To replay the time we spent together again and again until those moments are etched into my subconscious
Fantasies I have erected in my over active mind
The only way I can keep you alive
Imagining a past that we never quite had
Images that make me feel like I am drowning
Drowning in a sea of constant despair
A constant wave not of sadness more a numbness
A knowing in my heart that I will never see you again

Words unspoken now will never be said
Entombed in my body forever more
Eating away at me, feeling regret with every breath
All the things we could have done suspended in time and space
A huge void where once there was just a small glimmer of silent hope
I am a caged animal now
Boxed in by rails and invisible walls
Something to be pointed at and ridiculed like a circus freak
Without you I am not worthy of this life anymore
The air that I breathe does not keep me alive
I am being strangled
Forced to watch my life pass me by as I lamely wait in anticipation of death
The cruel irony is that I wake up every morning only to live through the same hell over and over again
I cannot run my legs are welded to the ground
They are made of stone since you left
My body encased in a living tomb
My heart frozen in time
Beating out of duty

I am lost without you here by my side
I am nothing
I am not strong enough to fight alone
With you it was different
A reason to be alive, to get up and face the dawn of every new day
To face the world I tried so hard to avoid
I try so hard to be positive but negative thoughts and feelings just get in the way

I loved you with all of my heart, body and soul and I know that somewhere in your heart you loved me
On some level I penetrated that armour you encased around your heart
You just couldn’t bring yourself to say the words for fear of consequence
I understand and I forgive you
In my eyes you could do no wrong
My mind muddled with a dangerous cocktail of reality and fiction
The edges blurred until the two became one
We were destined to be together in this life and on into eternity
Our bodies to be entwined as one on our deathbeds
Like two plants whose roots had become entwined over time
Wrapped around one another sucking all the life away
Like a poison killing slowly
Enjoying the torture that its victim is enduring day after day
A big romantic ending for a passion that ragged like an inferno in my tragic heart
Immortalized in marble our bodies placed in a tomb where we could be together no matter what
A place where no one could force us to be apart
Where we could be as one and live out our destiny
A love so epic that in eternity time would stand still
Frozen not out of fear but a magic that caressed the earth and all that inhabited it past and present

I see now that the day will never come
You stole what you wanted from me
Gave me enough to make me want to come along for the ride
Treated me like a princess when all along you were laughing at me like I was a fool
I was your puppet – you were the master pulling the strings
Twisting the knife this way and that
You used me – took the love I offered you and used it as a weapon against my soul
Even this knowledge does not make me hate you
I know like me you are suffering from a confused mind
Like a small innocent child you wanted a new toy and for the briefest of moments I caught your curiosity but toys get old and soon I was cast aside
I am nothing with or without you
You switched on a beacon in my heart but that light has long since died
At the end of the day I still love you and I guess I always will
Nothing and no one can take that away from me
My fantasies, as I realise that’s all they really were, lie in tatters on the floor
Trodden on like rubbish blowing freely in the wind on a winters day
Dampened by heavy rain
Destroyed by the decay of modern society

You were never mine
You had your own set of shackles and chains
You had your own set of rules to abide by
Your own prison to escape from and demons to fight
I never had you, not really
You were a thorn deeply embedded in my flesh and you still are and probably always will be
I wonder if your life flows in much the same way as mine
Tortured unwillingly day after day
For me like you there is no escape just this cruel existence on a harsh planet where the only emotions we seem destined to feel are bitterness and sorrow

Green light, red light
My life is still on pause
I guess it will be until the day I die



This piece was inspired by my friend who will remain nameless. It is a bit of a rant but it gets my point over in the end!